Dropbox is today announcing a new upcoming feature of its platform, codenamed Project Infinite. When Infinite rolls out, you’ll be able to see all your files and folders stored on Dropbox in the Finder, but they won’t take up any space until they are needed. The company is currently targeting the feature at business users.
This means your Dropbox storage can be far larger in total size than your local disk (as is common with modern setups of 1 TB Dropbox tiers and small SSDs) with on-demand instantaneous access to any file at any time over the Internet …
Given the enormity of the financial meltdown in Greece, not being able to make iCloud or iTunes purchases is rather a long way down the list of the country’s problems – but for those with data stored on iCloud, not being able to renew a subscription could put that data at risk.
For those outside Europe who may not have seen too much news coverage, a combination of a long history of low levels of tax collection and the global financial crash has left Greece unable to pay its international debts. To prevent a collapse of the Greek banking system, the government has put strict controls in place, including maximum cash withdrawals of €60 ($66) a day – and a complete ban on overseas payments or transfers.
As payments from Greek subscribers are processed outside the country, this means that Apple cannot legally accept payments from anyone with a Greek account. One Bloomberg staffer learnt about this very directly when they received an email from Apple telling them their iCloud renewal had failed.
“On June 30, we tried to charge your account for your iCloud space of 20GB, but there is a problem with your payment details,” said one e-mail received by Bloomberg News staff based in Athens. “If we don’t manage to renew your subscription, your account will be downgraded to the free 5GB space program.”
First launched on iPhone earlier this year, Dropbox announced today that it’s launching its Carousel photo and video gallery app for iPad users. The company is also bringing the experience to the web at carousel.dropbox.com.
Part of making the best home for your photos is giving you a fast, simple, beautiful way to engage with your pictures, however and wherever you want. Today, we’re excited to announce big steps towards that goal: Carousel for web, iPad, and Android tablet.
In addition, the iOS apps add the ability to share to Instagram and WhatsApp with today’s update.
The Carousel app offers easy sharing of one or multiple photos to contacts or email addresses and allows users to get around many of the upload limitations usually associated with sharing photos. With everything backed up in full resolution directly to Dropbox, the app is essentially a standalone experience for managing to photos and videos stored in Dropbox.
We’ve updated Carousel with one of your most requested features: support for iPad! Now, view your photos and continue conversations on a bigger screen.
Plus, we’ve added support for posting to Instagram and WhatsApp!
Box for iPhone and iPad – an app designed to allow convenient access to more than 100 document types in the cloud – has been updated to allow unlocking via Touch ID and given a bunch of new features designed to make it easier to use.
Touch ID support should make a big difference to heavy users, who the company says typically use the app 50 times a day.
A Notification Center widget makes Box significantly more convenient, allowing you to view recent files and add new notes. A new Favorites feature allows fast access to frequently-needed files without having to load them into the app first.
What’s New in Version 3.5.0
Now use Box from your Today view in Notification Center to quickly and easily create Box Notes, view recent documents and more (requires iOS 8)
Use your fingerprint to unlock the Box app at the touch of the home button with Touch ID (compatible devices only, requires iOS 8)
Add files and folders to a Favorites list for easy access without having to download any data ahead of time with our new Favorites feature
In-folder search capabilities
Box Bookmarks are now accessible
Support for previewing password protected Office and iWork files
Automatic photo upload for Personal Pro subscribers and Enterprise users
Additional stability improvements and bug fixes
Box appears to be a favored app at Apple, featured in Best New Apps and used to demonstrate app extensions during this year’s WWDC.
Box for iOS is a free download from iTunes, with 10GB of storage included. An in-app purchase of $79 a year for the Pro version boosts storage to 100GB and allows individual files of up to 5GB to be uploaded.
The (almost) free lunch promised by Bitcasa of unlimited cloud storage for just $99/year is coming to an end, and the company has also informed users that they will need to manually migrate all data to a new backend by 15th November or it will be deleted.
Bitcasa was able to offer low-cost “infinite storage” because it figured that most users would have only a relatively small proportion of unique content. As I mentioned in my comparative review:
The company estimates that most people have no more than 25GB of unique content on their computers, the rest – music, movies, etc – being content held in common with other people. For that data, Bitcasa stores only one copy of the file, with the rest of our backups containing a pointer to it.
But, says, Bitcasa, some people have been “abusing” the facility, which seems to be a reference to businesses storing large quantities of data in what is supposed to be a personal account.
While that may seem understandable, what is rather less so is giving users such a short time to migrate their data before it is lost, especially when the company’s support document recommends that people do this one folder at a time.
We recommend that you do not drag all your files and folders at once. Instead, drag one folder at a time and wait for it to complete before moving onto the next file/folder.
Those on unlimited subscriptions are being offered a choice of 1TB for the same $99/year, or 10TB for a rather eye-watering $999/year. The company says that only 0.5% of its subscribers have more than 1TB of data.
There is an attempt on Reddit to start a class-action lawsuit against the company.
Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage mobile app received an update today across multiple platforms. The iOS flavor of the refreshed software introduces improved file search options for iPhone and iPad, along with All Photos view for fast access to your saved pictures. This section displays your photos in chronological order and lets you keep an eye on your camera’s backup status.
Dropbox has today slashed its pricing and doubled the maximum storage space from 500GB to 1TB. Up until yesterday, you’d have been paying $500/year for 500GB; today you can pay just $120/year (or $99/year when paying annually) for a terabyte.
With Dropbox version 3.3, the app now supports search within Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint documents. Dropbox says this improvement is due to “new, higher fidelity previews” available in this version. The latest update also adds larger animated GIF support and “smarter caching” which users with low storage availability will appreciate.
The latest version of Dropbox is rolling out now on the App Store.
The Apple ecosystem is a large part of why I stick to an all-Apple line-up for my laptops, tablet and phone. iCloud is key to that, of course, providing seamless backup and syncing between devices.
Whether it’s my calendar, contacts, reminders, notes, ebooks or Safari bookmarks, all are available on all devices within a minute or two of me updating any of them. Documents I create in Pages, Numbers or Keynote are again available from any of my devices providing I choose to store them on iCloud. As I pay the extra for iTunes Match, I’m also able to stream any of my music from any device.
In some respects, Apple clearly takes the cloud seriously. It has invested massively in expanding its network of data centers, including a $1B investment in Reno, expansion in Maiden and new data centers as far afield as Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Yet, central as it is to the ecosystem, iCloud still feels a bit like it deserves the tag Steve Jobs famously applied to Apple TV: a hobby …
Cloud-storage service Box released version 3.0 of its iPhone and iPad app today to its users. While the app features new navigation and a fresh user interface, Box also says its app has been rewritten in version 3.
New features include faster search within the app and better previewing for documents and media. The service offers users 50 GB of free cloud storage so there’s plenty of room to store content.
Box for iPhone and iPad is available for free on the App Store.
With former MobileMe customers losing their additional 20GB of free storage a couple of days ago, there are probably a bunch of new people eyeing the paid iCloud upgrade options and wondering whether or not to hand over their cash. So we thought it would be a useful to take a look at the other major cloud storage services out there, to see how they compare.
As none of them are trying to hide the filesystem in the way Apple does, they all essentially work in the same way: providing you with a virtual online drive that you treat just like a local folder. There are also OS X and iOS apps for each.
Let’s start with the obvious: if you want something that is totally integrated into both OS X and iOS, and which Just Works, then iCloud is king.
Although the 5GB you get free doesn’t sound like a lot, you actually get more than this in practice – because Apple doesn’t count the space used by any of your iTunes purchases (apps, music, movies/TV shows or books), nor does it count the 1000 most recent photos you get to store in Photostream. If most of the content you want to store came from Apple, and all you want to do additionally is sync your contacts, calendar, notes and so on, the free storage is probably all you need.
iCloud is also a seamless way to store documents if you use Apple’s own iWork software: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. By opting to save documents on iCloud, they are automatically available to you from your Mac(s), iPad and iPhone – as well as on the web.
But if you have a lot of documents, you can pretty soon start bumping up against that 5GB limit. Which is where iCloud’s costs and limitations start to show up … Expand Expanding Close
Dropbox released version 2.3.12 as an “experiemental” build today, adding a few interesting new features that will hopefully make it through the beta process into the shipping version of the app. The new features, as noted by MacStories, include the option to have screenshots automatically added to your dropbox with the link copied to your clipboard for easy sharing, much like the automatic sharing features found in CloudApp and Droplr.
New in 2.3.12
Screenshot to Dropbox
Move to Dropbox
Import from iPhoto
Much faster upload/download speeds for large files
Google today updated its Drive app for iOS with a couple new features including the ability to access comments for Google Docs and improvements to viewing images stored in Drive.
Version 1.4.0 of Google Drive for iPhone and iPad introduces the ability to “view, create, reply, and resolve comments in Google Docs files,” something users could not previously access from the mobile app for iOS.
While it’s not the full blown card-style redesign the Android app received a couple weeks ago, Google is also making easier to quickly view photos on iOS by allowing users to swipe through images while viewing in fullscreen.
What’s New in Version 1.4.0
*Swipe through your images stored in Drive
*View, create, reply, and resolve comments in Google Docs files
Amazon today has a big sale on storage with notable deals on Transcend storage products. Whether you are adding an SD Card or USB stick to your Mac for some extra sneakernet or backup space, or using it for a camera or peripheral, pretty much any size and speed is covered here.
Amazon today announced unlimited storage for music in its cloud drive. The catch is you have to upgrade your overall Cloud storage (also includes Docs, Pictures, movies, etc) to the 20GB plan which is $20 per year. Once you do that, you can upload “Unlimited” amounts of music and play it anywhere. So, this appears to be taking on Spotify, Google and Apple’s iTunes Match (though each service is slightly different).
Speaking of Apple, the Amazon Cloud web experience is now also optimized for the iPad. Full press release below:
