Should I Switch To iCloud From Google?

Among the big enhancements to iOS 5 is Apple’s new iCloud suite, which keeps your mail, contacts, calendars, documents and other data stored in the cloud and synced to all your Apple devices. Most people currently use Google services for these features, so we played with iCloud for a few days and looked at how they stacked up against one another. Here’s what we found.

Both suites are in fact pretty good. It’s no secret we love Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and other Google service around here, nevertheless if you’re an Apple user, iCloud is pretty tempting. Each individual service has its own strengths and weaknesses. Here are the big services in each service and how they stack up against one another.

You can grab extra storage for iCloud and Google, even though Google’s prices are significantly better. $US20 a year will get you 10GB extra space with iCloud, however it’ll get you 80GB of extra space on Google. Check out Google’s pricing page and Apple’s pricing page for more info.

Of course, it isn’t without downsides. The web version of Mail is in the extreme basic, and even assuming you use Mail.app in OS X to manage your email, you’ll miss out on a lot of the advanced features Gmail has to offer. Whether it’s the increased organisational powers of labels over folers, super-powerful search operators, the ability to “send as” another email address, or even even the many Gmail labs like Send & Archive, Apple’s iteration of email is a bit less feature rich. Gmail’s spam filtering is as well a big feature that you probably use, however don’t even notice — and iCloud won’t have that. If you were using Mail.app to manage your email in any case, you probably won’t miss most of Gmail’s advanced features. Just know they won’t be available to you, even on the web, if you use iCloud.