Apple iCloud service spawns imitators such as Dropbox.com and Google Docs

by philg

Steve Jobs unveiled the iCloud file syncing system only a few hours ago, yet already there are imitators who have managed to run with Apple’s ideas. The two copycats that come most readily to mind are Dropbox.com and Google Docs (like iCloud, a cloud-based service that stores files, but the Google programmers, apparently within just a few hours, also managed to develop a browser-based editing interface to some of those files).

Has anyone figured out what the original innovative Apple service does that these imitators haven’t yet managed to copy? I.e., what can I do with iCloud that I can’t do with Dropbox.com?

19 thoughts on “Apple iCloud service spawns imitators such as Dropbox.com and Google Docs”

  2. Owen, that sounds kind of nice, I guess, but I already subscribe to Rhapsody and can stream pretty much whatever I want whenever and wherever I want it. And the MP3s that I have are 320 Kbps VBR. I’m not sure about the differences in codec quality, but would 256 Kbps AAC be better quality?

  3. Tough to say, but AAC often gives better results at lower bitrates. I doubt I could hear the difference since I blew out my eardrums back at that Nazareth concert in ’83 at the Orpheum.

    I think Apple’s advantage is the It Just Works™ thing and the robust APIs that they will offer developers for this stuff.

    The Photo Stream thing also looks particularly nice:

    http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/photo-stream.html

  4. Main advantage iCloud will have for IOS app developers is that it’s an official API supported by Apple. That means that instead of app devs having to include Dropbox code in their app, they can use the Apple API.

    Conversely, Apple was never going to support Dropbox for their built in Apps, bu they will support iCloud for document sharing.

  5. I am definitely not pleased with how Dropbox’s management has responded to various security issues. Mainly, it’s been shown that Dropbox lied about security, and at times when this was pointed out, they mainly just denied it.

    The truth about Dropbox is there are many competitors to Dropbox, and Dropbox is convenient as a direct result of their sacrificing security. (Since it starts automatically, and requires no login.)

    So I am all for Dropbox dying on the vine if it means we get competitors whose management teams have more integrity.

  6. And re the iTunes Match service – it’s not a streaming music service a la Rhapsody, Rdio, etc – it only gives you access to the music you already have on your computer. (I was going to say ‘own’, but apparently it will allow you access to anything in your iTunes library – presumably even pirated music.)

    It doesn’t sound as useful as I had hoped. I have a 32 gig iphone, but a 43 gig music collection. iTunes Match would let me get to that collection anyplace without connecting up a wire and syncing, but I think I’d still have to download the songs to my iPhone – so I’d still have the problem that my entire collection would not fit. (That’s where a streaming service has an edge.)

  7. The concept of a Hard-Drive in the cloud is nothing new. Apple had iDisk since the .Mac days. What is new and innovative is the no setup, fully integrated, off hand data management & background syncing across multiple devices (hand-held & desktop).

    Now tell what product does that?

  8. I’ve run into problems trying to edit my weight & balance spreadsheets (hosted on Google Docs) using my iPhone … I can read them but none of my formulas seem to pick up the new values when I try punching them into my iPhone browser. Compounding the problem was lack of WiFi at the FBO …

    Haven’t thot of trying to do this with DropBox tho … does it include a built-in spreadsheet editor on iPhone? Will investigate further.

    Anyway if iCloud makes it easy for me to edit my W&B sheets on my iPhone and iPad (and keep it all synced) then I’m sold! Especially if I can edit the sheets offline and have ’em sync back up when I return to civilization …

    OTOH I’m sure there’s a W&B app for iPhone out there … for some reason I like writing all the formulas myself.

  9. Gruber has an insightful take on this:

    http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/demoted

    “This is a fundamentally different vision for the coming decade than Google’s. In both cases, your data is in the cloud, and you can access it from anywhere with a network connection. But Google’s vision is about software you run in a web browser. Apple’s is about native apps you run on devices. Apple is as committed to native apps — on the desktop, tablet, and handheld — as it has ever been.

    Google’s frame is the browser window. Apple’s frame is the screen. That’s what we’ll remember about today’s keynote ten years from now.”

  10. I think you are putting too much of an emphasis on the file sharing part of iCloud.

    What Dropbox and Google docs certainly don’t do what iCloud (Nee MobileMe (nee .Mac)) does is keeping my mail account settings, passwords and certificates, bookmarks, contacts and calendars in sync across all my Mac OS and iOS devices.

    You can do some of that stuff by going all-out Google-Apps-pretending-to-be-Exchange and using some FireFox plugins, but it’s hard to set up and doesn’t do it all.

    .iMobileMacMeCloud makes is easy.

    That was worth paying $99/year for to me and now it will be free.

  11. Bas: Thanks for the clarification. I haven’t had any trouble syncing my Gmail contacts or calendar since, as far as I know, they are never resident on any of my computers or Android phones. The passwords and certificates sync sounds nice, esp. for those who use VPNs or SSH into things such as Amazon Web Services.

  12. Remember that Apple wasn’t the first vendor of a portable MP3 player either. There were several other on the market. almost all of them cheaper, when Apple introduced the first iPod. The iPod became dominant, because Apple made it easy to get music on the device compared to other products.

    Apple is good at making things that easy to use, and that’s a strong selling point to many people. Apple’s iCloud will make a lot of cloud-based data storage transparent for a large number of users. In typical Apple fashion, it won’t be the most advanced or flexible offering of its type, but it will be “good enough” for many people, and draws people into Apple’s product ecosystem more, so they buy more products and services.

    For a vast number of technology consumers, “Easy and simple” is actually “best”.

  13. Apple makes things easy as long as all parts of the system are Apple branded. It can be made to play with others, but generally doesn’t like to. iTunes will only work with iPods, not with other brands of music devices or phones (Apple intentionally broke Palm Pre’s ability to connect to iTunes).

    I have a mixed office, with Macs and PCs. Apple Time Machine (their back-up software) won’t work with NAS unless it’s also Apple branded (for my WD WorldBook, I have to manually backup my Apple machines because they see it as another computer and won’t allow Time Machine to back up to it).

    I like some of Apple’s products, but ultimately they are a hardware company and they want you to buy their stuff.

  14. The main thing in iCloud that I find missing in Dropbox, is the ability to access all files locally without being on-line. In Dropbox you have to manually select this for each file you want to be “local”, can’t set this globally or on a directory basis. With a Wifi-only iPad this seriously limits the functionality of Dropbox. In fact I use the GoodReader app on iPad and iPhone to sync automatically to my dropbox account to get the stuff locally always, but that another admin step. So the difference is that Dropbox synchs “to the cloud”, requiring connection to the cloud to use it, whereas iCloud synchs the data directly to the devices. Of course you need that 64Mb iPad, which makes Apple very happy, but it should be much less hassle.

    BUT, Dropbox could fix this with some simple global setting options I think.

  15. Ron: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/18285/sync-specific-folders-with-dropbox/ says that Dropbox syncs all folders by default to the hard drive on every connected computer. This is my experience with the service. It seems not to do this when syncing with phones, e.g., Android or iPhone (see http://www.dropbox.com/iphoneapp where it says a file has to be a “Favorite” for offline viewing). Perhaps they will tweak their iOS client to have a “work like it does on a standard PC” setting.

  16. philg: precisely my point. Dropbox won’t cache locally by default on Android/iPhone/iPad, requires extra steps to make it a “favorite”, whereas iCloud does this by default to your mobile device. Except that is has to be IOS.

    That remains a big plus for iCloud until Dropbox adds the feature you suggest. The other is of course syncing of music files between all devices, if you are a purchaser rather than a subscriber. I wouldn’t want to use Dropbox for that with a large music library.

  17. Philip-
    I have to be a bit diplomatic, as i am attending the Apple developer conference and there are some things I can’t speak publically about until iOS 5 ships sometime in the fall.

    iCloud affects 9 applications for users:
    – application installation itself (this is not novel on iOS, but the UI is improved)
    – book synchronization
    – documents in Apple’s word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool
    – backup/restore all user data
    – mail via a free @me.com address
    – calendaring
    – contacts
    – your most recent 1000 photos are sync’ed to all devices
    – your music library (and your pirated music, for $29/year)

    The plumbing that makes this possible is also available for developers. Dropbox may be a fine way to trade files, but it’s lousy when used as a key/value store, and inefficient when exchanging sqlite databases. As a developer, iCloud makes a number of interesting features very straightforward.

  18. Re: “It works fine with gmail”.

    If it wasn’t clear, Apple is very aggressively trying to “cut the cord” from Google. Their calendar and contact syncing required either Google, running your own linux server, or what used to be their $99/year @me.com service (now due to be closed).

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