It's amazing how quickly and thoroughly Google has ceded the lead in this area. I know that the Android market supports application and data backup, but IMO the implementation is not as slick or simple as iCloud at this point.
This is especially true for those of us with multiple Android devices (Phone + Tablet). But the lack of a comprehensive solution for photo synchronization is telling as well.
I am glad to see HTC addressing the issue, but the lack of leadership on Google's part is really unfortunate.
google has ceded the lead here because files suck. users don't want files or filesystems. look to how iOS works for how most users want to access their files: they open an app and the documents that are relevant to that app are available to them. whether that data is stored in a filesystem or in a database, locally or remotely is totally irrelevant. google docs works like this. picasaweb (or g+ photos now i guess) works like this. google music works like this. the very nature of dropbox is to not be the ideal solution to the problem they are solving. they're the realist's solution, google is going for the idealist's solution.
imho, google is leading the market here by not being a part of it.
It's funny, I like a lot of the ways Google has abstracted away from files (e.g. Google Docs or Picasa), but Google Music drives me batty.
Even though they're wonderful about streaming and "pinning" songs offline (even over 3G), I just want to download the music and know where it is. I often use players other than Google Music, so that's part of it, but I think I also just want tighter control over music than I want over other things. I've ended up using Amazon Cloud Player instead, even though I successfully download or stream over 3G once in a blue moon (if that).
Honestly I suspect Google is trying to grow a third party ecosystem.
By that I mean they leave obvious problems half solved or unsolved so that someone else can come along and do a really good job of it.
Cyanogen, GetJar, Dropbox, Opera, alt home screens, etc. By doing a 40% job Google leaves easy victories for third parties.
I expect the 'end game' is a better OS with a healthy ecosystem and is not dependent on Google.
Remember Google got into mobile to protect their ad market. A healthy competitive OS ecosystem would do this all without massive long-term engineering effort. Why build an OS and ecosystem if all you have to build is the OS?
> But the lack of a comprehensive solution for photo synchronization is telling as well.
If you turn on Google+ Instant Upload, you get very good photo synchronization support, especially for Android. Photos are synced to Google+ in the background, and since that is backed by Picasa, they automatically show up in the Galleries of any other Android device you have. I've been impressed with how quickly and easily you can browse your uploaded photos on another device.
It isn't for everyone because Google+ limits the maximum resolution of Instant Upload photos, but it is for a lot of people because they give you "unlimited storage" in exchange.
Cloud syncing is now something that Android (or at least HTC's Androids) will do better than iOS.
Apple really should have done a similar deal with Dropbox when they found out they couldn't buy them, but I guess it really isn't in their DNA to rely heavily on 3rd party services. Unfortunately, doing cloud syncing right also isn't really in their DNA.
All I see is that users get a Dropbox app pre-installed, with 25GB of storage.
iCloud gives the user transparent storage of data, apps can use the same APIs on all iOS devices (where is the Android Dropbox API?) to store information there. Backups occur to it trivially.
Photos are automatically synced there. iTunes Match runs off it.
iTunes Match only takes up 2GB of storage for my 15,000 songs (~80GB), because the majority are in the iTunes music store, so this deal would already be worse for me.
iCloud wins because it is backed by the ecosystem. Where is the corresponding ecosystem in the Android world?
How does a bundled Dropbox app + storage bundle compete if it requires the user to manually do file management to ensure "cloud syncing" happens?
To be fair, Android has had a lot of these features for a while.
* Calendars and contacts have always been synced with my gmail and across all my android devices since my G1.
* Bookmarks are now being synced through the new Chrome for android
* On Android you pretty much rely on Google Docs for your document needs, which of course is cloud-based
* Photos have been synced with picasa (now part of G+) across all my devices for a while now too
* Google music
(can't comment on google's book offering, as I haven't really used it yet)
Now, I'm not gonna say Google's implementation is better or anything, but a lot of that functionality has been there for so long, it seems at least comprable to apple's offering at this point (if a bit 'fragmented'). I only just got my first iOS device a few weeks ago (an ipad2 from my work), and since it's my only one I can't say I've tested out iCloud fully enough to give an in-depth comparison. I do hope google eventually come out with an API for their cloud storage for android though, as that seems to be the only major thing that's missing.
I will say one thing though, I find it quite nice that I can access all the synced data on my Android devices from any browser anywhere, conveniently within the services I already use, and not just from my Androids/personal computers.
Fascinating to me how histrionical the article headline is. I don't see a mention anywhere that this somehow competes against iCloud.
If the article headline is correct and HTC believes this is an answer, HTC's leadership is braindead. Giving your users 25 GB of free storage is not the same as pervasive, painless syncing across every core service on your device, as well as giving 3rd party developers access to APIs to do the same.
I recently saw Android's voice recognition -- a feature that long preceded Siri -- described as the "Android's response to Siri". These headlines seldom have much basis in fact.
However I would point to two things on the Android side--
a) Preceding iCloud, again, has been a pervasive cloud-based backup system, including a third-party API - http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/backup.html I won't argue that it's the same thing, because it isn't, but it does provide the highest value functionality.
b) But you're not supposed to rely upon that anyways. As another poster mentioned, most of what you do in Android is already cloud based. Whether it's Google docs, or automatic uploads to Google+ or Flickr, etc.
Am I the only one that thinks that it makes no sense to compare Dropbox and iCloud?
Dropbox is glorified rsync, and, in my eyes, is great for syncing files between my laptops that still use a file management paradigm from 20+ years ago.
iCloud abstracts files away from the user, so that the user doesn't need to worry about folders and extensions and filesystems. iCloud CAN do what Dropbox does, but it takes it so much further.
Dropbox can do what icloud does. Make one folder per app and hide file extensions in your os.
I think the two services are very alike, the only real difference in which platforms are supported with full sync. Dropbox chooses desktops, icloud anything apple.
Not true - one fundamental thing iCloud does that none of the synced-file services can do is seamless conflict resolution and offering devs an interface to do the same.
If I create 10 Widgets in an app on my iPhone, and go to my iPad and create 10 more widgets, I expect that all 20 widgets be visible on both devices reasonably quickly.
On Dropbox this is still a highly manual process, on iCloud this is handled behind the scenes and app devs have access to a (relatively sane, if still currently buggy) interface to make this possible.
This is a huge use case, and part of why cloud sync is rarely as simple as downloading/uploading a file to a central source.
While the conflict resolution is a nice thing, the burden of implementation lies almost entirely on the app developer, not icloud. The same code could easily trigger whenever Dropbox replaces the open file or adds a renamed conflicted version.
I think you might be a little. I may be overestimating the average user, but I believe iCloud over-abstracts the filesystem. A normal office worker has a ton of files already. It may be messy, but the world at large at least have some sort of workflow they carved out over the years of using the typical user facing filesystem. I can't imagine most people know how to get these files onto their iOS devices using iCloud. My iOS addicted family certainly doesn't. I honestly don't even really get it. If properly presented by HTC/Dropbox/Android, it is a superior solution.
Rather that trying to figure out what the user wants and often frustrating them with invisible restrictions, a Dropbox solution just powerfully augments what the normal person already does on a computer. Put all of your stuff here. Press on your file, you get presented with a series of apps that can work with your stuff. And when you are done, put it back in the box that magically keeps all of your stuff. And the stuff in this box will work with any application that can parse that particular file on your phone/tablet/laptop/work computer, not just on a certain subset of apps on a certain subset of devices.
Just because our file management paradigm is 20+ years old, is it so bad?
When you have a "lot of crap", you want some sort of organization to it. Folders do this well; gmail-esque labels arguably better.
I can't see how you can get away with "hiding files" themselves. In the end, a file can have multiple applications handle it (view, edit, etc.).. somewhere the files need to be visible.
On another note, Dropbox offers plenty more features. It is among the easiest ways to share files with another. And it runs on almost every platform; I can't even comment much on iCloud as I lack OS/X or an iOS device.
We needed a file management paradigm because we couldn't simply say to the filing system "bring me the X file, the one about Y". Now we can.
The machines have caught up to our need and we may now be lazy.
I am 46. I have worked in IT long enough to remember having to be obsessively organized.
Why? Because I had no choice. The machine could not help me.
I have become lazy in my dotage.
Why? Because the machine lets me.
gmail search is so fast I no longer organize email - it simply isn't worth organizing. I enter criteria, I find my email. When I was organized, I would have to break my current flow to remember my organizational method - which morphed over time, good luck with that.
find is now so fast - because of fast hardware - that I no longer even bother to try remembering where I filed things, I just type
In other words, case-insensitive search starting in CWD, with optional additional criteria.)
I remain somewhat organized, lest my search results be too chaotic for me to read. But I need not be as perfectly organized as I once was, for the machine can now be useful and not a hindrance.
I agree that find simplifies things, but I feel the ability to label is still important.
Just as I may need to "label" an email message from my boss telling me to do something, I may need to label documents by course.
Without labeling you lose (re-)discovery. I may want to read everything I wrote for a philosophy course a few years back. If I don't remember what I wrote about (and I don't), I can never find things again. (This has happened to me a lot with finding gmail messages)
As for files, the result of your search is just files. You need to be able to do multiple actions on them (use different programs).
So yes, our existent file managers are a bit limiting. They should focus more on labeling files (e.g. gmail) then folders. Search is already well-integrated into most operating systems. But in the end, at some level, you still work with files.
Does Dropbox on Android sync on per-file granularity? If so, how does this combo support things like calendar and contacts entries? Sure you can put each piece of data in its own file and watch the directory with inotify, but that seems to be very inefficient.
Dropbox on Android is pretty pathetic. It doesn't actually do sync - you get a file browser not too much different than the dropbox web site interface, and can download files one at a time! You can also choose to upload files although you can't select an entire directory at once. This is closer to a crappy ftp client than the desktop sync solution everyone is familiar with. They did however recently just add auto upload of photos and videos.
It should be noted that Dropbox on iOS is even worse (same download one file at a time mechanism) since you can only upload photos and videos, rather than any arbitrary content. Every iOS app that wants Dropbox integration has to add its own code to do all of it. On Android there is a centralized accounts system where Dropbox, Skype, Linkedin, Facebook and any other app with relevant permissions can publish an account. Other apps can then access those accounts (without getting the username/password - just a token) so they don't require heavyweight integration.
Android doesn't do calendar and contacts like Apple does. There can be multiple providers and they can each do whatever they want. For example Google stores those in the cloud, as does Linked and Skype so there is nothing to do to have them in sync. You can see the union of all relevant providers at once.
BTW one huge advantage Android has over iOS is that you do not have to keep re-entering passwords all the time. It totally bewilders me that iOS users aren't up in arms at how often you have to keep entering it.
I would say it's because in ~2010, iOS would remember your password for a lot longer - letting at worst fraudulent and at best misleading apps sneakily spend your money. Especially kid apps.
Today I had to enter my password about 5 times. That included every time I went to the app store for 4 of them, and the 5th is because I installed Apple's Remote control software for Apple TV which decided I should also re-enter my Apple id just in case it is different than the bazillion other times I have entered it on the same device.
Android Dropbox isn't quite this bad. It has a concept of "favorites". Once a file is Favorited, it is automatically synced. I imagine this is done due to concerns about space on mobile devices.
Favourites only puts it in Dropbox's cache. You still have to manually "export" it if you want it in a particular location on the SD card.
The desktop client allows you to choose which directories you want to sync. Being able to do that would go most of the way towards being more useful for Android. (There was a votebox issue when I last looked.)
Yep, that is definitely leg up for iCloud I hadn't considered.
Developers can write their own sync adapters on Android, but they would need to run their own servers (or find storage) and complications start to add up from there.
29 comments
[ 9.1 ms ] story [ 82.4 ms ] threadThis is especially true for those of us with multiple Android devices (Phone + Tablet). But the lack of a comprehensive solution for photo synchronization is telling as well.
I am glad to see HTC addressing the issue, but the lack of leadership on Google's part is really unfortunate.
imho, google is leading the market here by not being a part of it.
It's funny, I like a lot of the ways Google has abstracted away from files (e.g. Google Docs or Picasa), but Google Music drives me batty.
Even though they're wonderful about streaming and "pinning" songs offline (even over 3G), I just want to download the music and know where it is. I often use players other than Google Music, so that's part of it, but I think I also just want tighter control over music than I want over other things. I've ended up using Amazon Cloud Player instead, even though I successfully download or stream over 3G once in a blue moon (if that).
By that I mean they leave obvious problems half solved or unsolved so that someone else can come along and do a really good job of it.
Cyanogen, GetJar, Dropbox, Opera, alt home screens, etc. By doing a 40% job Google leaves easy victories for third parties.
I expect the 'end game' is a better OS with a healthy ecosystem and is not dependent on Google.
Remember Google got into mobile to protect their ad market. A healthy competitive OS ecosystem would do this all without massive long-term engineering effort. Why build an OS and ecosystem if all you have to build is the OS?
If you turn on Google+ Instant Upload, you get very good photo synchronization support, especially for Android. Photos are synced to Google+ in the background, and since that is backed by Picasa, they automatically show up in the Galleries of any other Android device you have. I've been impressed with how quickly and easily you can browse your uploaded photos on another device.
It isn't for everyone because Google+ limits the maximum resolution of Instant Upload photos, but it is for a lot of people because they give you "unlimited storage" in exchange.
If you have a Picasa account Android comes with a sync adapter which seamlessly syncs photos to all your Android devices and PC's with Picasa.
What advantage does iCloud have over this for photos?
Android also syncs Google docs, browser/Chrome data, contacts, calendar... The only thing I can think of that Google doesn't sync (yet) is files.
Cloud syncing is now something that Android (or at least HTC's Androids) will do better than iOS.
Apple really should have done a similar deal with Dropbox when they found out they couldn't buy them, but I guess it really isn't in their DNA to rely heavily on 3rd party services. Unfortunately, doing cloud syncing right also isn't really in their DNA.
iCloud gives the user transparent storage of data, apps can use the same APIs on all iOS devices (where is the Android Dropbox API?) to store information there. Backups occur to it trivially. Photos are automatically synced there. iTunes Match runs off it.
iTunes Match only takes up 2GB of storage for my 15,000 songs (~80GB), because the majority are in the iTunes music store, so this deal would already be worse for me.
iCloud wins because it is backed by the ecosystem. Where is the corresponding ecosystem in the Android world?
How does a bundled Dropbox app + storage bundle compete if it requires the user to manually do file management to ensure "cloud syncing" happens?
* Calendars, contacts, notes, reminders, bookmarks, reading list, etc.
* Full device back-up (including all third party applications, settings, etc)
* iCloud Documents / native APIs
* PhotoStream (photo syncing between devices)
For a price:
* iTunes Match
It's amazing how quickly things change.
* Calendars and contacts have always been synced with my gmail and across all my android devices since my G1.
* Bookmarks are now being synced through the new Chrome for android
* On Android you pretty much rely on Google Docs for your document needs, which of course is cloud-based
* Photos have been synced with picasa (now part of G+) across all my devices for a while now too
* Google music
(can't comment on google's book offering, as I haven't really used it yet)
Now, I'm not gonna say Google's implementation is better or anything, but a lot of that functionality has been there for so long, it seems at least comprable to apple's offering at this point (if a bit 'fragmented'). I only just got my first iOS device a few weeks ago (an ipad2 from my work), and since it's my only one I can't say I've tested out iCloud fully enough to give an in-depth comparison. I do hope google eventually come out with an API for their cloud storage for android though, as that seems to be the only major thing that's missing.
I will say one thing though, I find it quite nice that I can access all the synced data on my Android devices from any browser anywhere, conveniently within the services I already use, and not just from my Androids/personal computers.
If the article headline is correct and HTC believes this is an answer, HTC's leadership is braindead. Giving your users 25 GB of free storage is not the same as pervasive, painless syncing across every core service on your device, as well as giving 3rd party developers access to APIs to do the same.
However I would point to two things on the Android side--
a) Preceding iCloud, again, has been a pervasive cloud-based backup system, including a third-party API - http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/backup.html I won't argue that it's the same thing, because it isn't, but it does provide the highest value functionality.
b) But you're not supposed to rely upon that anyways. As another poster mentioned, most of what you do in Android is already cloud based. Whether it's Google docs, or automatic uploads to Google+ or Flickr, etc.
Dropbox is glorified rsync, and, in my eyes, is great for syncing files between my laptops that still use a file management paradigm from 20+ years ago.
iCloud abstracts files away from the user, so that the user doesn't need to worry about folders and extensions and filesystems. iCloud CAN do what Dropbox does, but it takes it so much further.
Am I totally off base?
I think the two services are very alike, the only real difference in which platforms are supported with full sync. Dropbox chooses desktops, icloud anything apple.
If I create 10 Widgets in an app on my iPhone, and go to my iPad and create 10 more widgets, I expect that all 20 widgets be visible on both devices reasonably quickly.
On Dropbox this is still a highly manual process, on iCloud this is handled behind the scenes and app devs have access to a (relatively sane, if still currently buggy) interface to make this possible.
This is a huge use case, and part of why cloud sync is rarely as simple as downloading/uploading a file to a central source.
Rather that trying to figure out what the user wants and often frustrating them with invisible restrictions, a Dropbox solution just powerfully augments what the normal person already does on a computer. Put all of your stuff here. Press on your file, you get presented with a series of apps that can work with your stuff. And when you are done, put it back in the box that magically keeps all of your stuff. And the stuff in this box will work with any application that can parse that particular file on your phone/tablet/laptop/work computer, not just on a certain subset of apps on a certain subset of devices.
When you have a "lot of crap", you want some sort of organization to it. Folders do this well; gmail-esque labels arguably better.
I can't see how you can get away with "hiding files" themselves. In the end, a file can have multiple applications handle it (view, edit, etc.).. somewhere the files need to be visible.
On another note, Dropbox offers plenty more features. It is among the easiest ways to share files with another. And it runs on almost every platform; I can't even comment much on iCloud as I lack OS/X or an iOS device.
The machines have caught up to our need and we may now be lazy.
I am 46. I have worked in IT long enough to remember having to be obsessively organized.
Why? Because I had no choice. The machine could not help me.
I have become lazy in my dotage.
Why? Because the machine lets me.
gmail search is so fast I no longer organize email - it simply isn't worth organizing. I enter criteria, I find my email. When I was organized, I would have to break my current flow to remember my organizational method - which morphed over time, good luck with that.
find is now so fast - because of fast hardware - that I no longer even bother to try remembering where I filed things, I just type
(fndi, he said?function fndi () {
}In other words, case-insensitive search starting in CWD, with optional additional criteria.)
I remain somewhat organized, lest my search results be too chaotic for me to read. But I need not be as perfectly organized as I once was, for the machine can now be useful and not a hindrance.
Just as I may need to "label" an email message from my boss telling me to do something, I may need to label documents by course.
Without labeling you lose (re-)discovery. I may want to read everything I wrote for a philosophy course a few years back. If I don't remember what I wrote about (and I don't), I can never find things again. (This has happened to me a lot with finding gmail messages)
As for files, the result of your search is just files. You need to be able to do multiple actions on them (use different programs).
So yes, our existent file managers are a bit limiting. They should focus more on labeling files (e.g. gmail) then folders. Search is already well-integrated into most operating systems. But in the end, at some level, you still work with files.
It should be noted that Dropbox on iOS is even worse (same download one file at a time mechanism) since you can only upload photos and videos, rather than any arbitrary content. Every iOS app that wants Dropbox integration has to add its own code to do all of it. On Android there is a centralized accounts system where Dropbox, Skype, Linkedin, Facebook and any other app with relevant permissions can publish an account. Other apps can then access those accounts (without getting the username/password - just a token) so they don't require heavyweight integration.
Android doesn't do calendar and contacts like Apple does. There can be multiple providers and they can each do whatever they want. For example Google stores those in the cloud, as does Linked and Skype so there is nothing to do to have them in sync. You can see the union of all relevant providers at once.
BTW one huge advantage Android has over iOS is that you do not have to keep re-entering passwords all the time. It totally bewilders me that iOS users aren't up in arms at how often you have to keep entering it.
The desktop client allows you to choose which directories you want to sync. Being able to do that would go most of the way towards being more useful for Android. (There was a votebox issue when I last looked.)
Developers can write their own sync adapters on Android, but they would need to run their own servers (or find storage) and complications start to add up from there.