Apple Inviting AppleSeed Members to Test iCloud Drive for Windows

There's a good chunk of the world that still hasn't bought a Mac for various reasons despite their love of iOS devices, but Apple is taking steps to make sure they remain connected to their Apple files regardless of which machines they're forced to use. Today, the Cupertino company sent out invitations to members of AppleSeed (Apple's pre-release software-testing program) to try out the beta iCloud for Windows, which includes access to iCloud Drive.

The great thing about this for those of us who have to use a Windows machine for day-to-day work is that it means that Apple files will now be accessible regardless of whether you're running an iPhone, an iPad, or an Acer notebook. There's one small catch: if you're an AppleSeed member who wants to take part in the beta, you'll have to have a machine that's capable of running at least Windows 7.

Apple first announced iCloud Drive back at WWDC in June, touting it as one of the key features in the upcoming release of iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite. iCloud Drive has been a part of the testing process for those services for some time now, but todays announcement marks the first time that it's been extended to Windows users.

iCloud Drive resembles existing cloud-based services such as Dropbox, Box, and Google's own Google Drive suite of apps, and you'll reportedly be able to drag and drop a file from either Mac OS X, iOS, or Windows and see it pop up on another system immediately. Apple plans to have pricing tiers for the service, along with a separate CloudKit service catering toward developers that has higher storage allowances and data transfer limits.

And in the wake of all of the concerns about iCloud's safety? Let's hope the Cupertino company can keep data safe when exposed to Microsoft's comparatively vulnerable system.

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