Last month we released preview versions of SkyDrive for Windows and OS X Lion, along with big updates to our iOS and Windows Phone apps. We also announced a new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage up to 100GB.
It’s been an incredible month since! Our goal was to build a cloud that seamlessly connects your files to the apps and devices you use every day, and we’ve been thrilled with the response so far. In just a few weeks, more people were using SkyDrive apps than have used Mesh. People using SkyDrive for Windows or Mac are now our most engaged users – syncing files across several devices, sharing with SkyDrive.com, and working together with Office Web Apps. At the same time, we continue to listen and respond to your feedback across forums, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.
We recently rolled out an update to the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone that fixed a few minor bugs, and we have a small bug-fix-only update to our iOS app on the way as well. Today we’re also starting to push updates to the SkyDrive apps for Windows desktop and for Mac, which will appear automatically on your PC or Mac over the course of the next week or so. You don’t need to do anything, as the updates occur automatically in the background.
Here are a few of the improvements and fixes in the updates:
Our primary goal throughout this preview period for our desktop apps is to really nail the fundamentals. This means we want the synchronization process to be fast and dependable, and for your SkyDrive folder to “just work,” so that it simply feels like magic.
- SkyDrive for Windows desktop will power a cool new feature in the upcoming Windows 8 Release Preview, available the first week of June. Right from the Photos app in Windows 8, you can fetch photos stored on your other PCs that have SkyDrive installed – no matter where you are or how many terabytes of photos you have stored on the PC you are accessing. We’ll have more to say about this shortly, so stay tuned.
- SkyDrive for OS X Lion no longer shows an app icon in the dock when running. We’ve definitely heard the feedback that it wasn’t necessary.
- Your SkyDrive folder now updates more quickly and reliably when changes are made on other devices, including SkyDrive.com.
- The limit on the number of total files in the SkyDrive folder created by the apps has been raised from 150,000 to a whopping 10 million! This should unblock some power users from easily adding lots of files to their SkyDrive folder.
- We made lots of smaller bug fixes to improve overall reliability.
By the way, if you’d like to see if you’re running the latest build, you can see the build number by clicking Settings (in Windows, this is in the right-click menu for the SkyDrive system tray icon, and on the Mac, it’s on the application menu) and then About. The build number to look for is 16.4.4111.0525. But again, if you’re still running an older build (if the last four numbers are lower than 0525), there’s nothing you need to do. You'll get the update automatically in the next week or so, provided the SkyDrive app is running.
Thanks for all of your support and great feedback over the last month!
Mike Torres
Group Program Manager, SkyDrive Apps
More...