Life in an always on world has led to interesting solutions and to problems we didn’t even know we had. One of my favorite examples is Google Drive (formerly known as Google Docs), an online word processor that saves as you go, ties into other Google services. Most importantly, it’s free. Drive actually came from an internal solution used in Google to make documents more collaborative. An argument can be made that the average person doesn’t need to purchase an office suite anymore. Makers of office software have noticed this growing trend too. Microsoft has Office 365 now, but it’s more of a value add to Office.
Apple, on the other hand, has added iWork in the Cloud. The service, in public beta as of last Friday, gives you access to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote from within your browser. To try it out, go to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID. Apple hasn’t totally abandoned its pay model of Pages, mind you; changes made on iCloud show up in your iDevice or Mac of choice, all tied together by that ID. Assuming you have one, that is. The only requirement is an Apple ID, not a pay account.
As this is a beta service, it’s not recommended to use it full time. However, if you’re already in Apple’s sandbox, you may as well play.
The catch being that iWork in the Cloud has no collaborative features at all. Which makes Google Drive an easy win.
You may be right about collaborative, but this feature is not necessarily just for that. It means that if I forgot my iPad at home, or lost it, I can use *anything* with a connection to update something. I can even go to Fedex Kinko’s to do work(not that I need to), without having to download my pages file as a word document or a PDF.
Cloud convenient truth