Cloudy with a Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudy with a Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive

#21

Post by JoBrad » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #14

crazygringo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Things just... don't sync. Not after a minute, not after an hour. But then 2 days later the files pop up. 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 h…

I found OneDrive would crash a lot amd couldn’t deal with file names that weren’t valid windows file names. 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…

Excel pivot tables won’t work if the file banner is invalid in Windows, too. This happens a lot for me when I open an Excel attachment, because macOS will put brackets in the file name.

Re: Cloudy with a Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive

#22

Post by ThePowerOfFuet » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 8:33 PM UTC

rmac wrote: post #8

increasingly my mac has critical issues that are undebuggable due to apple services (family sharing, etc) 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

>For about 3 months my mac had 1second network delays when opening any new connections, but only sometimes?

This sounds like the primary configured DNS server was unreachable, but the secondary was reachable.

Re: Cloudy with a Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive

#23

Post by urbandw311er » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

Had a similar experience myself recently with migrating the whole family over to iCloud calendar and having to import thousands of calendar events from iCal files. The process hung several times, repeatedly crashed the iCloud web client and Apple L1 support, while lovely, were out of their depth.

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.

Re: Cloudy with a Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive

#24

Post by gumby » Sun, Oct 15, 2023, 4:42 AM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #19

gumby wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found OneDrive would crash a lot amd couldn’t deal with file names that weren’t valid windows file names. 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…

> 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. 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.

I don’t know about Steve Jobs and iCloud, but Dropbox is the kind of thing that can become table stakes, requiring a large surface of interface (esp relative to its core functionality) vs someone else fitting it into their existing infrastructure (e.g. authentication and other tools). That’s basically the definition of a feature.

They only survive at all bc so many competitive alternatives can’t be bothered to invest in doing a good job.

Re: Cloudy with a Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive

#25

Post by MichaelZuo » Sun, Oct 15, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #24

MichaelZuo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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.

I don’t know about Steve Jobs and iCloud, but Dropbox is the kind of thing that can become table stakes, requiring a large surface of interface (esp relative to its core functionality) vs someone else fitting it into their existing infrastructure (e.g. authentication and other tools). That’s basically the definition of a feature. They only survive at all bc so many competitive alternatives can’t be bothered to invest…

Like I said a moderate sized team putting their all, going above and beyond, etc..., however you want to phrase it, will be competitive even against a much bigger company putting in a half-hearted effort.

Of course if they slip and only start putting in a 1.5x effort or something then they won't be competitive.