For years I’ve been using Dropbox to move over any content that I’ve processed for the blog or vlog so that I don’t have giant files activity living on my iPhone. I also like to store personal images from over the years. Of course, I still have 5 hard drives as does any Millennial, but I was seeking a more modern solution to content storage so that I didn’t have to drag those 5 hard drives around everywhere I go.
iCloud vs Dropbox
During lunch last year, my sister-in-law shared that the “Files” app on your iPhone is your iCloud storage. So not only does your phone backup to the cloud, but you’ll be able to use the Files app to store your content.
This was a revolution to me since I was paying for 2TB’s of storage on my phone anyway – essentially paying double – once of iCloud and once for Dropbox.
Taking a few weeks to move all my content over from Dropbox to iCloud, I cancelled my Dropbox subscription and moved exclusively to iCloud. While it was a good idea in theory, iCloud is SIGNIFICANTLY slower and less accessible than Dropbox.
The Results
On a mountainside for a wedding and wanting to pull up an old high school picture? Impossible. In a restaurant and wanting to pull up the images from your previous visit, slowwwwwwww. It turned out using iCloud was actually quite a pain!
The purpose of having your content on a cloud is so that it is available 24-7, no matter where you are, to access and either check content, share memories and have that immediate availability that a hard drive can’t offer. I would often find myself on 5G but unable to access images or video, requesting for my mobile data to be turned on even when it was permanently on.
Dropbox is also slightly less expensive year on year. iCloud costs R199.99 a month (R2 499.88) and Dropbox costs R194.99 per month, however, Dropbox has an annual discounted rate where you can get a month free. So the fee of $119.88 converts to R1 941.74 – a difference of R558.14 when comparing iCloud to Dropbox.
MOVING FORWARD
Needless to say, I am moving back to Dropbox. Not mainly due to the pricing, but due to the technology being far more agile and accessible in more remote locations – something common in South Africa.
Even when beginning the journey of moving content off iCloud and back onto Dropbox, it can take up to 2 hours for 300mb. I have Chat GPT’s and Googled solutions and apparently iCloud throttles the data limits. Needless to say, this may take me a few weeks (I have 1500 gigs) – just another reason to say goodbye to iCloud as a storage facility.
https://shorturl.fm/TInO7