Category Archives: apple

apple, mobile, reviews, tablets

Review: Cygnett Bluetooth Keyboard for iPad, Windows

In the iPad era there is increasing demand for wireless keyboards that will transform your tablet into a productive writing machine. I have tried a number of such gadgets recently, including a bargain-price iPad keyboard case and an expensive Samsung keyboard to go with the Slate I have been using for Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

Both keyboards work, but with so many annoyances that I rarely use them. The keyboard case works well enough, if you can cope with squishy keys and a tiny power switch, but adds so much weight and bulk to the iPad that it becomes like a laptop, and in doing so loses much of its appeal. The Samsung keyboard on the other hand has a quality feel but lacks a proper power switch, and I found the only way to prevent it powering up when in your bag is to remove the batteries, which is a nuisance. Further, there is some kind of design fault with the keys which can get stuck down; they pop back easily enough, but after a few times something snaps and I now have a key that slopes slightly.

Enter the Cygnett Bluetooth Keyboard, primarily designed for the iPad but which works find with the Slate and no doubt numerous other devices, and which is priced competitively considering it has hard keys and is rechargeable.

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I found several things to like.

First, it has a real on/off switch on the back, something I value having experienced problems with Samsung’s soft power key.

Second, it is small, and will fit in the the top inside pocket of a man’s jacket or tucked into a flap in almost any bag or case. The longest side of the keypad is around 1.5cm less than the length of the iPad itself.

Third, it seems robust and the keys are pleasantly responsive.

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Getting started was simple enough. Charge it using the supplied USB connector, and pair with the iPad or other device by depressing the recessed pairing key, scanning for new devices, and typing the code given.

I find I can get a good speed on this device, though it is a little cramped especially if you do true touch typing using all your fingers. Still, this is mainly a matter of practice and it is a big step up, for me, from the soft keyboard on an iPad or tablet. Another reason to prefer a physical keyboard is that you get twice as much screen space to view your document.

The keypad also works fine with my Windows 8 Slate, though it has Mac-style keys so no Windows key. Of course you can use Ctrl-Esc for this. There is a Print Screen key though, so from my point of view all the important keys are covered. There is no right Shift key.

One small disappointment: although it has a mini USB socket for charging, this keypad is wireless only. It will not work as a USB keyboard even if you use a full USB cable, rather than the charge-only cable supplied. A shame, because there are circumstances when a USB keyboard is useful, such as for changing BIOS settings on a Windows tablet.

The keypad also works with some Android devices. However I was unable to pair it with an HTC Desire smartphone, and I have seen reports of similar issues with other Android mobile devices. If the device prompts for a number to type on the keyboard, you are in business. If it suggests typing a generic code such as 0000 on the device, it does not work, though there may be a workaround of which I am not aware.

Another limitation: you can only pair the keypad with one device at a time.

Nevertheless, I like this keypad better than the Samsung keyboard which cost much more. Recommended.

 

apple

Apple’s space-age Campus 2 plans revealed: complete with amphitheatre

I am just back from San Jose; and on the flight back happened to be seated next to a Cupertino resident who had just received a brochure from Apple entitled Apple Campus 2, along with a letter from Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer beginning “Dear Neighbor”, describing the plans and requesting support.

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I found the document fascinating for several reasons. First, this will be a remarkable building. The building is a four-storey circle that looks like an elegant flying saucer come to land. It will include “one of the largest corporate campus solar installations in the world” and will be 100% powered by renewable energy. It will also have 300 electric vehicle charging stations. The “High performance smart building” will use, according to the document, 30% less energy than a typical office building.

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The majority of the parking will be underground and Apple will create a landscape that is 80% green space, 120 acres of it, creating “a peaceful environment for our employees”. Currently there are 4,273 trees on the site; this will increase to 6,000 trees.

The landscape design of meadows and woodland will create an ecologically rich oak savanna and forest reminiscent of the early Santa Clara Valley. Extensive landscaping including apricot, apple, plum and cherry trees will recall Cupertino’s agricultural past.

The site also includes a “world-class auditorium to host product launches and our corporate events”. For unstated reasons there is also an amphitheatre in the enclosed garden.

It sounds delightful; but Apple does note that “As with the current site, Apple Campus 2 will not be open to the public.”

Another key point: “The campus will be clean, with no manufacturing or heavy industrial activity onsite”. The reason of course is that Apple has exported such activity to China, far out of sight of its genteel Cupertino neighbours.

Since the site, delightful though it may be, will be closed to the public, Apple’s appeal for the support of local residents is based on other things: improvements the company plans for surrounding roads, and the fact that Apple is the largest tax payer in Cupertino. The new campus will “allow Apple to remain in Cupertino,” the brochure says, with the veiled threat of departure should the plans not be granted.

Finally, I was intrigued by Apple’s solicitation of support. Here are the options on the reply-paid card:

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There is no option to object to the plans; but there is space for written comments.

Apple says that the plans will be considered by the City of Cupertino “later this year”, that it will break ground immediately approval is granted, and expects to occupy the campus in 2015.

apple, gaming

The pros and cons of NVIDIA’s cloud GPU

Yesterday NVIDIA announced the Geforce GRID, a cloud GPU service, here at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose.

The Geforce GRID is server-side software that takes advantage of new features in the “Kepler” wave of NVIDIA GPUs, such as GPU virtualising, which enables the GPU to support multiple sessions, and an on-board encoder that lets the GPU render to an H.264 stream rather than to a display.

The result is a system that lets you play games on any device that supports H.264 video, provided you can also run a lightweight client to handle gaming input. Since the rendering is done on the server, you can play hardware-accelerated PC games on ARM tablets such as the Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab, or on a TV with a set-top box such as Apple TV, Google TV, or with a built-in client.

It is an impressive system, but what are the limitations, and how does it compare to the existing OnLive system which has been doing something similar for a few years? I attended a briefing with NVIDIA’s Phil Eisler, General Manager for Cloud Gaming & 3D Vision, and got a chance to put some questions.

The key problem is latency. Games become unplayable if there is too much lag between when you perform an action and when it registers on the screen. Here is NVIDIA’s slide:

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This looks good: just 120-150ms latency. But note that cloud in the middle: 30ms is realistic if the servers are close by, but what if they are not? The demo here at GTC in yesterday’s keynote was done using servers that are around 10 miles away, but there will not be a GeForce GRID server within 10 miles of every user.

According to Eisler, the key thing is not so much the distance, as the number of hops the IP traffic passes through. The absolute distance is less important than being close to an Internet backbone.

The problem is real though, and existing cloud gaming providers like OnLive and Gaikai install servers close to major conurbations in order to address this. In other words, it pays to have many small GPU clouds dotted around, than to have a few large installations.

The implication is that hosting cloud gaming is expensive to set up, if you want to reach a large number of users, and that high quality coverage will always be limited, with city dwellers favoured over rural communities, for example. The actual breadth of coverage will depend on the hoster’s infrastructure, the users broadband provider, and so on.

It would make sense for broadband operators to partner with cloud gaming providers, or to become cloud gaming providers, since they are in the best position to optimise performance.

Another question: how much work is involved in porting a game to run on Geforce GRID? Not much, Eisler said; it is mainly a matter of tweaking the game’s control panel options for display and adapting the input to suit the service. He suggested 2-3 days to adapt a PC game.

What about the comparison with OnLive? Eisler let slip that OnLive does in fact use NVIDIA GPUs but would not be pressed further; NVIDIA has agreed not to make direct comparisons.

When might Geforce GRID come to Europe? Later this year or early next year, said Eisler.

Eisler was also asked about whether Geforce GRID will cannibalise sales of GPUs to gamers. He noted that while Geforce GRID latency now compares favourably with that of a games console, this is in part because the current consoles are now a relatively old generation, and a modern PC delivers around half the latency of a console. Nevertheless it could have an impact.

One of the benefits of the Geforce GRID is that you will, in a sense, get an upgraded GPU every time your provider upgrades its GPUs, at no direct cost to you.

I guess the real question is how the advent of cloud GPU gaming, if it takes off, will impact the gaming market as a whole. Casual gaming on iPhones, iPads and other smartphones has already eaten into sales of standalone games. Now you can play hardcore games on those same devices. If the centre of gaming gravity shifts further to the cloud, there is less incentive for gamers to invest in powerful GPUs on their own PCs.

Finally, note that the latency issues, while still important, matter less for the non-gaming cloud GPU applications, such as those targeted by NVIDIA VGX. Put another way, a virtual desktop accelerated by VGX could give acceptable performance over connections that are not good enough for Geforce GRID.

apple, asus, cloud computing, gaming, mobile

NVIDIA’s GPU in the cloud: will you still want an Xbox or PlayStation?

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NVIDIA’s GPU Technology conference is an unusual event, in part a get-together for academic researchers using HPC, in part a marketing pitch for the company. The focus of the event is on GPU computing, in other words using the GPU for purposes other than driving a display, such as processing simulations to model climate change or fluid dynamics, or to process huge amounts of data in order to calculate where best to drill for oil. However NVIDIA also uses the event to announce its latest GPU innovations, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang used this morning’s keynote to introduce its GPU in the cloud initiative.

This takes two forms, though both are based on a feature of the new “Kepler” wave of NVIDIA GPUs which allows them to render graphics to a stream rather than to a display. It is the world’s first virtualized GPU, he claimed.

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The first target is enterprise VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). The idea is that in the era of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) there is high demand for the ability to run Windows applications on devices of every kind, perhaps especially Apple iPads. This works fine via virtualisation for everyday applications, but what about GPU-intensive applications such as Autocad or Adobe Photoshop? Using a Kepler GPU you can run up to 100 virtual desktop instances with GPU acceleration. NVIDIA calls this the VGX Platform.

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What actually gets sent to the client is mostly H.264 video, which means most current devices have good support, though of course you still need a remote desktop client.

The second target is game streaming. The key problem here – provided you have enough bandwidth – is minimising the lag between when a player moves or clicks Fire, and when the video responds. NVIDIA has developed software called the Geforce GRID which it will supply along with specially adapted Kepler GPUs to cloud companies such as Gaikai. Using the Geforce GRID, lag is reduced, according to NVIDIA, to something close to what you would get from a game console.

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We saw a demo of a new Mech shooter game in which one player is using an Asus Transformer Prime, an Android tablet, and the other an LG television which has a streaming client built in. The game is rendered in the cloud but streamed to the clients with low latency.

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“This is your game console,” said NVIDIA CEO Jen-Sun Huang, holding the Ethernet cable that connected the TV to the internet.

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The concept is attractive for all sorts of reasons. Users can play games without having to download and install, or connect instantly to a game being played by a friend. Game companies are protected from piracy, because the game code runs in the cloud, not on the device.

NVIDIA does not plan to run its own cloud services, but is working with partners, as the following slide illustrates. On the VDI side, Citrix, Microsoft, VMWare and Xen were mentioned as partners.

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If cloud GPU systems take off, will it cannibalise the market for powerful GPUs in client devices, whether PCs, game consoles or tablets? I put this to Huang in the press Q&A after the keynote, and he denied it, saying that people like designers hate to share their PCs. It was an odd and unsatisfactory answer. After all, if Huang is saying that your games console is now an Ethernet cable, he is also saying that there is no need any longer for game consoles which contain powerful NVIDIA GPUs. The same might apply to professional workstations, with the logic that cloud computing always presents: that shared resources have better utilisation and therefore lower cost.

apple, laptops

Fast service at Microsoft store in San Jose

I made a brief visit to the Valley Fair mall in San Jose yesterday and took a quick look at the Microsoft and Apple stores.

Personally I like the Microsoft stores. It is probably not the cheapest place to buy a Windows machine, but you do get the Signature install which as Microsoft notes:

Many new PCs come filled with lots of trialware and sample software that slows your computer down—removing all that is a pain, so we do it for you!

So much for the famous Windows partner ecosystem, eh! But I reckon this is worth the extra cost for most people.

Now, before looking at the following images, which were just snapped as I passed, note that:

1. It was a quiet Monday afternoon and none of the stores was busy.

2. I guess San Jose is Apple land; certainly I have not seen the Seattle store this quiet.

Nevertheless, there did seem to be a mismatch between the numbers of staff and customers. When I went in I was offered help three times and a free drink once.

The guy in yellow at the front left is protesting about some alleged Microsoft misdemeanour.

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The Apple store was not exactly heaving and there were plenty of blue shirts, but a few more customers.

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apple, gadgets, smartphones

A vending machine with a difference: this one buys your old phone

I`m visiting San Jose and looked into the Valley Fair shopping mall. I was intrigued to see an inverse vending machine, one that buys your old phone or other gadgets.

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You tap the screen to start the sale or get a valuation. Then you pop your old phone into the receptacle and the machine checks it out, using “Advanced machine vision and artificial intelligence” to work out what you have put in. You have power up your device for a second stage evaluation, presumably to check whether it actually works. Finally, you get paid in cash or credit, with an option to donate to charity.

The EcoATM machine will take anything, though some devices have zero value in which case you have only the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from recycling.

I was offered up to $104 for my 8GB Apple iPhone 4, though it was a valuation only since the machine was sadly not fully working. Of course you could do better on eBay, but instant cash and no hassle has its attractions.

OK, so what if you grab someone else’s phone, throw it into the machine, and walk away with the cash? The makers claim to have all sorts of anti-theft measures, including video of you doing the deed, though conceptually the idea does seem vulnerable to abuse.

These machines are USA only at the moment, though an international roll-out is planned.

Find out more here, or by watching the video below.

apple, google, microsoft, mobile, windows

Review: Digital Wars by Charles Arthur

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Subtitled Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle for the internet, this is an account by the Guardian’s Technology Editor of the progress of three tech titans between 1998 and the present day. In 1998, Google was just getting started, Apple was at the beginning of its recovery under the returning CEO Steve Jobs, and Microsoft dominated PCs and was busy crushing Netscape.

Here is how the market capitalization of the three changed between 1998 and 2011:

  End 1998 Mid 2011
Apple $5.4 billion $346.7 billion
Google $10 million $185.1 billion
Microsoft $344.6 billion $214.3 billion

This book tells the story behind that dramatic change in fortunes. It is a great read, written in a concise, clear and engaging style, and informed by the author’s close observation of the technology industry over that period.

That said, it is Apple that gets the best quality coverage here, not only because it is the biggest winner, but also because it is the company for which Arthur feels most affinity. When it comes to Microsoft the book focuses mainly on the company’s big failures in search, digital music and smartphones, but although these failures are well described, the question of why it has performed so badly is not fully articulated, though there is reference to the impact of antitrust legislation and an unflattering portrayal of CEO Steve Ballmer. The inner workings of Google are even less visible and if your main interest is the ascent of Google you should look elsewhere.

Leaving aside Google then, describing the success of Apple alongside Microsoft’s colossal blunders makes compelling reading. Arthur is perhaps a little unfair to Microsoft, because he skips over some of the company’s better moments, such as the success of Windows 7 and Windows Server, or even the Xbox 360, though he would argue I think that those successes are peripheral to his theme which is internet and mobile.

The heart of the book is in chapters four, on digital music, and five, on smartphones. The iPod, after all, was the forerunner of the Apple iPhone, and the iPhone was the forerunner of the iPad. Microsoft’s famous ecosystem of third-party hardware partners failed to compete with the Ipod, and by the time the company got it mostly right by abandoning its partners and creating the Zune, it was too late.

The smartphone story played out even worse for Microsoft, given that this was a market where it already had significant presence with Windows Mobile. Arthur describes the launch of the iPhone, and then recounts how Microsoft acquired a great mobile phone team with a company called Danger, and proceeded to destroy it. The Danger/Pink episode shows more than any other how broken is Microsoft’s management and mobile strategy. Danger was acquired in February 2008. There was then, Arthur describes, an internal battle between the Windows Mobile team and the Danger team, won by the Windows Mobile team under Andy Lees, and resulting in 18 months delay while the Danger operating system was rewritten to use Windows CE. By the time the first new “Project Pink” phone was delivered it was short on features and no longer wanted by Verizon, the partner operator. The “Kin” phone was on the market for only 48 days.

The Kin story was dysfunctional Microsoft at its worst, a huge waste of money and effort, and could have broken a smaller company. Microsoft shrugged it off, showing that its Windows and Office cash cows continue to insulate it against incompetence, probably too much for its own long-tem health.

Finally, the book leaves the reader wondering how the story continues. Arthur gets the significance of the iPad in business:

Cook would reel off statistics about the number of Fortune 500 companies ‘testing or deploying’ iPads, of banks and brokers that were trying it, and of serious apps being written for it. Apple was going, ever so quietly, after the business computing market – the one that had belonged for years to Microsoft.

Since he wrote those words that trend has increased, forming a large part of what is called Bring Your Own Device or The Consumerization of IT. Microsoft does have what it hopes is an answer, which is Windows 8, under a team led by the same Steven Sinofsky who made a success of Windows 7. The task is more challenging this time round though: Windows 7 was an improved version of Windows Vista, whereas Windows 8 is a radical new departure, at least in respect of its Metro user interface which is for the Tablet market. If Windows 8 fares as badly against the iPad as Plays for Sure fared against the iPod, then expect further decline in Microsoft’s market value.

 

amazon, apple

What next for the Nook as Microsoft invests in Barnes & Noble’s digital business?

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Today Microsoft and Barnes & Noble announced a partnership to sell eBooks, based on the existing Banes & Noble digital bookstore and eBook reader called the Nook.

The new subsidiary, referred to in this release as Newco, will bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in Newco at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary, which will have an ongoing relationship with the company’s retail stores. Barnes & Noble has not yet decided on the name of Newco.

In addition, Barnes & Noble, which was in litigation with Microsoft over the Redmond company’s claim to royalties on Android, has agreed to a “royalty-bearing license” for the Nook eReader and tablets. Both the Nook Color and the Nook Tablet are based on Android.

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Another detail is that there will be a Nook application for Windows 8:

One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8

though the release does not state whether or not this will be a Metro app. I would guess that it is, since otherwise it would not work on Windows RT (the ARM version of Windows), but nothing can be taken for granted.

Note that Barnes & Noble already has Nook apps for iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac, but not for Windows Phone.

It is an intriguing deal. Has Microsoft just taken a 17.6% stake in an Android company, or is there some plan in the works to base a future Nook on Windows?

As an attendee at developer conferences, I regularly see the Nook developer evangelists, and had a look at last year’s Adobe Max. Barnes & Noble claim that Nook apps sell relatively well, compared to apps on the official Google Play market, because Nook customers expect to pay for their content. The Nook is not an officially Google-blessed Android device, so has no access to the Play market.

If a future Nook is Windows-based, Barnes & Noble will have a tricky time explaining to developers why they will have to port their apps.

Overall this is a hard deal to interpret. Barnes & Noble was a thorn in Microsoft’s side with its resistance to Android royalties, a thorn which has now been removed, but what else does it signify? You would have thought there would have been a Nook app for Windows 8 anyway, unless it is a complete flop.

apple, mobile, smartphones, tablets

Hands on with Samsung’s Galaxy Note

I had a quick hands-on with Samsung’s Galaxy Note. It is a lovely gadget though I have some reservations about its appeal.

The two notable features of the Galaxy Note, which runs Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” but will upgrade to Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”, are its 5.3” 1280 x 800 AMOLED screen and its stylus, which you can slide out from an integrated holder. The device is beautifully slim and light, but the large screen means that you do feel a little conspicuous holding it to your ear as a phone. Whether you mind about this is an individual thing, but I can imagine that some will be put off using it as their main mobile phone.

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Behind the gorgeous screen sits a 1.4GHz dual-core ARM CPU, as part of the Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC, and an ARM Mali-400 GPU. Video flies on this thing, and its high resolution goes a long way to make up for the small screen – small relative to a TV or full-size tablet that is. It is the perfect device for watching video on the go if you would rather not carry an 10” tablet around with you.

If you do need a larger screen, and have a network-connected Samsung B handy, you can use a feature called AllShare Play to stream the video to the TV. Typical scenarios might be showing your holiday video to mum and dad when you go round to visit, or showing your business presentation to customers on a TV in their conference room. I am sure this will become commonplace on many devices, especially as it uses standard DLNA protocols, and it is handier than having to fiddle with wired HDMI connections.

Then there is the stylus. Android is designed for touch control, so a stylus is not that useful for navigating the UI, but does come into its own for note-taking, sketching and drawing. Samsung calls the stylus the S Pen, and it is supported by several apps. There is a multimedia memo app called S-Memo, Touchnote for creating multimedia e-postcards, Zen Brush for sketching with a pressure-sensitive brush effect, and TouchRetouch for photo editing, among others.

I found it easy to take a photo, crop it, write on it, and attach it to an email. Sharing on Facebook or the like is easy too.

A great device; but I am not sure of the market, and not sure that there is much enthusiasm for styluses outside niche uses. HTC achieved disappointing sales with its Flyer tablet last year, even though this is also an excellent device to play with.

The other problem is that the Note is too small to be an excellent tablet and too large to be an excellent phone.

It is great for games though, and if you are looking for a pocketable but powerful multimedia tablet it could be just the thing.

Full specs are here.

apple, comment, mobile, smartphones, tablets

Which online storage service? SkyDrive is best value but lacks cool factor

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This week both Microsoft and Google got their act together and released Dropbox-like applications for their online storage services, SkyDrive and Google Drive respectively.

Why has Dropbox been winning in this space? Fantastic convenience. Just save a file into the Dropbox folder on your PC or Mac, and it syncs everywhere, including iOS and Android mobiles. No official Windows Phone 7 client yet; but nothing is perfect.

Now both SkyDrive and the new Google Drive are equally convenient, though with variations in platform support. Apple iCloud is also worth a mention, since it syncs across iOS and Mac devices. So too is Box, though I doubt either Box or Dropbox enjoyed the recent launches from the big guys.

How do they compare? Here is a quick look at the pros and cons. First, pricing per month:

  Free 25GB 50GB
Apple iCloud 5GB $3.33 $8.33
Box 5GB $9.99 $19.99
Dropbox 2GB   $9.99
Google Drive 5GB $2.49 $4.99 (100GB)
Microsoft SkyDrive 7GB $0.83
(27GB)		 $2.08
(52GB)

and then platform support:

  Web Android Black
berry		 iOS Linux Mac Windows Windows
Phone
Apple iCloud ✓ X X ✓ X ✓ Limited X
Box ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X ✓ ✓ X
Dropbox ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X
Google Drive ✓ ✓ X ✓ X ✓ ✓ X
Microsoft SkyDrive ✓ X X ✓ X ✓ ✓ ✓

Before you say it though, this is not really about price and it is hard to compare like with like – though it is obvious that SkyDrive wins on cost. Note also that existing SkyDrive users have a free upgrade to 25GB if they move quickly.

A few quick notes on the differences between these services:

Apple iCloud is not exposed as cloud storage as such. Rather, this is an API built into iOS and the latest OS X. Well behaved applications are expected to use storage in a way that supports the iCloud service. Apple’s service takes care of synchronisation across devices. Apple’s own apps such as iWork support iCloud. The advantage is that users barely need to think about it; synchronisation just happens – too much so for some tastes, since you may end up spraying your documents all over and trusting them to iCloud without realising it. As you might expect from Apple, cross-platform support is poor.

Box is the most expensive service, though it has a corporate focus that will appeal to businesses. For example, you can set expiration dates for shared content. Enterprise plans include Active Directory and LDAP support. There are numerous additional apps which use the Box service. With Box, as with Dropbox, there is an argument that since you are using a company dedicated to cross-platform online storage, you are less vulnerable to major changes in your service caused by a change of policy by one of the giants. Then again, will these specialists survive now that the big guns are all in?

Dropbox deserves credit for showing the others how to do it, Apple iCloud aside. Excellent integration on Mac and Windows, and excellent apps on the supported mobile platforms. It has attracted huge numbers of free users though, raising questions about its business model, and its security record is not the best. One of the problems for all these services is that even 2GB of data is actually a lot, unless you get into space-devouring things like multimedia files or system backups. This means that many will never pay to upgrade.

Google Drive presents as a folder in Windows and on the Mac, but it is as much an extension of Google Apps, the online office suite, as it is a storage service. This can introduce friction. Documents in Google Apps appear there, with extensions like .gdoc and .gsheet, and if you double-click them they open in your web browser. Offline editing is not supported. Still, you do not have to use Google Apps with Google Drive. Another issue is that Google may trawl your data to personalise your advertising and so on, which is uncomfortable – though when it comes to paid-for or educational services, Google says:

Note that there is no ad-related scanning or processing in Google Apps for Education or Business with ads disabled

Google Drive can be upgraded to 16TB, which is a factor if you want huge capacity online; but by this stage you should be looking at specialist services like Amazon S3 and others.

Microsoft SkyDrive is also to some extent an adjunct to its online applications. Save an Office 2010 document in SkyDrive, and you can edit it online using Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps have frustrations, but the advantage is that the document format is the same on the web as it is on the desktop, so you can also edit it freely offline. A snag with SkyDrive is lack of an Android client, other than the browser.

Conclusions

There are many more differences between these services than I have described. Simply though, if you use a particular platform or application such as Apple, Google Apps or Microsoft Office, it makes sense to choose the service that aligns with it. If you want generic storage and do not care who provides it, SkyDrive is best value and I am surprised this has not been more widely observed in reports on the new launches.

One of Microsoft’s problems is that is perceived as an old-model company wedded to the desktop, and lacks the cool factor associated with Apple, Google and more recent arrivals like Dropbox.