Anyone ready to move 'to the iCloud' ?

Nope. The inability for apps to manage documents other than their own seems to make it pretty much useless; I don't understand why an image app can't just request all images, sorted by the apps that created them.

For example, if you create a new message in Mail and try to attach a file, then it won't see any of the files you know you've stored in iCloud, you have to go back into the app that created it, open the file, and use the share menu to create the e-mail.

It's fine for a much more constrained environment like iOS (even then…) but it's just no good when you might want to pass a document from one word processor to another, or open an image in a program that can handle multiple formats from a variety of sources.

And it's also not clear what happens if you stop using one of the apps; how do you open your documents if the image creation tool you've used is out of date and you want to switch to another one?


Plus I have ~3tb of hard drive space, the same in external backup, and have a NAS on the way for a third point of redundancy; I'm too invested in local storage I think

That all said, I think it'll be useful for passing files around, but for permanent storage it's just no good.

With iCloud as it is today, no chance. You can only open an iCloud document in the application that created it, there is little organisational structure such as folders available, and anyway all those documents are still stored locally but hidden, it's not like they are only in the cloud. Dropbox or similar is a better solution.

iDisk was a much better solution. You even had the option to store your entire idisk locally and sync it, or just access all the files remotely. iDisk was ahead of its time, then it was ignored and then replaced with the ridiculous solution which is iCloud Documents. Its not well thought out, just like most of the changes at Apple as of late.

For example. There is no iCloud PDF viewer on the iPhone, so if you save your Preview PDF to iCloud, how do you see it on your phone or iPad? If I add it to Dropbox, I can open it with Acrobat Reader or Preview, even if I saved it from the web using a web browser. I can then open it on any mobile device, including Android or desktop linux.

iCloud is just full of fail. I don't even think it works well for iOS like devices, as I pointed out.

It should be noted that iCloud documents appear both in Spotlight searches as well as the 'All My Files' view in the Finder.

haravikk said:

if you create a new message in Mail and try to attach a file, then it won't see any of the files you know you've stored in iCloud, you have to go back into the app that created it, open the file, and use the share menu to create the e-mail.

Click to expand...

steve-p said:

You can only open an iCloud document in the application that created it

Click to expand...

Not true.

Confusing.

When i'm in mail it leads to me my iCloud area but it's blank. Can't figure out what iCloud folder it's referencing.

nuckinfutz said:

Confusing.

When i'm in mail it leads to me my iCloud area but it's blank. Can't figure out what iCloud folder it's referencing.

Click to expand...

I agree it can be a bit confusing. It's referencing Mail.app's own iCloud folder (~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~mail/ . You can save mail messages and/or attachments to that location.

A cloud service without proper file management? Support for few file types? And all this through their own devices?

Don't think so...

Creating a smart folder is another way to have quick access to all of your iCloud documents from within the Finder and "Open File..." dialog boxes:



By the way: It gets weirder once you open and duplicate an iCloud document that was saved by another app. Want to guess which iCloud container this is going to be saved in?

tkermit said:

I agree it can be a bit confusing. It's referencing Mail.app's own iCloud folder (~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~mail/ . You can save mail messages and/or attachments to that location.

Click to expand...

Hmmm may be nice to drag some items in there that are often attached to emails. I'll give it a try tonight. Thanks!

For me, iCloud is great for contacts and calendars and not much else.

Sadly, iCloud is another of Apples much hyped, yet feeble attempts at the cloud. It would be terrific if Apple made it highly useful and worthy of praise.

At some point I think they may begin to improve it, yet at this rate they make me wonder just how long it might take. One of iClouds most compelling features is the very attractive icon they've created.

Next best is the terrific graphics and web pages on Apple .com. It's there that one gets to see Apples true expertise, creating a terrific & clever description of the service.

Some say that half the battle, when a company is introducing something new is the marketing pitch. Well, there's no worries cause Apples got that down cold.

Conversely now that it's time to put their money where their mouth is an deliver, they may have backed themselves into a corner.

Yes.
I've moved everything to iCloud that is a Pages, Keynote or Numbers document; and I have all my assignments stored their too.
For all my other files I use Google Drive as Dropbox and Box are extremely poor.

ixodes said:

Sadly, iCloud is another of Apples much hyped, yet feeble attempts at the cloud. It would be terrific if Apple made it highly useful and worthy of praise.

At some point I think they may begin to improve it, yet at this rate they make me wonder just how long it might take. One of iClouds most compelling features is the very attractive icon they've created.

Next best is the terrific graphics and web pages on Apple .com. It's there that one gets to see Apples true expertise, creating a terrific & clever description of the service.

Some say that half the battle, when a company is introducing something new is the marketing pitch. Well, there's no worries cause Apples got that down cold.

Conversely now that it's time to put their money where their mouth is an deliver, they may have backed themselves into a corner.

Click to expand...

Content free post.

In no way did you come close to divulging any deficiency in iCloud.

Yes...sharing in iCloud isn't up to par with the competition but iCloud works.

Not a chance I'm going to iCloud yet. I used to use MobileMe's iDisk, which was great. When it got dropped I switched to Dropbox. I'm not going to Apple's new solution until they fix these two main issues:

(1) iCloud is interoperable between apps. Rather than store the files in accordance with each file type, Apple needs to make it so that it stores entire folders with various file types and lets you open those files with any App that is granted permission to that folder. Others described the same need in this thread, perhaps more clearly than I. I have hundreds of files to keep track of at any single time, I'm not going to remember all their locations. I will remember how I organize these projects and what projects I'm working on. So we need a way to place all files related to a single project in one location, and visible from all Apps so I can quickly look up what other work I've done in this project.

(2) iCloud needs to support far more organizational structure. Just as an example, I teach a many places so I need a folder for each institution, and then within each of those folders I need a folder for each course. In there I need to keep all my syllabus, presentations, assignments, lecture notes, etc. But I also like to have a folder for each assignment given to my students so I can store their files in there, and they don't all submit in the exact same format no matter how much you instruct them to do so. With Apple's current setup, I'd have massive lists of files that I'd have to sort through in order to get any work done. In this example I need four levels of folders, plus the capacity to store multiple different file types in each one. Apple only allows two levels of folders, and one file type unless you are constantly looking various different Apps, utter nonsense.

wow reading this, dropbox or box seem better cloud alternatives.

nuckinfutz said:

Content free post.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment.

I'm practicing to be a politician

I'm hoping to move to the cloud, at least for the purposes of working on my air. I'm not sure how much I will use iCloud though. For a start, I prefer using microsoft word. I know this is because I'm much more familiar with word than pages, but most of the documents I get given from uni are word documents and never seem to open properly in pages.

I think I'll continue to use dropbox most of the time. I paid for mobile me, but I didn't really use it much. When I first signed up, find my iphone was only available for mobile me and that got used.

I'll probably use it from iPad to my laptop and desktop, but past that, I doubt i'll use it.

ixodes said:

Thanks for the compliment.

I'm practicing to be a politician

Click to expand...

LOL. That "is" a skill you know. You weren't that bad but
clearly your results with iCloud differ from mine.

Granted i'm not using it as heavily as I'd like I've had relatively a painless
time dealing with iCloud apps like Downcast, Day One and writing apps like Byword and iA Writer.

I think ML should improve things a bit but I'm in no way saying your experiences aren't real.

I honestly dont even know what everyone is talking about. I love icloud between iOS and mountain lion. (icloud tabs, reminders, notes,imessage, calender)

I dont understand whats wrong with it. Are you guys talking about documents from pages and apps like that? For me it always updated the documents between ios devices and if I wanted the document I juust download it. I assume thats how it is for Pages on the mac now isnt it?

steve-p said:

there is little organisational structure such as folders available, and anyway all those documents are still stored locally but hidden, it's not like they are only in the cloud. Dropbox or similar is a better solution.

Click to expand...

Not true, you can have your documents organized in folders. Also the second not true point is about the docs being stored locally, they are not local they are stored in Apples servers.

Dropbox is a more complete solution for backing up and syncing FILES across computers and accessing them across platforms or devices, iCloud is great for the casual user of iWork documents and multiple device Apple user.

I use all of googles services and Dropbox. I work for a home improvement dealer. All of my manufacturers use Dropbox to share things. Not many people use macs so for me Dropbox and google are better.

I've got thousands of documents of different types. All nicely organized. Not a chance I'd use iCloud with it's flat structure that organizes by creating program and not by project. And if you turn Documents on in iCloud it adds hurdles to using the apps for local storage.

There are other services (including my own server) to handle calendar, contacts, reminders, and note syncing, and mail.

I do use "the cloud" for one of my backup destinations, but only used iCloud for testing. It's now off.

Sital said:

For me, iCloud is great for contacts and calendars and not much else.

Click to expand...

I agree, although I would also add notes, Safari bookmarks and Photo Stream to the really useful list. I guess for everything else I find DropBox much more useful on 3 different computers, and don't need access to anything in there much on my iPhone or iPad.

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marc11 said:

Also the second not true point is about the docs being stored locally, they are not local they are stored in Apples servers.

Click to expand...

No, they are stored locally on OS X in ~/Library/Mobile Documents and mirrored to the cloud.

iCloud is great for everything but the document storage. The fact that documents can only be stored and seen by individual apps makes it pretty much useless.