Why doesn't iCloud work?
I think I'm going to have to buy a phone with a lot of local storage so I can end the nightmare I'm having with iCloud. Nothing ever, ever works right. I once signed out of iCloud on a MacBook, then things I deleted on that computer also got deleted on other devices. So "signing out" isn't really signing out. Recently I signed out and signed back in on my MacBook and iPhone to make a notification go away (the only solution per official Apple support), and the contacts don't match on my phone and laptop messages any more. Every time I sign out and sign back in it gets worse and worse as far as messages and contacts matching. Contacts in the contacts app on my MacBook also don't match my phone or iMessages. The issue there is duplicates keep getting created and they can't be removed. I tried "remove duplicates" and it just sat there for 20 minutes and I couldn't cancel or force quit the contacts app. The whole point of cloud services is to not have to be syncing between devices all the time but this is worse than having to sync manually because it just syncs haphazardly even when I'm signed out. Does anyone know how to move to strictly local? "Signing out" isn't really signing out.
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 13.4