The Sun is Starting to Peek Through iCloud

Anyone who takes more than a cursory glance at this site will know what an Apple fan I am. They would also know that I'm a professional technology consultant who regularly deals with a variety of hardware, environments and operating systems. What may not be as evident is my opinion that on-line services are making all that stuff less and less relevant.

For me, the "light bulb" moment was when I first installed Dropbox in 2008. The capability to save a file once and have it instantly available on all my devices was a nearly magical experience waaaaay back then. I instantly became a Dropbox evangelist and remain one to this day. Thanks to their referral plan and other special offers, my Dropbox folder is now 10 gigs (up from the initial 2 gigs included in their free service) and I've never given them a cent. I also "piggyback" a few other services like 1Password, TextExpander and ByWord by saving their data to my Dropbox folder. Without a doubt, of all the on-line storage companies, Dropbox was (and remains) “the first with the most". Their free service is, by far, the most widely available cloud storage. It’s on every platform I use, iOS, Mac, Linux and Windows. On iOS, more apps support Dropbox than any other cloud storage solution, including iCloud. Because I’ve avoided storing media (photos & video) to my Dropbox folder, their free offering plus their incremental adds for referrals provides me with plenty of storage space. In fact, I got a very generous (free) 5 gig bump for being a loyal customer. (Am I a customer if I only use Dropbox's free service?)  Anyway, a few months ago a friend asked me how long I'd been using Dropbox. I couldn't find that information on my Dropbox account page, so I made an inquiry via their email support. They replied thanking me for being with them since the week their beta went live in 2008 and gave me another 5 gigs for my loyalty! I remember being on the original waiting list to try Dropbox and I eventually became their 4726th customer. Now, there are over 200 million of us.

As much as I love and extol the benefits of using Dropbox, Apple’s ecosystem has sucked me in with some of iCloud’s services. Don’t get me wrong, I will probably use Dropbox ‘till I’m dead or Dropbox goes away, but iCloud makes document saving and ubiquitous availability across all my Apple devices so easy and automatic it’s hard not to take advantage of the free service. I discovered iCloud’s new utility when I began using the new iOS version of Pages to do almost all my writing on my iPad Air. I left Byword when the new version of Pages was released last year. Byword is a great text editor for the iPad and Mac. I was attracted by its built-in Dropbox support and overall simplicity and used it almost exclusively for over a year. Before the new Pages, Byword was the editing app that made switching between my iPad and Mac the easiest. At the time, Pages for iOS was “heavy”. It was a resource hog, took too long to load and I never got really comfortable with the interface. The new version launched late last year changed all that.

Pages is now a sleek, easy-to-use editor and its iCloud integration makes document availability completely automatic. Now, I can literally work on a document on my iPad while sitting on my sofa, set my iPad down, walk to my office upstairs and continue editing it on my Mac without any intermediate save steps. It’s just there. I could also choose to continue on a Windows machine by using the cloud version of Pages through any browser. iCloud makes all this possible and since I upgraded all my Macs to Mavericks, it has become even more attractive.

Apple's keychain syncing is another new iCloud feature that's beginning to supplant another of my favorite apps, 1Password. Like Dropbox, 1Password was my "go-to" for storing logins, identity and credit card information because it was available on all platforms and synchronized automatically. It still does some things (like storing software keys) that keychain syncing doesn't, but once turned on, Apple's built-in keychain stays up to date across all my machines and gadgets, keeping my stored logins, identity and credit card data. And because it's from Apple, it is baked into all the native iOS apps. That's something 1Password will not be able to replicate until Apple allows it or Oklahoma no longer sucks.

These new features plus all the legacy apps like email, contacts and calendar that date back to the ".Mac" days make using iCloud a no-brainer for a Mac/iOS user. Besides, it's free. Google's services are free also and I do have a Gmail account, but like many, I'm beginning to get a little leery about what Google's "free" services are actually costing me. It is refreshing to login to iCloud.com and take care of business in an ad-free environment. It's also nice to work in a similar interface on all my devices. Apple mail, contacts, calendar and iWork look and function basically the same on my Mac, iPad or in a browser. Apple has taken some criticism over this, especially about iWork. They took what I consider to be a bold step when they coded the new iWork apps to the "lowest common denominator" to facilitate uniformity across all three platforms. The most sophisticated iWork version, on the Mac, lost considerable capabilities as a result. Apple assures us this is only temporary and have already begun adding functionality back into iWork for Mac. It remains to be seen just how much will ultimately be restored and how long that will take, but I'll bet most users either haven't noticed and/or don't care. I consider myself to be an “intermediate” iWork user and none of the latest omissions or subsequent additions affected me in the slightest.

Apple is obviously putting great effort into improving iCloud. In the “.Mac” and “.Me” days, I wouldn’t have recommended it to anyone other than someone I really disliked and/or someone wanting a free email account. There may come a day when iCloud renders all other cloud services unnecessary, but that day ain’t here just yet. But iCloud has improved to the point of being very useful and reliable for a number of tasks. The fact that it has displaced Dropbox for a large portion of my document storage/syncing is a sign that Apple is heading in the right direction. Their continuing datacenter expansions plus the biggest bankroll of any company in the world add up to promising things to come for iCloud. You might give that some thought if you’ve been jaded by Apple’s poor cloud services of the past. When I did, I was pleasantly surprised.