Review: USB Disk Pro For iPad

The iPhone, iPad and iOS as a whole does a lot of stuff really well. Cross-app communication and in turn, sharing of data, however, is one of the worst aspects of it. For apps to talk back and forth the individual app developers need to program each app they wish to share to within the app. Understandably so, it’s a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist and isn’t really all that elegant for end users or easy for developers. But here and there an app is released that really pushes the boundaries of the sandbox.

Previously we looked at Files.app, very similar app in approach that looks to group your local and various online/cloud storage accounts into one repository for easy management. How does USB Disk Pro differ?

For starters, it’s a much newer, updated app for iOS 7. The new Apple design is shown off all over whereas Files.app is very much pre-iOS 7 (read: linen everywhere). That said, what are some things that Disk Pro does better? We asked Oleg Baranovskyi, our contact for the developer the same question. According to him, overall management of and browsing of files is much faster and more fluid. Direct access to .zip, .rar, and comic book files natively while also being able to view remote server content as if it were stored locally.

All this said, USB Disk Pro is not a new app. However, the latest update has brought many new features to the table including:

• restore last viewing position

• beautiful thumbnail preview

• rupload, delete, move files on remote servers

• viewing files on remote servers is simple: it is like viewing local files (no need to download the files somewhere)

• lock codes to restrict access to the application and selected files / folders

• tabbed navigation (like Safari on iOS 6)

• possibility to show two locations (file lists or viewers) at once on the iPad

• music visualizer

• faster access to zip files: no need to decompress a zip file to view the list of files it contains

• open RAR and comic book files

• iPad support

So is it really a good app? If you have various cloud services to store your digital junk like we do, then yes. While the individual apps for the supported services are all mostly good, USB Disk Pro is just as good if not better. The added bonus of having everything in the same app is also too convenient to overlook. With the latest update, iPad users are finally getting some loving too with their own official app.

In daily use it takes a little bit to re-train from simply opening each cloud service’s respective apps and opening USB Disk Pro instead. Once you get over that hurdle it’s almost natural to just go there for cloud based files. If you are the type to hoard cloud storage, getting it all under one roof/app is super convenient. And at $0.99 it’s a no brainer.

Buy it: USB Disk Pro (iTunes Link)

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