Since the introduction of the iPhone and iPod touch back in mid-late 2007, there has always been one feature which was noticeably absent from them both. It was apparent it was needed in order for the devices to become successful in the enterprise, and it was apparently highly requested for inclusion. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, Apple didn’t find it to be a priority, and consequentially it didn’t make the final cut into iPhone OS.

So what was it? What was this deal-breaking feature? – The ability to mount them as removable drives. Now, with the App Store in full swing, Avatron Software have officially filled the gap.
Cue, Air Sharing …

There are many alternatives besides Air Sharing on the store today. Among the best in this category; Files (£3.99) [App Store], File Magnet (£2.99) [App Store], Datacase (£3.99) [App Store] and more recently added, Briefcase (£2.99) [App Store].

Boasting a ‘Finder-like’ interface, Air Sharing [App Store] aims to transform your iPhone or iPod touch into a stylish (wireless) removable drive. Supporting Microsoft Windows and OSX systems, and with a no-qualms setup, it’s a pretty strong solution to the original lack of the feature. Which begs the question, did Apple leave this functionality out because they knew the App Store fruits would plug it?

With Air Sharing, you can:

• Mount your iPhone or iPod touch as a wireless drive on any Mac, Windows, or Linux computer

• Drag-drop files between your iPhone or iPod touch and your computers

• View documents in many common formats.

The best bit? – it requires no download of third-party end user software to operate. Just a Wifi network, a terminal, and your documents.

Setup Air Sharing for Mac
1. Open Air Sharing
2. Tap the ‘?’ in the bottom left hand corner
3. On the destination Mac, Open Finder and navigate to Go > Connect to Server
4. Enter the IP address (i.e. XXX.XXX.X.X:8080) shown within ‘Air Sharing’ into the ‘Server Address’ box in Finder on Mac OSX.

Setup Air Sharing for Windows
1. If you are using Windows XP, install the Microsoft software update for web folders
2. Open the Start menu and select My Computer
3. Choose Map network drive in the toolbar at the bottom of the My Computer window.
4. Enter Air Sharing’s IP address.
5. Makes sure the Reconnect at login box is unchecked.
6. If prompted, enter your username and password for this connection

You’ll now should notice your iPhone or iPod touch is shown as a device under ‘Shared’ in the left sidebar within Finder under Mac OSX, or in Windows Explorer under Windows XP/Vista.

One-Time Setup!
You’ll probably be glad to know that, once you’ve setup Air Sharing in this manner, and told your mac or PC the IP address and port to look for, that’s it. Future seamless connect relies on one more step to be completed though. Assigning an alias to your device. To do this:

Select the root folder in Finder > and navigate to File > Make Alias.

Alternatively, you can drag the folder into your dock, and each time you want to wirelessly transfer a document, you just have to ensure you launch Air Sharing on your device, beforehand.

Air Sharing supports the following (internationally recognised) document formats:

• iWork (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote)

• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), with limited support for XML formats

• Web Archive

• Web page

• PDF

• HTML

• RTF (Rich Text Format)

• RTFD (TextEdit documents with embedded images)

• Plain text (many different file extensions), with Unicode support

• Source code (C/C++, Objective C/C++, C#, Java, Javascript, XML, shell scripts, Perl, Ruby, Python, and more), with color-coded formatting

• Movie (standard iPhone formats: H.264, MPEG-4, 3GPP, etc.)

• Audio (standard iPhone formats: MP3 VBR, AAC, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, CAF, etc.)

• Image (standard iPhone formats: GIF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, etc.)

For the full list of features Air Sharing by Avatron offers, please visit:
avatron.com/products/

Sending a Document
Once you’ve setup Air Sharing and told your Mac or PC where to find and look for your connected device, it’s time to test it out! – Locate your device under ‘Shared’ (left sidebar within Finder) and open the volume up. You’ll now see two default folders; Public and Samples. Public will be empty, and Samples will feature sample files bundled with the application. To add a new file, simply drag and drop. While your document is on it’s way over (of which process time is dependent on file size sent), you’ll notice the ‘amount of files’ field on the folder your connected to flashes. This indicates your current transferring data to that folder. Once done, tap the folder, and hey presto – your data. All supported formats support full previews and thumbnail functionality. Just tap again to view the file – Word files don’t need pages, Excel files don’t need Numbers, it all happens and it accessible through the Air Sharing app itself. Bulk transferring through Air Sharing is also supported.

The Public Folder
You may be wondering what this is for, you can just delete it, right? – Yeah sure, but it designed to be kept. Your ‘Public’ folder, just like your Public folder attached to your account on Mac OSX, acts as a drop-box for others to send you files. Air Sharing assigns a unique IP address to it, which you can give to friends, family or work colleagues. They will then be able to drop files into your Public folder, wirelessly.
You can also choose to password protect this if you feel the need. You can also use this to drop files iPhone to iPhone, iPhone to iPod touch and iPod touch to iPod touch.

One major oversight (in my eyes) is the ability to add folders on the fly. You just can’t. It’s not possible in the app itself unfortunately. You have to add folders through your good ol’ Mac or PC.

Overall, I like it, but it is lacking. It’s simple, requires little effort and if you need to carry large amounts of files with you, go for it. I got it while it was free (at it’s launch). Ask me would I have paid for it at £3.99 today? – Probably not. It does what it was intended for very well, but there are much better looking alternatives out there, and you know me – aesthetics over functionality any day.

Things I’d like to see added in a future update:

- Option to e-mail documents from Air Sharing.app
- The ability to add folder’s (Priority)

Do you use Air Sharing? Tell us about it in the comments …

Grab it: Here