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macOS Sonoma 14.4 Bug 'Destroys Saved Versions in iCloud Drive'
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this is such a bad take. Having the ability to revert to old versions or even just view them is extremely valuable. I’ve even used them to produce redlines so that I can check changes on versions of documents I’ve received from other people.
I use iCloud for most everything, and 14.4 has been effortless.
Guess I should be greatful that I can scratch my head over the cautionary tales....
Yeah sure, let’s discount the serious bug where OneDrive deletes users computer data entirely or steam doing the same thing but on Linux, all because of catastrophic “computer bugs” that has nothing to do with users.
Unless Apple unilaterally claim all, and I mean ALL (inc company confidential information, national security information and more), data generated, stored, transmitted, processed and otherwise utilised using Apple devices are the property of Apple, data-destroying bug Is serious.
Because Apple doesn’t care and only fix with massive outcry? Maybe they are just way too big to fail.
So much vitriol here. Typical MacRumors.
Yes, Apple's developers have dropped the ball. Go complain to Apple, people. They have channels for that and support options. They are the ones who need to get their act together with cloud storage. No one on MR is going to help you clean up Apple's sh**.
Yes, Apple's iCloud storage version bug sucks. Yes, Apple's bug with Java not working properly on Sonoma 14.4 (Intel machines only?) is horrendous. Roll back to Ventura, back up your valuable data to Dropbox or another reliable cloud storage provider, buy a Windows machine (!), whatever it takes to feel better. Deprecative remarks about Tim Cook and Craig Federighi carry zero weight here and do absolutely nothing to solve the problem.
Take two deep breaths, close this browser tab now and get back to real life. That's what I'm doing.
Yes, Apple's developers have dropped the ball. Go complain to Apple, people. They have channels for that and support options. They are the ones who need to get their act together with cloud storage. No one on MR is going to help you clean up Apple's sh**.
Yes, Apple's iCloud storage version bug sucks. Yes, Apple's bug with Java not working properly on Sonoma 14.4 (Intel machines only?) is horrendous. Roll back to Ventura, back up your valuable data to Dropbox or another reliable cloud storage provider, buy a Windows machine (!), whatever it takes to feel better. Deprecative remarks about Tim Cook and Craig Federighi carry zero weight here and do absolutely nothing to solve the problem.
Take two deep breaths, close this browser tab now and get back to real life. That's what I'm doing.
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Agreed. Personally I keep everything on disc and also use two alternating Time Machines. One of which lives offsite in case of fire or flood. Both encrypted in case of theft.
Where I take issue is that iCloud and its ilk are marketed as secure and thus some people use it exclusively, with optimized storage enabled, treating it as if it’s a legitimate backup 🫤
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Not here. It’s doubtful that most Apple staff even give a flying rat’s butt about MacRumors.
Apple’s legal and publicity departments may have MR under their scopes to check for leakers and potential patent infringement, but that’s about as far as I imagine it goes. Apple support is busy enough with their own customers to take note of what the yelling and screaming masses of MacRumors or any other forum are chatting about at any given moment. You won’t get any attention from Apple here.
Oh, I suppose that Apple eventually responds to public furors that get their start on forums and eventually get picked up by the Apple news and rumor-mongering sites. That doesn’t mean that they are following every discussion on the Internet.
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Apple Feedback seems to be a black hole and I've never heard ANYONE get feedback through that, let alone a resolution. Heck even Radar is a crap shoot... The support channels might be ok if you have AppleCare and the level1 can find a magic solution that does not involve reinstalling your OS, taking the machine to the AppleStore [if you even have one]...And the community channels with Ernest and his Level 54343 status where he parrots text worse that a LLVM, making it look good with all the links, instructions etc and 99+% of the time doesn't answer the question and, of course, he's a volunteer but jumps on every thread, trying to guard his territory, and as a volunteer you can't call him out for being useless.
Sure, complaining here is equally less productive, unless a media person actually sees it and dares to go against Apple PR [seldom, oh what a nice iPhone 18 will be, shame if you won't get one... oh you want to be able to brag about being in the press area at WWDC to your blogger audience AND be within smelling distance of Cookie...]. Otherwise posting here can be to alert others to an issue that THEY have, and maybe you suddenly feel not alone if you have the same issues and have maybe thought it was you.
Meanwhile the vast majority of Apple customers, whether they have a problem or not, are outside of this echo chamber and others like it, so are even more dependent on the variable "support" of Apple, especially if not in a metro area, and dependent on the reasonable expectation that the software vendor tests its products properly [within their narrow range of configurations and variables].
Oh I saw you wrote "
Take two deep breaths, close this browser tab now and get back to real life. That's what I'm doing."
Sorry that you won't see this and have perhaps left Mac Rumours.
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Naïve, maybe 😌 I might agree with that. But I've had some pretty good experiences so far with Apple Support. They haven't always solved every underlying problem, but it was better than complaining and doing nothing. Sorry that you haven't.
It's okay to be mad when things don't go well with support channels. I was quite peeved for many years at the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft regarding Office for Mac support. It used to be a horrendous pool of muck, but I think a lot of people complained over a long period of time, MS changed up their management and now it seems like they are actually listening to their users (?). With Apple, it isn't what it used to be, and the Feedback form is pretty much as you said, a black hole, but you use what you've got. I did find their macOS Feedback app (forget the name of it now) to be an utter waste of time—there was never any indication that anything I posted there was ever read by an Apple technician.
We're all dependent on the manufacturer to get their act together. It's certainly our right to complain when they mess up and make our lives more difficult. But like I said, complaining and tossing around personal slurs here amounts to nothing good (the pejorative "Cookie" moniker often seen for Tim Cook, for one, really annoys me). There are some helpful users here that do try and give concrete solutions when people have issues. I do strive to be one of those when I actually know something that might help.
Lots of cynicism in your post, which is sad. I've gotten that way before, so I understand. I depend on this technology too. I'm glad I didn't upgrade my Intel MBP 16-inch 2019 to Sonoma. I'm concerned about the iCloud versioning bug, but haven't seen it do its dirty deeds yet.
Oh, as you might know, MacRumors won't let any user "leave" or permit you to delete your account, to my knowledge. You could post a lot of swear words, personal insults and thereby get banned, but I think that MR will still leave your older posts, to preserve the continuity of the threads.
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Indeed, and I carefully prefixed my comments. If we were face to face you would have picked up a slight "smile" as I then spoke what I wrote. You came with a very authoritative, old-school teacher-style approach. Not that there's necessarily something wrong with that, compared to what happens today. Some educational development is welcome and needed, but the client base's attitude to education...
Anyway. I do strongly believe that Apple Support is incredibly variable, even outside of "Feedback", "Radar" and the laughable community forums. If I'm honest I've never knowingly seen a useful post there by their "community experts" and it does feel like a bit of a circlejerk/failed Wikipedia editor/I want to be important venue by those leading correspondents. No doubt there must be some genuine people too, but they seem to be overshadowed. By comparison you can get much better, knowledgeable, helpful support ideas from other volunteers on Reddit, MR and specialist groups. Honestly Apple should just close that section down and stop those "subject experts" from pontificating. Remember to repair disk permissions folks, even if your screen is wonky... Voodoo type incantations may work once in a blue moon, but if you repeat them enough well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Debate is good, even if you don't 100% agree with the other person. That's actually more better and if you stay open you might learn things/change your view/gain a different perspective. I try to do that anyway [I am writing generally/not inferring you are not/not being snarky].
Have a nice day and "welcome back" to MR after closing your browser tabs for a while
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Yeah, sorry about that. That's sort of the way I write, and it isn't always welcomed by everyone.
Yes, I also agree about Apple's "support forums". They haven't helped me much, and I too have noticed the "parrots" snapping for the low-hanging fruit (and the acclaim, apparently), offering glib answers like "try reinstalling macOS". Interesting phenomenon. I'm glad there are other options like you said for gaining knowledge, like Reddit and sometimes MR, among other places.
Back to "reality". You have a great day as well 👍
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Buggy Java due to POSIX semantics yeah whatever. Buggy apps yeah whatever.
Buggy file storage / cloud semantics. Um, no. This is where I draw the line. Regardless of if this directly affects me or not, the obvious nature of the lack of attention and poor test suite now scares the **** out of me on this front. I already survived data destroying OneDrive bugs at work. I have 70 gig in iCloud of stuff I can't afford to lose or have to pick through the remains of and reassemble should something go to hell.
Literally on the tipping point of heading back to Windows-land at the moment (without cloud storage at all). It sucks but in safer ways and there are fewer opaque file abstractions which means it's a lot easier to move data in and out.
Buggy file storage / cloud semantics. Um, no. This is where I draw the line. Regardless of if this directly affects me or not, the obvious nature of the lack of attention and poor test suite now scares the **** out of me on this front. I already survived data destroying OneDrive bugs at work. I have 70 gig in iCloud of stuff I can't afford to lose or have to pick through the remains of and reassemble should something go to hell.
Literally on the tipping point of heading back to Windows-land at the moment (without cloud storage at all). It sucks but in safer ways and there are fewer opaque file abstractions which means it's a lot easier to move data in and out.
My greatest fear with iCloud services was and remains that some day Hide My Email will suffer a meltdown and render my internet logins inoperable and unrecoverable by shredding all my aliases. Only a matter of time...
That one scares me too. I have my own domain on iCloud+ and will not use hide my email for these reasons.
The ability for a single vendor to utterly knacker your existence is a tangible risk.
Keychain is another one. It’s not as easy as you might thing to restore it from a backup if possible at all if your iCloud account is hosed. I keep all accounts tied to a domain I control and keep duplicate keychain in Keepass on disk.
This won’t happen. Apple would never put you in that position.
Because most people use this with the understanding that the files that are offloaded to the cloud will be returned to local storage unaltered on demand. And if they rely on Apple versioning, they expect to be able to keep the versioning.
The "Optimize Mac storage" is a simple swith and does not imply you will lose data. And it should be this simple. Users should not be required to think through the risk of such side effects to any of the thousands file they have.
Yeah that’s why I have exported all my passwords into a CSV file stored on an encrypted external disc 👍
I really don’t understand the drama.
The cloud for me is nothing but a convenient way to synchronise my data between devices and access it from mobile devices from anywhere.
The real data repository is my local storage and the numerous backups (2x Time Machine disks and 2x CCC disks, in rotation, on and off site)
If the cloud goes bang, I just upload my data again.