Which services work better on apple hardware: Microsoft or Google?

rdubmu

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I had some compatibility issues with google docs not displaying word documents and changing my spreadsheets around in Excel. For files and office docs. I will only use MS Office, on MAC, windows or iOS.




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RavenSword

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I also love the way there cloud works on the net. It's just drop and drag into whatever folder you want to move something into.

Is there stuff you can't do on the Mac version? I don't think you can do a Mac system back up on it, right ? Can you access it through the finder ? I'm thinking if using onedrive for a photo/document dump . Basically keep that stuff there .
 

RavenSword

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I had some compatibility issues with google docs not displaying word documents and changing my spreadsheets around in Excel. For files and office docs. I will only use MS Office, on MAC, windows or iOS.




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That makes me think it might just be best to use office since it's so accepted and used. Google docs might be more used at my college though.
 

RavenSword

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Both Google Drive and OneDrive have Mac apps that create a folder you can access via Finder just like DropBox does.
So yes you can do a Time Machine backup for it since it is treated like any other folder.

I heard that with google drive you can create share links to the finder or whatever. Not so with onedrive. But don't know how important that is.
 

Trees

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For calendar, reminders, and notes; iCloud via web browser is an option to consider on Windows, and is what I'd use if I had a Windows PC. Dropbox has been working well for me.

The above sync seamlessly with iOS (by design), and are a combination (along with iCloud Control Panel for Windows) I'd recommend to Windows users if they are so inclined to go with Apple services for the most part, and still get the majority of the Apple ecosystem benefits.

Like others, I've been using Google stuff (Gmail, calendar) for years and found it to be good overall on Android, Blackberry, and iOS. Lately, I've been trying to simplify and reduce the number of service providers and individual services that I rely upon, and in turn have to manage. While the Apple suite may not be the most feature rich in some cases, it does the job.
 

RavenSword

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For calendar, reminders, and notes; iCloud via web browser is an option to consider on Windows, and is what I'd use if I had a Windows PC. Dropbox has been working well for me.

The above sync seamlessly with iOS (by design), and are a combination (along with iCloud Control Panel for Windows) I'd recommend to Windows users if they are so inclined to go with Apple services for the most part, and still get the majority of the Apple ecosystem benefits.

Like others, I've been using Google stuff (Gmail, calendar) for years and found it to be good overall on Android, Blackberry, and iOS. Lately, I've been trying to simplify and reduce the number of service providers and individual services that I rely upon, and in turn have to manage. While the Apple suite may not be the most feature rich in some cases, it does the job.

Yeah, I'm trying to do the same thing. Right now I use gmail, outlook.com, yahoo for fantasy leagues, onedrive, google drive, dropbox, box, iCloud, google search, onenote, Evernote,google docs, office, google calendar and sync, apple calendar and contacts, and probably some other ones I can't think of at the moment. I really want to cut down and focus because the abundance Is causing me not to use things fully.
 

bgl321

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I so want to use iCloud for everything. I've recently been using iCloud email and have been pretty happy with the smooth integration and look forward to what iCloud drive will bring. However one thing that has me concerned is iCloud email. Just this morning I checked my gmail account which I have forwarding to iCloud and a message was in the gmail account but never made it to iCloud. What happened to it? Did apple think it shouldn't haven't even made it to spam? I don't know but if they are silently filtering my email I don't think I can live with that. Just put it in junk and let me decide. I'm so close to being all iCloud even with a PC but this one issue continues to hold me up. Anyone else experience this?


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Ledsteplin

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Both services sync fairly well to Apple, so you need to consider the pros and cons of each as far as usability is concerned.

Also, there's absolutely no reason to only stick with one provider for everything. Sometimes integrating services from two different ones works better.

Here's my experience, however biased it may be:

Email - either Gmail or Hotmail are fine, and yahoo syncs fine too.

Calendar - I find Google calendar to be superior. It loads faster in browser, it has a search ability (something MS for whatever mysterious reason decided to omit), it has - in my experience - much more robust sync engine (MS seems to still be using some version of ActiveSync that is prone to getting out of whack every now and then). Also, more great 3rd party calendar apps like Pocket Informant or Calengoo work directly with GCal but rely on Apple calendar for Outlook.com sync (losing some functionality in process).

Tasks - I don't use either service but instead use Toodledo which is far superior to both, even in free version. I imported Toodledo feed into Google calendar as a subscribed cal, which worked out very nicely. I am also syncing it to Pocket Informant on iPad. If I had to choose between MS and Google I'd go with Google Tasks, because they show in browser version of calendar on due date, again a very basic feature that MS stupidly omitted.

Contacts - again, Google. MS has problems syncing contact photos.

Office - for a quick basic spreadsheet I use Google docs, for more involved stuff Office Suite Pro which I also use on my Android phone. It works well with MS Office docs, and is reasonably fast. And way cheaper than Office 365. Plus, it seamlessly integrates with Dropbox and Google Drive.

Cloud storage - while I have free accounts with all major providers, if I only had to use one, I'd go with Dropbox. Unlike Onedrive, it allows you to specify files to be accessible offline. And unlike Google Drive, it doesn't try to get you to convert the office files to Google Docs format. Plus, the syncing is fast and reliable. Onedrive is slower. As to the privacy issues - MS employees are known to be snooping around users' private files on Onedrive for "prohibited" content like nudity, so I don't think either MS or Google are better in that respect. If I don't want my data to be accessed by someone, I zip it inside an encrypted file. This way, only NSA can see it :)

With this setup, I am completely hardware independent and can switch to a different tablet or phone tomorrow without losing any functionality. Also, it is much less complicated than it sounds, as all these services integrate very well into all three major OS I'm using (Windows, iOS and Android).
I use Dropbox, Box and OneDrive. I prefer Box over Dropbox. They're similar, but Box has a delete cache option and other features I like. OneDrive is nice, but I hate having to log in each time with email and password. That should be an option.
 

RavenSword

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So, I might try to use Microsoft services like bing , outlook.com, onenote , onedrive , and office over the google alternatives and see how I like it in comparison. I still don't know if I really should be creeped by google and not use there stuff. But I don't know what to use instead.
 

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