When Microsoft introduced Windows 8.1 at Build a few weeks ago, it also introduced a newly revamped version of SkyDrive that now ships as part of Windows 8.1. You no longer need to download a separate SkyDrive desktop app, it’s just built in. And along with SkyDrive becoming just a native part of the OS, this new version comes with some significant changes that make SkyDrive easier to use on all kinds of devices, including tablets like the Surface RT.
A post this morning on the Inside SkyDrive blog goes back over the highlights of the new SkyDrive, and there are quite a few of them. The biggest change to SkyDrive is in introducing the concept of “placeholder” files, a new way of thinking about and dealing with the problem of what to sync to what device. Previously, in SkyDrive desktop, you were able to choose what files or folders were synced to each device, but it was a manual and somewhat laborious process, and you were left without any access (without going online and to your SkyDrive cloud storage) to files you had in the cloud but not on a particular device.
