iCloud Drive Sucks: Apple is Screwing Up

Presently, iCloud Drive is unreliable crap.

If it’s working for you, I’m happy for you and hope that it continues to work well. For me and probably tens of thousands of other people, files appear, disappear, appear but won’t open, take days or weeks to sync…

It’s a mess.

I’ve been working on more substantial, long-form content for this site and other things, but since iOS 8 and Yosemite, I haven’t been able to reliably work on documents on my various devices.

I prefer to work in Ulysses III/Daedalus Touch, iA Writer Pro and Day One, and all three worked great before the switch to iCloud Drive. Now I’m having issues with all three.

• Ulysses/Daedalus — None of my documents from Ulysses III show up in Daedalus on iPhone/iPad. Waiting for a sync to spontaneously occur yields nothing. Tried the reset troubleshooting instructions; nothing.

• iA Writer Pro — Numerous documents aren’t listed on iOS. They are viewable when using the iCloud Drive folder feature, but are gray and won’t open. New documents take over 20 hours to sync — some have failed to sync entirely.

• Day One — After waiting weeks and trying the troubleshooting methods repeatedly, the majority of the entries have synced across the various devices. However, 14 entries from my iPhone 5S wouldn’t upload for another few weeks, and finally synced today. During this time, entries would appear synced and then disappear a day later.

To be fair, a lot of the first-party iCloud Drive features are working okay. Photos enter the stream much quicker, and that’s nice.

Additionally, iOS 8 is problematic in general.

Shame on you, Apple. I’m really glad that I never moved beyond iOS 6 on my old iPad 2, because iOS7 ran and iOS8 runs so poorly on the iPad mini (first gen). My iPad 3 has issues with iOS8 as well; random lag and crashes. For the most part, the iPhone 5S handles iOS 8, but there are still random crashes and occasional device restarts.

In an attempt to beautify the OS, you’ve made it slower and glitchier. Turning off the fancy visual effects makes for a minor stability improvement, but overall, iOS devices haven’t seemed faster than iOS 6. When I first received the iPad 2, I was impressed by the lack of slowdown and minimal (if any) wait times. Now, idling has become the standard. In many ways, it feels like devices have taken a step back. I really miss Steve Jobs.

It’s as if these new iOS iterations are designed this way to force people to upgrade to the newest devices every year — and yet most of their phone deals with the major carriers are based on two-year contracts and upgrade cycles.

While it’s a nice idea to have synchronicity across devices with iOS 8, I’d prefer speed and reliability. Ideally both is best, but right now, that’s not reality. Also, Apple removed the Camera Roll in favor of a new organization system; while some may prefer it, it’s not optional. This seemingly small change has serious consequences for many apps and is far less usable for me.

Apple, please don’t be like Microsoft. Put your customers first and you’ll continue to stay on top.

If you try to put short term gains in profit and market penetration ahead of the user experience, put the desires of shareholders ahead of the needs of the consumer, your supporters will begin looking elsewhere. As I’m sure many already have.

iPad 2 Screen Problems

I now have the iPad 2.

This really is a big deal. The original iPad has served me so well, but this thing is twice as fast with graphics (they say) seven times better. I’ve heard that in reality, it’s less, but even so… this machine is amazing — now that I’m using my second iPad 2.

Yes, the first one was defective.

I was using a 64GB original iPad; I was so thrilled about upgrading to a 64GB with 3G. The anticipation from waiting over one month to receive the new iPad — and as soon as I sync it, I realize.

The screen of my iPad 2 is not centered.

Forget light leakage; the screen of my iPad 2 was offset about 1mm to the left, and tilted a degree to the left. This might not sound like much, but as an artist, it’s a huge deal. The untrained eye without magnification could see that the screen was off-center, so I took it back to the Apple Store for replacement. Apple’s customer service is pretty solid. I’ve been using their products for years now, and I’ve loved them since the beginning of OSX, despite some problems here and there. They saw the problem, and offered replacement… except that store didn’t have one. Luckily, an Apple Store twenty miles away did, so I went there.

It was there that I noticed that the offset screen problem could be a greater issue than just my lemon machine.

The problem is much easier to identify on the white iPad. The pixels of the iPad LED lit LCD screen don’t touch the border of the glass cover; there is a margin, a black border, on all four sides of the screen. At least, there should be — and it should be centered. However, this isn’t always the case. I checked several floor models, and noticed that some of the screens were positioned slightly off-center, though none as bad as the iPad 2 I’d first received. This imperfect placement makes me think that this could be an issue for other people. Please let me know if you’ve had something similar.

A screen with a slightly larger margin on one side is still usable, but a crooked screen isn’t.

That’s what I had. This new one, the one that I’m writing from, is much better. I can’t say that it’s perfect. I would’ve thought that iPad quality control would eliminate those sorts of problems. Other owners have reported light leakage and bright spots. At least dead pixels seem to be a thing of the past. “They don’t make ‘em like they used to” is a good thing with regard to LCDs. Despite my initial trouble, Imam happy with the iPad 2. It’s everything I loved about my old iPad, faster, in a better shell. I highly recommend these things; the iPad isn’t just magical, for me, it’s life-altering — in all of the best ways. I wish that Apple sold some kind of cover for the back of the iPad 2 (the aluminum can scratch really easily), but there are third-party covers like InvisibleShield. I plan to get something to go along with my (PRODUCT) RED smart cover. Because I take my iPad everywhere and use it as my mann computer, I need something sturdy and somewhat rugged. Having communicated with dozens of app developers, I feel like this device has some of the most passionate programmers and designers in the world backing it up and building for it. Despite some issues I have with Apple’s approval process and store policies, I give them my Bradtastic Approved label. I only wish they were more neutral in their apps choices and terms. As Playstation Network is still down, I’ll be writing more reviews, tips, tangents and rants in my spare time,, including a beginner’s guide to “becoming bit literate” — with the first step of reducing email inbox/es to zero emails. For now, I think I’ll enjoy this a little bit and continue organizing after a snack.