Dropbox vs. iCloud

iCloud

When I introduced StitchBuddy View as a universal app on iOS, documents of StitchBuddy should become accessible on all devices, for all StitchBuddy companion apps, and without the hassle of iTunes synching. So I decided to look into cloud-based file synchronization.

Back in those days Apple's iCloud was lacking an official way to access files on Macs or Windows computers, leaving me with its most prominent competitor, Dropbox. StitchBuddy's file synchronization was introduced in 2013, and despite various fixes and enhancements, there was and still is room for improvement: The synchronization process is quite fragile and especially for high numbers of designs pushed to its limits, so I have considered a redesign for quite some time.

And now it's time to move forward: Dropbox will shut down the functions I'm currently using end of June 2017 (API v1), which would require a lot of code changes in StitchBuddy. In addition iCloud has become more mature, e.g. offering iCloud Drive to seamlessly share files between your computer and iOS devices.

For these reasons I've decided to migrate StitchBuddy HD / StitchBuddy View from Dropbox to iCloud synching in the next months. Currently I'm working on a sample app, learning about strengths and weaknesses and how to deal with potential hick-ups. It will take some time, but I'm confident iCloud-enabled versions of StitchBuddy will be available on iOS in the first half of 2017.