What’ll it be: Mac or PC? Consumers have their reasons for loving or hating both platforms. When expressed in online forums and the user comment sections of websites like Mac|Life or our sister site Maximum PC, these rational talking points act to chum the digital waters, attracting the most irritating of all predators: The Fanboy. With Macs users now capable of easily running Windows and OS X on the same computer, and Windows rig owners leveraging iTunes to keep their iPads and iPhones purring along, you’d think the hostilities would be settling down.
Unfortunately, there’s a new argument to be had, and it revolves around the issue of which company, Microsoft or Apple, provides a superior cloud computing experience: SkyDrive or iCloud. While we wear our pro-Apple leanings like a badge of honor, we wouldn’t be doing our readers a service by simply declaring iCloud the single greatest cloud computing and storage platform of all time. Instead, we present you with a blow-for-blow account of how the two of the web’s most prominent cloud computing platforms -- iCloud and SkyDrive -- stack up against one another.
If you’re a Mac, Windows or iOS device user, iCloud is nothing but win. Contacts, calendars, and Safari bookmarks all sync automatically between devices. Users are also able to opt into syncing their documents and other data via the service as well, albeit with a lot less finesse than we’re use to seeing from Apple. Recently, SkyDrive introduced a mobile app for iPhone and Windows Phone 7 users to access and interact with their files on the go. Through the use of online applications such as Windows Live Hotmail Calendar, Mail and Contacts, users are able to interact with their information on the go, just like their iCloud-loving counterparts. That said, iCloud’s integration with OS X and iOS native applications is second to none, making SkyDrive’s data syncing methodology look primitive by comparison.
Winner: iCloud
Any cloud computing solution worth it’s salt should be able to provide you with all of the room you’ll need to tend to your storage needs without making you feel cramped for space. iCloud provides users with 5GB of free storage space that can be used for cloud-based iOS backups, email storage and file serving. If they need additional storage, users can purchase an upgrade to 10GB, 20GB or 50GB for $20, $40 or $100 per year respectively. Right off the bat, Microsoft gives all SkyDrive users 25GB of free storage space. That’s a whole lot of bang for absolutely no bucks.
Winner: SkyDrive
iCloud users in the United States finally gained access to Apple’s snazzy new iTunes Match service this past November, and all in all, it’s a pretty sweet deal. For $24.99 per year, subscribers can scan and match up to 25,000 tracks from their personal music library to Apple’s servers, and download them to any of their authorized computers or iOS devices to as high quality 256 kbps DRM-free AAC files.
What does SkyDrive bring to the party? Not much. While Microsoft does offer the company’s faithful access to the Zune Marketplace and Zune Music Pass through their Xbox 360, PC, and Windows Phone 7 hardware, it’s not touted as being a part of SkyDrive, and therefore disqualified from entry in this showdown. Even if it was, it doesn’t play nice with Apple branded hardware. Sorry, Redmond.
Winner: iCloud
There’s a lot of services out there offering cloud storage -- Dropbox, Amazon, SugarSync and Box to name a few. What makes iCloud and SkyDrive compelling is that in addition to giving consumers a place to stash their files, they also provide the means to tinker with that content to boot. By logging into iCloud.com, users are able to work with their calendars, contacts and email. While they have access to any of the iWork-related files they may have uploaded to iCloud, Apple sadly hasn’t provided any means of editing those files or creating new ones without the aid of a computer or iOS device with Pages, Numbers, or Keynote installed on it.
SkyDrive on the other hand, is glut with web-based applications. In addition to it’s Windows Live mail, calendar and contacts applications, SkyDrive also offers users online versions Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and the company’s excellent OneNote note taking app, all of which are useable without owning computer-side versions of the software.
Winner: SkyDrive
If you’ve got a SkyDrive account, you’ve also got a Windows Live Messenger account to go along with it. Born from the ashes of Microsoft Messenger, Live Messenger offers messaging clients for a wide range of devices, including Mac computers, Windows PCs, Xbox 360, Blackberry phones, and Symbian devices. iChat? It’s exclusive to Apple hardware, but uses AOL’s chat protocols, so it can be used with a number of different chat clients. Additionally, when users rock iChat’s client on their Macs, the software also grants them the ability to chat with users from other networks including ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, XMPP and wait for it… Windows Live Messenger. Sorry, Microsoft, but you’ve come up short on this one.
Winner: iCloud
By turning on PhotoStream, iCloud users will automatically see the photos they’ve taken with their iPhone or iPad 2 appear on all of their other PhotoStream-enabled iOS devices, Windows PC or their Macs if iPhoto or Aperture are installed. PhotoStream stores a maximum of 1000 of your most recent images. As if that weren’t enough to keep shutterbugs happy, Apple recently included the ability to delete images from your PhotoStream camera roll -- a feature often requested by users since the service was first launched.
In contrast, SkyDrive offers users access to Microsoft’s Windows Live Photos in order to store and share their photos. While it’s not as elegant a solution as what Apple has on offer, Microsoft’s take on taking your photos to the clouds incorporates sharing to services like Facebook, Flikr and YouTube as well as as the ability to make basic edits to your photos from any internet browser. Apple’s simplicity of function versus Microsoft’s larger feature set. We have to call this one a tie.
Winner: Tie
We’ll keep this one simple, folks. iCloud users get free access to Apple’s awesome Find My iPhone service, that tracks enabled Mac computers and iOS devices no matter when they roam. SkyDrive? Not so much. Microsoft currently doesn’t offer anything remotely like Find My iPhone, though Windows Phone 7 does have its own built-in homing device that can track down a phone if it's left behind. But for a Windows laptop or stolen desktop PC? No help there.
Winner: iCloud
The overall winner: iCloud! Due to it’s wide variety of services, and overall simplicity of use, iCloud trounces SkyDrive with ease, provided you’re using a device made by Apple. For everyone else, SkyDrive -- offering a full suite of free tools and ample space for most people’s files -- is a compelling way to compute in the clouds. What do you think readers? Which service would you declare the champ? Sound off in the comments!
drdavedmin
December 19, 2011 at 1:55pm
How about a comparison of iCloud with Google online - calendar, email, apps, etc.?
mikess1
December 16, 2011 at 1:26pm
Apple recently included the ability to delete images from your PhotoStream camera roll ??? how
