For any iPad gurus...

[seawasp]

I now own an iPad (iPad2) and I was looking for software that allowed me to easily transfer stuff back and forth between the iPad and my laptop; I picked one called Air Sharing. I also wanted to be able to use my Word and related documents, so I got OfficeHD.

Taken as themselves they seem to work fine, but I can't seem to find a way to ACCESS things brought over by Air Sharing except THROUGH Air Sharing, and similarly with OfficeHD. And if I try to open ones on Air Sharing, they don't use OfficeHD to open them.

Any ideas on how to solve this? Ideally I want to bring stuff over to the iPad and have it be accessible by the appropriate apps.

Comments

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

I use Dropbox (and Dropbox aware apps) for that. The apps will either see the Dropbox as general storage, or look for files in a specific folder there. A quick search shows that OfficeHD works with Dropbox, though I don't use OfficeHD, so I don't know for certain.

I think iCloud probably accomplishes this even better. I haven't tried it myself.

[seawasp]

I don't have iCloud or Dropbox, and I'd prefer not to store anything of mine on a system that's not in my control, though.

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

Ahh, understood. I'd assumed you wanted access to documents when you were far away from your computer, which seems to require some sort of cloud based storage.

Is there something wrong with the normal iTunes sync that it doesn't update documents too? That should work over both cable and wifi syncing.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

+1 for Dropbox.

Dropbox is a combination of two things -- a computer-to-computer sync tool (you designate a dropbox directory; anything dropped into it on one computer automagically appears on every other computer synced using that dropbox account), and cloud storage (in addition to syncing between your own computers, stuff is stored for you on DropBox's own servers, which are actually rented from Amazon's storage cloud).

Because it's rsync-based, when you edit a file, only the actual changes you made to it are uploaded across the net. So if you're editing a 1Gb movie file and add a couple of scenes totalling 50Mb of runtime, only the extra 50Mb gets sent across your cable modem. Dropbox premium accounts not only come with more space, but also come with a (paid) option for file versioning -- so that if you edit a file, Dropbox will retain earlier versions of it (in case you did something drastic and unpleasant by mistake). Yes, this is an occasional life-saver.

You can get a free 2Gb DropBox account, download the PC and iOS clients, and experiment. Let me throw you a referral via email and I get an extra 250Mb.

If you're worried about security, (a) Dropbox offers two-factor authentication, and (b) there's nothing stopping you using it to store encrypted files, or even an encrypted filesystem disk image (say, using TrueCrypt) -- although the latter won't be much use on an iPad.

I gather that when Scrivener for iOS shows up, it will use DropBox as its primary way of sharing projects with other computers.

I don't think much of Office2HD, although the recent addition of Word change tracking is good. The best looking iOS word processor is Apple's Pages (although it's not great at interoperating with anything except iCloud), and the most functional (aside from change tracking) is probably Documents to Go Premium edition.

Let me add: after years of rolling my own storage services and using rsync, I am a total dropbox convert. Two laptops, a desktop, an iPhone, and a couple of iPads/android gizmos all have access to my key working files wherever and whenever I need them. And if I get hacked off with Dropbox and decide to cancel my sub, I can simply de-authorize the computers .... and the most up-to-date recent copies of my files will still be sitting on them in local storage.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Because it's rsync-based, when you edit a file, only the actual changes you made to it are uploaded across the net.

Actually, it isn't and it doesn't. At least it didn't last time I tried something very close to this, which was about a year and a half ago.

The biggest problem with Dropbox for me is the backend storage. There's no encryption at all. It's a bunch of Amazon S3 buckets. I've tried layering EncFS on top of the Dropbox folder but the singular nature of that folder gets in the way. It's just too inconvenient for me to use on a regular basis.

I use a tool called Unison. It does real two-way sync and it handles conflicts far more gracefully than Dropbox (which doesn't really handle conflicts; it just pretends hides them under the rug). The inconvenience of running the Unison sync tool after login and before logout is slight compared to changing all of my workflows. But then, I don't use tablet appliances so I'm not at all inconvenienced by their shortcomings.

I've looked into some automated systems based on Git. Yes, the revision control system. Git's replication mechanism lends itself to sync-like utility with built-in revision control and conflict resolution. Best of all worlds, at least in concept. Sparkleshare is a pre-rolled system based on Git but I've found some of its UI limitations to be too limiting for my needs.

[groblek.livejournal.com]

I use Documents to Go rather than Office HD, but this should still work to get a file from Air Sharing - tap and hold the file you want until the lower menu bar changes to show an ellipse (...) in the lower right hand corner. Tap that and choose "Open in". It should give you the option to open the file in any other app that will handle that file type. The problem with this is that the copy stored in Air sharing won't have any changes you make in another program, and I don't know if you'll be able to find any way to export the file back to Air Sharing. My understanding is that for improved security, Apple has chosen to sandbox iOS apps so that they can only share files through Apple-sanctioned methods, and so far photos are the only file type Apple's set up to be able to do that. This is one of the reasons that people use services like Dropbox. Documents to Go actually has a server you can install on your computer and sync files via wifi to the iPad - the only reason I don't use that method myself is that it doesn't work with the way my iT department at work has things set up, but I've made it work with my MacBook Pro at home in the past, before work suggested Dropbox as an approved method of achieving the same sort of thing.