My digital life solution

Posted by aftoc on August 17, 2012 04:36 am 7

Dear Verge Readers,

I have for the last five or six years ago realized the value of having an organized digital life. I remember a while ago when I had an HTC Hero and a Windows Vista/7 desktop the frustration of using two devices which are not communicating at all. Only sort of syncing they had was through the browser with the help of Google Sync. I was a looking for a way to sync my documents, music, videos, notes, apps and other stuff around all devices I use. Then I started adopting the Google system, or as they like to call it "Gone Google". That meant I started organizing my music folders (to fit the android file system), converting my documents to Docs, uploaded my pics to Picasa and lived more or less a digital life through the Chrome Browser to stay in sync.

Well this went on for atleast 18 months and by then I had already got a new nexus one. But what disturbed me was how little had changed by then. It was still as hard to sync music, videos and Google docs was a really bad editor, especially on the phone. In general, the "living on cloud" was clearly something I was looking forward, but noticed nobody (Microsoft, Apple, Google) had nailed yet.

Of course I was following news all the time and noticed Apple addressing the issue in a different way. Instead of building a cloud system based on "web-apps" Apple went something completely different, they started moving from the browser and went on to improve their much more powerful desktop apps. They combined the power of offline desktop apps with the power of internet. As you of course know this is today known as iCloud. To me this idea is completely brilliant, I could have a copy of everything on my computer, my backup harddrive AND on iCloud.

I was sold. Early 2011 I bought my first Apple mac, the MBP 15", a year later the iPad 3rd gen and now I'm waiting for the iPhone 5(6?) or if I don't get thrilled I'll stick with the iPhone 4S, which to me is a really underestimated phone by users here ;)

This way my music, movies, apps, pictures, notes, documents, books and other stuff can stay in sync between my three devices. It's not fully functional yet but it is a far better experience then I felt I had with Google. Plus I keep having my data stored, instead of having to buffer to see a pictures or listen to a song.

Thanks for reading, How do you keep your digital life organized?

Peace