Allow me a moment to state the obvious. Google is getting better at developing apps and building smartphones faster than Apple is getting the hang of online services.
Yes, Numbers, Pages, Keynote are now freebies with every Mac, iPhone, and iPad, but the glue that holds them together doesn’t work as well as some of Google’s web apps. iCloud, I’m looking at you.
Fix It And Go Home
There are two things that we need in iCloud. The first is obvious. Seamless, well integrated online storage and synchronization that just works. That’s not iCloud now.
Here’s a good example. I use iCloud to sync up Calendar, Contacts, Keychain, Email accounts, bookmarks and more between Macs, iPhone, and iPad.
Invariably, something goes wonky at least once a week leaving me with duplicates to delete or something not working today when it did yesterday.
Apple has a serious problem with file synchronization. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
The latest had to do with restoring my old iPad’s apps and files on a new iPad. The restore brought back duplicate photos (again; not the first time) from my Mac.
Passwords needed to be entered again for Mail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, et al. Why all the manual work? What’s Keychain sync supposed to do?
I’m not the only red, white, and blue bona fide Apple fan girl or boy with an ax to grind against iCloud. Granted, it may not be easy to synchronize everything between many hundreds of millions of devices, but Google does it. And they make apps and phones, too.
So, the first thing Apple needs is an iCloud improvement and some competitive pricing on storage space. Yahoo gives me a full terabyte of online storage for my Flickr photos.
iCloud Home
The second thing Apple needs to do, and immediately after fixing iCloud so it just works, is to create an iCloud product for the home. Forget about Airport Time Capsule.
We need iCloud Home (just as soon as iCloud works).
Think about it. Whatever you save or synchronize with iCloud in the cloud, would also be synchronized and backed up on the iCloud Home device. The sync could work from iCloud to iCloud Home, or, when you’re at home, the other way.
In fact, there’s no real reason why Apple couldn’t simply change the name of Airport Time Capsule to iCloud Home, do the same Time Machine backups, and add the iCloud sync, too.
Assuming Apple could ever make iCloud work the way we want and expect.
rick says
Kate,
Your frustrations are justified. Great article. I have written about this problem before, but have more issues since I purchased a new iMac. Although Apple champions buying devices for the family, it has yet to come up with a solution that allows the family to sync devices without causing a mess.
After purchasing my computer I created an admin account and then accounts for all of my family. So the question becomes which iTunes account should everyone link to? If everyone makes their own iTunes account then you run the risk of duplicating all of the files. If everyone has the same iCloud name, then everyone gets the same messages, even if the messages are not directed at them.
You’re left with iTunes cloud, whether you want it or not. Then comes the issue of needing to have the same iCloud name and same iTunes or Apple password, otherwise the apps and movies will not sync. How ridiculous is that? The same family, in the same house, having to purchase a song twice or having to change iD’s so that the download can take place.
This really needs to be simplified. It’s a mess.
doug says
You are confusing your iTunes account with your iCloud account. Although they can be the same thing, they don’t have to be. So everyone in your family needs an iCloud account for their personal syncing. Then you can decide if you want to each get an iTunes account and simply authorize each other to use your content or if you want to simply get a single account for everyone to share. Ether way, when doing this all on a single computer you will need to move the default storage out of the user protected areas and into the shared folder or duplicate all of the data on each users protected area in the file system. This is not difficult to do but I do wish Apple would make an automator script or something similar to make it even easier.
Hope this helps
Ray Stevens says
Not to mention iCloud security is notoriously weak.
The worst thing is Apple taking away local sync in Mavericks. There appears to be a huge backlash outside of the US taking place regarding this issue.
Petition to bring back local sync.
http://www.change.org/petitions/apple-bring-the-100-offline-sync-for-ios-back
They’re making a mess of things at Cupertino lately.
GeeDeezy says
Agreed, all around. I had to move Contacts syncing over to Google – not perfect, but tons better than the missing contacts / duplicate contacts issue I was constantly getting with iCloud. Calendar and Bookmarks and Reminders sync seems fairly solid. The rest (Mail, Photos, Documents) – there’s no way I can afford to leave them to chance on iCloud, they are too critical to my business. I just don’t sync those at all, and I use IMAP for email which handles most of what people consider “syncing” on its own.
spr8364 says
Interesting about the duplicates, I have been using iCloud for my syncing for about three years now and have never had the duplicates occur. I remember about five years ago, I did have a problem with Entourage duplicating my Address Book contacts. However switching to Apple Mail eliminated that issue for me.
Observer1959 says
I had the duplicate issue years ago when I was moving from desktop iTunes syncing to wifi syncing. I just couldn’t get them to go away even though I kept choosing to use the cloud.
I wiped my phone clean and started over as a new phone and even though it was a lot of work after that everything has worked perfectly. I have used iPhone and iPad icloud backups to restore new devices and they have all synced as they should.
I think a lot of the problems come from OSes being loaded over OSes and settings getting corrupted with all the many changes going on.
Just start with one device and get it working then use it to restore the others.
macmeister says
iCloud is not your friend. Apple doesn’t seem to have the engineering chops to do web services right. They’re all sizzle and no steak. Duplicates and data losses are the order of the day. It’s a free add on so Apple doesn’t have much incentive to make it work right, and the company is so insistent on doing it all the ‘Apple way’ that they miss the forrest for the trees. Apple has been working on synchronizing for years and still can’t get it right.
But iCloud has a cool icon.
Polimon says
Too bad Steve Jobs was so insulting to the Dropbox people, or Dropbox could have become iCloud.
doug says
I have do disagree, with a caveat. I’m sure that iCloud syncing is broken for you at some level but it is not broken. Let me explain. The people who transition from MobileMe to iCloud got the shaft, at least some of them did. You see the problem isn’t with iCloud it is what the left over crud from MobileMe. The problem with mobile me was Apple didn’t trust the cloud so every device owned their own database and when they changed they pushed an update to the cloud and sent a notification to every other device to sync too. But if there was a problem, it would stop syncing to try to avoid trashing data. As part of this it created a maze of files and backups and indexes and what not to try to get back in sync but never succeeded. This is where you are stuck and your only option is to reload and sync down from iCloud. I know I was there.
This is still a huge black mark on Apple for not getting the transition correct, but the service as it stands now is working.
Note:!! You mentioned the storage for photos that Yahoo gives you and that is great! Apple gives you an unlimited amount of storage for photo and video collections as well with iCloud and backups the last thousand photos and videos as well. All totally free! No ad’s on web pages, emails or anything else. That said, I will never understand why they reduced the old MobileMe accounts from 25GB down to 5. They should have just upped everyone else to 25GB so that people with multiple iOS devices could reasonably use iCloud for general backup.
Iggy pence says
Too many errors in your line of reasoning, Doug. ICloud IS broken for many, many customers. That’s a fact.
I, and many others, have reloaded iCloud from scratch many times and it still breaks. It’s even worse with 3rd party apps that use iCloud to store and sync. It’s a mess. It is NOT working– often.
When did Apple start giving unlimited photo storage online for free? iCloud has a price tag after 5Gb and only holds the last 1,000 photos in Photo Stream.
Personaly, I don’t trust important data to Apple because their system is not stable. I don’t trust Google because the steal information and sell it.
Doug Petrosky says
Believe me or not. I had to reload my os to clear the crud from MobileMe and now am golden. As for storage, photo share sites setup in iCloud do not appear to count against your storage limit and I have seen no limit as to how much you can share. Test it.