Manton Reece on what iCloud is, and isn’t, good for:
For iOS backups and iTunes Match, iCloud is fantastic. For private, app-specific data that doesn’t make any sense away from a single developer’s native Mac and iOS apps, it’s also excellent. There’s no question that using Macs, iPhones, and iPads today is a significantly better experience thanks to iCloud.
But there are two fundamental limitations in iCloud that make it inappropriate for a bunch of syncing uses:
- No way to access it from other platforms or web apps.
- No way to share data between apps from different developers.
Agreed. And a prime example is iOS/Mac text editors. I’ve actually found that using iCloud to sync my document in Byword (though it’s cool) is not my preference. I use Dropbox because: (a) the workflow which OS X requires an app to go through to save a document to iCloud is a bit tedious; (b) iCloud documents don’t show up in LaunchBar’s recent documents list; and, most importantly, (c) documents synced via iCloud are only available in Byword.