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Other Is iCloud Drive worse than other popular cloud storage service [cellular only]?
- Thread starter brizna
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iCloud Drive works. It's just not the best out there for cloud storage. Dropbox and OneDrive are good. Google Drive is good so long as you don't have to download or install the desktop version on macOS (it's utter garbage). All of them will integrate with the Files App so long as you download and install the apps on your iOS/iPadOS device and log into them first.
Been using iCloud Drive for years with all my Apple devices and I’ve only very occasionally seen issues with syncing across devices. Otherwise mostly it’s absolutely fine.
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I have cross-platform need so I mainly use OneDrive, and Google Drive for easier access for collaborating with random people. (15GB free storage is still enciting for many) iCloud Drive As such has not been used actively ever since I start using iPhone.
I would not say iCloud Drive “not works”, but the limited nature and low confidence on Apple‘s ability to maintain service level quality (They have no obligation to offer reliable service unlike Microsoft and Google facing business customers) means I don’t really use it.
I would not say iCloud Drive “not works”, but the limited nature and low confidence on Apple‘s ability to maintain service level quality (They have no obligation to offer reliable service unlike Microsoft and Google facing business customers) means I don’t really use it.
Go to Settings, Cellular, scroll all the way down and enable iCloud Drive to use cellular data.
ICloud Drive works. The thing is, it wasn’t designed originally like the standard cloud storage. Watch the introduction of iCloud by Steve Jobs, and you will see that the original vision is for a seamless cloud based syncing service where the user had hands off the actual service, and it just worked automagically. But users didn’t understand and Apple caved in and created iCloud Drive and Files app.
And generally iCloud Drive works well, especially if you have multiple Apple devices. It integrates well with the ecosystem. The only catch is it doesn’t work well on other platform as Apple doesn’t make an actual iCloud Drive apps for other platforms.
This has been my experience. I add a new contact on my iPhone and it's immediately there on my iMac, MBA, and iPad. Automatic backups are easy as well and make upgrading/restoring new devices a snap.
All well and good - but not an exclusive thing.
I add a new contact on my iPhone and it too is on my Macs and my other iPhones and iPad. But also on my Pixel. Because I'm using Google for contacts and it's cross platform.
Dropbox autouploads photos. These end up on all my devices that can run Dropbox. With my Macs they end up in daily and weekly backups.
Restoring without iCloud is also a snap for me - because I keep nothing important on the device. Everything, with the exception of messages is stored on some server somewhere else. A restore simply relinks and all that info comes right back. One reason I use IMAP for all my email accounts. And IMAP is not exclusive to iCloud.
About the only thing I use iCloud backups for is messages and since nothing important is ever discussed via message in my group of people it doesn't really matter.
On a personal note. I purchased a 2TB iCloud sub in May of 2022 in preparation for replacing my phone (which I had dropped). I did that because I wanted all my photos to come back exactly as they were before I bought the sub.
It didn't happen that way at all! I had to go and dig out all my images from my Dropbox/Google Photo backups and drop them into the Photos app on my Mac just to get them all back on the damn phone. No idea why that was the case but I certainly trust Dropbox with my photos much more now.
Is that really true? I mean wasn’t it called “mobile me” or similar and it was X Mb or Gb of storage and an email? I could def be wrong, but I vaguely recall that being an option sometime in the mid 2000s when I started using Apple stuff…. in retrospect I would have enjoyed using it but I didn’t until some years later and by then they had renamed it to “icloud.”
Originally it was .Mac, then rebranded as mobileME, then rebranded again to iCloud. 😂
For nostalgia sake
Note Steve saying that iCloud was more than just a drive in the sky (a jab at Microsoft OneDrive, which used to be called SkyDrive).
iCloud is pretty good within the Apple ecosystem. I also have it on my Desktop PC, but uploads from the PC app are slow.
I mostly use Google Drive. Works flawless on all my Android, PC, and Apple devices. Plus it's super easy to switch accounts.
Performance wise OneDrive is amazing. It's also built in on Windows PC, and plays very nice with Android. The auto sync photos and pictures is better than what Google Photos was, IMO. But I hate the UI of OneDrive.
Haven't use Dropbox in years. I do remember it being the most expensive.
I have experienced iCloud going down several times in the last 5 years. From several hours to half a day. Never experienced Google Drive or OneDrive go down once in the last decade.
The only disadvantage with third party cloud apps on iOS, is that the app needs to be open in the background to upload and/or auto sync. With iCloud you don't have to worry about that.
I mostly use Google Drive. Works flawless on all my Android, PC, and Apple devices. Plus it's super easy to switch accounts.
Performance wise OneDrive is amazing. It's also built in on Windows PC, and plays very nice with Android. The auto sync photos and pictures is better than what Google Photos was, IMO. But I hate the UI of OneDrive.
Haven't use Dropbox in years. I do remember it being the most expensive.
I have experienced iCloud going down several times in the last 5 years. From several hours to half a day. Never experienced Google Drive or OneDrive go down once in the last decade.
The only disadvantage with third party cloud apps on iOS, is that the app needs to be open in the background to upload and/or auto sync. With iCloud you don't have to worry about that.
Per what @ian87w said.
I will just add that when it was introduced it was advertised as free. I can remember connecting to it on a G4 and mounting it on the desktop as a drive. That would have been using OS9.
Then Apple rescinded its promise and I ditched it. Didn't come back until late (very late) 2011.
Thanks, glad others have clearer memories of this than I do.
That’s too bad though, I would be very annoyed by that too. Like many people probably, I resisted it but then started using it very sparingly since it was free… wish they would up the allowance from 5GB for the free tier someday, but as long as they can make more $$$ not doing so, perhaps it’s not going to change. : - /5GB free is actually not bad. Dropbox only gives you 2GB free. 😂 OneDrive is also 5GB. And the nice thing about iCloud is they offer a very cheap 50GB for 99c a month tier. Even Google pricing starts at $2 a month (for 100GB).Thanks, glad others have clearer memories of this than I do.
Decided to look it back up…Thanks, glad others have clearer memories of this than I do.
Originally it was iTools and iDisk, the part I mentioned, was a 50MB drive that you could mount to the OS9 desktop. Anything you stored there could be accessed on any Mac that could mount iDisk. Apple pulled that within a year and you had to subscribe ($50 up front, $199 a year after that) to .Mac - which later became MobileMe.
But I was out when Apple demanded users pay (.Mac).
Dropbox allowed you to earn additional GBs - at least in the beginning. I have a base 10GB of free storage, and I could have gotten more if I'd really wanted to work at it.
The thing that ultimately lured me to Dropbox (other than being compatible with PowerPC Macs at the time) was that you could upload any size file or amount of files up to your limit. Originally, a lot of the other services placed limits on how many MBs you could upload at a time.
Now, I pay Dropbox for 4TB a month AND Apple for 2TB iCloud.
And I am still paying Google $2 for 100GB with Google One. My Pixel gets storage.
Yeah, true, as much as try to I avoid monthly subscriptions, it’s been worth it for me to switch to the 99c / month plan some years ago, so far that’s plenty of space for me.
I use Dropbox also, (free version… not sure how many GB I have but it’s enough) but mostly keep work stuff on it, whereas icloud drive is used for mostly personal files.