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Developers Unhappy With Bug Causing iCloud Unreliability
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In general, I find Apple’s internet related offerings a pile of doo-doo. It’s always been that way. I try to stay away from iCloud as much as possible, but the main battle is how they insist on trying to get you to use it, no matter how many times you refuse - there’s always some nagging to set it up. I don’t use Mail, Apple Maps, Apple Music or streaming etc. Just rubbish. I know people hate Google, but to me, Gmail and Google Maps is head and shoulders above Apple’s lame offerings. Nothing is 100% reliable, that’s technology, but the horror show that is Apple’s internet offerings I can do without. YMMV.
For me, if an app relies too much on iCloud it’s a no-go. That’s why for me local storage is an absolute must. It’s the reason why I spend more money on iPad, iPhone and Macs to get more storage - because I want it all local and then back it up to HDDs.
I am always amazed at folks who trust the cloud for everything - sorry, I’m the opposite - unless I can see it locally and on my HDDs, I can’t rest easy.
For me, if an app relies too much on iCloud it’s a no-go. That’s why for me local storage is an absolute must. It’s the reason why I spend more money on iPad, iPhone and Macs to get more storage - because I want it all local and then back it up to HDDs.
I am always amazed at folks who trust the cloud for everything - sorry, I’m the opposite - unless I can see it locally and on my HDDs, I can’t rest easy.
A few months ago, I had been out on a hike and took a few hundred photos with my iPhone. I AirDropped them to my iPad and then deleted them from the iPhone and emptied the trash (so my slow mobile WiFi wouldn't upload the trash, ugh!). I then began editing the photos on my iPad. When I finished, I looked through them. Half had disappeared!!! Somehow, my phone had touched WiFi for a moment and then iCloud deleted the photos thinking the iPhone deletion occurred after the iPad edits.
I don't know how to fix this problem (short of moving all photos into a temporary folder in Files).
Apple needs to add a MOVE option to AirDropping photos between devices to both avoid duplicates and unintended deletions.
And never let RAW photos get into iCloud. Once there, you can't get rid of the RAW file. It was a couple of years ago, but I did everything I could think of to rid myself of the RAW files. When I re-uploaded the edited photos, iCloud recovered the deleted RAW files and attached them again. I hadn't even noticed this was happening until I saw huge files in iCloud for Windows and began investigating. Now there is A RAW album in Photos, but I still don't know how to save to heic and delete the RAW.
And while I'm on it, I have GB of original photos I can still revert to even though my edits are finished. iCloud should remove the disk-wasting original photo after a few months, unless I opt to protect them.
I don't know how to fix this problem (short of moving all photos into a temporary folder in Files).
Apple needs to add a MOVE option to AirDropping photos between devices to both avoid duplicates and unintended deletions.
And never let RAW photos get into iCloud. Once there, you can't get rid of the RAW file. It was a couple of years ago, but I did everything I could think of to rid myself of the RAW files. When I re-uploaded the edited photos, iCloud recovered the deleted RAW files and attached them again. I hadn't even noticed this was happening until I saw huge files in iCloud for Windows and began investigating. Now there is A RAW album in Photos, but I still don't know how to save to heic and delete the RAW.
And while I'm on it, I have GB of original photos I can still revert to even though my edits are finished. iCloud should remove the disk-wasting original photo after a few months, unless I opt to protect them.
Reversing the headline...
"Developers Happy With Bug Causing..."
... kind of shows what nonsense the headline is.
"Developers Happy With Bug Causing..."
... kind of shows what nonsense the headline is.
The behavior changed, you get named tab groups synced, and the start page has a view of tabs in the 'default' group of each other device.
The iCloud team does a lot of cutting changes, and sometimes it bites them. The iOS 13 betas were rumored to be unstable due to broken builds of iCloud due to internal code changes to support shared folders; since Apple uses it as the core of all their own account sync, development was very difficult. Supposedly this was why features for that release got cut pretty handedly, why there was over a month gap in beta releases, and why iPadOS's release was delayed - they can't ship iPhones off schedule and they can't ship them without the hardware support being added to the next OS. Shared Folders shipped months later in March.
That said, 503 errors are either a client side retry bug or server infrastructure issues. No real way to tell from here since iCloud's infrastructure is a black box.
In general Apple is very aggressive about pursuing network and infrastructure improvements, and sometimes it bites them in the butt and they have to roll things back.
Yeah, a lot of devs don't realize what they get with the iOS developer SDKs. Apple really tries to differentiate by having features you can't get in other platforms easily (and as a result, shops might be encouraged to make exclusive native software rather than portable electron garbage).
Why complain? It's a 'free' sync service, isn't it?
EULA says: the service is 'as-is'.
Why build your app on a questionable foundation?
EULA says: the service is 'as-is'.
Why build your app on a questionable foundation?
I think part of the issue is the behavior of iCloud is unclear enough that most people, it is ever hard to blame it (oh, I must have been sloppy, where did I put X ? do I have a problem with the OS install of computer C ? maybe I do not have enough space on device Y which may be why Z will not appear ? …).
But the truth is pretty much everyone around me who is using iCloud complained at some point that some strange things were happening about it.
Yes. As far as I can tell they outright lie about iCloud photos. They tell you to turn on "Optimize Storage" on the phone because they keep originals in the cloud, but I've found the cloud files are compressed and quite degraded when I download them from the cloud.
Very upsetting off because transferring original images from the phone to the the pc is also buggy and crashes.
They need to fix this.
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Every single piece of code write by Apple in last five yrs is s***t; every single piece of code write by competitors is worst.
iOS is a bug with a “operating system” nickname, macOS became the same with iOS integration, others os are iOS compliant so them are also buggy (watchOS, HomePod os, tvOS). They sells dumb hw with extra prices and sw ALWAYS s**k.
It’s unbelievable how sh***y it is, power on a PPC with Tiger (buggy itself) and compare them.
iOS is a bug with a “operating system” nickname, macOS became the same with iOS integration, others os are iOS compliant so them are also buggy (watchOS, HomePod os, tvOS). They sells dumb hw with extra prices and sw ALWAYS s**k.
It’s unbelievable how sh***y it is, power on a PPC with Tiger (buggy itself) and compare them.
I am so fed up with Apple. It's an absolute disgrace. I'm managing over 400 Devices via MDM. Been 20 years with Apple. But it started to go downhill 10 years ago. Nothing works as its supposed to. If I call Enterprise Support they treat me like a newbie that has no clue. REALLY Apple? You only care about consumer stuff, don't care about Schools and Enterprise anymore. You Support is useless, If I say we use Federated Authentication for manged Apple ID and I show the problem via Remote desktop to the support agents they tell me: "Interesting, never seen the Federated Authentication login process."
REALLY APPLE!!!!
And If I say Schoolwork does not sync properly to the iCloud and that students loose their homework, the tell me: "we tested everything works fine" ""Of course we do not test with Federated Authentication" Have you checked Microsoft Azure?" REALLY Apple???!!! Yes I checked Azure, there I have logs that confirm a successful login by my user! Can I check any logs on Apple School or Business manager???!!! REALLY APPLE!!!???
They say: "oh you're using PDF in schoolwork, PDF is not our Format, have you tried with Pages?"
Darn!! Isn't PDF a Standard? If we want to write with the Pencil on a PDF that's what we want and we should be able to. That should be the reason why the documents don't sync properly to the iCloud? Because we use PDF!!!
REALLY REALLY APPLE???
REALLY APPLE!!!!
And If I say Schoolwork does not sync properly to the iCloud and that students loose their homework, the tell me: "we tested everything works fine" ""Of course we do not test with Federated Authentication" Have you checked Microsoft Azure?" REALLY Apple???!!! Yes I checked Azure, there I have logs that confirm a successful login by my user! Can I check any logs on Apple School or Business manager???!!! REALLY APPLE!!!???
They say: "oh you're using PDF in schoolwork, PDF is not our Format, have you tried with Pages?"
Darn!! Isn't PDF a Standard? If we want to write with the Pencil on a PDF that's what we want and we should be able to. That should be the reason why the documents don't sync properly to the iCloud? Because we use PDF!!!
REALLY REALLY APPLE???
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Google and Microsoft are lightyears ahead with GoogleDrive/OneDrive of what Apple delivers with iCloud - Apple take a look what your competitors already deliver and are capable of.
I decided last year to go from last version to last version. So I am on 14.8 and will only upgrade in Aug/Sep to the last version of 15.
We have over 5K employees using OneDrive and yes occasionally some laptop users get logged out of OneDrive because the laptop goes through many sleep/wake cycles over a week/month. A reboot fixes this issue and things sync.
We have maybe 70 Mac users who constantly complain about iCloud syncing issues.
Hopefully in February when the the new Mac OneDrive client drops with known folder sync comes we can fully move the Mac users to OneDrive.
iCloud always has issues with iCloud Photos... Syncing ALWAYS has issues!!!!!! My Mac will go days, or weeks without syncing Photos, while I just keep snapping away on my iPhone. There is no reliable way to resolve, it just works when it wants to. Really odd for a paid service...
The web services I created and posted were sporadically getting 503 errors too. Found out it was Akamai causing these random errors, because the 503 error wasn't showing up in the web logs. Akamai hemmed and hawed and never came up with a resolution.
Now, I point the web service calls directly to the IP address of the server and -- voila! -- no more 503 errors. Apple, please contact me for my résumé.
Now, I point the web service calls directly to the IP address of the server and -- voila! -- no more 503 errors. Apple, please contact me for my résumé.
I have no doubt Apple knows what the issue is and how to fix it but it could relate to something that Apple is looking to implement and does not want it's users knowing but having to disclose the bug issue and do a write up about the bug and explanation how the bug was fixed would let on to it's users what Apple is trying to do, ergo nothing has been done since it was notified of the issue back in November of last year.
CDNs certainly can/do interfere with services, yielding http 503 responses.The web services I created and posted were sporadically getting 503 errors too. Found out it was Akamai causing these random errors, because the 503 error wasn't showing up in the web logs. Akamai hemmed and hawed and never came up with a resolution.
Now, I point the web service calls directly to the IP address of the server and -- voila! -- no more 503 errors. Apple, please contact me for my résumé.
I developed a busy web service API for work that processes upwards of a million daily requests. After many years of faultless operation, the guys in infosec helpfully insisted that the service had to be fronted by a CDN (mention no names). Surprise, surprise, document upload times increased dramatically and started throwing 503 errors.
If it’s any consolation transferring a large number of original photos to the Mac is no picnic either.
onedrive is a real garbage, modifying the original location of the folders and not allowing access due to lack of internet and this is done in the default