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Comment by startupcto | Hacker News Reader

I think the fundamental differences between Dropbox and iCloud is the sharing feature and Windows/Linux/Mac/etc support. iCloud is never going to be on Windows and our company uses Dropbox to share project resources and our machines are a mixed of PCs and Macs so iCloud means nothing for us.

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Exactly. As Steve Jobs is quoted in the article; Dropbox is only half the solution.

Apple's 'full' solution involves the necessary purchase of their hardware and software as well. Dropbox works across the board, without prejudice.

No, the other half is getting people to use the product. It's easier if you can make it seamless and bake it in rather than a third party solution. They probably wanted to own the solution to leverage any trust they have with their customers.

It's the same thing that happened with backups, they came up with Time Machine. Pretty much all the Mac users I know have a Time Machine backup.

I believe the same thing will happen with version control once Versions support is wide spread. Normal people will know about keeping versions of their work rather than multiple differently named files.

"No, the other half is getting people to use the product."

More than 45 million people use Dropbox. I think they have that part of the problem solved.

iCloud is already available on Windows: https://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/pc.html

I bet it comes with Quicktime, iTunes and a lot of extra plugins which are absolutely necessary for to run the software. /joke

Does the Windows versions suck as much as iTunes? (including installing that pesky apple updater).

Going on-topic, I have a dropbox account but the 2 GB limit (which I managed to make 3.5GB after referring) is very limited. In addition they do not support WebDav.

I recently opened a free Box.net account and I am really happy with it. Because it has webdav support (box.net/dav) I can "mount" the disk in any computer as a drive (windows) or folder (linux).

I personally prefer this approach to the DropBox "replicate everything on each PC you enter". But I understand they are solutions to different issues.

Don't forget Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. iCloud is available on Windows, but I don't think it will be going to competing mobile platforms any time soon.

More to the point iCloud will never be on Linux.

"iCloud is never going to be on Windows"

The same was said about iTunes, but it eventually appeared there. It wouldn't surprise me if more aspects of iCloud eventually appear on Windows.

iCloud is available on Windows - https://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/pc.html

See! It only took 35 minutes.

Doesn't look like there is a Linux or Android version.

Woah... 5GB! I'm so there.

Do you think that if Apple bought Dropbox, Dropbox would still be on all those platforms with such strong support? I don't think so.

I think you have a good point generally speaking, but iCloud does in fact run on Windows.

wait for Google, Facebook or Microsoft to implement their own Dropbox clone.

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