8 ms·

Please don't make us use iCloud anymore

131 points by chmars 12y ago

k-mcgrady 12y ago
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.
- stith 12y ago
  Same. iCloud has worked perfectly fine for me. My experience has been pretty close to the "It Just Works" that Apple strives for.
- caiob 12y ago
  Absolutely true. As a user, I have never had any problems using iCloud.
- emsy 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    It's difficult to tell if that's an iCloud issue or a bad implementation of iCloud sync by the developer.
    - emsy 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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 12y ago
        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.
        jblow 12y ago
        Sync is not that hard. I have never had a problem with Dropbox, for example, and that was made by brogrammers.
- lupinglade 12y ago
  Yup never had any issues either. iCloud stops working one a week for most users? Whee is that statistic coming from?
trumbitta2 12y ago
My eyes are bleeding. Can't read anything without going 200% and hoping for the best with the contrast.
- lylejohnson 12y ago
  Try the Readability plugin for your browser of choice: https://www.readability.com/addons https://www.readability.com/addons
  - Tepix 12y ago
    Why bother? The guy should fix his site. http://contrastrebellion.com/ http://contrastrebellion.com/
  - Slackwise 12y ago
    Evernote's Clearly, also a browser plugin, that runs locally unlike Readability, gives you similar presets, but also lets you set your own CSS: http://evernote.com/clearly/ http://evernote.com/clearly/ Here's an example of Clearly typeset with all the Adobe Source fonts: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2071994/Clearly%20set%20with%20Source%20Fonts.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2071994/Clearly%20set%20...
dijit 12y ago
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 12y ago
  > 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.
  - dijit 12y ago
    thats' fair, iCloud is not meant to be used with non-apple signed binaries. so you fall outside the usecase for iCloud. personally I keep my mac stuff and my linux stuff very very seperate, 1password doesn't really work on linux so it's a non-problem for me that iCloud doesn't function for the platform. I'm going to sound like an apple fan-boy here; I promise you I'm not; but you said "fail" which implies it's not working as intended while appearing like it should. Could you provide more information on this? usually if the iCloud option to sync is present it works as intended for me, and I've never had otherwise (unless it's a fault with the mac/iProduct or networking).
rsynnott 12y ago
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.
eddielee6 12y ago
Never had a problem personally
- chris_wot 12y ago
  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!
danbee 12y ago
Please don't add `letter-spacing: -1px` to Helvetica Neue. It's hard enough to read as it is!
fidotron 12y ago
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.
Tehnix 12y ago
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?
jng 12y ago
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 12y ago
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.
gbrhaz 12y ago
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.
MCRed 12y ago
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.
- ZoFreX 12y ago
  Did you even read the article? It's asking developers of third-party apps to not use the iCloud sync backend for their apps, due to a lot of problems they are seeing with it.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  > 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 12y ago
    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.
abc_lisper 12y ago
Wait. Syncing with iCloud freezes the application? Can't you sync in a different thread?
bendyorke 12y ago
> 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.
iphonelock 12y ago
I bypass iCloud activation screen lock whit tool from this page : http://removeicloud.wordpress.com/ http://removeicloud.wordpress.com/
notduncansmith 12y ago
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.

131 points by chmars 12y ago

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.

stith 12y ago
Same. iCloud has worked perfectly fine for me. My experience has been pretty close to the "It Just Works" that Apple strives for.
caiob 12y ago
Absolutely true. As a user, I have never had any problems using iCloud.
emsy 12y ago
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 12y ago
  It's difficult to tell if that's an iCloud issue or a bad implementation of iCloud sync by the developer.
  - emsy 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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.
      - jblow 12y ago
        Sync is not that hard. I have never had a problem with Dropbox, for example, and that was made by brogrammers.
lupinglade 12y ago
Yup never had any issues either. iCloud stops working one a week for most users? Whee is that statistic coming from?

trumbitta2 12y ago

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

lylejohnson 12y ago
Try the Readability plugin for your browser of choice: https://www.readability.com/addons https://www.readability.com/addons
- Tepix 12y ago
  Why bother? The guy should fix his site. http://contrastrebellion.com/ http://contrastrebellion.com/
- Slackwise 12y ago
  Evernote's Clearly, also a browser plugin, that runs locally unlike Readability, gives you similar presets, but also lets you set your own CSS: http://evernote.com/clearly/ http://evernote.com/clearly/ Here's an example of Clearly typeset with all the Adobe Source fonts: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2071994/Clearly%20set%20with%20Source%20Fonts.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2071994/Clearly%20set%20...

dijit 12y ago

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 12y ago
> 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.
- dijit 12y ago
  thats' fair, iCloud is not meant to be used with non-apple signed binaries. so you fall outside the usecase for iCloud. personally I keep my mac stuff and my linux stuff very very seperate, 1password doesn't really work on linux so it's a non-problem for me that iCloud doesn't function for the platform. I'm going to sound like an apple fan-boy here; I promise you I'm not; but you said "fail" which implies it's not working as intended while appearing like it should. Could you provide more information on this? usually if the iCloud option to sync is present it works as intended for me, and I've never had otherwise (unless it's a fault with the mac/iProduct or networking).

rsynnott 12y ago

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.

eddielee6 12y ago

Never had a problem personally

chris_wot 12y ago
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!

danbee 12y ago

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

fidotron 12y ago

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.

Tehnix 12y ago

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?

jng 12y ago

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 12y ago

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.

gbrhaz 12y ago

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.

MCRed 12y ago

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.

ZoFreX 12y ago
Did you even read the article? It's asking developers of third-party apps to not use the iCloud sync backend for their apps, due to a lot of problems they are seeing with it.
Mikeb85 12y ago
> 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 12y ago
  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.

abc_lisper 12y ago

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

bendyorke 12y ago

> 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.

iphonelock 12y ago

I bypass iCloud activation screen lock whit tool from this page : http://removeicloud.wordpress.com/ http://removeicloud.wordpress.com/

notduncansmith 12y ago

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.