The 7 Day iPad/iPhone Universal App – FileFly
April 3, 2010 — Mike (admin)With Tweets taking up all our time over the last few months we totally missed out on putting in lots of time to make a really sweet iPad app. Once we submitted Tweets to the App Store we got an email from Apple a day later saying we have 7 days to get them our iPad apps for the grand opening. Well, we didn’t have anything to send them but that email sparked a great idea for a fast-to-develop app.Enter FileFly. The decision to make FileFly came out of nowhere but it totally worked. FileFly started as a little tool we used on our iPhones to transfer files around from computer to computer via WiFi. It was *really* ugly and in no way ready for any users besides us but it was a good base. In it’s early days, FileFly had no features at all besides being able to wirelessly send files from any web browser to an iPhone. That alone surely wasn’t enough to create a full application for so we upped the ante.
I have literally dozens of books that I downloaded as PDF’s but none of them ever get read. Why is that? I can’t stand sitting in a chair in front of a computer to read a book on an LCD screen. It just doesn’t work. As it turns out, the iPad is the perfect way to read a PDF book. It fits in your hand, you can take it anywhere without being tethered to a mouse/keyboard/monitor. And it has such a gorgeous screen. It was a perfect fit for a media viewer. We started with that as a base and FileFly was finally ready to be a real app.
FileFly lets you share files to/from your iPhone/iPod/iPad via your web browser. You can create folders, move files around, delete them, email them and view them. FileFly will let you watch movies, view .txt files, Word docs, PowerPoint files, listen to audio files, images and more. It is a dual-purpose file viewer and storage device. And it works on iPhones and iPads alike. You can now rid yourself of that clumsy USB drive because FileFly will handle that for you wirelessly. We threw in a Google Docs viewer as well for good measure. All this for just $1.99 for BOTH versions: iPad and iPhone. Enjoy!
What advantages does this app have over the old “Air Sharing” app? I’ve been using “Air Sharing” for nearly two years with no problems.
@Nikki, I just took a look at Air Sharing. It looks like it tries to do a whole lot more than FileFly. FileFly was designed with only 2 thoughts in mind:
transferring files between a computer and an iPhone/iPad
viewing those files (especially PDF books)
Air Sharing looks like it is a one stop shop for connecting to tons of different “cloud based” services such as email, FTP servers, SSH servers etc. It seems more for “techies” while FileFly is more for people just looking for a really simple way to do the two things mentioned above. The extra features will of course cost more and that is reflected in the $9.99 price for Air Sharing HD while FileFly is only $1.99 for both the iPhone and iPad versions.
So, to sum it all up if you are happy with Air Sharing than there really isn’t much of a reason to get FileFly unless you like the insanely cute icon!
Why is filefly zipping my file? is it because it is a package? (Keynote file). How do I unzip it when I get it onto the iPad so I can use it.
I successfully used filefly to copy one presentation over, but now it is zipping the other one, and I can’t see it in Keynote.
@Wayne, I believe Keynote files are actually archives depending on the version. I also believe it is mail that is adding the .zip extension. Can you send me a sample file so that I can do a quick test to confirm? You can send it to questions (at) prime31.com
Hi I was wondering if FileFly can sync files directly between an iPhone and an iPad without any intermediate PC/MAC? If not could that functionality be added or if not are you aware of any app that does this?
@iByte, FileFly cannot share directly from iDevice to iDevice. I’m not aware of any apps that can other than sharing contacts and images from the Camera Roll.
Might be a good enhancement to offer – I regularly switch back and forth between my iPhone and iPad and somes time wish I could keep certain files easily in sync
@iByte, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I don’t think we would implement full syncing but maybe a way to see a list of files from the other device and choose 1 at a time to download.
Fully automatic sync’ing isn’t required (at least for me). Manual syncing would be fine, possibly some multi file selection interface or by folder if the basic functionality was driving some sales.