OneDrive vs iCloud

OneDrive and iCloud are, in many ways, the same thing. They both let you put things in one place and then pretend that place is everywhere, which is exactly the sort of magic trick that would have gotten you burned at the stake a few centuries ago. They offer free storage, which is just enough to lull you into thinking you’ll never need more and then charge you when you inevitably do. They work on multiple devices, let you collaborate on documents and automatically save all those blurry photos you meant to delete but never did.

But OneDrive is different, mostly in the way that Microsoft likes to do things differently, which is to say it’s very good at being used in offices by people wearing lanyards. It has been around since 2007, which means it predates many of the things people now use it for, much like a wise but slightly grumpy time traveler. It plays nicely with Windows, grudgingly with Mac and accepts third-party integrations like a well-meaning but socially awkward dinner host who keeps introducing guests by saying, “You two will get along, I’m sure of it.” It remembers all versions of your files, which is useful for those prone to regret and is generally happy to live wherever you tell it to.

iCloud, on the other hand, behaves as if it was designed by an Apple engineer who once tried Windows in a fit of teenage rebellion and still doesn’t like to talk about it. It arrived in 2011, later than OneDrive, but with the smug confidence of something that already assumes it’s better. It doesn’t particularly want to leave Apple’s cozy ecosystem and will only venture out to Windows if absolutely necessary, like an aristocrat forced to take public transport. It backs up everything on your Apple devices, sometimes more than you intended and encrypts a great deal of it, which is fantastic unless you actually want to access it in a straightforward manner.

See also: Top 10 Cloud Storages