Dropbox vs. iCloud

Now that Apple can share files and folders, I’m sorely tempted to let my Dropbox subscription expire. I’m generally not a fan of apps that embed themselves in the underlying operating system the way that Dropbox does on the Mac. Indeed on my laptop, I didn’t install the Dropbox hacks. When I need to upload a file there, I trigger a Keyboard Maestro script that gets me to the Dropbox website, and I drag and drop into the browser. Also, I don’t want to give another pile of money to Dropbox.

A few reasons are holding me back at the moment:

  1. iCloud Doubt Dropbox has always been rock-solid and fast. I’m not aware of ever losing a file through the Dropbox cloud sync, and I’ve always been impressed with Dropbox’s synchronization speed. Is iCloud up to that? It has been stable for me in terms of file and sync integrity. It’s definitely slower than Dropbox.

  2. Non-Apple People In the day job, I often have people I share files with that don’t own any hardware with a fruit logo. Historically, iCloud sharing has not been useful outside the Apple ecosystem. That is getting better now, but is it good enough yet?.

Apple could make this decision a lot easier for me later this month if they add additional features for iCloud sharing at WWDC. While I’ve got some time left on my annual Dropbox subscription, I’m keeping it as a backup, but I’m also trying not to use it. If I can get by a few months without having to resort to Dropbox, I’m probably good. Ideally, one cloud storage service is enough for me.