5 ms·

Sounds like a smart deal. Cloud syncing is now something that Android (or at least HTC's Androids) will do better than iOS. Apple really should have done a si

Sounds like a smart deal. Cloud syncing is now something that Android (or at least HTC's Androids) will do better than iOS. Apple really should have done a similar deal with Dropbox when they found out they couldn't buy them, but I guess it really isn't in their DNA to rely heavily on 3rd party services. Unfortunately, doing cloud syncing right also isn't really in their DNA.

heresy 15y ago
All I see is that users get a Dropbox app pre-installed, with 25GB of storage. iCloud gives the user transparent storage of data, apps can use the same APIs on all iOS devices (where is the Android Dropbox API?) to store information there. Backups occur to it trivially. Photos are automatically synced there. iTunes Match runs off it. iTunes Match only takes up 2GB of storage for my 15,000 songs (~80GB), because the majority are in the iTunes music store, so this deal would already be worse for me. iCloud wins because it is backed by the ecosystem. Where is the corresponding ecosystem in the Android world? How does a bundled Dropbox app + storage bundle compete if it requires the user to manually do file management to ensure "cloud syncing" happens?
jsz0 15y ago
6 months ago I would have agreed but Apple has surpassed Android in this respect. With iOS you get for free: * Calendars, contacts, notes, reminders, bookmarks, reading list, etc. * Full device back-up (including all third party applications, settings, etc) * iCloud Documents / native APIs * PhotoStream (photo syncing between devices) For a price: * iTunes Match It's amazing how quickly things change.
- oblique63 15y ago
  To be fair, Android has had a lot of these features for a while. * Calendars and contacts have always been synced with my gmail and across all my android devices since my G1. * Bookmarks are now being synced through the new Chrome for android * On Android you pretty much rely on Google Docs for your document needs, which of course is cloud-based * Photos have been synced with picasa (now part of G+) across all my devices for a while now too * Google music (can't comment on google's book offering, as I haven't really used it yet) Now, I'm not gonna say Google's implementation is better or anything, but a lot of that functionality has been there for so long, it seems at least comprable to apple's offering at this point (if a bit 'fragmented'). I only just got my first iOS device a few weeks ago (an ipad2 from my work), and since it's my only one I can't say I've tested out iCloud fully enough to give an in-depth comparison. I do hope google eventually come out with an API for their cloud storage for android though, as that seems to be the only major thing that's missing. I will say one thing though, I find it quite nice that I can access all the synced data on my Android devices from any browser anywhere, conveniently within the services I already use, and not just from my Androids/personal computers.

heresy 15y ago

All I see is that users get a Dropbox app pre-installed, with 25GB of storage. iCloud gives the user transparent storage of data, apps can use the same APIs on all iOS devices (where is the Android Dropbox API?) to store information there. Backups occur to it trivially. Photos are automatically synced there. iTunes Match runs off it. iTunes Match only takes up 2GB of storage for my 15,000 songs (~80GB), because the majority are in the iTunes music store, so this deal would already be worse for me. iCloud wins because it is backed by the ecosystem. Where is the corresponding ecosystem in the Android world? How does a bundled Dropbox app + storage bundle compete if it requires the user to manually do file management to ensure "cloud syncing" happens?

jsz0 15y ago

6 months ago I would have agreed but Apple has surpassed Android in this respect. With iOS you get for free: * Calendars, contacts, notes, reminders, bookmarks, reading list, etc. * Full device back-up (including all third party applications, settings, etc) * iCloud Documents / native APIs * PhotoStream (photo syncing between devices) For a price: * iTunes Match It's amazing how quickly things change.

oblique63 15y ago
To be fair, Android has had a lot of these features for a while. * Calendars and contacts have always been synced with my gmail and across all my android devices since my G1. * Bookmarks are now being synced through the new Chrome for android * On Android you pretty much rely on Google Docs for your document needs, which of course is cloud-based * Photos have been synced with picasa (now part of G+) across all my devices for a while now too * Google music (can't comment on google's book offering, as I haven't really used it yet) Now, I'm not gonna say Google's implementation is better or anything, but a lot of that functionality has been there for so long, it seems at least comprable to apple's offering at this point (if a bit 'fragmented'). I only just got my first iOS device a few weeks ago (an ipad2 from my work), and since it's my only one I can't say I've tested out iCloud fully enough to give an in-depth comparison. I do hope google eventually come out with an API for their cloud storage for android though, as that seems to be the only major thing that's missing. I will say one thing though, I find it quite nice that I can access all the synced data on my Android devices from any browser anywhere, conveniently within the services I already use, and not just from my Androids/personal computers.