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If you've never heard of the horror stories, I invite you to read up on that. It's not about the company going out of business, it's about having issues with a

• gress 12y ago
  This isn't about trying to defend iCloud's teething problems, so these links are irrelevant. Yes, there are risks associated with using a 3rd party service. However if you don't use one, you are claiming that you can do better in architecture, implementation, and DevOps. How many apps do you have? Let's say you have 30. What percentage of the developers of these apps do you think will do a better job of sync than Dropbox or Apple? Unless you think that number is in the high 90's, then your advice is a severe disservice to end users.
  • jafitc 12y ago
    You cannot shrug real problems off as "irrelevant". Let me do a comparison to highlight how relevant it is: 1. iCloud: A user experiences an issue. Contacts your support. You finally figure out that the problem is caused by a system you have no control over. You tell the user a) there's nothing you can do about it b) they should prepare for it happening in the future. The user is unhappy. This repeats over and over again. 2. Custom sync: A user experiences an issue. You go to your server, find the root cause and fix it. The user is happy, and you also fixed problems for all the other users with the same issue. So this particular situation is never repeated again. I've never said everything in your system had to be custom made. I emphasized, "it depends on what your priorities are". If you priority is customer experience, then you can take the huge field of syncing, slice off a little manageable portion of it -- that makes sense for your app -- and attack it with elegance. See you don't have to do a better iCloud, you just have to do a better slice of the syncing pie. Big difference. Clearly not all developers are suited for this. But in a lot of cases, it is not only possible, but even advisable at the moment. Vesper is a good example. (scenario number (1.) is not just a hypothetical situation you just have to look at the mountains of evidence: lot of apps had to remove iCloud syncing, because of the tons of complaints that flooded their support channels)
    • gress 12y ago
      Do you know anything about current icloud stability for document syncing? I agree that scenario 1 is not hypothetical, and that iCloud was too unusable unstable for the first two years. I personally avoided including it in my apps for that reason, to my great disappointment. However, it is routinely incorporated in new apps now, and as and end user I have had no serious problems since iOS7. As a user I'd far rather trust iCloud or Dropbox than yet another sync service. I've read Brent Simmons articles on how he did syncing for vesper, and it seems like he's done it well. Having said that, there is no indication of how well it will scale, and more importantly Brent has the experience to do this job well, whereas most App Developers do not.