I had a lot of issues with Live Mesh about one year ago (duplicate files). I am also not so sure what the future of the service will be,as Microsoft really doesn't know...
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iDisk vs. Dropbox
- Thread starter wnxgenral
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I had a lot of issues with Live Mesh about one year ago (duplicate files). I am also not so sure what the future of the service will be,as Microsoft really doesn't know...
You can, but not directly: I sync my documents and pictures folders (among others) into Dropbox. There are two ways of doing this. The first is the way I did it and that's to move the folders under dropbox and then create symlinks back to the original location (so my ~/Documents folder is actually a symlink to ~/Dropbox/Documents)
The other way is to create a symlink within your dropbox folder to point to the folder you want including (so you'd have ~/Dropbox/Documents which is a symlink to ~/Documents)
I agree that it would be better if Dropbox allowed you to arbitrarily sync any folder, but until that functionality is there, the symlink option works well once you have it set up
And, in answer to the OP's question, Dropbox is superior to MobileMe iDisk in every conceivable way: It's much faster, cross-platform, more flexible (you can share any folder with other users, or create a shareable link to any file or folder), include file versioning (30 days of versions available for no extra charge) and will rapidly become a vital part of your computing setup. I can't recommend it highly enough!
Here's an example of how we use Dropbox: We do a bit of web hosting (nothing on a grand scale), and before Dropbox, we had FTP access to our server for our customers. Now, with Dropbox we just create a shared folder for each of the websites and grant access to that folder to the customer. All they have to do now is update their local copy of the website within Dropbox and it is automatically published to the server. It's easy for customers to understand, it gives them a cloud backup of their site and versioning and it means we could turn off FTP on our server (which is always an open invite for people to try and hack the server). Try doing that with MobileMe iDisk...
Last edited:
I know about symlinks but it is too cumbersome, especially if you sync to more than one Mac.
You can do the same with idisk and it is indeed cross platform. idisk is slow however.
How so, please explain what Dropbox does that iDisk doesn't, because I am struggling to see it. I've heard of speed and reliability problems with iDisk, but honestly I haven't experienced that, so function to function, price aside, what does Dropbox offer/do that iDisk doesn't?
Keeps backup revisions of every file. Easier sharing files. More compatible with other apps. Just to name a few
Okay if you are using it as a true back up device than I can certainly agree that is an important option to have.
Apart from the speed (and the difference is considerable for me), the two big things are what I mentioned in my first post - file sharing and versioning.
I gave a real-world example of something we use Dropbox for and I see you said you can do that with MobileMe, but I honestly can't see how you can use MobileMe to achieve the same thing: The only concept of shared folders is with the family pack and that is a single shared folder shared across all the members. With Dropbox, you can select any folder and share it with any other dropbox user.
This is full collaborative sharing - all users of the shared folder have read and write access and it just appears in their Dropbox.
Also, as I and others have said, you get versioning for all changes to files for 30 days (i.e. take a file back to any point in time over the last 30 days) and whilst MobileMe works on Windows and OS X, Dropbox adds Linux Support
I see thank you. Of course in MM you can create public folders that are password protected but that is not as clean as you described, and for back up I get the iterative approach as well.
I suppose for my uses none of that is important, I back up to a TC and use MM really for file storage and sharing across platforms and devices I or my family control, plus I use it to host pictures/movies and synch calendar, email, addresses and such. For those uses it works great, but yeah I can see if you used it for a proper back up location or file commercial type file distribution it falls way short.
Thanks for the clarification.
For me it's the collaborative working tools. With drop box I can share any folder with anyone on any opperating system. I don't always work with mac users. So dropbox is just perfect.
You can share any file with anyone on MM too via the public folder and file sharing options, regardless of the platform, but it isn't collaborative or individual by folder like it seems to be with DropBox. I do it at work, I drop all sorts of files from my office XP machine on my iDisk and then pick them up on my Mac at home and visa versa.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that. TBH I've heard MM isn't all that great and have never used it to do any proper work. Just playing around.
Besides the other responses as to why they prefer dropbox, and I've only had it a couple weeks, is how much faster files upload and download.
And then I also tried 'ishare' with another dropbox user yesterday and was amazed at how quickly the file was available.
Quick, easy, encryption during transmission etc.
And then I also tried 'ishare' with another dropbox user yesterday and was amazed at how quickly the file was available.
Quick, easy, encryption during transmission etc.
Take a look at my thread in this forum from yesterday where I've actually timed mm vs dropbox for uploading & downloading the same file. Have more results to come from other cloud storage.
This gets my vote for the most helpful post on MacRumors so far. Great insight, thanks.
I guess mileage will vary. I'd been using MM a long time, and though I haven't done any official tests, my immediate impression was that dropbox was much more convenient to use, transparent, and seemed quicker at syncing also.
MacWorld gave dropbox a five out of five rating for a reason.
"If this sounds a bit like the iDisk feature of Apples MobileMe service, thats because its similar except that Dropbox is fast and reliable. Dropbox is also more secure than iDisk, as files stored on the Dropbox servers are encrypted and are transferred using SSL. Dropbox is also smarter about copying files: It transfers smaller files before larger ones, copies only the parts of each file that have changed, and compresses all data for the trip. And Dropbox is better about handling sync conflictsif the same document is modified on two computers at the same time, Dropbox keeps both copies, adding a conflicted message to the name of one . . ."
iDisk > Dropbox
While Dropbox syncs much faster it still lacks the necessary integration between all devices. If you are a simple user thats fine, but for those that use online storage for alot, its better. If you use iWork on the iPad you practically have to have iDisk to function. It is integrated into all of the iWork applications to upload and download. The iDisk app and Dropbox app on iPad work about the same and on the Mac they are identical in terms of functionality. As a whole though I still like iDisk better. Dropbox is fast yes, but that's its only advantage really. If you are going to pay to get the higher capacity for Dropbox you might as well buy MobileMe and get the sync capabilities, Back to My Mac and Gallery and still get 20 GB of iDisk.
While Dropbox syncs much faster it still lacks the necessary integration between all devices. If you are a simple user thats fine, but for those that use online storage for alot, its better. If you use iWork on the iPad you practically have to have iDisk to function. It is integrated into all of the iWork applications to upload and download. The iDisk app and Dropbox app on iPad work about the same and on the Mac they are identical in terms of functionality. As a whole though I still like iDisk better. Dropbox is fast yes, but that's its only advantage really. If you are going to pay to get the higher capacity for Dropbox you might as well buy MobileMe and get the sync capabilities, Back to My Mac and Gallery and still get 20 GB of iDisk.
DAWG is right once again.
Dropbox is so good, I don't even use my iDisk anymore and I am paying for the 50 GB. Dropbox just works...like you'd expect an
based product to...