Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 207 posts

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#191

Post by stevemoy »

zbowling wrote: post #190
smokey_the_bear wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any documentation about this? I see a few scant references in the developer forum and nothing in the docs.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#releasenotes/DataMan... right there.

From what I can tell the use case for .nosync there is to store a large dataset in a SQLite store in such a way that individual transactions are replicated to iCloud but the entire SQLite store itself is not transferred each time something changes.

The documentation seems to imply that .nosync will prevent the whole store from being uploaded, but (1) that does not seem consistent with what others are reporting, and (2) I cannot find any other supporting information on .nosync in either Apple documentation or dev forums - that doc and this thread are literally the only places I've seen it referenced.

The other underlying issue is whether Apple would be cool with storing persistent application data in Documents provided that it is not synced to iCloud. The use case that Marco and others have described does not really match what's described in that document.

edit: Marcos -> Marco

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#192

Post by kcbanner »

mpakes wrote: post #180
zbowling wrote: post #160

Add .nosync to the file/folder name path and keep it in the home or documents directory. Problem solved. edit: I'm shocked this thread is so long and no body mentioned this. It's been on the apple developer forums for months as a solution.

I haven't had a chance to verify this myself, but according to Marco, this does not actually avoid the iCloud sync: https://twitter.com/#!/marcoarment/status/124587437799374848

The docs specifically say directory, not file. Maybe that is the problem?

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#193

Post by dextorious »

sudoman wrote: post #172
dextorious wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This general problem is a symptom of a major issue regarding the use of software that does not respect the freedom of its users. Developers are not users. I don't particularly want my mobile phone to respect the "freedom of its developers". I do want to be sure that no app I install at a whim hogs the disk down, installs spyware or f*ks the phone when I'm in need to make an important call. If I wanted "developer fr…

> He's only "required" [to do] so if he chooses to use iOS. And if he chooses to use iOS, it's because the platform attracted him, and one thing that attracts a lot of people to it it's the "it just works" and "you don't have to manage it". That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what a…

>That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what about in 5 or 10 years when everyone has an iPhone and Apple has one or no competitors? Can we stop them from shrinking our room if there is no free alternative?

Well, for one our room was fairly small itself before the iPhone. Actually, not small --inexistent. The only reason the touch-smartphone room exists is because Apple made the iPhone and then everybody copied it. So, if they have no competitor in 10 years, more power to them.

But I think that that can't happen. Even MS at the height of its power has had competitors... And today we have Android in several versions already.

> Actually, no. You can access the filesystem, but you can't install your own free (or proprietary) operating system on the iPhone because there isn't one.

Why that is? Because the OSF/GNU etc never cared about a mobile OS until Apple made one. Suddenly freedom in the mobile apps was important. Why wasn't it important when Nokia, Sony, Ericsson et al ruled? Because it took Apple (and Google after that) to show that a mobile OS can be a nice platform to use.

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#194

Post by wlesieutre »

qjz wrote: post #145

Apple - iCloud - Your content. On all your devices. That is the title of Apple's main iCloud page at http://www.apple.com/icloud/ . iCloud is seamlessly integrated into your apps, so you can access your content on all your devices. This is Apple's definition for the iCloud service. It doesn't matter what the data is, it's your data and Apple is promising to sync it between your devices, to preserve your experience. I…

But it's not clear that Instapaper is allowed to put the files in Documents. According to the Data Storage Guidelines cited in the article:

1. Only documents and other data that is user-generated, or that cannot otherwise be recreated by your application, should be stored in the /Documents directory and will be automatically backed up by iCloud.

2. Data that can be downloaded again or regenerated should be stored in the /Library/Caches directory. Examples of files you should put in the Caches directory include database cache files and downloadable content, such as that used by magazine, newspaper, and map applications.

I don't know if this is something enforced in the approval process, but it seems like Apple's intention is for redownloadable content to all be stored in temporary, wipeable locations.

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#195

Post by gbog »

seabee wrote: post #171
gbog wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you would drop freedom of speech just because it is useless unless you own CNN?

Nobody is suggesting that. In any case it's a false comparison, since anybody has the ability to fully exercise their freedom of speech. To exercise your open-source freedoms fully require skills, time, and/or money (to pay others to do it for you).

If the overall noise level is too high and you don't own a microphone, your freedom of speech can't be used effectively, you talk any nobody hears you. It is not a reason to drop freedom of speech, right? It's just the same with free software, the mere fact that you are allowed to read, change and distribute source code IS the key. Doing so is hard but not a reason to dismiss this freedom as irrelevant.

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#196

Post by zbowling »

stevemoy wrote: post #191
zbowling wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#releasenotes/DataMan... right there.

From what I can tell the use case for .nosync there is to store a large dataset in a SQLite store in such a way that individual transactions are replicated to iCloud but the entire SQLite store itself is not transferred each time something changes. The documentation seems to imply that .nosync will prevent the whole store from being uploaded, but (1) that does not seem consistent with what others are reporting, and (…

Can also store in the apps home directory (which is right above the apps Documents directory).

They spoke about .nosync at this year's WWDC a few times. Dev forums are a little nuts since they opened the iOS Beta 5 forums to all the non NDA members.

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#197

Post by faizanaziz »

Apple wants Cache (stuff that can be re downloaded and not core to the experience, just to improve performance) to actually be deletable when space is low. A valid point.

Developers want a place to store app information that is critical and sometimes a very important part of the app(example main feature of instapaper is to view offline content). This should not be backed up since its redundant and when the phone needs to be restored(rarely) this data can be re-downloaded. Also backing up will be slow and destroy user experience.

Solution make another location which is used for storing the data(not backed up) so then all are happy. Maybe you can have data from hidden directories not backed up inside the Documents directory. Then Apple can delete caches in apps like browsers. User critical data like settings can be backed up and app critical data that need not be backed up can also exist

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#198

Post by Terretta »

dextorious wrote: post #193
sudoman wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's only "required" [to do] so if he chooses to use iOS. And if he chooses to use iOS, it's because the platform attracted him, and one thing that attracts a lot of people to it it's the "it just works" and "you don't have to manage it". That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what a…

>That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what about in 5 or 10 years when everyone has an iPhone and Apple has one or no competitors? Can we stop them from shrinking our room if there is no free alternative? Well, for one our room was fairly small itself before the iPhone. Actually, not…

> the OSF/GNU etc never cared about a mobile OS until Apple made one. Suddenly freedom in the mobile apps was important. Why wasn't it important when Nokia, Sony, Ericsson et al ruled?

Thank you. Nobody wants to remember that.

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#199

Post by sthulbourn »

dlss wrote: post #136
lukifer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> defective by design, free (as in speech), respect the freedom of its users Is it just me, or has the free software community gotten so disciplined and precise with their talking points that it would make Karl Rove blush? It comes down to this: different people want different things. Some people want Kramer's vision of building your own pizza, both for fun and to get exactly the pizza you want. Most people would rat…

> I don't care whether something is defective by design, or defective by lack of design: I care that it's defective, period. Interesting. As an engineer, I very much care about causes. Especially systematic ones. They allow me to better reason about the kinds of problems my system is likely to have, and to proactively mitigate them. I believe that sudoman's tl;dr is something like "If Domino's executives ate at Domin…

> Apple's own software almost certainly uses different APIs than what they force developer apps to use.

I think it's foolish to think that Apple uses private frameworks for their apps exclusively, when they could be using the public frameworks that other 3rd party apps use.

It's more likely to be: Apple uses the public frameworks for the majority of their apps but use the private frameworks for controlling the underlying hardware and subsystems of the OS [stuff like communications which could cost the user money, SMS, phone calls].

Re: IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior

#200

Post by sthulbourn »

smokey_the_bear wrote: post #99
derefr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of just saying "don't install iOS5", can't you continue to store files in their Documents, but tell them to flip off the sync switch for your app? http://i.imgur.com/acOje.png

We could, but it would involve pushing an update to the app. The 'don't install' is a stopgap for people who may be counting on using their maps this weekend. Additionally, people collect geo information with our app, tracks and waypoints that they like to backup.

The cleaning issue isn't something that just popped up with the GM build. It existed before then in some of the later betas. As a developer it's verging on the lazy to wait for the GM before you update an app for an issue that you've known about for month(s). As a developer, it's your responsibility to update your app to work with as little inconvenience to your users.
Post reply on HN