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alternative to Icloud

Harp77

Harp77

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 2, 2013
51
0
Toronto, ONT
I have almost 20 gigs of pics I need to move off my desktop pc that is going to crash any day.

While I love Apple/Mac, their pricing for Icloud storage is robbery.

Google Drive is much better on the wallet but was wondering - can I still use Drive the same as Icloud on my Ipad to view pics, etc.?
 
Harp77 said:
I have almost 20 gigs of pics I need to move off my desktop pc that is going to crash any day.

While I love Apple/Mac, their pricing for Icloud storage is robbery.

Google Drive is much better on the wallet but was wondering - can I still use Drive the same as Icloud on my Ipad to view pics, etc.?
Click to expand...

Yes and no. It can store all of your pictures and video, but you cannot do full device backups of iphones / ipads to it. It also won't sync in your photo stream for iPhoto and other devices, wont store contacts, calendars, notes, ad remiders unless you use carddav / caldav and a gmail account (which really isn't a part of google drive) as well as correctly configure all of your mac apps. Find my mac also depends on iCloud as well as icloud mail.



If all your going to do is store picture on it for backup purposes then yes it's pretty easy to do that, although 20GB will take quite a while.
 
Harp77 said:
I have almost 20 gigs of pics I need to move off my desktop pc that is going to crash any day.

While I love Apple/Mac, their pricing for Icloud storage is robbery.

Google Drive is much better on the wallet but was wondering - can I still use Drive the same as Icloud on my Ipad to view pics, etc.?
Click to expand...
I've used Dropbox, SkyDrive, Mozy, Google Drive and, recently, Copy.com. Copy offers 15GB free to sign up, (20GB free if you are referred by an existing user), and will add 5GB free for each referral you make. All of these can be used to store any documents, photos, movies, etc. that you choose to store.
 
Now that Apple is about to back out of the 25 GB they currently give me on iCloud as a former mobile me user, I'm tempted to start moving stuff off of iCloud rather than cough up the $20 or more per year to maintain my current level of storage.

I really like Photostream. I like it better than Picasa. Jellybean broke Picasa. On older Android devices, if you had dozens of albums set up in Picasa, they "just showed up" on your Android device. Not any more. Then there's the upload side of things. Photostream is dead simple. Enable uploads and you're done, though I still don't quite have movies uploading correctly. The only tweak I'd like to see Apple make is automatic deletion of uploaded items from my camera roll after 60 days if I don't mark them for retention.

I like the way iCloud works for some apps like iWork and some games. I've used dropbox, google drive and a few others but I like the way iCloud works. I'll probably wind up paying for iCloud storage because I think Apple has things working pretty well for those of us on the "all Apple" ecosystem these days. One thing I'd like to see Apple do is release iBooks for Android, Windows and the web (or even just offer a web app). Apple still hasn't quite figured out that they are on the verge of becoming an 800 pound gorilla content company to rival Amazon but they are so focused on selling iThings that they are missing a huge "content lock-in" opportunity. Just as people will be impressed with iWork in the browser, they would be impressed with iBooks in the browser as well.
 
AWS-Amazon Web Services. Have a look at Glacier. Here I use it with great results.

Arq complements quite well. Here

Maybe that helps you. Let us know what you do.
 
Interesting information here to alternatives to iCloud.

skydrive - I've used this in the past but found it slow, both on my work computer and my Mac. It offers a lot of storage for free at the moment but I wonder if like Apple that may be a temporary thing.

Google drive - haven't used it, but given Google's privacy stance, I'm not sure I want this

DropBox - been a user of very early on. I've accumulated a fair amount of storage due to referrals and/or promotions from them - even so I'm at 7.8gb. Kind of meager

iCloud - Love the integration, since I'm fairly well immersed in the apple ecosystem, though I don't take full advantage of all the service. The rollback in storage isn't affecting me because of this.

Copy - I'm intrigued by this, though but I question the long term viability of a new service given the big dogs in the game (google,apple,ms and dropbox).

I do think apple is missing the boat with the price point, and the meager free storage provided. While I don't use that much of their storage, I don't think they're helping their cause
 
maflynn said:
Copy - I'm intrigued by this, though but I question the long term viability of a new service given the big dogs in the game (google,apple,ms and dropbox).
Click to expand...
I have the same concerns, but I've learned that many of these services have introductory free storage in amounts that aren't offered later. When I see free storage in the amounts that Copy is offering, I open an account to secure the storage, but don't necessarily start using it until I'm more confident that they're going to be around for a while. I may just use it for less critical data, or as a redundant backup, or as a means of sharing large files with others.
 
GGJstudios said:
I have the same concerns, but I've learned that many of these services have introductory free storage in amounts that aren't offered later. When I see free storage in the amounts that Copy is offering, I open an account to secure the storage, but don't necessarily start using it until I'm more confident that they're going to be around for a while. I may just use it for less critical data, or as a redundant backup, or as a means of sharing large files with others.
Click to expand...

I agree and I'll probably do the same with copy just to be safe. I was so turned off of SkyDrive that while I have a lot of space, I'll never use it
 
SkyBell said:
Really? I've found SkyDrive to be wonderful. :) The only qualm I have is the lack of Snow Leopard support for the desktop app;
Click to expand...

Yeah for me, it was too slow, both on my Mac at home, and my work computer running windows 7. In both cases moving some rather largish files were really slow, to the point where I gave up on it.
 
maflynn said:
Yeah for me, it was too slow, both on my Mac at home, and my work computer running windows 7. In both cases moving some rather largish files were really slow, to the point where I gave up on it.
Click to expand...

I suppose it's more suited for "light duty" users like myself - largest file I ever asked it to deal with was just a bit under 600 MB, I believe. I don't think I even have more than 2 GB worth of stuff on it. :eek:
 
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