I’ve been an Apple guy since forever. I bought the very first Macintosh back in 1984. My current mobile technology line-up is a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, 11-inch MacBook Air (now just a backup Mac), 9.7-inch iPad Pro and an iPhone SE. I’m all-in on Apple, and the ecosystem is a large part of that. Things may not always Just Work, but the Apple ecosystem gets closer to that than anyone else. However, while I do make some use of iCloud, I’m not all-in on Apple’s cloud storage.

In this piece, I compare the main cloud services out there, and finally describe the mix-and-match approach I use to get what I consider to be the best of all worlds. There are, of course, an almost infinite number of players out there. Some of the smaller services have their benefits and their fans, but I’m focusing here on the major players for one crucial reason: you don’t want to entrust your data to a company that may be here today, gone tomorrow. Cloud storage is one area where I only trust the big boys because they aren’t going to disappear overnight. You could argue that Google Drive might be an exception. The company is notorious for launching services with much fanfare and then quietly shuttering them some way down the line. But Google isn’t going to risk its reputation by closing a core service, and one for which migrating services would be a major hassle.

Microsoft excel 2016 for mac formats time as decimal not time chart. Another reason to stick to major services is we can be confident in their fallback plans. Smaller services may have super-robust backup regimes, but I wouldn’t rely on this.

Various third party sellers usually offer Office 365 through Amazon for $70 or less, so this isn't necessarily a limited-time deal, but it's a good tip to remember given yesterday's news.Once you. If you’re an Office user who likes to have ongoing access to the latest versions, OneDrive is a bargain – offering a free Office 365 subscription for less than competing services charge for.

The big companies have extensive mirroring systems. That doesn’t mean any of them are infallible. You should never depend on any cloud service as your sole backup. But the big four will be a safer bet than a smaller company. I’m also excluding Amazon Drive, because it forces you to use its own top-level directory structure (Documents, Pictures, Videos) rather than allowing you to mirror or choose your own, and because its Mac and iOS apps suck.

Let’s start with Apple’s own offering, iCloud. ICloud Monthly pricing • 5GB: Free • 50GB: $0.99 • 200GB: $2.99 • 1TB: $9.99 • 2TB: $19.99 • No annual plans available. Pros iCloud is the obvious solution to anyone who exclusively uses Apple kit. In principle, it meets the Just Works criteria: activate it on all your devices, and you get easy access to all your data – from calendar, notes and photos through to iWork documents. Your iOS devices also get automatically backed-up to iCloud at the flick of a virtual switch. It requires no setup, no effort.

Version of excel from office 365 for mac. Each Office subscripton also includes the rights to use Office on both iOS and Android, as well as Mac and Windows PCs.