
How Apple’s iCloud Drive deletes your files without warning - markjaquith
http://txfx.net/2015/07/14/apple-icloud-drive-deletes-your-files/
======
jmount
And iBooks dropped all metadata at some point. The wrong network setting on
iTunes nukes all your album art. iCal sync is a cruel joke. The moral is don't
use Apple cloud services for anything you care about.

~~~
nickbauman
Apple doesn't have the right organizational structure to support cloud
services across apps to a level of consistency and quality that Google and
Amazon does. Nathan Taylor explains this quite well.

[http://praxtime.com/2013/11/03/apple-strat-tax-voice-as-
god-...](http://praxtime.com/2013/11/03/apple-strat-tax-voice-as-god-
particle/)

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Speaking as a former resident deep in Cue's org, I believe this is common
knowledge internally, but there isn't alignment on how to address it. Even at
the IC level, most people I spoke with are aware of Apple's shortcomings in
services. Services are not the favored child at Apple. iOS and hardware are,
because of revenue. Services ICs know that, and it hits morale directly; I saw
(and felt) this. There are attempts to fix it, too, but those manifest as
reorganizations. I was subjected to four in a year and a half.

You hear pains from teams like Maps, who were moved from iOS to services
during my tenure, and who immediately ran into serious organizational
problems, dried up budgets, and so on. The gettin' is good in iOSville, and
once you leave iOS, it's a whole 'nother Apple. There's a common story about
the origin of Maps at Apple where Maps was basically given a blank check, and
they're still mopping up some of that excess to this day. That doesn't happen
in services.

Meanwhile, organizationally, Siri is kind of outside the typical services
structure for various legacy reasons and they're off iterating like all getout
and having a blast without the encumberance of the services organization.
Every time I met with Siri I always came away with questions like, in this
organizational climate, how on earth are they getting so much done?

Apple needs a serious Microsoftism on services. If you would have told me five
years ago that Microsoft under Nadella would completely reverse course and
embrace the living hell out of services while Apple meandered in the "let's
buy companies to implement our services strategy" grasslands, I'd have said
the opposite is more likely, yet here we are.

~~~
skc
"dried up budgets" is a phrase I never would have thought would be applicable
to anything Apple Corp related.

~~~
kossTKR
Seriously, how can any teams inside apple have dried up budgets? It does not
make sense to me when i see their profits!?

~~~
karantansky
Companies that hardly give out cash have the most cash :)

------
reilly3000
Happened to me. Besides being an unbelievably irresponsible bug, the core
functionality is terrible. I had an important document in my iCloud Drive and
needed to send it urgently via email. This isn't possible on an iDevice. There
is no file browser, you just have to open the file in the appropriate host
app. And if that file type isn't one that can be opened by an iApp you are
iFucked.

~~~
glhaynes
This is changing in iOS 9 which has an iCloud Drive app, thankfully.

~~~
reilly3000
I hope the will address some of the larger issues as well like version
control.

------
eclipxe
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201104](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201104)

>If you need to access a file that you recently deleted, you might be able to
recover it from iCloud.com. Sign in to iCloud.com, click Settings > Data &
Security, then browse the list of files in the Recover Documents tab. Files
will be removed from Recover Documents in 30 days.

~~~
markjaquith
So, I verified the bug, but this happened to a friend of mine (she lost
gigabytes of data). And Apple Support tried to help, and couldn't, and as a
consolation prize she got a Thunderbolt external drive. Which was particularly
insulting. "We suck so much at handling your data, you should probably do it
yourself!"

~~~
droopyEyelids
That is not particularly insulting. That is the support agent doing more than
any other company to compensate for a fuckup.

Particularly insuting would be if they shut down your account after making the
complaint, or something like that.

------
lemevi
Dropbox's event log has saved me so many times. I have recovered pictures of
my family that mean a great deal to me. I even get an email if lots of files
were deleted, and the API is amazing. That's why I love Dropbox, the file sync
is their bread and butter, their core business and not just a feature.

~~~
markdown
"Dropbox is a feature, not a product" \- Steve Jobs

~~~
kalleboo
This is a thread about how poorly Apple has managed to implement this as a
feature rather than a product.

The context makes your quote sound like hubris rather than wisdom.

------
jostmey
So if I move a folder out of iCloud before the sync finishes every pending
file is lost? Did I understand the article correctly?

~~~
CPLX
That seems to be pretty clearly what this article is saying.

And it's a goddamm disaster if that's the case.

~~~
_mikz
I just tried that
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888649))
and it finished syncing the moved files. So no harm done and it even appeared
in the iCloud.com Settings > Data & Security where I could recover it.

~~~
brazzledazzle
It's possible they fixed it or it's isolated to specific versions.

------
WalterBright
Yeah, I'm not too interested in using any cloud storage:

1\. slow 2\. bugs that delete your data 3\. company goes bust or dark for
whatever reason 4\. your private data is available to voyeuristic employees,
hackers, spies, advertisers, researchers, monetizers, anyone who offers to buy
it, stalkers, dragnets, and anyone who buys their used disk drives on ebay.

No thanks.

~~~
verytrivial
For personal backup of key files (not endless GBs of movies, just documents
and precious pictures) I usually sync a Sparse Disk Bundle[1] with a good AES
key. Sure, you have to trust Apple's AES implementation (I don't to any great
extent) but it gets you some degree of privacy without much hassle. It is a
cheap insurance policy.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_image](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_image)
. It uses 8MB chunks by default which sync quite quickly.

~~~
netheril96
I wrote a FUSE filesystem
([https://github.com/netheril96/securefs](https://github.com/netheril96/securefs))
to secure the data that is meant to be synced to the cloud. In principle it is
more secure than alternatives because the randomization and authentication of
encryption. It encrypts file by file so that no need to sync a huge data when
you only change a single file.

~~~
spost
I see you submitted this a while back, it's a shame there wasn't much
discussion! Seems like a neat idea and (to my naive knowledge of cryptography)
a solid implementation.

~~~
netheril96
Thanks for your interest! I would also like it to receive more attention, but
I guess technical superiority isn't much correlated with popularity.

------
rebootthesystem
iCloud is a disaster. I can't even remember the things it does to address
books, calendars and notes. I am trying to block the memory of having to
explain to my MD wife why almost her entire calendar, address book and notes
EVAPORATED when she decided she did not want her phone to connect to iCloud.
In this case 100% of her data had been entered through the phone. However,
iCloud somehow decided anything that lived on iCloud and had been updated in
any way from any machine had to be deleted iCloud AND the phone once she
turned off iCloud.

I think iCloud is quite revealing of Apple's incompetence as well as the
contempt they have for the very users they claim to love. The fact that they
think this is OK and normal is, in my opinion, quite disturbing. The same
applies to changes made to OSX over the last few years. Incomprehensible,
arrogant and full of contempt for users.

------
_mikz
Isn't this exactly the same thing as someone reported with Google Drive?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612854)

~~~
icebraining
Well, not _exactly_ , since GDrive just moves the files to the Trash, it
doesn't delete them immediately. The user had to manually purge the Trash
after moving the files.

That said, they're both brain-dead UIs, yes.

~~~
hutattedonmyarm
iCloud only moves to the trash too, see here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496)

------
martin-adams
I think it is safe to say that Apple iCloud is not a backup product, but
merely a file synchronisation tool.

I never liked the idea of stub files with tools like this. I used Livedrive a
few years ago and the whole stub files gives a false sense of security. The
only benefit it provided was I could double click the stub file and prioritise
the download.

~~~
madeofpalk
But I don't think the user was using it as a backup, it was using it as a
storage product. As in, I'm working on a file across multiple devices, so I'm
going to store it in iCloud Drive so everything is kept up to date.

Theoretically.

~~~
martin-adams
I do understand that, hence why I was highlighting that if anyone were to
think this tool will cover you for data loss, it wont.

Personally, any product that allows accidental deletion in one place that gets
synchronised across all devices is a bad, bad thing. It only takes one virus
or rogue app to delete the contents of a directory and the iCloud software
will do it's thing and spread it.

------
larrymcp
I noticed this same phenomenon with all three of the auto-syncing cloud
storage services I tested: Apple's iCloud, Google Drive, and Microsoft's
SkyDrive.

During testing, all three of those services incorrectly deleted files when the
cloud service got confused about synchronization. So for the particular
application I had in mind, I wasn't able to use any of them and had to write
scripts to handle the synchronization myself.

~~~
gcr
How did Dropbox do on your test?

I'd love to see a blog post describing your test protocol, if you have time to
write one.

------
padmanabhan01
Software having bugs is understandable and people live with it. But there are
a few areas where such fuckups are just unacceptable. Deleting files, photos,
security stuff etc fall in that category. And as more and more stuff move to
the cloud, companies better understand the priority of this.

------
Lorento
I think the lesson here isn't that iCloud is unreliable, but that any data
storage is unreliable. Syncing isn't backup so you still need a backup.

------
azinman2
Title is misleading. This is an isolated edge case, although clearly one that
should be addressed.

~~~
morganvachon
Hmm, dragging and dropping files on a Mac isn't an edge case, it's a common
activity. The question is, is this bug reproducible?

Also, it's reminiscent of the Steam on Linux bug (though not as catastrophic);
it's well within the realm of possibility.

~~~
_mikz
Just read other comments -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496)
It is reproducible, it is recoverable, it is not a problem.

~~~
vacri
> _It is reproducible, it is recoverable, it is not a problem._

I can't wait to use this excuse for any future bug. "Yeah, it happens, but you
can recover from it, so it's not a problem".

Let me try it now with a problem we're having in staging: "You keep getting
kicked out, but can log in again and keep working? Yeah, it happens, but you
can recover from it. It is not a problem"

~~~
vultour
If you keep getting kicked out once a year then yeah, it's not a problem.

------
nathanvanfleet
I've never used iCloud drive, and now I'm very happy that it's the case. It
seems like a very incompetent bug, once they implemented the .iCloud files
they should have seen this.

------
benguild
One of the main reasons to stick with Dropbox at this point is they have the
UX figured out. Everyone else even with better specs/features is still playing
catch up to that.

------
angry_octet
Google Drive does something very similar. Never use their Windows drive client
unless you want gross permanent and/or silent partial deletion. The iOS and
android clients seem more robust, but neither can handle syncing >1000 files
without crashing, or handle large files like videos efficiently (iOS version
at least can't do partial uploads or continue uploads). The single upload
queue also prevents user-requested immediate sync. Basically, it's horrible.

------
entropie
Had a similar problem with the dropbbox linux client from the early days.

I installed the script and ran "dropbox" on a new machine. Maybe It was
because I created the destination folder before maybe because I had to kill
the deamon at sometime to restart... no idea. It begun to delete my entire
stuff in the dropbox.

Not really a problem for me because I store no important stuff in it, but i
was kinda buffled. Even it could be a mistake by me, this stuff should not
happen so fast.

------
vmarsy
> Fine. That’s what dragging a file from one place to another generally does!

To me this is not fine. Usually dragging from a different device(USB
Thumbdrive <-> hard drive, SD Card <-> Thumbdrive, ....) should copy the
files, and the cloud should be considered as another device.

Could a Mac user confirm if this is the default behavior on Mac devices?

~~~
_mikz
I can confirm that dragging between devices does 'copy' by default. And
dragging from iCloud to local drive does 'move' by default.

~~~
agumonkey
In general 'modification' by default is bad.

~~~
_mikz
It is what you expect on local drive. Windows do the same.

~~~
agumonkey
It is. That's why I quoted 'modification'. It's not a sensitive issue if it's
easy to undo. Which is the case on a user selected files on a drive (unless
it's between naive FS or sluggish drives). On a remote system, you'd have to
reup the whole thing.

------
phelm
When finding a new bug, isn't the best thing to report it to the software
provider (rather than blogging about it) ?

------
MichaelCrawford
Apple's Deep Insight Into User Interface Design

[http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays/jump-the-
shark.html](http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays/jump-the-shark.html)

------
MichaelCrawford
There is a straightforward fix for this:

    
    
      C T Corporation System
      818 W Seventh St Ste 930
      Los Angeles CA 90017
    

C T Corporation System is Apple's Agent for Service of Process.

Don't Say I Never Did Nothin' Fer Ya.

------
themeekforgotpw
Giving your data to a third party is a very difficult thing to do. Either
their policies and heuristics are not perfect (like this article), they go
under and you lose your data and service (probably not the case now with
Apple) or they will be compelled by law to share your data with law
enforcement.

On this last issue, Apple has the reputation of being one of the best
technology corporations. However according to their legal guidelines
([http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-
guideline...](http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-guidelines-
us.pdf)) they will and do give at least:

    
    
        Device Registration (name, address, email address, and telephone numbe, iCloud Apple ID)
    
        Customer Service Records
    
        iTunes (name, physical address, email address, and telephone number, purchase/download transactions and connections, update/re-download connections, and iTunes Match connections, iTunes subscriber information and connection logs with IP addresses, specific content purchased or downloaded).
    
        Apple Retail Store Transactions (cash, credit/debit card, or gift card transactions, type of card, name of the purchaser, email address, date/time of the transaction, amount of the transaction, and store location, receipt number)
    
        Apple Online Store Purchases (name, shipping address, telephone number, email address, product purchased, purchase amount)
    
        iTunes Gift Cards (sixteen-digit alphanumeric code, nineteen-digit code, any purchases, name of the store, location, date, and time, user account
    
        iCloud (music, photos, documents, iCloud email, encryption keys, Subscriber Information, iCloud feature connections, connection logs with IP addresses, Mail Logs, records of incoming and outgoing communications such as time, date, sender email addresses, and recipient email addresses, Email Content, Other iCloud Content, Photo Stream, Docs, Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, iOS Device Backups, stored photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks and iOS device backups, photos and videos in the users’ camera roll, device settings, app data, iMessage, SMS, and MMS messages and voicemail)
    
        Find My iPhone (including connection logs
    
        Other Available Device Information (MAC Address for Bluetooth, Ethernet, WiFi, or FireWire)
    
        Requests for Apple Retail Store Surveillance Videos
    
        Game Center (Connection logs with IP addresses, specific game(s) played)
    
        iOS Device Activation (including upgrades the software, IP addresses, ICCID numbers, and other device identifiers)
    
        Sign-on Logs (iTunes, iCloud, My Apple ID, and Apple Discussions, Connection logs with IP addresses, Sign-on transactional records)
    
        My Apple ID and iForgot Logs (password reset actions, Connection logs with IP addresses)
    
        FaceTime (logs when a FaceTime call invitation is initiated, content protected by 15 bits of entropy if secure enclave baked key is obtained from manufacturer)
    

According to Apple: "Extracting Data from Passcode Locked iOS Devices For all
devices running iOS 8.0 and later versions, Apple will not perform iOS data
extractions as data extraction tools are no longer effective. The files to be
extracted are protected by an encryption key that is tied to the user’s
passcode, which Apple does not possess. For iOS devices running iOS versions
earlier than iOS 8.0, upon receipt of a valid search warrant issued upon a
showing of probable cause, Apple can extract certain categories of active data
from passcode locked iOS devices. Specifically, the user generated active
files on an iOS device that are contained in Apple’s native apps and for which
the data is not encrypted using the passcode (“user generated active files”),
can be extracted and provided to law enforcement on external media. Apple can
perform this data extraction process on iOS devices running iOS 4 through iOS
7. Please note the only categories of user generated active files that can be
provided to law enforcement, pursuant to a valid search warrant, are: SMS,
iMessage, MMS, photos, videos, contacts, audio recording, and call history."

But this blurb fails to mention that the user provided passcode can only be
about 15 bits of user supplied entropy - the rest is provided by a hardware
manufacturer that is also obligated by law to respond to legal request.

~~~
__david__
> But this blurb fails to mention that the user provided passcode can only be
> about 15 bits of user supplied entropy…

How do you figure that?

~~~
themeekforgotpw
Four digits, choice of 10 for each digit.

log(10000)/log(2) ~ 15.

~~~
rimantas
You are not limited to four digits.

~~~
themeekforgotpw
I see. Is there a limit? Does it approach 128 bits?

~~~
cjensen
"Over 90 characters" [1]. At roughly 5 bits per character, that puts it at
more than 450 bits.

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/05/how-to-set-up-a-
complex-p...](http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/05/how-to-set-up-a-complex-
passcode-on-your-ios-device/)

~~~
themeekforgotpw
Nice!

Of course this isn't ever actually used - in practice users choose four to
eight digit passcodes.

Users should, if they want to secure their information, use a randomly chosen
passcode of approximately 30 digits long.

------
piyush_soni
Let's admit it, Apple makes good hardware, but that's about it.

~~~
coldtea
Don't know about that. OS X is a mighty fine OS, iOS is the best mobile OS,
Logic gets top points as a DAW, etc etc.

~~~
imron
OS X _was_ mighty fine. It's been getting progressively worse in my opinion.

~~~
coldtea
I don't see anything really worse about it.

That's just what people like to say without any quantifiable metrics (usually
just with some random data points about this or that bug, but not quantifiably
compared to previous releases).

Millions of people use it everyday for professional work, including in film
and music studios, where stability and timely performance are much more
paramount than for some corporate cubicle running Excel.

I've not seen anything actually actively deteriorate. The Finder is much
better, Spotlight is much more robust than before, apps run fine, etc.

There have been bad moves, like the change to their custom DNS responder thing
which was not ready for production. Or some glitches here and there. But I've
seen such things all the way down to 10.1 were I started. There will always be
bugs when you add new features (and even when you don't add anything, as
technologies around your OS also change).

Plus the upcoming release is a "Snow Leopard" like bugfix affair too, which
will help things.

~~~
rsync
"Plus the upcoming release is a "Snow Leopard" like bugfix affair too, which
will help things."

It is ? You are referring to Yosemite ? Genuinely curious...

~~~
sbuk
El Capitain is the next release.

------
api
This isn't just an Apple thing. iCloud was designed for mobile, and one thing
I've observed about mobile OSes is that (so far) they treat user data with an
indifference that is approaching contempt.

Mobile devices/OSes are for consuming and messaging or accessing remote
systems as a glorified ultra-portable dumb terminal. They're not designed for
creating or handling/storing important data.

~~~
Someone1234
> This isn't just an Apple thing.

Who else deletes your files with no ability to roll back? OneDrive allows
it[0]. DropBox allows it[1]. Amazon allows it[2]. Google Drive kinda allows
it[3].

The rest of your post is built on that faulty assumption ("everyone is just as
bad"). I've proven that that is untrue, therefore your whole "but mobile!!!"
justification is wrong.

[0] [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Delete-or-
restore-f...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Delete-or-restore-
files-and-folders-949ada80-0026-4db3-a953-c99083e6a84f?ui=en-US&rs=en-
US&ad=US)

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/296](https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/296)

[2]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201376770)

[3]
[https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2405957?hl=en](https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2405957?hl=en)

~~~
glhaynes
It's not as easy to find as it should be, but you can recover deleted files on
iCloud.com: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201104](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201104) (search for "recover")

Whether that only works with intentionally deleted files or it would help with
the ones in this post that were deleted because of system error, I'm not sure.

