Righteo, so anyway back to the discussion...
I agree, on initial release Apple won't introduce it with a tone of configuration options (full selective sync, file type exclusions, online/offline caching etc). But it's very easy to have the option.
Jesus lol, the options are....
Sync desktop to iCloud? (I'll leave that off thanks)... Sync documents to iCloud? Yup I'll tick that one it sounds good.
That's neither hard to program or for the end user to understand.
Time will tell, and this will be problem. Why? Because that's what people use desktops for and user habits take months/years to break.
You're screenshots....
I know i can work around it. I can just make a symbolic link on the desktop to a "work in progress" folder out of the sync directory.
But i still feel you are missing the entire issue here. lol (Again can't see real world usage)
Lets try and break this down:
1. You have provided a method to get around a poor design choice. It's super easy to seperate the document & desktops sync options. There are no technical reasons getting in the way of implementing this. Both directories are at the same tree level and can simply be redirected to the mobile documents area where iCloud
already syncs.
2. Why do people have to change their use of the "Desktop" which has been around for 20 years. Due to a poor oversight? Plenty of users don't understand shortcuts to folders, symbolic links etc and hence won't implement a work around.
3. Majority of users are still on the 5GB iCloud tier. Users that might read a news article on whats new in macOS Sierra will find out it can sync their desktops and docs. "Oh cool" some will say and turn it on. Only to find out the entire thing goes to **** when they fail to realise that they already have 15 GB of stuff on their desktop. Yes it's only $1.50 here in Australia to get 50GB of storage. But still it will catch a **** load of people out. Out of all the people that pay for iCloud storage, majority pay for the first tier and will still likely get burnt.
4. A desktop is a working area, hence it shouldn't be synced in realtime unless someone specifically enables it. On the flip side, majority of people would love their documents synced.
5. Syncing all their desktop stuff via the internet is going to be a PITA for internet bandwidth.
Why is the net going so dam slow dad? I don't know son... (Dad just dumped the contents of his 64GB SD card to his desktop).
The point of all this is Apple is meant to be "It just works"
This will introduce issues as most users won't understand why the hell all their storage is gone and why the their home Internet runs like ****.
Having the sync of Desktop and Documents tied to each other is just stupid.
What puzzles me is why on earth you are defending it?
[doublepost=1474212777][/doublepost]
I guess that a bigger picture – with new contexts for user-defined preferences and for enforced policies – will not become clear until after a first release of APFS (
discussion), which I expect will allow more interesting things to be done with optimised storage (
discussion) and if the latter will be done well, then I expect fewer users to be concerned about hierarchical file system approaches to deciding what should and should not be served by Apple.
In the meantime we have
removal of FileSync support for portable home directories and I take that as a sign that Apple will increasingly encourage/push individuals, groups and enterprises towards Apple
as a service provider.
Ahhhhh nice! this is the stuff to discuss (you've convinced me that you do understand more than you initially let on).
I see it moving this way too. (Well i really hope it does).
However, I still stand by my initial comment that i can't see why Desktop and Document sync should be tied to each other.
There were some acquisitions by Apple in the last couple of years that were toying with the idea of having a non-hierarchical (at least user present) file system in which data is displayed and navigated as relationships. I'm hoping that after the release of APFS, the next major OSX update will do away with finder as we know it. (Not quite the same vision as WinFS though If you also followed the Longhorn days.)
This year Apple did focus heavily on iOS, so lets home next year they focus heavily on macOS.
for me but not for other writers who offer links, there's no pleasing some people … the least said about that the better … moving on, back to the Apple stuff … 
