
Please don't make us use iCloud anymore - chmars
http://mosx.tumblr.com/post/100420300476/please-dont-make-us-use-icloud-anymore
======
dijit
I remember a friend of mine complaining about getting his program to sync
using iCloud, he said it was complicated but very solid.

He would commonly submit his application to the store and get critical
feedback and very helpful comments on why it wouldn't work, what wouldn't work
and in one case an architectural issue that could have caused duplication.

As a consumer, I've never had any applications fail to use iCloud effectively,
everything I use that actually leverages iCloud (and not dropbox or
$proprietary_syncing_method) just works wonderfully and predictibly.

the authors actual gripe seems to be from the developer who has not submitted
a fully working version of his program.

I would ask him what specifically makes him think that it's the device causing
the issue.. maybe add a contact through the webUI and see if it syncs, or
modify data with another application that uses iCloud.

>Obviously I’m using more apps than just MindNode.

which apps, have they been updated recently? iCloud API's have changed in iOS8

Diagnostics is super simple stuff, don't blame everything before at least
looking into the issue.

~~~
atmosx
> As a consumer, I've never had any applications fail to use iCloud
> effectively, everything I use that actually leverages iCloud just works
> wonderfully and predictibly.

I had the opposite experience with 1Password. Now if I wanna sync I need to
buy the AppStore version. I opted re-enabling my dropbox account and keep only
to sync data where iCloud fails + with Dropbox sync I can use 1Password on
non-mac related platforms as well (e.g. a chromebook).

Same with another iOs/OSX application called 2Do. The iCloud sync is
problematic while the Dropbox sync worked flawlessly.

~~~
preek
EDIT: Wording of 'dropping support' to 'dropping support for the legacy API'.
Also added a link to the 1Password blog.

1Password dropped support for the legacy Dropbox sync API some time ago. I was
a bit bogged as well, because it needed me to re-buy 1Password from the
Appstore. Previously I had v3, v4 needed to be re-bought. When you were a user
of 1Password v3, they made that very transparent and also wrote[1] about it on
their blog

That sucked, _but_ I get why they did it. v3 used an API of DB that was legacy
and they didn't want to support it anymore, because they had a new
implementation around the corner which used iCloud.

And in my experience synching got improved a lot. Yes, re-buying sucks, but
that's the developers choice. That's not related to iCloud at all. Plus, the
new version works better for me, so kudos to 1Password to improving their
product - and charging for it seems to work, I paid them lots of money and
still am a happy customer(;

1\. [http://blog.agilebits.com/2013/08/08/1password-3-dropbox-
syn...](http://blog.agilebits.com/2013/08/08/1password-3-dropbox-sync-faq/)

~~~
yock
_1Password dropped support for Dropbox synching of the main vault some time
ago._

Wat? Not only is it still supported, but they recently squished a bug that
caused Dropbox syncing to get disabled. Does your copy of the app not allow
Dropbox syncing? Where did you hear about this?

~~~
preek
The OP mentioned that he _had_ to buy the AppStore version. That was back when
1Password switched from v3 to v4. Then, they also disabled the legacy Dropbox
support. They made that very transparent and also wrote[1] about it on their
blog. Also note that 1Password needs you to sync via Dropbox for secondary
vaults.

1\. [http://blog.agilebits.com/2013/08/08/1password-3-dropbox-
syn...](http://blog.agilebits.com/2013/08/08/1password-3-dropbox-sync-faq/)

------
k-mcgrady
I've never had any of the issues in the post. I know iCloud sucks for
developers (seems like iOS 8 is rectifying that a bit) but for me as a user
it's been very reliable. Am I just lucky? Is the experience detailed in this
post very common?

P.S. You don't have to use iCloud for anything. iOS supports Google
Calendar/Mail, Dropbox has an API for file storage dev can use and with the
new document extensions it's easier than ever to use. You choose to use iCloud
of the devs of your favourite apps choose to use it.

~~~
emsy
I had several games where savegame syncing was enabled by default (on the top
of my head i remember Rayman Jungle Run) and when the sync fails, the game
won't start, even after disabling iCloud.

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's difficult to tell if that's an iCloud issue or a bad implementation of
iCloud sync by the developer.

~~~
emsy
Well, if it's so difficult to implement that it happens to a great number of
developers, I'd say it's an iCloud issue.

~~~
jtc331
Not necessarily. Sync--particularly sync which can involve changes at the same
time by different devices--is hard. A lot of devs just don't want to fully
implement the required mechanisms.

~~~
emsy
I agree that sync is hard and I wouldn't even blame iCloud since it's rather
complicated matter, but there are three things that made me do so:

1) They made it a de facto standard and showed developers how easy it is to
use when seemingly, it's not

2) iCloud even messes up simple sync tasks, like: buy a new device 3 out of 5
apps won't start after a simple download from iCloud

3) The problems occur to so many customers and developers that Apple should
communicate the problem with developers and adapt their approval system.

------
trumbitta2
My eyes are bleeding. Can't read anything without going 200% and hoping for
the best with the contrast.

~~~
lylejohnson
Try the Readability plugin for your browser of choice:

[https://www.readability.com/addons](https://www.readability.com/addons)

~~~
Tepix
Why bother? The guy should fix his site.
[http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

------
MCRed
First off, iCloud has worked great for me. Secondly, you're not made to use it
at all... Apple makes it really easy to turn off in settings, and with
particularly fine grained control. If you don't use it, things fall back
gracefully to local storage. Thirdly, I've not seen a competitor that works
better. Google isn't even trying (it's web only- the equivalent of iCloud.com
without the numbers, pages and keynote apps for mobile and desktop.) That's
not a slam on google, the web is what google does. It's just the closest
competitor.

If iCloud was bad in comparison to something else, people would be using that
other thing.

I'm just glad I can now finally get rid of Dropbox once and for all.

~~~
Mikeb85
> Google isn't even trying (it's web only- the equivalent of iCloud.com
> without the numbers, pages and keynote apps for mobile and desktop.) That's
> not a slam on google, the web is what google does. It's just the closest
> competitor.

Really? Google syncs docs, photos, music, and all sorts of stuff from mobile
devices. They have a Drive desktop client (for PC and Mac).

And you say it doesn't have the equivalent of Numbers, Pages, or Keynote, but
they do. It just so happens that there's a web client for all your word
processing, spreadsheet and presentation needs in Google-land (with very cool
features like simultaneous multi-user editing and Javascript scripting with a
script repository).

Anyhow, Google does have equivalents to what you listed, they work great, not
sure about iCloud (don't use it), just wanted to clear that up.

~~~
a_c_s
You missed the key word: "numbers, pages and keynote APPS". The parent's point
is that Google doesn't have an offline version of their productivity suite, so
they aren't trying to do the same thing Apple is.

~~~
kukkukb
Yes they do:
[https://play.google.com/store/search?q=google%20docs&hl=en](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=google%20docs&hl=en)

Docs, Sheets and Slides are all APPS now, with real-time syncing

------
danbee
Please don't add `letter-spacing: -1px` to Helvetica Neue. It's hard enough to
read as it is!

------
gbrhaz
I had lots of issues using Day One with iCloud. I have the Mac app as well as
the iPhone app, but they just wouldn't sync up correctly. Fortunately, after
moving to Dropbox syncing everything cleaned up and I've not had a problem
since.

------
rsynnott
The new iCloud APIs are a lot less magic-oriented, and lower level, than the
Core Data syncing thing, so hopefully we should see improvements.

------
fidotron
Highly tangential project pimp time:
[https://github.com/atomirex/umbrella](https://github.com/atomirex/umbrella)

So, sadly I haven't got this further the last couple of weeks, and it's more
framework than even proof-of-concept (panic at a paying customer taking
precedence), however, the general idea is to provide iCloud/Dropbox/GDrive
type functionality to apps (on Android to start with) via the storage app
framework wrapping JGit synced over Bonjour or static IPs (and IDed with
public keys) with a sane UI, and ultimately things like filetype specific
SQLite indexing of documents within.

I don't buy the idea that any of Dropbox/iCloud/whatever are sustainable in
the long run, especially with the privacy noise. The whole thing needs to
become user-oriented, not service-oriented. How the economics of that will
work I have no idea, but it's becoming an itch that's getting intolerable.

------
bendyorke
> Fortunately this issue didn’t happen too often. Maybe once a week or so, for
> most users, but now we have iOS 8.

Once a week is incredibly frequent, and it's too bad that it's not working for
Andreas. However, if the comments on this thread are any proof, this is not
the case for 'most users'.

if you're experiencing these issues, it is possible that there is something
wrong with your account. I would highly recommend contacting Apple Support [1]
( _especially_ if you have had your account for many years), I can't even
begin to explain the obscure issues they have fixed with my account, in no
less than 24 hours of contacting them.

[1] Apple ID support is done online, an Apple Retail employee will not be able
to help.

------
jng
iCloud notes syncing between my iPhone and my Mac used to cause conflicts
almost daily. And when conflicts arise, iCloud just creates duplicates. So I
was left comparing notes manually to fix the mess. 20min lost every day to
mind-numbing work is not my idea of a seamless experience.

I then tried Evernote. It's even worse with syncing. It would create
duplicates in at least three different ways, all of them annoying, all of them
requiring the same manual work to repair. I am pretty sure it also lost some
work at one point.

Since then, I've switched to OneNote from Microsoft (which is free!), and I
haven't had to waste a single more minute, and haven't lost a single character
more.

------
martingordon
I've had one issue with iCloud Drive - and that was with Threes. I don't know
why/how they're using iCloud, but their instructions to fix it was turning off
iCloud Drive for the app.

Other than that, I haven't had any problems. I have seen tweets of people who
are having problems, and the most common recommendation I've seen is to turn
iCloud Drive off for the app and turn it back on so it regenerates the sync
key.

------
notduncansmith
I haven't played with iCloud, but Couchbase Lite + CouchDB on the backend has
been pretty great to work with. Data sync is free and Just Works™, and thanks
to Couch attachments, supports files as well. Not right for every use-case,
obviously, but for keeping data in sync across devices it's been great.

------
Tehnix
I have never had to reboot my device because of iCloud, and actually never
experienced any of the issues described in the post.

Honestly, I suspect the developers of the app is more at fault here, or
something weird is going on with the authors iCloud account. Or hey, I might
just be one of the lucky few?

------
eddielee6
Never had a problem personally

~~~
chris_wot
You're at a negative score - the text on HN is grey on white to make it
deliberately hard to read. Which is sort of what that site is like to read!

------
iphonelock
I bypass iCloud activation screen lock whit tool from this page :
[http://removeicloud.wordpress.com/](http://removeicloud.wordpress.com/)

------
abc_lisper
Wait. Syncing with iCloud freezes the application? Can't you sync in a
different thread?

