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Apple Merging 'iCloud Documents and Data' Service With iCloud Drive in May 2022
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Possibly, but I think it's more likely that this is deprecating functionality and they want to give developers time to pivot before their apps break.
Go back to the iCloud keynote in 2011 and it was called "Documents in the Cloud" back then, specifically here:
Yay. Nothing ever goes wrong when Apple makes major changes to iCloud.
Cant they find a way to make iCloud Drive syncing a priority?
I've been using it since the beginning, and I'm still waiting for it to improve. Documents take forever to sync, or sometimes don't sync at all. The syncing aspect is NOTHING like it is from products like Dropbox or OneDrive. With those products, if you add a file, it syncs. Now. Right now. Not later. Not Maybe. It uploads, and is available elsewhere. iCloud Drive gives no such consideration to syncing.
I've been using it since the beginning, and I'm still waiting for it to improve. Documents take forever to sync, or sometimes don't sync at all. The syncing aspect is NOTHING like it is from products like Dropbox or OneDrive. With those products, if you add a file, it syncs. Now. Right now. Not later. Not Maybe. It uploads, and is available elsewhere. iCloud Drive gives no such consideration to syncing.
I like that Apple is cleaning up iCloud a little, but what I really want is macOS in iCloud.
I have an M1 MacBook Pro, and an Intel Mac mini. I recently did a nuke-n-pave on my Mac mini to start fresh, and did a clean reinstall of macOS. It's not necessary to do this but I like the feeling of starting over.
I want my two machines to mirror each other in almost every way. Settings, applications, documents, menu bar, everything. It was a huge pain to figure out what I was missing on my Mac mini, and it took more time than it should.
My macOS dream is that I could sign in with my Apple ID and choose to set up my Mac from a "backup" like we do in iOS, and then download whatever apps I need when macOS is installed.
I have an M1 MacBook Pro, and an Intel Mac mini. I recently did a nuke-n-pave on my Mac mini to start fresh, and did a clean reinstall of macOS. It's not necessary to do this but I like the feeling of starting over.
I want my two machines to mirror each other in almost every way. Settings, applications, documents, menu bar, everything. It was a huge pain to figure out what I was missing on my Mac mini, and it took more time than it should.
My macOS dream is that I could sign in with my Apple ID and choose to set up my Mac from a "backup" like we do in iOS, and then download whatever apps I need when macOS is installed.
I worked for AppleCare and we were always told that it was for legal reasons why they couldn’t do that. What if hackers stole someone’s account.
Kinda BS, but whatever
also, let’s say someone gets married and you merge their account. What about if they get divorced? Do you split it up?
Create a shared folder on iCloud Drive with only you as participant. Files in this shared folder will sync quicker. At least that is my experience after I tried this solution.
Good to see some movement in the user’s direction. iCloud and Apple ID implementation not user friendly at all. My preference scrap the whole idea and start over.
Some people do NOT want their machines to mirror each other. Some people do NOT want all of their documents to reside in the cloud, but to be local. Some people have had massive problems with iCloud Drive torching documents and functionality. While I am as big an Apple fan as any, I use other cloud services - not Google, though - for cloud storage. Apple does not do Cloud stuff well. And yes, I have had two Apple IDs since Apple IDs became a thing and I'm sick of it and kind of amazed that they cannot fix it.
Documents and Data is a service that is used by apps. That will be merged with iCloud Drive later next year. This is not same as Desktop and Documents.
Attachments
It's generally quite fast and reliable, in my experience. I used Dropbox more or less from the beginning and only migrated to iCloud Drive a few years ago. Dropbox wins with granular control and transparency and version control. iCloud Drive is better with being deeply integrated into the system, and has (IMO) a way less intrusive UI.
iCloud Drive doesn't tell you with any detail what it's syncing or when, but tends to favor stuff you're actively using. And it's definitely not "convoluted" by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I'd like a little more information from it than it gives.
It's been a long while since they updated storage tiers. Hopefully that gets another look soon ...
No. It's not a backup, it's a sync service. Please stop telling people this, because then it leads to us having to answer support questions where people assume they can get stuff back that they deleted because they believe it's a backup. It syncs whatever changes you make, including deletions.
Does "iCloud Documents and Data" also include other things stored in iCloud but not visible in iCloud Drive, such as game saves, app settings, etc? I would love to be able to clean up some of that data I don't need anymore since they seem to count against the iCloud storage space. As far as I can tell, there's really no way to remove them if the app doesn't provide the option, or if I already deleted the app.
If you have a Mac with iCloud turned on, you can go to "~/Library/Mobile Documents" to see this info. Mine has stuff like the following when I list the contents of that folder in Terminal. (There are a bunch more, these are just a few examples.)
I've tried removing some via Terminal commands, but the deletions don't sync back up to the cloud, so I'm basically stuck with the useless files/data forever.
If you have a Mac with iCloud turned on, you can go to "~/Library/Mobile Documents" to see this info. Mine has stuff like the following when I list the contents of that folder in Terminal. (There are a bunch more, these are just a few examples.)
8K2JCY88ZA~com~liability~Earth-Clock
8Z3V4F58RK~com~ustwo~monumentvalley
EWU3Q535J9~com~abcdigital~abc~videoplayer
JFJ4SDLLV4~com~mediocre~smashhit
iCloud~com~imangi~templerun2
iCloud~com~nbcuni~nbc~portal
iCloud~com~snowman~alto
iCloud~com~snowman~altos-odyssey
I've tried removing some via Terminal commands, but the deletions don't sync back up to the cloud, so I'm basically stuck with the useless files/data forever.
If I had one Apple feature request, being able to selectively nuke my past Apple/iOS store purchase history and remove those files you just mentioned — that would be it!
iCloud is the poorest, least featured of all storage services in the market, their only advantage is being fused into the OS. I have gone through the process of comparing it to competing services and it loses in almost every regard.
I hope someday icloud will not suck. Untill then I will use Dropbox. Somehow, Dropbox always works.
Will this stop "iCloud Documents and Data" from using 3GB+ of cellular data every month?
Sometime around 2 years ago, with no change in my usage habits, "iCloud Documents and Data" jumped from minuscule data usage to hundreds of MB per month. I reported it to Apple and shut down everything I could imagine on my end, but it kept relentlessly increasing, up through 1GB per month and kept going.
I have no idea what this is about, and it makes zero sense to me -- what are the circumstances under which documents are being changed on some other device but it's appropriate not to sync with my phone at the time of change (on WiFi) but to wait hours later and do it on cellular?
Part of the usual sad Apple cycle where the A-team creates a really impressive framework (like how little data iOS required for so many years) only eventually to have C-teamer's start writing code for the framework and blow it all to hell without even understanding what they are breaking 😟.Happened with Finder, happened with iTunes, now it's happening with the iOS networking system.
Sometime around 2 years ago, with no change in my usage habits, "iCloud Documents and Data" jumped from minuscule data usage to hundreds of MB per month. I reported it to Apple and shut down everything I could imagine on my end, but it kept relentlessly increasing, up through 1GB per month and kept going.
I have no idea what this is about, and it makes zero sense to me -- what are the circumstances under which documents are being changed on some other device but it's appropriate not to sync with my phone at the time of change (on WiFi) but to wait hours later and do it on cellular?
Part of the usual sad Apple cycle where the A-team creates a really impressive framework (like how little data iOS required for so many years) only eventually to have C-teamer's start writing code for the framework and blow it all to hell without even understanding what they are breaking 😟.Happened with Finder, happened with iTunes, now it's happening with the iOS networking system.
If then.
Account merger would be an incredibly risky move by Apple. The risk isn't in the massive number of situations, where a person legitimately has two or more Apple IDs. The risk comes in the relatively small number of situations where a decision by Apple to allow account merger results in things like: the hijacking of a celebrity's account by a disgruntled employee, identity theft, divorce proceedings where one spouse maliciously takes over the account and data belonging to the other spouse... It doesn't take much negative publicity of that sort (especially if it occurs to a celebrity) for Apple's long-touted commitment to security and privacy to go out the window.
Just what would a person have to do to assure Apple that they have the legal right to move the data and purchase history of one account into another account? What might Apple's legal liability be if they fail to catch fraudulent mergers? It's not a trivial task. The safest thing for Apple (as unpopular as it can be), is to just say no.
