Google Drive iPad, Android Updates

Google announced today updates to both the iOS and Android versions of it’s Drive product. Probably the biggest update is the iPod version of the software now allows editing of documents, something that the Android version has had for over a year now.

You can also now move files, including photos and video from your iPhone, iPad directly to your drive folder, something previously not able to be accomplished in one step, at least on the iOS version of the app. According to the blog post by Senior Product Manager, Anil Sabharwal, “You’ll also notice other new improvements to the Drive iOS app. For example you can now view Google presentations on your iPhone or iPad, including speaker notes, full-screen mode and the ability to swipe between slides.”

The updates to Android include the same ability to view presentations in full-screen mode, speaker notes and ‘swipe-abilty’ as the iOS update.  In addition Android users can now add comments, respond to comments and view tables in Google Doc’s.  This feature proves to be especially useful for desktop users, who used the notes as a whiteboard when sharing/collaborating on files with prospective clients, existing clients, etc. to explain what they were looking at.  It also allowed for continued dialog about the image, document, proposal, presentation or estimate to name a few.

As more and more people move to working in the cloud, and become used to having all their files at their fingertips, Google Drive will continue to be a driving force behind this change.  And with these updates, Google moves even closer to having Drive used as it was intended I believe, as a virtual drive accessible from anywhere on any device.  On the horizon for Google Doc’s include plans for real-time collaboration on spreadsheets and native editing features for it’s mobile Drive app.

iOS users can find Google Drive in the Apple Store here.