Finally wait is over,at Google’s annual event, Google I/O 2012, Google has announced that two of its best products and services, the Chrome browser and Google Drive, would be available for the iOS platform.
Fist talk about-
Google Web Browser for iOS- Google Chrome
When you power up the browser, you are asked to login with your Gmail account. It is possible to skip this but it is helpful in easily syncing your device with your bookmarks and other preferences.
Some of the features of the browser are as follows:
1. The navigation bar also doubles up as the search bar just like the desktop version of Chrome.
2. You can open multiple tabs with ease on the browser.
3. Drag your finger from one edge of the screen to quickly change tabs
4. Incognito: Browse in private with incognito tabs. The pages viewed here will not appear in the history or leave traces like cookies
When we opened a bunch of tabs and websites on the browser, they opened and rendered quite well. If you are used to using Chrome on any other device, especially an Android device, you will feel right at home with the interface. To the left of the navigation bar is the back button. To the right, you have a drop down that gives you the options to star, reload, open a new tab, new Incognito tab, Bookmarks, other devices, email, find in page, request desktop site, settings and help. To the right of the drop down menu is a button is a button that shows you all the tabs that are open (only on the iPod touch and iPhone).
Press this button and all your open tabs are lined up vertically. This is very cool as it makes navigating through tabs on a small screen (iPod Touch and iPhone) very convenient.
The keyboard with the browser has been modified slightly. Buttons such as “:”, “.”, “-”, “/” and “.com” rest above the top row of the QWERTY keypad. It may take a bit of getting used to for some users. This custom keyboard layout only appears when you are typing in the navigation bar. Try typing anywhere else, and you are greeted with the normal keyboard.
One of the biggest disadvantages of Google Chrome for iOS platform is that it doesn’t feature Google’s fast JavaScript rendering engine. Instead the browser uses Apple’s UIWebView to render web pages -not as it is for the Android devices.
Now talk about-
Google’s cloud based storage service for iOS – Google Drive.
For starters the app is live and freely available for download from the Apple App Store .The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires iOS 5.0 or later.
Downloading the app on your iOS device as well as the software for your Mac or PC is like as easy as Dropbox. Transfer the relevant documents onto the folder, start syncing your data to Google Drive.Then the documents appear in iPad but take a while. We can say the experience is as good as Dropbox if not better. Otherwise refresh button can be used to refresh apps contents.
Straight out of the box, the app gives you access to My Drive, Shared with me, Starred, Recent and Offline. By default, you cannot access your content offline. You need to go into the file and toggle the “Available Offline” option to view the data without accessing the Internet.
By default the data is organized by files and folders arranged alphabetically. If you are used to using Dropbox on your iOS device, the interface should be in familiar territory for you.
The disadvantages are editing documents isn’t a smooth experience. You have to open the spreadsheet/document in Safari and then edit it. Quite a painful process really. The overall feel from the app is that it is more of a document viewer than an editor as you cannot add your photos or any content to Google Drive straight from your iOS device.
Google drive gives you 2GB of storage when you register for the first time and you can purchase additional storage there as well.
Overall, Google Drive is a nice addition to the cloud storage options available but it isn’t quite there yet – and is so far not at par with the competition.
No comments:
Post a Comment