Is iCloud totally worthless?

The whole iCloud thing leaves me very frustrated. Bet it hasn't done wonders for the Apple folks involved either. I have three separate iCloud/MacOS(10.7.2)/MobileMe issues in our all Mac home computerized life:

• Bookmarks don't sync. This may be a minor issue, but why would it happen and what does that tell you about the shiny new iCloud. A few raindrops?
• Support. I went to the support site to book a call back from AppleCare Support. Guess what? The earliest call back possible today (Saturday) is next Thursday!!! Wow.
• On the iPhone side Gallery app (still on MobileMe) crashes, even though the webapp seems OK.
• On the Mac, side the newly downloaded iPhoto crashes when loaded, before upgrading the Photo Library.
• Also on the Mac side both pre- and post-conversion to iCloud IMAP accounts on MobileMe have been real flaky. Have a look at your console with Mail open and you'll see what I mean- lots of background failures, lots of missing Help files' calls, just a general malaise.

If you guys have any light to shed on these topics start a new topic on them and let us know the topic name or link, please.

H

Normand Lepine wrote:

....When I LogOut of iCloud and try to SignIn to MM, the message states that I have moved to iCloud. Am I stuck in the cloud?

Yes you are :-(

I have spent the two days similarly, "playing" with this. I am not really at the stage yet to know what it does successfully. I am exitedly waiting to see if the change I made on the to do list shows up on my iPad2, the suspense may kill me!

I do know iCloud does not do what I hoped which is what WUALA does which is to actually keep files synchronised on different machines which appear in the finder window. Saying that the integration with finder does not work in 64 bit Lion

It does not even seem to allow backup of any files other than iWork files. Less functional than iDisk. Not a WebDAV even

It does not sync any files, it puts them in a webdrive which you need to retrieve when connected to the internet, not much use for working on a plane!

Who needs music synchronised on to three or four devices owned by the same person anyway? That sort of iTunes stuff is done when you have a spare minute!

It also does not help with the snchronising of my various bits of software. It actually causes problems because I use iDisk for some of that. So iCloud has actually created more need for Dropbox, box.net, WUALA etc.

For those of us who actually work and dont just move music and photo around all day!

See my previous post.... WUALA or similar is what you need synced filed on each machine and online.

There is a short-term answer and a long term answer:

Short term:

It is quite simple - the iWork applications on the Mac haven't been updated for iCloud yet. Be patient...

Losing iDisk was bad - but then, there are many files that I wouldn't want to trust to the cloud anyway. So I have set up my own server to replace iDisk. More disk space, and faster, too.

At the end of the day, the cost of Lion + Server is less than what I paid every year for my MobileMe family account.

Long term:

Apple is moving away from the concept of a visible file system. The file system is the biggest security risk in today's systems. We are moving towards sandboxed apps that manage their data automatically without an exposed file system that everybody can mess with. There is no room for iDisk in that strategy.

So, instead of complaining, I am curious to see where this journey will lead us in the next year or two. If all goes well, there will come a time where we laugh about the ridiculously ancient concept of files and directories that you had to manage manually...

I think iCloud has been a total pain in the a%$*. I have spent this entire weekend trying to configure my devices to sync with each other including an 60 min stint at the genius bar. Although I have sorted most things out there are some things that still don't work properly:

My iCloud calendars aren't recognised by my work macbook as it doesn't have lion on it yet. This is despite the fact that these same calendars were syncing fine with MobileMe only a couple of days ago and I haven't changed the settings.

iWorks documents also don't sync between devices. The only way I can get them onto the cloud is to manually upload them through Safari (which sort of defeats the entire purpose). iDisk is no longer an option for me any more now.

Twitter, Facebook as well as these forums are awash with disgruntled users. Many of us have to go back to work tomorrow and we will have problems with our productivity because of this mess. I left PCs and MS windows precisely because of problems like this. Up till now my Apple issues have almost always been solve in less than 30 min, I would never have thought I'd have to go through this ordeal.

Steve Jobs is famous for saying "Keep is simple, stupid". I wonder who's looking stupid now. I think he took iCloud up into the clouds with him.

doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of iCloud and wireless syncing?

zalamander wrote:

I think iCloud has been a total pain in the a%$*. I have spent this entire weekend trying to configure my devices to sync with each other including an 60 min stint at the genius bar. Although I have sorted most things out there are some things that still don't work properly:

Zalamander,

Go to my post, and you will find out what you did wrong. Sorry, but I don't have a way to get back to square 1, in this case, except to reinstall the OS. On my second go-round (on a different machine) I found the trick.

H

I just want to chime in and be one of the people who says: VERY DISAPPOINTING. I don't care where Apple might want to take us (as per other responders), since they're just silly about being so cryptic all the time you actually can't guess anyway. So there's no point in wondering what the future holds, there is only value in assessing what we now have to use. And what we have is an iOS update that detracts from or even deletes already useful operations (file syncing and backup between macs via iDisk of ANY file).

Apple has not been upfront about the limitations of iCloud and have made it sound like this is file-syncing 2.0, but in fact it's not, it's just a re-focussing of Apple AWAY from Macs and towards iOS, which, and let's be honest, is not really a production OS, but rather a consumption OS. People who are doing real work are mainly using their Mac OSX, and iOS is only there to do light work or consume data. The form factor of iOS devices is itself prohibitive for real production. And I would not even care about these things, since they are useful in their own right, but when they replace functional systems, then they encroach on my own work flow in a negative way and force me to have to place a value on Apple's efforts here.

HenryS wrote:

Bookmarks don't sync. This may be a minor issue, but why would it happen and what does that tell you about the shiny new iCloud. A few raindrops?

This is another case of an individual's problem being announced as an iCloud FAULT. The above statement is simply not true. I just saved this page as a Bookmark on my Mac and as fast as I can turn around and pick up my iPad and open Safari and look at the Bookmarks (i.e. a few seconds), it is there. So, Bookmark syncing demonstrably DOES work. Henry's problem is undoubtedly with his particular setup. I cannot comment on what the problem might be, but it is certainly NOT due to any fundamental functionality simply missing from iCloud.

It's a shame so many people have had so many problems and get so wound up about it. I myself have had several issues with getting my local accounts set up as I wish and there are certainly some parts of the MobileMe to iCloud conversion that leave a lot to be desired. But, realistically, for someone with a Mac who simply wants to 'join' iCloud for what it actually does offer and can do, it's a no-brainer.

Part of the problem is people's expectations of a new product. If someone has a mistaken belief that the new product will be able to do something they really want, and then it does not, they get angry. Yet if the supplier of that product never said it would do that, they can hardly be blamed.

It's also imperative that people are able to differentiate between their own problems, i.e. that relate to their own particular setup and those caused by the new product they are currently trying to get to grips with. Like I said, I have certain requirements that have caused additional hassle in setting up iCloud, but they were not Apple's fault.

Although far from perfect, Apple doesn't deserve a lot of the criticism to which they are subjected.

To: UKenGB

I'm sure I can speak for everyone here and say that we are ALL Apple aficiandos. And I am also quite certain that Apple will in due course rectify all of these problems (perhaps not the Apple ID's though). This isn't about unreasonable expectations; I just want iCloud to do what it's meant to do:

- sync calendars, mail, notes, contacts, bookmarks across ALL my devices regardless of what they are (this is what mobile me did)

- allow me to effortlessly store my documents on iCloud without having to manually upload each one

- provide me with the same facilities that I previously had with iTunes

Apple advertised it as the next coming of Christ; perhaps in retrospect they shouldn't've. Perhaps they should've been a bit more modest about how many new things they can introduce at one go.

Apple customers pay much more and therefore its quite natural for them to expect more - that's the way these things work. In the meantime, while Apple sort everything out, we're left picking the pieces.

The media & competitors are going to have a field day with this in the coming week - this fiasco leaves antennagate in the dust. It's really quite a pity.

I have to say too this has been an epic fail on the same scale as Blackberry's Playbook with mising email/calendar/contact functionality and HP's Touchpad. And we've seen what happened to them.

I'm sure that iCloud works great for consumption device/usage purposes. And it works with Windows Vista/7/8 Beta! But it doesn't even work with Snow Leopard! Sorry, but I have to upgrade to Lion and pay for new versions of all my software because they aren't Lion compatible and the app developers won't patch to Lion or can't? So there's money to upgrade versions, upgrade to a virtual machine to keep Snow Leopard running in a sandbox with orphaned programs so data/capability isn't lost, etc.

Admittedly I'm both a professional/business and consumer user...tha's iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPad 2 between family and business. Professiona/productivityl work is on the Mac, consumption/data viewing/connectivity/coordination is on iOS. So looking at the capabilities:

• iCloud offers email/contact/calendar syncing. I can do that fine with Gmail/Google right now, much better than Mobile Me ever could. So while that might be useful, I need more reason to disrupt my existing connections and services and switch such as stability and additional functionality of bringing all my services to one provider. And Gmail isn't limited to Lion only, it works on iOS all versions and Snow Leopard.
• iCloud offers note and reminder syncing. But it only works with iOS 5 and Lion. I can do that now with Google, Evernote, and many other services and they work across all devices.
• iCloud offers music and related media syncing. But I can do the same thing now across all devices using iTunes without having to upgrade to Lion or iOS 5.
• iCloud offers a crippled version of iDisk document and important file syncing. It removes any sort of file sharing domain. And requires update to Lion. I can do that with DropBox in a disk drive-like environment with no loss of functionality to iOS, Snow Leopard, Lion, or Windows devices. And if I want secure, I can just deposit the entire file structure in an encrypted file as a drive and use that off DropBox and just drag things I want for iOS out of that on Mac before hitting the road.

The problem I see from the above analysis is iCloud has some great ideas. But it has made itself a niche product rather than a relatively all-encompassing service (which they could have easily done with a little forethought...it doesn't have to do everything, but it has to do the RIGHT things and do them WELL to win). And without the later, as you can see from my above analysis, there is no impetus to switch. I was planning to move the remaining machines to Lion, update our iOS devices to 5, and invest in a 4S iPhone primarily because iCloud originally looked like it would allow me to bring all my needs under one service as both professional (a HUGE Mac segment) and consumer. Now instead I am abandoning any upgrade plans as the new capabilities aren't compelling enough at the moment to invest money and lost time to learning new functionality to, and instead will move to even further third party services to improve capabilities independent of how Apple implements itself. Again, sounds like the Blackberry Playbook story all over again except this time Apple is the one behind the curve and likely to fail if so many of us will not bother using this new service no matter what its price, free or otherwise.

I too am hoping they get the idea and improve things across the spectrum. But its six months in and Playbook stil has no email/calendar/contacts. If Apple is thinking "we'll add this in a year or two", they will be too late to the game as the HP Touchpad was. iCloud will have become a primarily consumer/niche product much like AppleTV by that time. This is a critical junction between their consumer and professional segments (which as with me actually overlap, are not separate)...this requires a fix in a month, not a year, if they want a market "win" instead of "thud".

I agree Ditto

I must buy iWork?

It is very simple to place a value on something that is free. If the something works for what is needed, then it is useful. If not, it is without value. The cost has nothing to do with value.

In this case, the iCloud has been touted as a place to store up to 5G of files free, with more storage available at a modest price. This has been widely reported in various news articles; Apple Store employees told me explicitly that even though iDisk would evaporate, the iCloud will work as well. So I bought into Lion [not free, by the way], and I find that I cannot easily upload a Word document to iClouid.

iGuess that Microsoft Office may be updated with access explicitly to iCloud. But at present, this does not work. The iCloud is currently without value for the purpose of storing, for example, a Word document.