And then on Tuesday it all works instantaneously and perfectly.
But then Wednesday it stops entirely again.
It honestly baffles me, what possible architecture choice could explain its erratic behavior.
And it baffles me just as much that they've never fixed it.
Whereas Dropbox and Google Drive for Desktop have always worked great.
The google drive for Mac crashes a lot, and no matter how I adjust the settings often refuses to download the full remote system unless I click on the cloud icon next to the file name. They really want you to use a web browser, which I don’t like to do (prefer native apps, thanks).
Dropbox seems to have gotten it right, it seems. I guess that’s why they’re still in business even though their business is built around a feature, not otherwise a product.
"The issue for me was that the Safari iCloud interface would balk at files larger than 10 GB even though the iCloud handles files up to 50 GB."
Wow. Those are ridiculous limitations.
As mentioned in the article this is a helpful command, I use it a couple times a week whenever iCloud syncing is stuck (sadly).
Like the author, I have Dropbox besides iCloud. However, iCloud is an Apple thing — share/backup/store settings, preferences, temporary edits/work, and share with families. If something is essential, even for Pages, Numbers, etc., I store the files in the local version synced to the cloud (Dropbox for personal/family and Google for work).
I haven’t faced the problems people keep mentioning on the Internet, so I stay cautious enough. However, it has been my pattern for a while — Own your content and use everything else as tools[1].
I manually back up Photos every month. I need to find a simple way to automate backing up the photos, contacts, etc., and keep a copy in Open formats.
iCloud is convenient and works as long as we stick to Apple’s prescribed lane. However, try to have a way to walk out if the need arises.
The whole “Apple is bad at cloud” is a meme from a decade ago. Apple is great at the bits of cloud computing that make Apple money.
I just happen to have backups to walk out and not become part of a statistics or, worse, a meme influencer.
It's a bit more work, but not _that_ much more work, and a single weird undebuggable incident can flip the entire "amount of work" calculation on its head.
Logging and diagnostics were minimal and it really was a black box. Smelled very much like one poorly understood/under maintained server sat somewhere that deals with calDav for web.
I suspect that the most senior engineering teams at Apple that work on this stuff are pretty lean to say the least. Imagine a few ultra 10x guys who wrote most of the sync code base and now get hardcore salary incentives to NEVER LEAVE.
For about 3 months my mac had 1second network delays when opening any new connections, but only sometimes? The console wasn't much help as the failing services were all secret apple things with error/failures but no usable logs.
good luck
This sounds like the primary configured DNS server was unreachable, but the secondary was reachable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudy_with_a_Chance_of_Meatba...
Definitely the movie name too, and assuredly not the book which came out 30 years before. (Which the movie is based on)
I’ve since moved all my data out of iCloud Drive (although I still use it for their other services like photos). I thought my case was just special but I’ve encountered similar issues helping friends/family.
It’s beyond me how they get away with people thinking it “just works” and how they can’t manage to make a simple cloud sync service.
That criticism never made sense to me, especially from Steve Jobs, as a moderate sized team putting their all into an excellent product will be competitive against a larger team putting in a half-hearted effort. As he himself demonstrated.
They only survive at all bc so many competitive alternatives can’t be bothered to invest in doing a good job.
Of course if they slip and only start putting in a 1.5x effort or something then they won't be competitive.