App Store Day: A.I.Disk lets you access iDisk on the iPhone

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This week, we take the ‘App Store Day’ wagon to the folks over at Readdle and explore their A.I.Disk app for the iPhone.

We here at Smoking Apples are great fans of the iPhone and 3 of us already have a MobileMe subscription. As much as we like the sync features of iDisk, it was always a problem to access your files on the move given that MobileMe lacks a mobile interface or even a dedicated app on the iPhone. Readdle’s A.I.Disk is a app available for the iPhone that allows you to connect to any WebDAV storage on the web and access those files on the movie, right from your iPhone. Yes, that includes MobileMe’s iDisk and even Box.net.

Let’s take a closer look at what the app has to offer.

A.I.Disk’s prime feature is its ability to connect to and browse through a number of WebDAV services on the web, including MobileMe, MyDisk.se and Box.net. Not only can you login to your iDisk and access your own files, you can also browse the public folders of other MobileMe users. These files are downloaded onto the app when you first access them, thus giving you access to them anytime in the future. A progress bar tells you how much of the file has been ‘received’ by your iPhone, so you might want to be careful with larger files, specially if you’re not on an unlimited connection.

You can create as many ‘Online Identities’ as you wish. Here in this screenshot, I’ve saved my personal iDisk and a friend’s Public Folder. Take note that the public folder has the blue colored icon, unlike the pink iDisk icon. Tapping on either of the two gives you access to the folders hosted on the disk. A.I.Disk has a nifty little button on the top, which is aptly titled ‘Get All’ and lets you download all of them at one go.

To open a file, simply tap on the name an it opens up right in the app. A.I.Disk supports a wide array of file formats,, including PDF, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx txt, fb2, rtf and even html. The bar at the bottom of the inbuilt viewer allows you to do the following functions:

Bookmark
Send the file(s) via Email to your contacts
Scroll down multiple pages using the percentage bar
View the file FullScreen

A.I.Disk’s ability to work over EDGE, 3G and WiFi gives it an added advantage over the other FileSharing apps on the iPhone. I use my iDisk’s Document folder as my primary Documents folder on the Mac, so I have access to all my documents, papers and reports on the go on my iPhone.

A.I.Disk is available for $7.99 from the App Store [iTunes Link] and is well worth the investment if you’re serious about anytime access to your documents on your MobileMe iDisk.

Tagged as: aidisk, MobileMe, review

Reader Comments

Huseyin November 5, 2008 at 9:46 pm: Have you looked at MobileFiles, which does a similar job but is free?
Alex November 6, 2008 at 12:57 am: Much better than any other iPhone+iDisk app because:
1. Has great document viewer with bookmarks, fast scroll, fullscreen and more.
2. Can send files by email.
3. Supports Box.Net, FilesAnywhere and other popular on-line storages.
4. Provides password protection of the documents.
Milind Alvares November 6, 2008 at 1:22 am goobimama.blogspot.com: It is utterly shameful that Apple doesn’t have their own app for this purpose. At least a WebUI would have been sufficient enough. Nevertheless, AI Disk is a great app with an even better UI. Would have recommended it if it wasn’t for MobileFiles

@Huseyin: We just received the press release for MobileFiles, after we did the review. Indeed it is sort of the same app and sells for free. Here is a link to MobileFiles at the App Store:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=294258237&mt=8
Preshit November 6, 2008 at 1:35 am smokingapples.com/author/preshit: @Huseyin:
MobileFiles is indeed a great free app to use along with iDisk. However, I’m not too pleased with the little ad at the bottom. Plus, it only does iDisk, unlike A.I.Disk, which can connect to any WebDAV server, including the popular Box.net
Apart from that, you can email files to your contacts on the go, which is very important for me.

And someone who spends $100 on a MobileMe subscription can certainly get an app worth $7.99.

/Personal Opinion