Cloud storage and sync.
What to do when iCloud fails to recognise document sync is needed? Put the file in Dropbox!
iCloud is incredibly weak in a number of areas. Sync is unreliable leading to conflicts needing resolution or documents being permanently stuck in sync and unusable. No trash leading to files being lost forever (bad times). No version history.
Box is better but it’s sync has issues. A big feature of Box is collaboration and they do have the most useful tools for collaboration (commenting, tasks and folder/file embedding). But sync lets them down. My colleague and I get tens of duplicate files produced in shared folders just due to sync on files that are not open, so this not even due to multiple edits being made simultaneously.
On my laptop sync takes multiple tries to sync everything (it reaches 100% and restarts the sync). It appears that it doesn’t know what to do with some iWork files – a problem I’ve not had with Dropbox or Google Drive. Just recently Box sync has been hogging the processor and not doing a heck of a lot, thereby killing off 30% of the battery in 50 minutes (the laptop was idling this whole time apart from Box sync).
So whilst I do like Box for the features that come with it (and my workplace has gone the Box route), Dropbox is my preferred storage platform. Reliability is most important. Dropbox also has the most informative menu icon on Mac.
