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All Devices Any advantages to using iCloud Drive vs Other Providers

sfwalter

sfwalter

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 6, 2004
2,259
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Dallas Texas
Are all the cloud providers considered to be first class citizens compared to iCloud Drive? There are some features that I like in Dropbox that iCloud Drive just doesn't provide. Is there anything that I couldn't do in iOS or would be limited because I use Dropbox over iCloud Drive?

Thanks.
 
Dropbox integrates with Files on iOS. There isn’t any limitations that I’ve found. It’s more personal preference in my opinion.
 
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I regularly use iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive for various things and honestly they all work fine for my uses and I could use any one of them (I use OneDrive and Google Drive for work).
 
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I just use iCloud drive as it's the most convenient for me. Plus, it's pretty seamless to access documents and/or processed images across all of my Apple devices. I know you can do that with other cloud services as well, but until iCloud drive doesn't provide what I need, I'll continue using it exclusively.
 
I use Onedrive for work where I have to use Windows but iCloud drive for all my and OH's Apple devices, we share a 200GB plan.
 
In my experience iCloud Drive works seamlessly with Apple format files (i.e. Pages, Numbers etc.) on Apple devices, but falls down on other file types.
Case in point: you can’t open a pdf directly in iCloud Drive, only in the Books app in iOS. You can’t share a pdf from within the Files app with another Apple user, but you can share Pages/Numbers files.
The other cloud storage providers work across platform with the same functionality, and don’t have the ridiculous ‘file belongs to an app’ mentality that Apple has persisted with for too long.
 
KeepCalmPeople said:
In my experience iCloud Drive works seamlessly with Apple format files (i.e. Pages, Numbers etc.) on Apple devices, but falls down on other file types.
Case in point: you can’t open a pdf directly in iCloud Drive, only in the Books app in iOS. You can’t share a pdf from within the Files app with another Apple user, but you can share Pages/Numbers files.
The other cloud storage providers work across platform with the same functionality, and don’t have the ridiculous ‘file belongs to an app’ mentality that Apple has persisted with for too long.
Click to expand...

I am sure Flies on iOS supports opening PDFs by itself without any other app. You can quick look and even markup from Files app itself.

Regarding sharing with other users, I am not sure I remember from before but I am on iOS 13 beta and you can share any file with a user by email or messages.
 
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Video stored on iCloud Drive needs to be fully downloaded prior to playing via Browser, iOS and Mac Devices. Video stored in Google Drive can stream via Browser and iOS app.

It's the only functionality I can see missing in the iCloud offering. Adding a stream/download button next to the file name or as a setting in iOS Files app would be convenient.
 
KeepCalmPeople said:
In my experience iCloud Drive works seamlessly with Apple format files (i.e. Pages, Numbers etc.) on Apple devices, but falls down on other file types.
Case in point: you can’t open a pdf directly in iCloud Drive, only in the Books app in iOS. You can’t share a pdf from within the Files app with another Apple user, but you can share Pages/Numbers files.
The other cloud storage providers work across platform with the same functionality, and don’t have the ridiculous ‘file belongs to an app’ mentality that Apple has persisted with for too long.
Click to expand...
I have iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. On iOS 12 you can open PDFs with the files app. You can choose which apps work with which files. All PDFs open on my iPad with PDF Expert. Actually you can open any file you like in the files app off iCloud Drive, it has nothing to do with being an Apple formatted file & app. Just what apps you have installed that reads those files types.

Sharing works the same as well. Tap the Square with the up arrow select share and you can choose how to share the file email, txt, whichever.
 
Seeing that if you have an Office subscription, I also have a 1TB plan for OneDrive as a part of the bundle, everyone in the family is using OneDrive. That's 1TB for each person.
 
KeepCalmPeople said:
In my experience iCloud Drive works seamlessly with Apple format files (i.e. Pages, Numbers etc.) on Apple devices, but falls down on other file types.
Case in point: you can’t open a pdf directly in iCloud Drive, only in the Books app in iOS. You can’t share a pdf from within the Files app with another Apple user, but you can share Pages/Numbers files.
The other cloud storage providers work across platform with the same functionality, and don’t have the ridiculous ‘file belongs to an app’ mentality that Apple has persisted with for too long.
Click to expand...

Incorrect. You can easily open a PDF from the Files app. You can also mark it up and share from the markup. The complete share sheet comes up so you have plenty of options of how to share.

Even though I have 1TB OneDrive storage from my Office 365 subscription, I switched to iCloud Drive about a year ago. Access is seamless across all of my devices (iMac, iPad, iPhone) and syncing is so much cleaner. I only use OneDrive to store some movies/pictures that I've accumulated over the years and large storage items that I don't access frequently.
 
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Mabus51 said:
Sharing works the same as well. Tap the Square with the up arrow select share and you can choose how to share the file email, txt, whichever.
Click to expand...

What I see with pdfs is that I can email or iMessage the pdf to someone, but I can’t share it from within iCloud Drive. With Pages/Numbers files, I have the option to add the person and give them read or edit permissions. Am I missing something?
 
KeepCalmPeople said:
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[doublepost=1568055291][/doublepost]

What I see with pdfs is that I can email or iMessage the pdf to someone, but I can’t share it from within iCloud Drive. With Pages/Numbers files, I have the option to add the person and give them read or edit permissions. Am I missing something?
Click to expand...
Yeah, select the file, then hit the Square with the up arrow. Bottom selection row scroll over until you see Add People.
 
My only thing is that right now, I can search file names (and other metadata) for files stored in iCloudDrive, but cannot for OneDrive and DropBox. I use the latter 2 for work and not being able to search has been an impediment to using the Files app with my IPP.
 
I don't use iCloud because they don't offer an application for Windows. OneDrive has been working great for me.
 
sfwalter said:
Are all the cloud providers considered to be first class citizens compared to iCloud Drive? There are some features that I like in Dropbox that iCloud Drive just doesn't provide. Is there anything that I couldn't do in iOS or would be limited because I use Dropbox over iCloud Drive?
Click to expand...

As far as iOS is concerned, probably nothing significant from file storage perspective. But to me, its iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Backup are very substantial benefits. For these tasks, Dropbox cannot match.

But I dislike Dropbox on macOS, which uses substantial amount of resources and does naughty things from time to time.
 
Here are a couple things which only seem to work with iCloud Drive:

1. You can't set Dropbox as the Safari download location. At least for me Dropbox is greyed when I attempt to select it inside the Settings app

2. Some iOS 13 updates apps allow you to link to a folder for in place editing. For example the Buffer text editor. However Dropbox is greyed out when you attempt to link folders.
 
Both DropBox and Box's implementations of the file provider can be buggy. For example, opening a file from Files on Dropbox directly (e.g. double click an Excel) sometimes causes multiple versions to be uploaded.

Sometimes these services get confused when the internet connection goes offline.

iCloud Drive is the only one that works reliably in these cases — presumably because Apple can provide a better implementation and use private APIs.
 
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