Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop | Hacker News Reader

Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop

asselinpaul.calepin.co

62 pointsasselinpaul49 comments

This is one hundred percent a personal opinion, but I suspect its one that I'm not alone in.

I use iCloud and Dropbox, I don't even really see how they're competitors from my perspective. iCloud does things like sync my iCal calendars and Safari bookmarks, and Dropbox allows me to maintain a shared filesystem between all my computers.

Dropbox is a form of free form backup/sharing, while iCloud is just a convenient way to keep defined, structured data together for me.

I've also never had Airdrop work properly. Back To My Mac is finicky as well, and there's insufficient transparency in how it works for me to figure out exactly what I'm doing wrong.

Could you describe where things went wrong with Airdrop? I haven't found much use of it either, but it did work between mine and two of my classmates computers without any issues.

Computers just don't show up, despite, as far as I can tell, being properly configured for it. It's probably a network settings thing (as I believe it is with BTMM). I've only used it on my local LAN though.

I think it's only meant to be wireless. Also, it requires both computers to have the "Airdrop"-section in Finder open at the same time. And finally, it only works with Macs manufactured from some point in 2009, due to the specific hardware it requires. Would any of these possibly be the cause of the issue?

AirDrop is a Mac-to-Mac connection, and works only between specific and supported WiFi-connected Mac systems. The connection is directly between Mac systems, and not via WiFi router nor AP.

Older WiFi devices don't support the necessary transfer mode.

Read the summary and features here:

  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4783

If you want to venture off the trail:

  http://www.macworld.com/article/162407/2011/09/airdrop_any_mac.html

If/when apple exposes an "iCloud folder", then it'll be competing directly with Dropbox. It's currently not a competitor, just a potential one. Although it'll be a Mac-iOS only solution anyway, not catering to a huge portion of the "real world" - linux & win users.

Yeah, that's true. For me, without cross-platform support (and a website) I still wouldn't be able to use it: my Dropbox syncs with 2 Ubuntu machines, 2 Macs and a Windows laptop, and I simultaneously use it to access files on my university's lab (Windows) computers via the website.

Apple is trying to build a post-filesystem world. When was the last time you thought about file paths, or even folders, on an iOS device? Data is presented to users with a structure determined by the application.

Apple's goal is not to compete with Dropbox directly; it is to make Dropbox irrelevant.

It's going to be difficult to make dropbox irrelevant without reasonable cross platform support.

If I have all my data in "the cloud" but it can't be accessed without using a device from particular manufacturer I have to be pretty sure that myself or anybody else I want to share data with will never use a device from another manufacturer.

Apple is trying to build a post-filesystem world. When was the last time you thought about file paths, or even folders, on an iOS device?

Whenever I've wanted to move data from one app to another—like when I want to transfer a word from a note or txt to a dictionary, or when I'd like to move a picture.

I think we'll see more and more apps have Dropbox integration. For example, Day One is an iPhone/iPad/Mac journal app that can use Dropbox to sync journal files across all of your devices. Sparrow is a Mac email client that can upload photos into your Dropbox's public folder for your attachments and embeds a Dropbox URL, instead of actually attaching it to the email.

Apple's goal with iCloud and Air* is not to compete with Dropbox. iCloud, in general, seems poised so that no matter what device it originated on, you can find your data.

Take a look at PhotoStream. Yes, you can't delete individual files, and yes, it has very few features. That's not the point. The bottom line is that any photo you took on your iPhone appears almost immediately on your other Apple devices. You can view them on your AppleTV, you can flip through them on your iPad, you can download them to iPhoto. There's no extra step, the photos just appear.

iCloud is Apple's attempt for this to happen for all of your data. Airdrop is a red herring. It's to solve the short-term problem of "I have a file on Computer A, and I want to transfer it to Computer B." In the end, ideally, this would never happen. Your app of choice would grab the file from iCloud seamlessly.

I don't think Apple cares that this doesn't work on Windows. Like the new owner of the Jaguars said, "I think I can clarify at this point for me a fan is somebody who is a season ticket holder."

> Airdrop is a red herring. It's to solve the short-term problem of "I have a file on Computer A, and I want to transfer it to Computer B." In the end, ideally, this would never happen.

I think in the context of Airdrop, Computer B is presumed to be a different person. The transaction is "giving away" a file, in this case, not "how do I get it from my desktop to my laptop."

I view Apple as still very much a newbie in this space. Sure, they can make it pretty and shiny, but I see them balking on the harder engineering challenges.

For example, because I was one of the doomed MobileMe users, I ended up having two Apple IDs for my Apple assets. As a result of moving to iCloud, I had to ditch one set of assets. Apple assumes you only have one Apple ID, which is fine, but they do not offer you a way to merge two Apple accounts. In other words, their walled garden is so tightly walled it doesn't even play nicely with itself.

Another example is that they don't have a good user experience around communicating what is going to happen when moving data from one device to another. I had the hardest time getting my contacts from my old iPhone to iCloud. What ended up happening is that I had to manually transfer the info (yes, look at the iPhone contacts, type them into a file, then manually type them back into my new iPhone) and actually in the process of moving to iCloud I accidentally deleted all of my contacts without warning. Oops!

So Apple is still really green when it comes to smoothing out all of the rough edges of this complex engineering challenge. My experience with DropBox has been closer to the "it just works" experience.

Since you can sync your contacts with your computer via iTunes, and then sync your new iPhone with your computer, I am genuinely curious as to why you "had" to manually type in this information. Having owned every iPhone except the 3G this has never been my experience.

My contacts ended up in a separate contact group, and there doesn't seem to be a way to pull in contact info from an existing group into the iCloud group.

Keep in mind that I also had two Apple IDs.

Right conclusion (iCloud is DOA), but wrong reasoning.

Lots of people are 100% Apple ecosystem (I use Linux and FreeBSD servers, but all my desktops/phones/laptops/etc. are Apple). I have only ever used Dropbox from Apple platforms, too.

Yet, I still use Dropbox, and not iCloud. Why? Because so far, iCloud has been totally useless. iTunes Match is marginally useful, but it was done internally by Apple as a first-party thing (and really, iTunes and all online Apple services are an embarrassment to a company which is so good at design; even the online Apple Store is crap compared to their physical retail presence. Some people should hate each other for every Apple Internet service.)

Basically no non-Apple first-party apps support iCloud in any meaningful way. 1Password, Chrome, ... Plenty of third-party apps support Dropbox API.

Dropbox may have three main things going for it (simple initial "put stuff in a folder", cross-platform, and great API), but any ONE of those is sufficient. Cross-platformness is the easiest one to discount (since even Dropbox isn't cross-platform to the platforms I really care about, like Audi RNS-E, various fitness tracking devices, people who aren't currently dropbox users, ...).

…simple initial "put stuff in a folder…"

Apple's goal with iCloud (and iOS) is to eliminate the concept of a folder in the filesystem. Of course it won't work well for you. You want folders and files.

I'd be fine with syncing "data" vs. files, too, but no apps I use or care about support iCloud.

iCloud has been available to end users for three months. Give it time to accrete features, just like iOS.

"Basically no non-Apple first-party apps support iCloud in any meaningful way. 1Password, Chrome, ... Plenty of third-party apps support Dropbox API.".

I can't wait for this to change (and I'm pretty confident it will). 1Password's Dropbox support really is terrible. My 1Password DB is not something I want to see, so I can hide it away in a folder in my Dropbox, but then a dot file is saved in my Dropbox root so 1Password can find it. The alternative would be for 1Password to force a hard coded path. Both are inelegant solutions to using a filesystem for app data syncing.

I think the point is that even people who are 100% apple are likely to need (or at least anticipate needing) to swap files with people who are not apple users.

I think being cross platform as it stands means being compatible with at minimum: Windows , Mac , iOS , android + possibly web?

I can't imagine there are many people desperate for a file sharing solution for their car or heart rate monitor, if one was developed it would probably be a niche solution possibly using dropbox as a platform.

Basically no non-Apple first-party apps support iCloud in any meaningful way. 1Password, Chrome, ... Plenty of third-party apps support Dropbox API.

GoodReader has great iCloud support. And iCloud has only been available to the general public for all of three months. GoodReader's support for iCloud is way more meaningful to me than Dropbox support in any other application has been, except perhaps 1Password's.

iCloud is an umbrella term. It makes no sense to compare iCloud to Dropbox. Dropbox doesn't provide app syncing (calendar, contacts, mail, alarms, etc.), it doesn't provide photo syncing, nor Music Match, or anything else iCloud provides and conversely iCloud doesn't provide a portable file system like Dropbox does. At some point iCloud could bundle Dropbox -like services under the iCloud name, but at this point it doesn't.

I use photo stream all the time, rely on contact and calendar syncing, use share music between all my devices AND use dropbox daily. Not once have I had to decide if I should use dropbox for this or iCloud. They simply don't step on each others toes.

One of the great things about iCloud is that you don't actually "use" it. It just sort of works (yeah yeah I know).

Dropbox is for file sharing. iCloud lets you forget about files. I don't really view them as competitors, at least not direct competitors.

Drop box is just obvious next step: taking file-system to the cloud. Apple is just unfortunately clumsy or it is up to something...

I have Apple ecosystem in my home and within couple of my friends. I just love how it all works together well. Except one thing: sharing and syncing.

The document sharing between computer and ipad through iTunes->iPad->Apps->App (in second! list) is just overcomplicated and does not even allow real synchronisation. That way of sharing breaks logical document coupling as well (by-project, for example). The way of sharing documents between apps is limited as well and it forces me to have duplicates... There many other little things.

I think (and strongly hope) that this is just a transient period. Looks like Apple would like to get rid of classical file system "feel" on the user's side. They either have no human friendly solution yet (measured on Apple standards) or want to do it step-by-step, so users can accommodate to changes gradually.

iCloud is application/document type based storage, iPad is application based file storage. They even added a view to finder: "All My Files", which also hides classical file system way of browsing files.

I do not think that Apple is done with file management evolution. But I feel, that the classical hierarchical file system structure is not the way to go in the cloud based file system...Consider not only your document syncing, but also synchronized file sharing with custom categorization...

Dropbox's idea of the cloud is file based. Apple's idea of the future of computing (iOS and iCloud) is no files, you just assume apps will use the cloud. It's clunky because it's not what we are used to, nor the app makers.

I'm not so sure their long term view of the cloud is necessarily "file based" (although it's debatable what that means specifically).

Dropbox was originally IIRC developed by a college student who had the problem of sharing files easily between his home and college computers, dropbox was a solution to that.

In the long term however , they have more or less solved the basic problem of syncing files and used this to provide revenue to move into the future.

I see a good business model for them could be to provide a platform for developers to build things that may in the background be syncing files (I think it'll be a while before we have filesystemless servers especially since unix is build around the concept of files) but from the end user point of view are providing services like photo / calender sharing etc.

>Sadly, iCloud only supports Apple devices (which is understandable) but that means that it will never be what it aspires to be. iCloud is unpractical and reserved for the Mac addict that never touches any other computer.

Don't know if I'm missing some subtlety here, but I've got iCloud running happily on my Windows PC. Details on how to do are on the Apple website - http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/pc.html

This is why I could never buy into the comment Steve Jobs supposedly made that Dropbox is just a feature.

I'm still not convinced about the Dropbox developer experience though. I would think web integration is key to them winning. Similar to the way FB wants Like buttons everywhere, Dropbox wants Dropbox This everywhere. And yet, there's no way to pass a URL and say "store that". Dev has to pull the URL and copy it across, every time, and Dropbox has no idea it's the same URL.

A bit specific, but an example where Dropbox needs to invest its new capital into making life easier for developers, especially if similar products from say Google or Amazon emerge...which would presumably be cross-platform, unlike Apple's offering.

We use Airdrop a lot for sharing large files over our local network, for that it works great, and is a lot more efficient than Dropbox. But I agree that it would be more useful if it's an open protocol.

With respect to iCloud - it makes little sense to make it generally available. It's an free add-on (except iTunes Match) that ties you into 'the Apple platform'. If you and your applications use iCloud for synchronization, and it's limited to iOS and OS X, there is one more hoop to jump through if you want to switch to another platform.

Whether Apple succeeds on that front, we have to see, and depends on things such as adoption by third-party application developers.

iCloud's main draw is that provides MobileMe sync features for free. Anyone who expects it to be a serious dropbox competitor when the folder based filesystem is still prevalent isn't seeing why people are using iCloud.

Agree, iCloud isn't really a file sync it's more of an application data sync. I moved from Googles cloud to calendar and contacts because of the seamless sync between my iPhone and Mac.

I wouldn't say iCloud is DOA, more of a lack luster first appearance.

If you string together the cases of Appletalk, iChat, ping, FaceTime, and now iCloud (photo stream in particular), the Apple model of 'communication' seems always limited to the apple ecosystem. Apple doesn't seem to understand that even if I have a full-Apple setup, people I want to communicate with may not. As long as they don't see this as a fundamental issue, folks like Dropbox need not worry. Once they do see it, though, and they decide to bring their design sense to it all ..... hmmm I must be dreaming.

The customers Apple is targeting with these services don't care. Apple is very good at defining their customer and they are amazingly dedicated to keeping feature creep from spoiling the experience for those users.

It isn't that Apple doesn't understand. They completely understand and make choices to do A better rather than A+B so-so. I wish more companies would follow suit rather. It's strong product design (the overlap between product management and design in its true sense).

I don't believe these people actually exist. Unless you live at 1 Infinite Loop, most of the people you meet will have Windows computers.

Airdrop is only useful IF:

1. You want to send a file to someone

2. They are standing right next to you

3. They have a fairly recent Mac, running Lion.

Whereas Dropbox is useful whatever OS they're running, and wherever in the world they are.

The point I was trying to make is not that Apple is bad at designing these things. My point is that they seem to consistently miss the fact that communication is a platform agnostic need. To give an exaggerated example, would you buy an iPhone if it only let you make phone calls to other iPhones, despite it's super super design? Would you buy a Mac that only let you send emails to other macs?

That's a really good point. However, it is easier to create the protocol in a homogenous environment than to backfill a heterogeneous one. Case in point: FaceTime. I wouldn't buy an iPhone if it could only talk to iPhones, because the precedent has been set before. I don't have a problem with FaceTime being Apple-only, because 1) there is no precedent and 2) Apple can potentially make FaceTime better by limiting the platforms they worry about.

There may come a time where a competitor has all the features of FaceTime (especially its ease of use) and have platform agnosticism. Then the decision might change.

If you go by "skate to where the puck is going to be", the puck, when it comes to communication, always moves towards platform agnostic protocols. (.. and Skype provided a decent fraction of Facetime's functionality well before Facetime).

If the likelihood of a person using platform A is P(A), then the likelihood of two of them communicating is of the order of P(A)^2. So even if you have 20% platform penetration, that only gives you a communication likelihood of 4%, leaving plenty of space for other providers to fill.

This reminds me of how you originally needed a Mac in order to use an iPod which was later reversed.

Perhaps they are attempting to create a lock-in via network effects similar to Microsoft's where everybody feels they should own at least 1 apple device just to be able to be compatible with everyone else.

It's also possible they will port this to other platforms once they have it right on the mac as there are many people (such as myself) who simply can't justify the cost of buying an apple device.

If anyone is interested in figuring out how AirDrop works .. I registered OpenAirDrop.org a long time ago. I would be happy to point it to a github site.

AirDrop uses mDNS and link-local ipv6

ifconfig shows that a new network interface called p2p[1-N] is created when AirDrop is opened. For instance:

p2p1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 12:9a:dd:a9:9f:1e inet6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e%p2p1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x8 media: autoselect status: active

Sniffing traffic on this interface shows mDNSv6 packets being sent to ff02::fd port 5353. Containing the strings "_airdrop", your machine name and so on.

sudo tcpdump -ni p2p1 Password: tcpdump: WARNING: p2p1: no IPv4 address assigned tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode listening on p2p1, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes 01:56:41.647582 IP6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e.5353 > ff02::fb.5353: 0- [0q] 6/0/3 (Cache flush) SRV MacBook-Air.local.:57829 0 0, (Cache flush) TXT "cname=MacBook Air" "phash=MvwrscY0f8Bc5+f5vR+ncIthkl8=", PTR _airdrop._tcp.local., PTR ea4be4d626af._airdrop._tcp.local., (Cache flush) PTR MacBook-Air.local., (Cache flush) AAAA fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e (365) 01:56:41.647657 IP6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e > ff02::fb: frag (0|1232) 5353 > 5353: 0- [0q] 1/0/0 (Cache flush) NULL[|domain] 01:56:41.647675 IP6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e > ff02::fb: frag (1232|1232) 01:56:41.647686 IP6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e > ff02::fb: frag (2464|1232) 01:56:41.647698 IP6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e > ff02::fb: frag (3696|1232) 01:56:41.647704 IP6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e > ff02::fb: frag (4928|1232) 01:56:41.647710 IP6 fe80::109a:ddff:fea9:9f1e > ff02::fb: frag (6160|1050)

The MAC address of my Airport card in this machine is: 10:9a:dd:a9:9f:1e

Wikipedia says this about fe80::/10

fe80::/10 — Addresses in the link-local prefix are only valid and unique on a single link. Within this prefix only one subnet is allocated (54 zero bits), yielding an effective format of fe80::/64. The least significant 64 bits are usually chosen as the interface hardware address constructed in modified EUI-64 format. A link-local address is required on every IPv6-enabled interface—in other words, applications may rely on the existence of a link-local address even when there is no IPv6 routing. These addresses are comparable to the auto-configuration addresses 169.254.0.0/16 of IPv4.

[edit] and for all of those who claim that AirDrop uses some proprietary mode on the Airport card, read this:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2011091321364956...

And ask yourself how that supposition could possibly be true when AirDrop can be made to work on Ethernet cards.

Thanks for your investigation. Regarding the proprietary mode Apple claims to be required, I guess this mode allows an AirDrop link to be established without disassociating from the (infrastructure mode) WiFi base station by switching between the two links quickly enough. Obviously Ethernet has no such limitation. Indeed, in my opinion, AirDrop is more useful over Ethernet than WiFi.

Multi-mode WiFi drivers became the norm less than 10 years ago. The trick here may be getting all the devices involved in a given AirDrop session on the same channel.

Isn't one of the main features of airdrop that it can work in the absence of a network by creating its own adhoc network? I believe that in order for this to work when you ARE connected to a network, it rapidly switches the NIC between the two networks. Making airdrop "open" doesn't mean that any computer can make use of the protocol.

Airdrop is not a Dropbox competitor, it's a replacement for t he 'public folder/drop box' feature of OS X.

AirDrop is great at college: most people have macs where I go to school and don't know what fileshares are. "go to this icon in your sidebar and press accept" is much easier than putting it on a fileshare.

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