It occurred to me recently that how few of my apps lack the ability to sync. Almost every one of the apps on my homescreen is a utility that requires little set-up (Convertbot, Weather), a social networking app that requires a quick login (Tweetbot, Instagram), or a native app with some sort of over-the-air syncing capability (Notesy, 2Do). I also use Google Sync for my contacts, calendar, and e-mail so my personal information is consistently up-to-date, so long as there’s an internet connection. Logins and passwords have reached a point where they’re much more than just keys to light the ignition – they’ll also to set the radio to my favourite station, lean the seat back to just the right angle, and load my latest Words with Friends game without me having to do a thing.
The only things I’ll lose in a complete iPhone restore are my text messages, camera roll, device settings, game saves, and Safari history. That’s still a fair amount of data, but I’ll only have to wait a few months until iCloud mitigates even that problem.
Now if there is a point to this post, it isn’t that iCloud will be awesome or that Dropbox is great, but rather that I seem to have become locked into the idea of syncing, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. All of the apps I use — especially my daily drivers — have some sort of auto-magical way of transferring data over-the-air, and I tend to shun apps that lack this ability. Hell, I even tend to shun classic tech (e.g. Paper) simply because it requires manual transfers and backups. I am well aware of how ludicrous that sounds, though.
As it stands, the way that I’ve gone about choosing my mobile apps has hinged a lot on how well synchronization is integrated. In most cases, it’s no longer enough for an app to be awesome on its own. I’m no longer interested in islands of data if there isn’t some sort of digital bridge, or at least an occasional air-drop of information, that keeps data flowing.
That’s a pretty marked difference compared to when I started using an iPhone 2G and all I cared about was getting my SIM card contacts from my HTC TyTN to my new Apple smartphone.
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