In short, we’re told that while Transmit iOS can download content from iCloud Drive, we cannot upload content to iCloud Drive unless the content was created in the app itself. Apple says this use would violate 2.23 — “Apps must follow the iOS Data Storage Guidelines or they will be rejected” — but oddly that page says nothing about iCloud Drive or appropriate uses for iCloud Drive.
I really don’t understand some of these decisions.
I’m kind of sad about a lot of the decisions they have been making lately =[
The App Review process is becoming increasingly less useful as technical restrictions are implemented on iOS.
Apple has lately done some very bad moves, this one is just another symptom of the bigger problem: the designer genius taking over engineering and removing every and all freedoms making Apple’s OS X, iOS and Hardware great. (Disabling Apps not certified by Apple by default, sealing the iMac to only allow RAM upgrades, removing 100% of extensibility for the MacPro, glueing in the batteries into notebooks, locking down the NFC chip in the iPhone, buggy bluetooth drivers for years effectively closing that to external developers… the list goes on)
Apps on OS X do not need to be certified by Apple. They need only be signed by a registered developer; Apple never sees the app.
Apple does not need to approve apps, they only reject developers writing malware. And, as you say, this is the default.
I agree with Steven… there might be a good list of complaints, but these aren’t them. I’ll go one step further on the mac pro, since I just bought and upgraded a 4 core to a 10 core (and plan to do same on more) – it’s expandable within the heat dissipation area as well.
Apple seems to have no overall plan or architecture for where iCloud is going, what it will do, or how it will operate. After WWDC 2014 I assumed that Apple would fill in the details of a full-featured, easy-to-use cloud service suitable for the photographers in my family who are not (and don’t want to be) sysadmins. Instead they have gone the opposite direction, making it more complex and opaque at every release and operating decision. Sad.
your examples dont make any sense. nor does the notion that “designers” have usurped engineers. as if the programmers and hardware people just got up and shuffled away from their desks, to be replaced by designers…
newflash: some of those examples were made by engineers. like gluing batteries to simplify the hardware.
just because you dont know it, doesnt mean it they dont have one.
as for photo services, the new photo app isnt out yet. it ties into the cloud-based photos storage they developed for iOS 8.
My impression is the opposite, that the latest iCloud “update” was a pretty major rewrite that simplified things. A lot.
Gluing in batteries, because the design does not leave the space for a user replaceable battery, is not a good design, it’s form over function instead of form and function in unity. Neither is more important than the other, they should have equal weight in the design process. If a design makes something impossible that should be default, it needs to be improved.
I think we can agree opinions vary, I don’t need to tell you the problems professional video production and effects have run into, having a mac without space for video capture cards inside. By now most is available as external expansion – it just makes your mac look like you bought a Windows machine with all the wires everywhere. The MacPro had an elegance to it, fitting inside what you needed, no clutter no cables, it’s lost that; it’s become a more powerful G4 Cube.
The Bluetooth problem isn’t mine as a developer. I was simply told by authy they discontinued their OS X app, because the bluetooth was too buggy for their dev team to get it going. My experience as a consumer: Apple’s bluetooth drivers made a company making a product I use, discontinue their app.
The rest is in my other comment below.
I used Authy’s Bluetooth app and it worked flawlessly for me. Unfortunately, the only computer on which it worked was my Mac mini server that didn’t need it. None of my other Macs have BTLE. It was a great idea limited by the lack of necessary technology.
Of course, it may have been buggy, too. I didn’t use it much because it was on my server which I primarily access remotely and rarely use to authenticate to any of my 2-factor sites. But it worked flawlessly the few times I used it.
I tried using it on a MacBook Pro Retina, and a MacBook Air. It worked during setup and never again connected to my phone, despite me trying to open the app on iOS and re-launching the OS X app at the same time, waiting for minutes or rebooting.
Gluing the batteries is both design and function. They have less repairs due to fewer moving parts. There are external batteries that are available for the small percentage of people that need them. If the battery does need to be replaced, the glue is not hard to pry off (I’ve done it). I guarantee you Apple did their research and based their decision on the amount of people that need the extra battery vs current battery life vs repairs.
I’m also not seeing the sfx problems you’re talking about on the pros… Yes, you have to find different ways of working, but that has always been the case. In this industry you are always buying new equipment, and you hope to recoup the costs down the line. I find my 12 core is an absolute beast for film and video work. My cables are tucked nicely behind it (turn the whole computer to get to the ports), it’s as quiet as a mouse, and it takes up way less space than my old pros. The cord situation was way worse with the old pros – you needed much longer cables if you wanted to go to the back, the front had cables having off it – total mess.
Like I said before, there are things you can definitely ding Apple on, but these are not them.
Right now, I’m not loving iCloud Drive at all… it took down my computer yesterday (force my finder) – took me 2 hrs to figure out that was the problem, shut it off and now all is fine… except I can’t get to any of my iCloud documents. Between that and the way Apple is picking and choosing who to go to war with over access, iCloud Drive is off to an extremely rocky start in my opinion.
I guess I’m the contrarian again:
Is it that Apple is making more bad decisions, or more developers are deciding to bypass (or augment) any appeals process by taking it to social media, podcasts, and the tech press?
Much of the time the outrage spills out, and later Apple corrects the situation. Is the outrage the cause of the correction? or was the correction in the works already?
I fear that the perception is forming that griping in public is the preferred method of getting Apple policies revised. Personally it’s beginning to sound like the boy crying “wolf” too often. Especially when I’m also reading/hearing analysis about how Apple is to somehow blame for the difficulties of making a living as an independent developer, (a lot of which unrealistically assumes Apple has the power to control the minds and wallets of its customers)
It’s all getting to be a bit much, and I’m starting to tune this out.
I assume you aren’t violating your NDA with Apple to post here, so you probably don’t know if there is such an architecture or plan. If there is, and you know what it is, by all means please post it!
The rest of us can only go on what we see. I’ve been learning and using complex computer systems for quite a while now and am pretty good at, e.g., going into a client and figuring out the patterns in their systems quickly. I can’t discern any pattern in Apple’s iCloud actions and neither can many other qualified and interested observers. If you have figured one out, again please post that.
The other issue being that if Apple does have an architecture and roadmap it wouldn’t hurt them in any way at this point to publish it, at least in summarized marketing form. And they haven’t. So again, I’m thinking they don’t have one. Hope to be proven wrong, but “Apple always knows better than us” is not a valid analysis.
Curious what your thoughts are on this essay:
I yield, you have convinced me. You can access the iCloud files inside your Library folder – even on TimeMachine backups btw. Hope that helps.
Thanks! I had forgotten about the Library folder. I was able to get my pages files from the web version, and the rest of the stuff from another computer that hadn’t had this problem. Lots of complaints about it on the intertubes. If I were Panic I wouldn’t be too mad about not being able to use iDisk 🙂
I haven’t yet had any trouble with it, but I don’t trust it with any important files. I had MobileMe once… I’m damaged for life.
Squeaky wheel gets the oil, sure, but this is just Apple. If you do something outside of their desired box, they deny you. They babysit users to control the experience from top to bottom and we (developers) take the lumps. You also know small developers without Panic pull get denied all the time but have no recourse.
This is the primary reason I will not return to iOS.