App Review: Air Sharing 1.1.4

If you’re like me, you often find yourself needing to transfer files from one computer to another (in another location) without the use of the Internet or even a blank CD/USB stick.

Several months ago, I found Avatron’s “Air Sharing” application which turns your iPhone’s internal memory into a network-accessible hard drive.  As of this writing, I find myself constantly using it to keep up with everything from my button collection (images I use to create buttons) to transporting my daily diabetes log.

Once you go through the settings and enable things like your security options and so-forth, then enable sharing, you can attach to the drive via either a web browser, or in my case — on the Mac — as another network drive on the Finder.

Preparing for this review, I noticed that since the release of the $4.99 Air Sharing, there are cheaper apps out there which allow basic file sharing but none seem to have the options available that Air Sharing provides.  There’s even an “Air Sharing Pro” for $9.99, but I haven’t yet broken the seal on buying $10 apps yet.  I will however be writing the authors to see if I can get an eval copy for a future review.

The Good:

• Great utility to have in your iPhone arsenal.  Makes it simple to take files with you and believe me, there’s no safer place to me than on my phone.
• It allows EASY management of files and even allows entire folders of stuff to be moved around quickly and painlessly.
• You can view files such as Word, Excel and so-forth on the screen.

The Bad:

• At $4.99 for the regular version being reviewed, it should have a few more features, such as the ability to print and/or e-mail files.  These functions however, as well as file management, is reserved for the even moreso expensive “Pro” version.
• This is perhaps unfounded, but being the paranoid that I am, I find it a bit creepy to introduce a way for co-workers on the same network to see your phone’s files.  Therefore you REALLY need to go into the settings, set up a username and password for it, and turn off “public access”, then possibly even change the port number to something crazy so that only you will know it’s there.

Screenshots: