I split my writing between my iPad (70% ish) my iPhone (10% ish) and my Mac (the rest). Doing this has meant that I need to sync my documents so that I can just work on them anywhere. Until recently I used iCloud, but that is no longer the case.

Byword Crashing

My distaste started when Byword began continually crashing. Anytime I created a new document with Byword in iCloud it would crash about 10 seconds in and then I’d have a document conflict. Didn’t matter if I waited to type so that the document was created, I still had crashes.

The Document Sandbox

Another big knock against iCloud is that you lock documents to an application. So that means I can’t use iAWriter on my Mac and Byword on my iOS devices. This lock in has been a known issue for a while, and sure it’s simple for many users but simple is not always what’s actually best for users.

Dropbox

So I’m out of iCloud and using Dropbox. Now I can work in iAWriter, Byword or any application I want. Byword doesn’t crash and my data is versioned in Dropbox.

Sure iCloud has a bit of promise, but it’s terrible function kills any benefit. I keep hoping that Apple can do web services, only to be let down.