iCloud Drive vs. Google Drive, which is better?

There are many cloud and storage services, but not all have a good interaction with your operating system. Today we will talk about two rivals facing each other. The one for iOS and the one for Android. One is exclusive for users of the bitten apple and the other is free for everyone, whether they have an iPhone, iPad, Android terminals, a PC or a Mac.

Advantages of one and disadvantages of another. Each has its own pros and cons. This is an opinion article where I will try to help you choose the option that best suits your needs. Keep reading.

iCloud: Everything on all your Apple devices

Photos, Contacts, Calendar, Events, Reminders, Safari tabs and reading list, Content of your applications and much more. If you have a device with iOS or MacOS, you will have seen how iCloud works, which many do not know how to manage and get confused when the device warns them that they have exhausted free storage. First of all, I will tell you that I have the Apple cloud plan of 50Gb per month and that I consider that it is the recommended minimum. Free 5Gb is fine as long as you don't store heavy photos or files, that is, what better to switch to a payment plan if you want to use this service.

iCloud Drive has the disadvantage of the free amount of storage, but once you try it and know how to manage it, you realize that it is better than it seems. The content of my apps, my computer files, my images and Garage Band, Pixelmator, Scanner Pro projects ... Many third-party apps are built into iCloud and that makes syncing between my devices so much easier and so much better. I also love it for native apps, like Pages, where I work every day. I go down the street and edit something on the iPhone. Instantly I have it on the iPad and the same on the Mac. It is similar to what we would find in Google Documents or Google Drive, but I personally prefer it in iCloud for its functions, its interface and the good performance of the apps.

Google Drive: Documents and Files Around the World

The strong point of Google is that they open from the browser or the apps, so you can see it not only on your devices, but on any computer or system. Apple is doing something similar by integrating iCloud with a browser version, but it is not as comfortable or as well known as that of the search engine company. For privacy and security, I prefer to trust iCloud, but the truth is that Google Drive gives you more than 15Gb for free, which in my case I have expanded for free to 17. If you use the Google suite to edit your files it will come in handy, but if you use Word or Pages and then want to save it in Google Drive you will have to go through the files one by one manually, as it does not have the same integration.

Comparison between one and the other

I have also been trying to save some audio recordings in iCloud and Google Drive to compare the differences. To Apple they are saved in a second as soon as I give them to share and save. Then they are uploaded to the cloud in the background and it does not become annoying or heavy. On the other hand, from iOS when saving on the Google platform I have to wait for it to load completely, since it is not integrated into the system as it is a third-party app. That process takes a long time and I think it's something Apple should improve. Everything that is uploading files to the internet or publishing on the web should improve, it would make iPhone and iPad devices much better and more comfortable, and it would help a lot to enhance their use, and more now that the iPhone 7 plus could carry 3Gb Ram memory.

In conclusion, choosing one platform or another is something personal. I prefer iCloud despite having to pay € 0,99 per month, but the other option is also quite good, especially if you use Android as your operating system.