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Comment by larrik | Hacker News Reader

From among CloudRail powered mobile apps. Meaning iCloud isn't considered at all. Interesting finding, but needs an asterisk.

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I don't claim to represent the average app developer but I've never so much as heard of CloudRail, them claiming to be a "Unified API integration leader" and all. I can't find them being written about by someone like Gartner; some other sources claim that they're a European startup in the IoT integration space.

I guess I'm not sure what to make of some unknown-to-me company's study on usage of its own SDK for cloud storage; and this study being posted in 'news release'-style on their blog. To me, these are huge grains of salt.

I looked at CloudRail, but the Dropbox and Google Drive API's are pretty easy to use.

Adding this layer of middleware is just another layer of complexity for us.

I've heard of them before a couple times but frankly, I don't know how good the source is. Just considered it interesting and I'm a Dropbox only user as well.

I'm a "use all the free space I can get from whichever provider" user. Across the providers I use I have 207.25 GB of storage.Dropbox, Drive, Box, and OneDrive all integrate with Astro file manager on my phone. Media Fire and AT&T Locker thru only their own apps. Astro may or may not use cloud rail internally to abstract away the apis for each different server. Although Astro does not offer egnyte so probably not.

That doesn't include Amazon's unlimited free storage for photos with our family prime account.

Oh, and a 1 TB Western Digital personal cloud drive...

I decided that it's not worth the hassle to keep track of so many accounts, so I fork over $2/month to get 100 GB on Google Drive. I was going to get OneDrive, but I have no need for the whole Office 365 shenanigans.

I do understand that point of view. And did consider it, but the way I use the different services is segmented by what I use them for which works for me. box is the backup of just my Calibre library, amazon photos, google drive is just documents, spreadsheets, etc.

Yea, but lets say we just pick iOS users, how do you tell they use iCloud over Dropbox when some things do not give a choice? This is probably as good as we're gonna get from a third-party.

I guess every iOS user uses iCloud somehow. But for me it's just backup because it is so limited to the Apple world. Do they even have a public API?

Yes: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Da...

Oh wow, I never knew about that.

iCloud is purely optional. You just need any email address for an AppleID for a functional phone with AppStore, notifications, etc.

True! It is just among Dropbox GoogleDrive Box OneDrive. Also Egnyte is not considered (or just too small?) even it is supported by cloudrail.

Does iCloud even allow storing arbitrary files? I can't even figure out how to drag and drop a file from my mac to the icloud drive, let alone retrieve it from the iOS side.

I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.

macOS Sierra syncs the desktop and documents folders across all your Macs and makes the files available in the iOS iCloud Drive app as well.

It's really handy - I've pretty much stopped using Dropbox, except to share files with people on other platforms.

With a few (and lessening) limitations, iCloud is becoming the general user-accessible filesystem that iOS has lacked since the beginning.

All that's needed now is a download manager in safari.

And a family plan, so I can pay for higher tiers and share them between my wife and I.

Um, it's trivial to drag any file on a Mac into iCloud. Look in the sidebar in the Finder, between Favorites and Devices is iCloud. Click there to see the contents of your iCloud storage.

On iOS, the iCloud Drive app lets you see everything in iCloud storage as well.

Certainly iOS app integration is important in iCloud, but it functions perfectly well for any other use too.

In the Finder, iCloud Drive is also available in the Go menu, or with the keyboard shortcut ⌘⇧I

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