Designing a new project at the moment, and one of the requirements is the ability to Synchronize data between Apple devices, I see that’s pretty much what iCloud should do. Does anyone have any experience with it?
My research also indicates that quite a few iOS users own Windows and as far as I can tell, iCloud isn’t available for Windows. I think Dropbox will do nicely as they have a API for data syncing and are fairly well known. Any one used it?
I’d like to avoid writing my own server to sync data as I don’t want to make this project far more complicated, than it’s already getting!
Some people are already asking for this become a multi-user app… Which is way beyond my original designs…
[quote=49681:@Sam Rowlands]Designing a new project at the moment, and one of the requirements is the ability to Synchronize data between Apple devices, I see that’s pretty much what iCloud should do. Does anyone have any experience with it?
[/quote]
No sorry
Enough to know it might be cool & fun & handy and a huge security hole
It’s disappeared from my machine after I had had enough with the problems it perpetually presented.
YMMV.
Google “dropbox security issues” and make up your own mind.
And there are lots of alternatives which DON’T have drop box security issues
Google “dropbox alternatives” and you’ll find lots
[quote=49681:@Sam Rowlands]Designing a new project at the moment, and one of the requirements is the ability to Synchronize data between Apple devices, I see that’s pretty much what iCloud should do. Does anyone have any experience with it?
My research also indicates that quite a few iOS users own Windows and as far as I can tell, iCloud isn’t available for Windows. I think Dropbox will do nicely as they have a API for data syncing and are fairly well known. Any one used it?
I’d like to avoid writing my own server to sync data as I don’t want to make this project far more complicated, than it’s already getting!
Some people are already asking for this become a multi-user app… Which is way beyond my original designs…[/quote]
Take a look at Box.com. I use that instead of DropBox for file sharing on this forum and such.
There is a free account if that could suffice. I have not tried their API though but you can take a look here: https://developers.box.com/
They have and app for iOS and I guess Android as well.
I have a rack in a Datacenter in NZ with Terabytes of storage. We do commercial offsite backups for a number of companies, most of whom have 500+ GB of compressed backup data.
If you’re interested we could build a proprietary storage solution with you.
I originally looked at DropBox because I’ve heard so many people use it. Ideally I would like a solution that people don’t have to think about, another pro for iCloud. But security is paramount (I hadn’t gotten as far as encrypting the data), but if its a risk for my users, I’m not interested.
As for iCloud on Windows… My brief investigation turned up no official documentation from Apple, I’ll check again incase I missed it.
At this early design stages, I don’t envision large amounts of data and the apps is more geared towards an individual who wants to have the same data on all his devices.
The troubles I’ve mainly seen with iCloud issues, seem to stem from CoreData, which I’m not planning to use as we may ship this as a Windows/Linux application… I’ll guess we’ll find out for sure when we get there, which is also why I’m interested in an alternative solution to iCloud.
I think Apple’s control panel is for Safari and iTunes, I can’t find any API and if there was it would probably mean I have to ship my app with an iCloud installer and such.
And yep Philip is right, it needs to be code signed with a Apple App Store identity, which I’m not even sure you can do on Windows and OS X code sign engine is pretty restrictive, although it might be an interesting challenge!
