The Next Web is reporting that Dropbox‘s CEO Drew Houston has been talking at the DLD Conference about Apple’s own cloud initiatives.
Martin Bryant, The Next Web:
Houston said that apparently the team behind the failed cloud service MobileMe wanted to add a Dropbox-style feature directly into OS X (for use with MobileMe) but that the team responsible for the OS X Finder app “wouldn’t prioritize it, or wouldn’t build it” for them. MobileMe’s replacement, iCloud, also lacks any kind of direct OS X Finder interaction as yet.
After discussions and a reported failed buy-out attempt of Dropbox, Apple was clearly interested in making a Dropbox competitor. While MobileMe is no more, iCloud has been implemented, and it has been a lot smoother than Apple’s previous attempts at the cloud. What is curious is why Apple has taken a completely different route with iCloud. The skyrocketing success of iOS has a lot to do with it.
The appeal of Dropbox is its simplicity. It’s merely a folder that syncs. It’s great for the traditional model of computing. Drag a file here, and drop a file there. Boom. With iOS, there is no file system available to the user. You can’t just go around tapping and dragging files willy-nilly. iCloud, instead, works as application syncing rather than file syncing. The data and settings for iCloud enabled apps will sync to the cloud automatically. It’s baked in, and it is clearly designed with iOS in mind. Sadly, it isn’t exactly great on the Mac. Sure, your contacts and calendars will sync, but you can’t throw your Word or Photoshop document in iCloud for syncing. It doesn’t work that way.
It remains to be seen if Apple has plans to make an iCloud syncing folder system to compete with Dropbox, but with a recent funding round of $250 million, Dropbox doesn’t seem too worried about it.
Source: The Next Web
