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Developers Unhappy With Bug Causing iCloud Unreliability

AxiomaticRubric said:
HTTP status code 503 is Service Unavailable. It sounds like a scaling issue to me. Too many users and not enough iCloud servers? Regardless, one would think Apple's iCloud API would provide an exact error message whenever this happens, so developers can respond accordingly in their apps.
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As a developer you find out that Apple hates errors. They somehow have come to believe that "it just works" also means that "it does not complain". For example, iTunes for its whole life would not report audio transfer errors from CD. So importing CDs was "it just works" even if the imported audio file had glitches.

Apple also considers its servers and services errors as potential security leaks, so they only report generic errors. This is a design feature at Apple to address security.

In Apple's log implementation all variable data in the log message is redacted automatically. A dev in control of their own machine can change that right now, but that is why I believe that no one is using Apple's logging but Apple.

I could go on and on. The truth is Apple does not want error messages displayed because it potentially harms the user perception and by default in a lot of cases Apple just ignores them and fails silently. After all if you don't get an error it can't be Apple's fault now can it?

Apple iCould APIs do not let the developer know what is happening in a way that is easy to use. If you have time to write 10,000s of lines of code you can figure it out, but most don't. iCould version 1 just never worked. Apple scrapped the APIs and converted to iCould version 2. Its better, but still not usable, except for the simplest of cases.
 
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Apple does not do services well. They never have. I migrated calendar and contacts off Apple to Fastmail several years ago because iCloud was so poor.

I would never keep anything in iCloud Drive that I cared about, nor depend on iCloud Sync for anything I cared about. The last time I tried to make that work was with GoodTask, which is a fantastic app. But you have to use it in isolation (either the Mac or iOS) because the infrastructure is just that bad and the two don't talk to each other reliably.
 
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Literally just a few hours after posting in this thread my iCloud connected Apple apps are acting up. Password and faceID not working in Notes. I'll take this as a request from them to leave the platform :cool:
 
ouimetnick said:
iCloud syncing has always been unreliable. Remember how long it took them to fix iCloud tabs in safari? Old tabs closed weeks ago would reappear, support promised a fix was coming, but never really did. Eventually it started working again for most folks though, and we think you’re gonna love it.
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Still happens to me, despite having the latest OS releases running on the latest hardware. This one particular tab won’t go away for months, like a ghost.
 
MacRumors said:


A number of developers are upset with an increasingly problematic iCloud server issue that is causing some apps that have implemented iCloud support to fail to sync properly.

iCloud-General-Feature.jpg

As outlined on the Developer Forums and on Twitter, there are CloudKit connectivity issues that have been occurring since November. Some users of apps that have iCloud support built in are seeing the following message: "Request failed with http status code 503."

The developers behind popular note taking app GoodNotes have been seeing the problem frequently enough that they wrote a support document for customers who are running into the error message. The GoodNotes team says that the app automatically retries to connect and thus the issue gets solved eventually, but they're not sure what's causing the connectivity error to begin with.Some developers have noted that their apps have worked without issue for years prior to the sudden appearance of the iCloud server issue that is apparently causing the error message. From a developer on Apple's forums:A handful of developers have been able to get help from Apple engineering, and one was able to change their iCloud container for their developer account to fix the issue, but there appear to be many developers who are still having issues.


Other developers have resorted to building iCloud status dashboard into their apps so customers can see when iCloud is non-functional.


iCloud failures are a major problem for app developers because the end user of the app doesn't know that it's an Apple issue, so customers blame the app developers for a non-working sync feature that they have no control over.


Multiple developers have reported the iCloud syncing bug to Apple, but it has gone widely unaddressed based on the number of complaints and the fact that the issue has seemingly persisted for at least the last couple of months. It's likely that the problem popped up with the launch of iOS 15 and its sister updates, and it's not clear when a fix might be available.


Customers experiencing iCloud issues should be aware that it's likely an issue on Apple's end and not a bug that app developers can address at this time.

Article Link: Developers Unhappy With Bug Causing iCloud Unreliability
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Well obviously apple's 30% cut is going to improve the service. it just works
 
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Leaflock said:
what does this say exactly? Because it certainly does not help with the failed syncs onedrive has in the company.
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This means Microsoft has the obligation to maintain good service quality while on the Apple side they can choose to provide only “good enough” as most customers aren’t business users, therefore less sensitive to subpar service quality.
 
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ikramerica said:
If it’s any consolation transferring a large number of original photos to the Mac is no picnic either.
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No consolation. I tried that and found PC better. It's like how youtube works better on brave or edge than chrome. Weird.

Carlos Alberto Fiandrino said:
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
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Onedrive has worked incredibly well for me as a consumer version. In a corporate environment I found it unusable, though I always blamed that on our systems people mucking about with system controls and firewalls.
 
nt5672 said:
I could go on and on. The truth is Apple does not want error messages displayed because it potentially harms the user perception and by default in a lot of cases Apple just ignores them and fails silently. After all if you don't get an error it can't be Apple's fault now can it?
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They should read you post. Indeed, my perception of Apple is harmed by my constant notification that my storage is full while having about 80GB free on my iPhone.
 
I spent almost my entire day yesterday on chat and phone with Apple Support over broken iCloud synching of my contacts.

Troubleshooting and data collection. The woman who worked with me was quite good (after I got past the chat guys who seemed not to understand the words they were using).

Awaiting escalation to engineers...
 
dysamoria said:
I spent almost my entire day yesterday on chat and phone with Apple Support over broken iCloud synching of my contacts.
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I've been curating my contacts for far to long to be keeping them in iCloud. You can't even back them up.
 
posguy99 said:
I've been curating my contacts for far to long to be keeping them in iCloud. You can't even back them up.
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I seem to remember an export function in Mac OS’s contacts app. I’m on High Sierra. Can’t confirm at the moment. Check it out.
 
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