sync

I've actually lost track of all the iOS devices I have. From iPhones to iPads and iPods, there are a few generations of mobile Apple gadgets populating my home that are occasionally adopted or abandoned by my wife and kid.

For the most part, today's iOS devices are self-supporting. They get their updates directly, and purchased media can be downloaded and redownloaded without hassles that used to come with Apple's iTunes-focused, obnoxiously DRM-wrapped early days of iOS.

But what do you do when your kid wants you to load your Led Zeppelin bootlegs onto his iPad? Or … Read more

For some users who are torn between switching from iOS to Android, the downside of giving up some iCloud features such as Calendar and Reminders (especially if there are shared calendars or reminder lists with other iCloud users) is too much to overlook.

Last July I covered an app called SmoothSync for Cloud Calendar that provided a solution for Android users to still have two-way sync with iCloud calendars. The app has been updated several times since last summer, with each update improving reliability, but until recently the option to sync Reminders was still missing. If you had set up … Read more

Last December Google announced its plans to discontinue support for Google Sync as of January 30, 2013. Sync allowed users to access Gmail, Google Contacts and Calendar using Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync system. What this allowed iOS users to do was set up Gmail as an Exchange account, which in turn provides push alerts for new e-mails in a real-time sync of Calendars and Contacts.

The cutoff date has long passed, but if you had an account already set up and running on your iOS device as Exchange, you had nothing to worry about; Google promised to keep the service … Read more

4Sync offers more space and just as much style as most of the popular cloud-storage apps. It is a little costly to expand, but it's hard to beat 15GB of storage right out of the box. If nothing else, it's worth having around to keep a few dozen photos or CDs from clogging up your hard drive.

This app gives you a very beefy 15GB of storage, which is three times what Dropbox, Google Drive, and other cloud apps give you. It not only works on your computer, but on your tablet and smartphone, as well, thanks to … Read more

Dropbox is almost finished wrapping up its work on version 2.1.x (the version you're probably using if you haven't upgraded). Releasing an experimental build allows it to get feedback from early adopters. This new build lets you automatically save screenshots, move files to Dropbox in an easier way, import from iPhoto, and get faster upload and download speeds.

Ready to check out the new version? To download a copy of Dropbox 2.3.12, find the link that matches your OS and install. What's excellent about this method of distribution is that you won't … Read more

SugarSync attempts to do what other services before it have done well--provide an extended storage solution for the iOS platform. However, due to limited upgrade options, it will only work for a certain group of people. While the focus on video and image backup is good on a device with a camera and far too little built-in storage, it doesn't offer more than its competitors to truly stand out.

SugarSync is very much like other cloud storage tools like Dropbox and Box.net. Sign up for a free account and you receive 5GB of storage that you can use … Read more

RadarSync PC Updater 2012 might be the easy way to keep your PC's drivers up to date, but its free trial disables its primary functionality. PC Updater scans your PC to identify its software and drivers, and then scans the Internet for updates and applies them one by one or all at once. While it's a free-to-try PC Updater, you still must register the program to apply the updates it identifies. That costs just under $25 but includes technical support (the interface even displays a toll-free, 24/7 support number).

PC Updater's user interface has controls for … Read more

For those users who have and want to share tons of images and videos, PictureSync for Mac's features, design, and instructions make it a very useful tool for batch uploading of image files.

PictureSync for Mac, available as freeware, starts with a tutorial that opened automatically to prompt the user to enter log-in information for sites where photos would be uploaded. A program menu then came up, which explicitly stated there was no technical support available. This could make less experienced users uneasy, but we didn't experience any issues that would require support in our tests. The main … Read more

If you're looking for a solid, non-Google planner, you've found it in mOffice. It has a smooth layout and most of the features you love about Google--all in a neat package.

This app is designed to sync with your Outlook desktop program. It will also sync with a client called Mobisynapse, but that costs an extra $10. This app falls under the "Getting Things Done" category, which seems to mean it's optimized to make work convenient. As such, mOffice has a very clean interface that makes it easy to find the features and menus you'… Read more