MacResearch

With the 2.1 update for iPod Touch finally available and apparently much better than the 2.0.x series, I made the jump from the 1.1 version of the software, and got a first taste of the App Store offerings. One app soon caught my eyes: Air Sharing (in iTunes: App Store link). Why interesting? It allows very simple sharing of files between your Mac and your iPod / iPhone, and it is free for the next 2 weeks (grab it now!!). More...

Air Sharing works in a very simple way. When you start it on your iPod Touch, it starts a web server. I am not sure what happens if you are on EDGE or 3G, but with Airport, your iPod can now be accessed locally via Bonjour if your computer is on the same network, or remotely from anywhere on the internet. You just need to "Connect to Server..." in the Finder, type the address, and your Air Sharing documents are mounted on your computer desktop, using the WebDAV protocol. You can then manipulate the files, change the names, add folders,... and the contents are instantly synced on your iPod.

Edited:On the iPod, Air Sharing then allows you to easily browse the files and folders. In addition, Air Sharing can display most of the useful file formats, such as html pages, Word documents, pdfs, Excel worksheets, iWork documents,... It also recognizes several programming languages and applies some useful syntax coloring to them (I tried javascript, C and css for instance). Without the ability to view the files, the application would clearly not be as useful.

Air Sharing is free for the first 2 weeks (that's a $0 introductory price), and will then be $6.99, but I am not sure how that will work. Given the way the App Store works, if you grab version 1.0 now, you can keep it forever. It is however not clear how upgrades will be handled, and that may be when and how the "non-free price" will apply. As far as I can tell, for the other applications on the App Store, the free / paid version pricing models have so far been based on the availability of 2 separate applications (for instance, Instapaper Free and Instapaper Pro). But if you grab 'Air Sharing' now, will you get free upgrades? Or will there soon be an 'Air Sharing Pro' app that will be the only app getting the updates? It will be interesting to see how Air Sharing pricing model works out.

There is clearly a need for this kind of applications on the iPod Touch and iPhone: sharing files becomes much easier and much more flexible than the all-in-iTunes model. This is particularly useful for storing files you will need access to when offline (similar to what Instapaper is offering for storing web pages). And Air Sharing does a nice job of keeping it simple.

Update: see Drew's comment below. At least 2 other apps use WebDAV to share files over wifi, Files and Datacase (both links are to the App Store on iTunes)