We don’t often think of Apple as a cloud services company because so much emphasis is placed on hardware, but for many consumers, Apple’s iCloud is their first experience using cloud storage.
Over this past fall, Strategy Analytics conducted a study on which cloud services are the most popular in the U.S. right now, and iCloud grabbed the top spot with 27% usage.
There are many, many ways to keep a journal using your various iDevices, or paper, or even — if you’re desperate — your Android phone. (Kidding — a sharpie turns the back of any Android handset into the perfect paper-emulation device.) But they tend to be either high on effort — manually writing up everything yourself — or somewhat proprietary, keeping all your info inside an app or service.
But thanks to the ever-amazing internet automating service IFTTT (If This Then That), and some new channels, it’s now possible to roll your own plain-journal, pulling from various sources automatically. And it even includes pictures, which is quite a trick for plain text.
Even though Mailbox for iOS has only been out for a month, it’s taken no time at all for the buzzworthy app to get bought up by a bigger fish.
Dropbox is buying Orchestra Inc., makers of the popular new email app, Mailbox, that allows users to control their email in a new way.
Remember Unbound? I called the iOS app “the best dropbox browser I have ever used,” and it’s still up there in the top two (the other is the excellent Heliog). Now — or at least soon — Unbound will be coming to the Mac. What’s more, it’ll be compatible with the neat little Leap Motion box that lets you control your Mac with wavy hand gestures.
After giving its mobile app a lot of love, Dropbox is focusing its attention on its desktop client.
Dropbox announced today that it’s got a couple new upgrades for the Mac and Windows app that will help you share files quicker, and improve updates to help you keep up with the service.
Apple’s iCloud service hasn’t been perfect, but it’s performed fairly well since its debut in 2011.
Dropbox’s CEO on the otherhand thinks that Apple’s users really shouldn’t get too invested into the data-synching service, because it will probably hurt them in the long run.
Dropbox is a great service, and I use it both professionally and personally. I share files with friends, presentations and documents with co-workers, and I upload my iPhone photos as well as a secondary backup to PhotoStream, which can be touchy at times. Problem is, I need to ask people if they’re Dropbox users, get the email they’ve associated with the service, then log in to Drobpox and create a shared folder with that person’s email. It’s useful, and not too difficult, but it can be tedious.
That’s where ProxToMe comes in. This free app does all the discovery for you, letting you share any file from your Dropbox account with any other ProxToMe user nearby. Slick!
Basil is just about my favorite iPad cooking app. It doesn’t come loaded with recipes, nor does it feature videos of people slicing and sautéing fancy ingredients. Instead, Basil is a version of your paper notebook, only better. And it’s just about to get a huge makeover.
Dropbox is about to add a great new feature to make photo-sharing a lot easier. It’s called Albums, and it lets you group together photos from anywhere in your Dropbox folder structure and share them as a single album. The service is currently in beta testing, but if you have an Android device the most recent update also contains a version.
Let’s take a look at how it works on your Mac.
The official Dropbox app for iOS has today been updated to add push notifications and an all-new PDF viewer. With version 2.1, users will now receive an alert when a folder has been shared with them. The update is available to download from the App Store now.
Can an iPad really replace a “proper” computer? Can a ten-inch, 128GB tablet do the work of an eleven-inch 128GB MacBook Air? The answer is yes. Kinda. If your work involves having two windows sitting permanently open side-by-side, then the iPad might not be for you (although you might consider whether you need both windows open together).
For most other regular workaday work type work, though. the iPad is ideal. And here’s our guide to replacing your Mac with an iPad. Specifically a Retina iPad, but you might even manage with a mini.
If you’ve got your music stored in the cloud, then streaming it to your iPhone might be difficult. Depending on which service you use, you may need to find a third-party app — one that actually works well, and is designed specifically for music playback. AudioBox is exactly that.
Compatible with a whole host of cloud-based storage services — including Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box, and Dropbox — AudioBox ensures that you can take your entire music library with you on your iPhone.
Dropbox’s new Albums feature, rolling out over the next few weeks, lets you share your photos and videos way more easily that you could before. Think of it as kind of a Shared Photo Stream, only anyone can use it, not just iOS6 users.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the U.S. government open access to electronic information stored by non-US citizens on US-based servers, like a host of cloud services available today. iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and other popular services are all subject to this law, passed in 2008 by the Bush administration and recently re-authorized by the Obama administration for another 5 years.
What this means is that any data stored by non-American citizens on cloud servers here in the US is able to be looked at in entirety by various agencies in the US federal government, including the NSA, FBI, and CIA.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the anti-Steve-Jobs: a sweaty, tongue-lashing ogre of a corporate figurehead who exudes a sort of Ben-Grimm-like lovability through his orange, scaled outer shell. He often says foolish things, and that’s okay, because we love him anyway.
This morning, Ballmer’s talking to Bloomberg Businessweek about the just-released Office 2013 (not to be confused with Office 365, Microsoft’s online productivity suite). In the interview, he talks a little bit about Office for iPad, and then bizarrely decides to slag off Dropbox for a spell.
Drafts, the default inbox for text on your iOS device, has just been updated to version 1.5 on the iPad and v2.5 on the iPhone. And, man, what an update!
Previously, Drafts was a great way to scribble down a note, and then send it off to pretty much any text-based app you could think of. Now, with two big new features called “URL Actions” and “Dropbox Actions,” Drafts not only becomes more powerful than you could possible imagine, it also lets you automate a whole lot of notetaking tasks.
How powerful are we talking about here? How about controlling your Mac at home from your iPhone by just jotting down a note?
Everybody wants to be Jony Ive’s friend, so he probably gets invited to a lot of the dinners where Silicon Valley’s elite just hangout, scarf down pizza, and get blitzed on wine. We rarely see pictures of such events, but last night a picture was posted of Sir Jony himself hanging out with 11 of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.
The dinner was hosted by Nirav Tolia – a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur – and featured the CEOs of Twitter, Yelp, Path, Dropbox, Yahoo, and other companies. What’d they do besides eat pizza? Did a wild night of karaoke follow over at Marrisa Mayer’s manor? Who knows? Who cares? But we’re glad Jony gets to hangout with people outside the mothership from time to time.
Here’s a list of everyone that was present at the dinner:
Readdle is well-known for its awesome productivity apps for the iPhone and iPad, so it’s always exciting when the company launches something new. Today sees the release of Documents, a terrific file manager, document editor, and media player for the iPad that promises to be unlike any other app you’ve download.
“You will use it constantly, at home, office, university or on the road, every single day,” Readdle says. And what’s more, Documents is completely free.
It seems like just last week that I was raving about Unbound – and that’s because it was. However, there is now yet another amazing app for browsing the photos in your Dropbox.
It’s called Heliog, and it is the equal of Unbound – although it takes quite a different approach.
Unbound app is a Dropbox-linked photo viewer. Imagine if iOS’ built-in Photos app linked to Dropbox instead of needing you to dick around with iTunes and the flakey Photo Stream, and you have pretty much imagined Unbound.
Dropbox — our favorite cloud-based storage solution next to the iCloud — has been hinting that it wants to be a major presence in the online photo gallery business, and now they’ve taken another step towards that goal, purchasing photo sharing and organizing tool Snapjoy for an undisclosed amount.
One of the best cloud-based services out there, Dropbox, has gotten its iOS app updated with a shiny new design and photo gallery, which adds its own tab and a scrollable timeline of the automatically uploaded photos from your iOS device of choice.
Remember iDisk? It was a great feature of the otherwise forgettable MobileMe service, and it let you access your free Apple-provided internet disk space just like Dropbox or Google Drive do now.
Interestingly, you can make iCloud work the same way, with a little app called iClouDrive, from Zibity Software. Here’s how.
I thought I had the whole “paperless” thing under control until Doxie sent over the new, budget-priced Doxie One for me to review. Trust me: If you snap photos of your receipts with your iPhone in an attempt to banish dead trees from your life, you should probably switch to a portable scanner.
It really is that much better.
Happy Thanksgiving! This year to observe the holiday we asked each of our writers to tell us a bit about the things they are most thankful for in 2012: specifically, the Apple product, app, service, third-party accessory and person they most relied upon and were grateful for this year. All through the rest of the day, we’ll be posting these thanksgiving observances. Here’s Cult of Mac Reviews Editor Giles Turnbull’s list of the things he’s most thankful for this year. You can find the rest of our Thanksgiving Smorgasbord entries here.