![]() ![]() This fits nicely into Apple’s utopian “interact with apps, not files” vision, but for users like myself who use other text editors or simply sleep better knowing where their files are on a drive, iCloud has a long way to go. If you own the Mac version of iA Writer (which is also fantastic) you’ll find your file waiting for you in a special iCloud menu. Changes sync live as long as your iPad has an Internet connection. ICloud syncing works quickly and painlessly: create a file using the “+” button up top, tap on the “Document” text at the top to re-name your file, and you’re good to go. ![]() The one thing I don’t quite understand is the bit about Dropbox – if Dropbox is so complex, how come so many other apps already offer iCloud-like performance while syncing to Dropbox? Notesy, WriteRoom, Elements, and others all do a great job of saving the most recent versions of my notes to Dropbox, and in much the same manner as iA describes iCloud integration. iCloud sync, which really helped me understand the differences. iA Writer has been similarly opaque in the change notes, but they did write this FAQ on Dropbox vs. ICloud is a funny thing because Apple really hasn’t done a very good job of explaining how it works from a user perspective, and yet they’ve been advertising it like magic. Writer is also the only writing app I know of that can move files from one Dropbox sub-folder to another (Daedalus Touch can do this, but the syncing system is so clunky that the solution doesn’t seem functional). It also deserves mentioning that Writer can now read and create files or folders anywhere you please within Dropbox, which totally kills off the last complaint I leveled at the app. The system sounds complicated, but it has worked out well enough for me so far without having to think about it much. You’ll have to manually move the file back to Dropbox if you want the offline changes to sync with your other Dropbox apps. The upside to this is that any file you edit while you have an Internet connection will be updated live…but if you pack up your iPad mid-sentence and head to a café without any Internet and restart there, you’ll be working on a local copy of the file saved only on your iPad. That’s because Writer on iPad now reads and writes directly to Dropbox, which means there’s actually no local storage of Dropbox files. All that’s left is pure, unadulterated Awesome. That was just silly, and I’m very happy to say that all silliness has been banned from the app as of this latest update. In other words, it wouldn’t matter if I deleted ARTICLE XY in WriteRoom or Notesy, because if I hadn’t deleted the file within Writer, ARTICLE XY would come right back after I next synced in Writer. Furthermore, text files that existed within Writer’s folder had to be deleted within the app, or they’d simply re-appear in other Dropbox clients the next time you synced Writer. Writer could sync with Dropbox, but only with one folder called Writer. Before I get into how much better Dropbox integration is now, let’s review how things used to be. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |