Filed under: iPhone, MobileMe, First Look, App Review
First Look: iDisk app
Apple's long-awaited free iDisk (iTunes link) program brings some great new features that makes MobileMe more appealing. But, there are a few holes and the program certainly doesn't do everything.
Basic layout
When you launch the iDisk app, you'll see most of folders that you normally have access to in your iDisk, plus any other folders that you might have created. What you won't see are the Backup, Sites, Software and Web folders that are normally in your iDisk. You can access these folders by enabling them through the software settings. Pressing the edit button will allow you to delete any user-made folders you've added to iDisk, but you can't create new folders.
Along the bottom are buttons for the iDisk itself, recent files viewed, files that you've chosen to share and public folders you've subscribed to. The settings screen is pretty basic, but leads to one of the gems of this piece of software -- an extremely documented help section that goes over every aspect of the app.
Gallery: First Look: iDisk app
Uploading files
I initially enabled iDisk on my MacBook and dragged over some test files, then opened up the iDisk app and added some more. As I added items to my iDisk on the Mac, they weren't showing up instantly in the iDisk app despite being on the same network. Once I moved into the various subfolders, the app updated to show the contents of that folder. However, only the contents of that particular folder is updated and not all of the folders. I had to exit the app and reenter it for an entire refresh.
While the laptop was chugging along with its sync, I used the web interface on my iMac to upload a couple more documents. These files appeared faster in iDisk, though I still had to refresh the iPhone app to see them.
Sharing files
Tapping on the shared icon next to a file will bring up an e-mail message, sending a link out to a recipient that you choose with a link granting them access to see a file. Clicking on the options in that e-mail will enable you to set when the link will expire and an optional password should you want to keep the file restricted to select viewers.
Fellow TUAW blogger Dave Caolo, who helped me test this feature, pointed out that he was unable to Quick Look the photo I sent over. He had to download it in order to see the image. Clicking the download button opens a browser window before downloading the document. Tapping the shared files icon a second time will bring up a dialogue asking if you want to stop sharing, or e-mail the link again.
Watching movies and listening to music
You can upload movie and music files to your iDisk and play them through the iPhone, thus taking advantage of having more space with iDisk - especially if you have a smaller capacity iPhone. There are a couple of drawbacks. With music files, you will not get album art, even if you originally purchased the file from iTunes. And if you want to play something over the Edge network? Forget it. There's a good chance that iDisk will refuse to play it.
My test movie file was an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, a spoof series that is also available as a podcast through iTunes. The episode I selected was 25.5MB. Here's how long it took for the episode to load and start playing:
• Wi-Fi: 5 seconds
• 3G: 14 seconds
• Edge: 47 seconds before getting an error message "This movie format is not supported."
The test music file was the opening track from the series 4 soundtrack of Doctor Who, also purchased through iTunes. I copied the file directly from my iTunes library and it was while playing this that I discovered that the album art did not carry through with the file. But, the track loaded quickly through the iDisk. While definitely not a substitute from using the built-in iPod features on the iPhone and iPod Touch, it does great for one-off files.
Viewing other files and public folders
PDFs and text documents are easy to view, though one extremely annoying thing is that the tops of these files are hidden by the mostly transparent navigation bar. It goes away after a few seconds, but if you lightly tap on it, it returns - making scrolling through documents pretty tedious. Data detectors for phone numbers do work in Word documents. Tap on a phone number in the document and you'll get a prompt asking you if you want to call it.
Adding public folders is also easy and only requires you knowing the screen name of the person whose folder you'd like to access. You can keep a list of public folders you have access to, making it easy to keep track of other users' folders.
There are some things that the iDisk can't do. You can't download, rename a file, or move files to another folder. You can delete files and folders, but you can't upload or create new ones. This leaves plenty of room for other apps such as Air Sharing and OneDisk to offer a unique set of features that Apple's currently doesn't. But if you've already shelled out the cost for MobileMe, this is a pretty good free alternative if uploading, downloading and a few other features aren't on your list of must-haves.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jonathan said 3:31PM on 7-29-2009
LOL
if uploading downloading viewing loading the app or even enjoying life isnt on ur list of must haves LOL
sooo what can we do with this app again?? lol i kid i kid
Reply
Jon said 3:38PM on 7-29-2009
If you start watching a movie. Close the app and start the movie again does it remember where you left off or start over from the beginning again?
Reply
Anthony said 9:51AM on 7-30-2009
Nope. That was the first thing I tried.
sterlingz said 3:42PM on 7-29-2009
Installing now to test. But the bottom line is, iDisk is so incredibly slow and unreliable when syncing with the desktop, that I've switched over to Dropbox for online storage. While their webapp is great, I look forward with great anticipation to the native Dropbox iPhone app, which will allow many of the same features as the MobileMe app. iDisk just doesn't cut it.
Reply
Chris said 4:03PM on 7-29-2009
You can be sure Apple won't approve it since it duplicates functionality they provide in their own app. -_-
Stephen said 3:47PM on 7-29-2009
meh. can't edit pages, number, keynote, word or excel files. what's the point. this app is a year late. air sharing, one disk and others have provided this level of functionality for awhile now.
Reply
*john said 3:50PM on 7-29-2009
I am writing my iDisk App review tonight on my website http://www.johnthrasher.net
So far, I am not impressed!
John
Reply
Frank Adams said 4:09PM on 7-29-2009
I think the functionality of this app has already been done better in many other 3rd party apps. Try again, Apple.
Get 100's of free iPhone Apps
http://www.webappuniverse.com
Reply
Travis Bell said 4:03PM on 7-29-2009
I agree 100% with sterlingz.
iDisk has proven to me, time and time again, upgrade after upgrade that it is simply unreliable and slow. I've dragged files on to my iDisk (on my Mac) gone to work and my files aren't there. Do it once, 4 years ago, whatever but still happens when I've given it a chance today. It's a lost cause as far as I'm concerned.
Now, an app that has a 100% (yes, has not failed me even once) is Dropbox. You want to share files with other people/computers? Use Dropbox like I do and be done with it. Sure, there's no iPhone app (that I know of) but it doesn't matter, I'd rather have my files sync properly.
Reply
Desaparecido said 4:19PM on 7-29-2009
The icon design is some of the worst design coming from Apple. Completely inconsistent with their original purple iDisk look. There is WAY TOO much blue throughout all App Store icon designs and Apple certainly did not "Think Different" here.
The app is much faster than all the other iDisk apps I've tried out in the fast, which is good. The UI is nice and simple. However, why can't I move files around like I can with some of the other iDisk apps? This is either a definite oversight or laziness.
I'm also really happy that this iDisk iPhone app reads iWork '09 files...I am so tired of reading "unreadable file" in all the other iPhone apps I've encountered.
Reply
howiegroove said 1:44PM on 7-30-2009
for some reason, my icon changed to the same icon as speed test!!! If anyone knows how to fix it or if they want to see, let me know and I'll take a screen shot.
George said 4:32PM on 7-29-2009
I noticed a major bug in iDisk for iPhone: when I do a "share" on a file, the email app brings up only my "Friends" group, and when I click the button to go back to all groups, it's blank.
My full Groups list show up fine in the Contacts app.
Also, lame that there is not auto-complete when typing in an email address. Sheesh!
Reply
gtdavemac said 7:26PM on 7-29-2009
Hmm... do any other Apple iPhone apps have a help menu? It almost goes against the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines:
"Minimal User Help
Mobile users don’t have the time to read through a lot of help content before they can use your application. What’s more, you don’t want to give up valuable space to display or store it. A hallmark of the design of iPhone OS–based devices is ease of use, so it’s crucial that you meet users’ expectations and make the use of your application immediately obvious. There are a few things you can do to achieve this:
Use standard controls correctly. Users are familiar with the standard controls they see in the built-in applications, so they already know how to use them in your application.
Be sure the path through the information you present is logical and easy for users to predict. In addition, be sure to provide markers, such as back buttons, that users can use to find out where they are and how to retrace their steps."
Petre said 11:56PM on 7-29-2009
So, what you're saying is that I can use my iPhone to VPN into my computer at home and download an app through iTunes (or wherever), throw it into .mac, then access it on my iPhone and play it... All over 3G.
But I can't simply click the iTunes app and download an album still.
Fail.
Reply
chris said 1:42AM on 7-30-2009
I think I'll be sticking with Air Sharing
Reply
denis said 12:30PM on 7-30-2009
Readdle products gives more, but costs more.
It's a matter of choice and what people need.
Reply
anothercookiecrumbles said 8:16PM on 7-30-2009
I concur. iDisk is painstakingly slow. It took over 30 minutes to copy over 5 meg of documents only. *eek*
Also, it doesn't render Pages documents properly, but Microsoft Word seems fine. I don't know if it's something to do with margins, or page lengths, but the last couple of lines in my Pages document go "beyond" the page length, and subsequently, aren't visible. My Word documents don't suffer from the same, which is slightly ironic.
Another thing that is mildly annoying, but password protected files aren't viewable. Guess that was expected though.
And finally, not having any "edit" options infuriates me. I tend to do a fair bit of writing on Pages, on my Mac. Would be nice to continue editing/writing while commuting or something on the iPhone. Plus, having an edit option just makes sense!
Not very impressed with this, which is a shame, because I downloaded it very excitedly.
Reply