“iCloud Drive is a component of Apple iCloud, sort of, but it also spans across other components of iCloud. It can get confusing, especially if you are used to more standard file-syncing services, such as Dropbox, that put all your files together into one place,” Jill Duffy writes for PC Magazine.
“Wrapping your head around iCloud Drive and iCloud takes some patience, but it can be a good service if you use Apple’s office productivity apps avidly, because it’s tightly integrated with them on all platforms,” Duffy writes. “It also works well on Windows computers and the Web. ”
“As confusing as it can get, the original purpose of iCloud and iCloud Drive was for Apple users to have a seamless experience using their Apple apps across devices,” Duffy writes. “In many ways, Apple has succeeded, or at least continues to make progress to this end. iOS 8 and Yosemite made huge inroads at creating a more unified experience.”
Read more in the full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: Trying to shoehorn iCloud Drive (and iCloud itself) into preconceived ideas about what cloud storage is and does is not the basis for a good review.
The confusion Duffy describes is born from having learned how to do it one way and trying to fit iCloud Drive into those notions. It’s similar to the issues Windows sufferers have when they arrive in nirvana for the first time: They learned it upside-down and backwards and now that have to forget that and let the Mac work for them. Fortunately for Apple, new users to cloud storage – the vast majority, unlike Duffy – won’t have anything to unlearn and they’ll simply use iCloud Drive as intended, not try to make it work like something else.
Here’s what iCloud Drive does:
• Store and access all of your documents in one place from any of your devices
• Keep files and folders up to date across all your devices
• Create new files and folders from iCloud-enabled apps
• Work on the same file across multiple appsHere’s how you access your files in iCloud Drive:
• Using any supported web browser*, you can go to iCloud Drive or iWork for iCloud (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) at iCloud.com. In iWork for iCloud, you can find your Pages, Numbers, and Keynote files
• On your Mac with OS X Yosemite, you can go to iCloud Drive in Finder
• On a PC with Windows 7 or later and iCloud for Windows, you can go to iCloud Drive in File Explorer
• On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 8, you can access your files from Apple apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, or any apps that support iCloud Drive*Safari 6 or later, Firefox 22 or later, or Google Chrome 28 or later