23 ms·

How Apple’s iCloud Drive deletes your files without warning

221 points by markjaquith 11y ago

api 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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-files-and-folders-949ada80-0026-4db3-a953-c99083e6a84f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Delete-or-restore-f... [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=201376770 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2... [3] https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2405957?hl=en https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2405957?hl=en
  - glhaynes 11y ago
    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.
- nl 11y ago
  More photos are taken using mobiles than ever have with cameras. If photos of your children aren't important then I don't know what is.
jostmey 11y ago
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 11y ago
  That seems to be pretty clearly what this article is saying. And it's a goddamm disaster if that's the case.
  - _mikz 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      It's possible they fixed it or it's isolated to specific versions.
- markjaquith 11y ago
  That was what happened to a friend of mine. And I reproduced it reliably, with data loss.
jmount 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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-particle/ http://praxtime.com/2013/11/03/apple-strat-tax-voice-as-god-...
  - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
    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.
themeekforgotpw 11y ago
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-guidelines-us.pdf http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-guideline...) 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.
reilly3000 11y ago
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 11y ago
  This is changing in iOS 9 which has an iCloud Drive app, thankfully.
  - reilly3000 11y ago
    I hope the will address some of the larger issues as well like version control.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - glhaynes 11y ago
      That's been available for some time via iCloud.com.
      - happyscrappy 11y ago
        @Someone1234 Please don't delete a question that has been responded to. He asked when iCould would have a web service, which it is has had for a while.
        reilly3000 11y ago
        It does, but doesn't work in mobile browsers. I ws able to navigate to the webapp despite the site being not responsive, but I could only get it working as a desktop site in Chrome(anybody know how in safari?) and couldn't download or mail the file from there without getting a bug.
lemevi 11y ago
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 11y ago
  "Dropbox is a feature, not a product" - Steve Jobs
  - paulspringett 11y ago
    I don't think you could call iCloud Drive either.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    "Not losing my data" is a feature, too.
  - kalleboo 11y ago
    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.
- gutnor 11y ago
  Just wonder how long they will manage ? Their competition is fierce and cloud storage is indeed an additional feature of their competitor products. A bit like standalone digital camera losing out to smartphones despite obvious quality difference. In this case, dropbox does not even have an obvious quality benefit: syncing is a bit of a lemon market and in any case it works perfectly for most people the majority of the time. I'm both an iCloud and a Dropbox customer. The fact that I chose to pay for iCloud despite paying for Dropbox is my anecdotal evidence of the perceived value of iCloud "other services" (which I admit is Apple ecosystem prison - just sweet enough a prison you don't want to break free). I trust Dropbox - but I know that eventually, if iCloud does not betray me for a while I will be tempted to save some money on it.
WalterBright 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        Thanks for your interest! I would also like it to receive more attention, but I guess technical superiority isn't much correlated with popularity.
nathanvanfleet 11y ago
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.
martin-adams 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
vmarsy 11y ago
> 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 11y ago
  I can confirm that dragging between devices does 'copy' by default. And dragging from iCloud to local drive does 'move' by default.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    In general 'modification' by default is bad.
    - _mikz 11y ago
      It is what you expect on local drive. Windows do the same.
      - agumonkey 11y ago
        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.
- josephb 11y ago
  Dragging from Dropbox, One drive, hubic all act as a move, not copy.
piyush_soni 11y ago
Let's admit it, Apple makes good hardware, but that's about it.
- coldtea 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    OS X was mighty fine. It's been getting progressively worse in my opinion.
    - azinman2 11y ago
      Apple is one of the top product makers period. Products are more than just hardware or even software. If you doubt me, look at their market capitalization. Individual products will always have their pros/cons, and the company will have strengths (design) and weaknessess (social, some cloud services). But to say they're bad at software just isn't true.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      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.
eclipxe 11y ago
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.
- _mikz 11y ago
  Sounds solid. Did someone try it out?
  - _mikz 11y ago
    So I just tried it. Uploaded 200 MB file through web. Checked that my MacBook shows the .icloud file. Moved whole folder with it. Was gone from the iCloud web BUT my laptop kept downloading it. Also it is in the Settings > Data & Security. So. What is the fuzz?
    - jostmey 11y ago
      I think this is a sync issue. What happens when the files are still uploading on one device, while being donwloaded on another. Will the files waiting to uploaded disappear?
      - _mikz 11y ago
        1) Other devices don't see the files that are still being uploaded 2) Tried creating a folder, uploading 200 MB file in it and moving the folder to to local drive. Works as expected. After upload finished, the folder reappeared with the file in it. So, the files waiting to be uploaded won't disappear.
        netheril96 11y ago
        This seems to contradict the claim in the article. Am I interpreting it wrong?
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
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 11y ago
  Apple fanbois may touch my junk.
_mikz 11y ago
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
- tedunangst 11y ago
  No, when Google does it, that's the whole point of cloud storage. When apple does it, that's proof they don't understand services.
- icebraining 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    iCloud only moves to the trash too, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
I have a close friend who is homeless. He synched his iCloud to iPhoto on my Mac. I later learned that he is a heroin addict. Now he has disappeared. I dont have a clue what happened to him. I had a look through his photos recently. Only a few came from his time of homelessness. In the others he is far healthier, more muscular and surrounded by friends, family and coworkers. I resigned in protest from AMCC because I was not permitted to test the driver for their RAID HBAs in the same configuration as they were used by our customers.
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago
  Is there some reason you are downvoting this?
  - chipotle_coyote 11y ago
    While I didn't downvote this, I can't see your comment as remotely relevant to a story about an iCloud syncing bug.
    - MichaelCrawford 11y ago
      My point is that data loss can lead to more than inconvenience and expense, it can lead to the loss of cherished, irreplaceable memories. While I have since backed up my friend's photos, there are ways they could have been lost forever.
      - JadeNB 11y ago
        What is the relevance of the bit about AMCC? I don't ask with hostility; I really can't figure it out.
        MichaelCrawford 11y ago
        My apologies, I will edit to make my point clear. A common application of RAID is fault-tolerant storage. If one does not test one's product in the same configuration as used by one's customers, one's customers may find a failure mode that one's tests are incapable of finding. In AMCC's case I was concerned about the Special Magic that Apple used to convert 64-bit system calls to 32-bit. The opinion of the engineer who originally wrote the driver I maintained was that a 32-bit tool was sufficient to test a 32-bit driver. My opinion is that a 64-bit tool was required to test Apple's Special Magic. I have found and reported numerous bugs in Apple's kernels, all but two were promptly fixed. I struggled to convince Apple to fix the other two, but was refused. One was fixed a year later after someone else reported it, the other is a spectacular zero-day that I could exploit in a heartbeat but I won't tell you what it is not so much because Apple refuses to fix it but because the fix would break a lot of existing code. In 1990 I was testing MacTCP 1.0.1 or maybe 1.1. My manager Bruce Southwick suggested I beta test A/UX 2.0, in large part so I could help with A/UX' MacTCP emulation which was a wrapper around Berkeley sockets. Among the first things I did was to verify A/UX' compliance with each of the CERT recommendations. When I found a security hole I dropped a dime to some random A/UX team member: "May I speak to your Security Manager?" "What's a Security Manager?" Me and the A/UX people went back and forth for quite a long time until I attached a 12 or maybe 15 line remote root exploit to a Radar bug report. I then blasted an eMail all over G-d's Creation that pointed out that "The United States Air Force isn't going to want to pay seventy million dollars for this." Their reply? "We'll let the Air Force take care of it." I could have fixed the zero day in ten minutes without breaking anything whatsover. Even so it was not fixed until A/UX 3.0.
larrymcp 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
azinman2 11y ago
Title is misleading. This is an isolated edge case, although clearly one that should be addressed.
- morganvachon 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      > 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 11y ago
        If you keep getting kicked out once a year then yeah, it's not a problem.
  - azinman2 11y ago
    I question how common it really is. I, for example, rarely move anything out of Dropbox. Further, you have to have not synced the files AND say ok to apples warning. I'm sticking with edge case, albeit one that violates expectations and should be fixed.
- 11y ago
entropie 11y ago
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.
benguild 11y ago
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.
Lorento 11y ago
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.
rebootthesystem 11y ago
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.
padmanabhan01 11y ago
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.
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
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.
angry_octet 11y ago
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.
phelm 11y ago
When finding a new bug, isn't the best thing to report it to the software provider (rather than blogging about it) ?
digital-rubber 11y ago
PEBCAK (humorous) Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. Used by technical support helpdesk staff to indicate that the problem with a user’s computer or experience is due to user error. ps your story reads as the story about the woman microwaving her cat. Just because you did not get the message you should not do it, doesn't make it the microwave manufacturers fault.

221 points by markjaquith 11y ago

api 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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-files-and-folders-949ada80-0026-4db3-a953-c99083e6a84f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Delete-or-restore-f... [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=201376770 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2... [3] https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2405957?hl=en https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2405957?hl=en
- glhaynes 11y ago
  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.
nl 11y ago
More photos are taken using mobiles than ever have with cameras. If photos of your children aren't important then I don't know what is.

jostmey 11y ago

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 11y ago
That seems to be pretty clearly what this article is saying. And it's a goddamm disaster if that's the case.
- _mikz 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    It's possible they fixed it or it's isolated to specific versions.
markjaquith 11y ago
That was what happened to a friend of mine. And I reproduced it reliably, with data loss.

jmount 11y ago

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 11y ago
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-particle/ http://praxtime.com/2013/11/03/apple-strat-tax-voice-as-god-...
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  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.

themeekforgotpw 11y ago

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-guidelines-us.pdf http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-guideline...) 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.

reilly3000 11y ago

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 11y ago
This is changing in iOS 9 which has an iCloud Drive app, thankfully.
- reilly3000 11y ago
  I hope the will address some of the larger issues as well like version control.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - glhaynes 11y ago
    That's been available for some time via iCloud.com.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      @Someone1234 Please don't delete a question that has been responded to. He asked when iCould would have a web service, which it is has had for a while.
      - reilly3000 11y ago
        It does, but doesn't work in mobile browsers. I ws able to navigate to the webapp despite the site being not responsive, but I could only get it working as a desktop site in Chrome(anybody know how in safari?) and couldn't download or mail the file from there without getting a bug.

lemevi 11y ago

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 11y ago
"Dropbox is a feature, not a product" - Steve Jobs
- paulspringett 11y ago
  I don't think you could call iCloud Drive either.
- pjc50 11y ago
  "Not losing my data" is a feature, too.
- kalleboo 11y ago
  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.
gutnor 11y ago
Just wonder how long they will manage ? Their competition is fierce and cloud storage is indeed an additional feature of their competitor products. A bit like standalone digital camera losing out to smartphones despite obvious quality difference. In this case, dropbox does not even have an obvious quality benefit: syncing is a bit of a lemon market and in any case it works perfectly for most people the majority of the time. I'm both an iCloud and a Dropbox customer. The fact that I chose to pay for iCloud despite paying for Dropbox is my anecdotal evidence of the perceived value of iCloud "other services" (which I admit is Apple ecosystem prison - just sweet enough a prison you don't want to break free). I trust Dropbox - but I know that eventually, if iCloud does not betray me for a while I will be tempted to save some money on it.

WalterBright 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      Thanks for your interest! I would also like it to receive more attention, but I guess technical superiority isn't much correlated with popularity.

nathanvanfleet 11y ago

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.

martin-adams 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.

vmarsy 11y ago

> 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 11y ago
I can confirm that dragging between devices does 'copy' by default. And dragging from iCloud to local drive does 'move' by default.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  In general 'modification' by default is bad.
  - _mikz 11y ago
    It is what you expect on local drive. Windows do the same.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      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.
josephb 11y ago
Dragging from Dropbox, One drive, hubic all act as a move, not copy.

piyush_soni 11y ago

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

coldtea 11y ago
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 11y ago
  OS X was mighty fine. It's been getting progressively worse in my opinion.
  - azinman2 11y ago
    Apple is one of the top product makers period. Products are more than just hardware or even software. If you doubt me, look at their market capitalization. Individual products will always have their pros/cons, and the company will have strengths (design) and weaknessess (social, some cloud services). But to say they're bad at software just isn't true.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    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.

eclipxe 11y ago

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.

_mikz 11y ago
Sounds solid. Did someone try it out?
- _mikz 11y ago
  So I just tried it. Uploaded 200 MB file through web. Checked that my MacBook shows the .icloud file. Moved whole folder with it. Was gone from the iCloud web BUT my laptop kept downloading it. Also it is in the Settings > Data & Security. So. What is the fuzz?
  - jostmey 11y ago
    I think this is a sync issue. What happens when the files are still uploading on one device, while being donwloaded on another. Will the files waiting to uploaded disappear?
    - _mikz 11y ago
      1) Other devices don't see the files that are still being uploaded 2) Tried creating a folder, uploading 200 MB file in it and moving the folder to to local drive. Works as expected. After upload finished, the folder reappeared with the file in it. So, the files waiting to be uploaded won't disappear.
      - netheril96 11y ago
        This seems to contradict the claim in the article. Am I interpreting it wrong?

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

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 11y ago
Apple fanbois may touch my junk.

_mikz 11y ago

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

tedunangst 11y ago
No, when Google does it, that's the whole point of cloud storage. When apple does it, that's proof they don't understand services.
icebraining 11y ago
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 11y ago
  iCloud only moves to the trash too, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888496

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

I have a close friend who is homeless. He synched his iCloud to iPhoto on my Mac. I later learned that he is a heroin addict. Now he has disappeared. I dont have a clue what happened to him. I had a look through his photos recently. Only a few came from his time of homelessness. In the others he is far healthier, more muscular and surrounded by friends, family and coworkers. I resigned in protest from AMCC because I was not permitted to test the driver for their RAID HBAs in the same configuration as they were used by our customers.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago
Is there some reason you are downvoting this?
- chipotle_coyote 11y ago
  While I didn't downvote this, I can't see your comment as remotely relevant to a story about an iCloud syncing bug.
  - MichaelCrawford 11y ago
    My point is that data loss can lead to more than inconvenience and expense, it can lead to the loss of cherished, irreplaceable memories. While I have since backed up my friend's photos, there are ways they could have been lost forever.
    - JadeNB 11y ago
      What is the relevance of the bit about AMCC? I don't ask with hostility; I really can't figure it out.
      - MichaelCrawford 11y ago
        My apologies, I will edit to make my point clear. A common application of RAID is fault-tolerant storage. If one does not test one's product in the same configuration as used by one's customers, one's customers may find a failure mode that one's tests are incapable of finding. In AMCC's case I was concerned about the Special Magic that Apple used to convert 64-bit system calls to 32-bit. The opinion of the engineer who originally wrote the driver I maintained was that a 32-bit tool was sufficient to test a 32-bit driver. My opinion is that a 64-bit tool was required to test Apple's Special Magic. I have found and reported numerous bugs in Apple's kernels, all but two were promptly fixed. I struggled to convince Apple to fix the other two, but was refused. One was fixed a year later after someone else reported it, the other is a spectacular zero-day that I could exploit in a heartbeat but I won't tell you what it is not so much because Apple refuses to fix it but because the fix would break a lot of existing code. In 1990 I was testing MacTCP 1.0.1 or maybe 1.1. My manager Bruce Southwick suggested I beta test A/UX 2.0, in large part so I could help with A/UX' MacTCP emulation which was a wrapper around Berkeley sockets. Among the first things I did was to verify A/UX' compliance with each of the CERT recommendations. When I found a security hole I dropped a dime to some random A/UX team member: "May I speak to your Security Manager?" "What's a Security Manager?" Me and the A/UX people went back and forth for quite a long time until I attached a 12 or maybe 15 line remote root exploit to a Radar bug report. I then blasted an eMail all over G-d's Creation that pointed out that "The United States Air Force isn't going to want to pay seventy million dollars for this." Their reply? "We'll let the Air Force take care of it." I could have fixed the zero day in ten minutes without breaking anything whatsover. Even so it was not fixed until A/UX 3.0.

larrymcp 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.

azinman2 11y ago

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

morganvachon 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    > 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 11y ago
      If you keep getting kicked out once a year then yeah, it's not a problem.
- azinman2 11y ago
  I question how common it really is. I, for example, rarely move anything out of Dropbox. Further, you have to have not synced the files AND say ok to apples warning. I'm sticking with edge case, albeit one that violates expectations and should be fixed.
11y ago

entropie 11y ago

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.

benguild 11y ago

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.

Lorento 11y ago

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.

rebootthesystem 11y ago

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.

padmanabhan01 11y ago

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.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

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.

angry_octet 11y ago

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.

phelm 11y ago

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

digital-rubber 11y ago

PEBCAK (humorous) Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. Used by technical support helpdesk staff to indicate that the problem with a user’s computer or experience is due to user error. ps your story reads as the story about the woman microwaving her cat. Just because you did not get the message you should not do it, doesn't make it the microwave manufacturers fault.