Dropbox, which has become a useful tool in many businesses, is dropping support for public folders and updating its app for Apple's iOS platform. The company made the moves amid an increasingly competitive space for cloud-based sharing.

The free version 1.5 app update allows Apple mobile device owners to upload photos or video manually or automatically through a Wi-Fi or cell-based connection. Uploaded files can be seen in the Gallery view, and users can gain up to 3GB of free space for camera uploads -- in 500 MB increments -- for automatically uploading files.

'A Huge Pain'

The iOS photo/video upload functionality follows the addition in February of automatic photo uploads for Android devices, and in April for Macs and PCs. As with those updates, users simply need to attach any camera, phone, or SD card to a computer and then, through a few clicks, make the transfer.

In the April announcement, Dropbox noted on its company's blog that "getting pictures off your camera has always been a huge pain." To lessen that pain, Dropbox said it "put our heads down and worked worked worked to ensure that automatic upload would play nicely with anything that might have a photo or video on it."

On Friday, the company also sent an e-mail to registered developers. It noted that, in April, the ability to share any file or folder via a single link in Dropbox was launched. "This new sharing mechanism," the e-mail said, "is a more generalized, scalable way to support many of the same use cases as the Public folder."

As a result, the company said it will "no longer create Public folders in any new Dropbox accounts" after the end of July. If an app depends on Public folders, Dropbox said, it recommends the developer switch to an API call. However, existing accounts with Public folders will still continue to function the same way. A notice similar to the e-mail was also posted by Dropbox on its Web site Friday.

Faster Than Real Clouds

Cloud-based sharing and storage is moving faster than actual clouds on a windy day. Prominent services for personal and business use offering a variety of capabilities include Microsoft's SkyDrive, Google Drive, Samsung's S-Cloud service, Apple's iCloud, Amazon's Cloud Drive, and Box.

Last month, for instance, the enterprise-oriented Box announced new tools for businesses to simplify cloud-based management of content, as well as the launch of an administrative control that would appeal to IT departments. In recent weeks, SkyDrive has been busily releasing versions for Windows and Mac OS X Lion.

Founded in 2007 by two MIT students who had grown tired of e-mailing files to themselves when they had to switch computers, Dropbox is a cloud-based service that allows access to photos, documents, and videos from any device, through free and premium services.

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