iCloud will delete stuff from my Mac?

[Xairbusdriver]

I may have mentioned that my wife got an iPad last week. She loves it! I finally got her to create a single copy of the multiple paper calendars that are never in sync (that's only taken 15+ years!). Going through her settings I mistakenly read that she had used 4.93GB of space already! Turns out the light grey text actually says she has 4.93GBs available...

But that sent me to look for what I thought was hogging her space and why anything was being stored from her MBP. That's when I found the "iCloudPref" item in System Prefs. I can't remember ever looking at it but I must have, since the "Documents & Data" choice was UNchecked on my iMac. It was checked on her newly installed Lion! OK, I'll just UNcheck it, she writes lots of stuff and there's no point in using up space in the cloud for it, we already have Time Machine and Superduper backups. Why would I trust the 'cloud?'

Well, the following dialog 'greeted' me:

[attachment=2679:DELETE_MY_STUFF.jpg]

What? Who said anything about wanting/needing to delete anything off the computer?! You touch that stuff and I show you what 'delete' mean, buddy!

Apparently, in Mountain Lion, the default setup is for most new documents to be stored in iCloud. The Save dialog has that setting as standard although it can be changed... every time you create a new document! Because the "Documents & Data" selection is also set to checked in that System Pref, again by default. The only way to stop this behavior of forcing stuff into the cloud is to turn off that system Pref. Of course, you will be 'greeted' by the message that "all that data will be deleted from your computer". Is that stupid or just insane?

The only 'reason' I've seen for this behavior is that someone at Apple decided that the only reason one would not want to store stuff in iCloud is that the device is being prepared for sale/trade/gifting. Therefore, one would want to purge all that 'stuff.' Excuse me? There are multiple ways of deleting stuff from my device, at least those with a real file system installed. Of course, this behavior would be one of the only ways to delete stuff from a mobile device since there is not user accessible file system... Apparently, that 'someone' must have forgot that desk/laptop devices are still being sold by Apple. So the iOSification forces this behavior unto a Mac!

Or maybe it's just a way of 'encouraging' us to buy some more iCloud space?

Further search has not confirmed how to make sure data is not deleted from a Mac nor even how to know exactly what documents & data the iDevice is storing, other than it's probably email, Pages, etc. But no document names or even dates or listed. It's just stuff. Trust us.

There is some indication that turning things off on the iDevice may return it to the computer. The dialog on the iDevice is not the same that shows on the computer. The iDevice dialog simply says basically that things will be synced the next time the iDevice and computer are connected. Does that mean what I hope it means; that the data/documents on the iDevice will be transferred to the computer? It doesn't really say that, one has to 'read between the lines' and hope!  With the default settings, nothing will have been stored on your computer; it will only be in the cloud. :shocked:

[krissel]

Not exactly answering your question, but kinda on the same subject:

https://www.macworld.com/article/1168122/wh...src.wrap_081812

[Xairbusdriver]

Yes, it's just another of the stupid/insane (I'm still trying to decide which term applies) implementations of documents in iCloud. Seems a further morphing of the "It just works" to the "It's just the way Apple does it" method. I'm sure the 'sandboxing' function has something to do with this, but it is making he cloud much less usable to all but the simplest of users and uses. That's my opinion anyway. Those that have seen Apple only from the mobile devices will probably have no idea what all this is about. Nor will most of them care. Dropbox is looking better all the time!

[kimmer]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Aug 21 2012, 06:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, it's just another of the stupid/insane (I'm still trying to decide which term applies) implementations of documents in iCloud.

At the risk of upsetting everyone by veering slightly .... today we received an email advising us that:

QUOTE

Your 20 GB + Cloud Player Premium Promotion subscription has ended and you are now limited to 250 imported songs in your Amazon Cloud Player library and 5 GB of free storage in Amazon Cloud Drive. If you would like to review your usage or subscribe to a new plan, visit the Manage Your Cloud Subscriptions (http://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/manage) page.
If your Cloud Player library contained more than 250 imported songs when your subscription expired, you will be unable to access your previously-imported music, but you will still be able to access all of your Amazon MP3 purchases.
You are currently using 0.00 GB of Cloud Drive storage.  If your Cloud Drive account contains more than 5 GB of files you will be prevented from uploading additional files until you delete enough files to be under the 5 GB limit or subscribe to a storage plan with enough space for your files.

Must admit, neither of us was aware that we had a cloud library/cloud drive. Probably a good thing since we no longer have it, or access to anything we might have stored there!  Personally, I'd rather keep my stuff on my drive (and on my backup drives), as trust someone else to store it for me. All this disappearing cloud stuff would keep me awake at night.

xABD, I'll be watching here for an updated reply as to how you solve all this.

I'matellin'U, this is just another reason why I don't upgrade right away.

[Xairbusdriver]

"Congratulations! You just lost stuff you didn't even know you had!"

OTOH, they say you never know what you had until you lose it! Well, you just lost it, so why don't you know what you had?!

Maybe it's all just a misteakenlie sent message? Maybe someone hacked Amazon's address book?!

And now, back to my previous question/rant/complaints/whining...

[Xairbusdriver]

Since my wife has left me, I have more free time. At least until she returns, which she said will be tomorrow. But I used the free time to watch a ~2 hr video from TidBITS authors, Adam Engst, Joe Kissell and Matt Nueberg. (BTW, they'll be having a live feed tomorrow at 12 Eastern/ 9 am Pacific: <TidBITS Presents: “Protecting Your Digital Life"> )

Anyway, Matt displayed something that should directly apply to what gets deleted when one gets the dialog I posted... at least in Mountain Lion. A short description of what is actually going on when things are "saved" to iCloud should help.

First, this description is based on the vid which was concerned with Mountain Lion, any comparison with 10.7/Lion may be purely coincidental!

One of the things you will notice in ML is that the "Open" dialog looks different than any other OS X Open dialog. There are two buttons/labels showing where the documents are stored: iCloud or On My Mac. Clicking one will not show the same thing as the other (unless the user has done a lot of tedious work).

Remember, Apple has set the default location for saving documents in ML to be iCloud. Of course, you can change that, manually, with every save.

What Matt revealed, however, is that what we are shown, even with the "iCloud" view of our saved documents is actually what has been saved on our own HD. In ML, there is a new folder/directory called "Mobile Documents" in each user Library. That folder/directory does not exist in 10.7/Lion. I have one instance of it and that is on the installation of ML on an external drive.

In the this "Mobile Documents" folder are sub-folders for every iCloud savvy app (right now there are only a few of those apps: TextEdit, Pages, Mail, Preview, etc...). Inside those app-folders (named "com-apple-TextEdit" for example) is at least one "Documents" folder. Inside each "Documents" folder are either documents created by that app or a sub-folder (which the user can create) containing other documents. Note that this is a rather simple "two" level filing system: a "Documents" folder for each app with actual documents or user-defined folder(s) with documents.

Matt demonstrated that this simple hierarchy is actually what is displayed in the "Open" dialog when the "iCloud" button/selection is active. You are actually looking at your own HD file system, not the "cloud." The important thing here is that you can open and work on a document "in the cloud" even when you don't even have an Internet connection! When you eventually do have a connection with the Internet, the work you did will be synced with what is in iCloud. And then, any other device you have will see the changes also. That's the whole point of "the cloud," of course; every device can access the documents for an app that exists on more than one device.

This is also one of the major differences between iCloud and other 'cloud' storage services like DropBox.

• iCloud is designed for one person to use multiple devices to access a document created by a specific app on any device.
• DropBox (and similar services) are designed to be used by multiple devices and multiple apps and multiple people.

What this also means, I think, is that the items the dialog warns will be deleted, are the items in that ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ directory! How/why  this affects 10.7/Lion, I still don't know! Right now, since my wife couldn't have created much more than a few documents, the loss could be minimal... or, since they are her documents, it could be catastrophic for me!

I still need to find out what those documents are and where they might be stored on her HD.

Bottom line: I think I understand what will be deleted, but I still don't know how to prevent it at this point in our experiences! Lastly, I intend to make sure anything even vaguely important is saved on our HDs (and backups) and that the "Documents & Data" check box is UNchecked!

[jchuzi]

I don't know if Mountain Lion Tweaks has an easy solution, but the price is right. Since I don't have ML, I can't test it.

[Xairbusdriver]

I'm not sure what 'solution' you're looking for. There's nothing about iCloud or saving behavior that I can see. "Tweaks" does have many useful solutions. There is a version for both Lion and Mountain Lion. (I just downloaded the ML version and sent him five bucks, also) The only 'solution' (in the Lion version) that doesn't 'stick' is the coloring of items in the Finder Sidebar. Tweaks must be re-run every time the Mac is shutdown. I suspect all these 'solutions' are simply GUI front ends to the Terminal default writes methods of setting prefs that aren't made accessible by Apple. So these aren't dangerous to the OS, if that's correct. But it also means that the fixes may not be available if/when Apple re-writes the prefs database.

One thing I have not seen 'fixed' is the replacing of the arrows (and better yet, the double arrows) in the scroll bar.

[jchuzi]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Aug 22 2012, 10:08 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

One thing I have not seen 'fixed' is the replacing of the arrows (and better yet, the double arrows) in the scroll bar. :sad:

That option is present in the General tab of Tinker Tool, at least for Snow Leopard. SL also has some options in the Appearance tab of System Preferences (I can't speak for ML, obviously).

[Xairbusdriver]

I think that's what I used in SL, also. The problem in Lion (and ML) is that the scroll bar is narrower than the ones in earlier OS X versions.