Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: using iCloud as the smart, automated way to store documents - Page 2

That is not what the article says: "The system handles the duplication and local saving of that file, and Pages can begin working on it just as if iCloud never existed. The original document remains in iCloud, tied to TextEdit. Pages (or any other app) can work on its copy, and save it to the file system just as always." (bold added)

 

If I save it, or slightly edit it, how do I know when I come back which is the most recent.  Worse yet, what if I forget I worked on it in the other app and start making edits to it in the original application.  Now I have two files with different edits.

 

This copying behavior is one of the biggest problematic issues with this approach.  In order to open it with another application, there is a copy made of the file that the other application can work on.  Thus, there are two files, one associated with each application.

 

I've spent decades training newbies - and supposed non-newbies - on using PC's and Macs.  Including PhD's, MD's and other presumably intelligent, edjumatcated folk.....

 

Files and folders (or directories) were always flying OTTOTH (over the tops of their heads).  And Roots and subfolders and drives??  Fuhgeddaboudit.  There's a mindset about grokking how computers work that one either has or doesn't - and training won't resolve it for the great majority of those who don't. This is part of why Windows has been a system many engineers, admins and general geeks were never intimidated by - i.e., designed by them for them - and why Apple, being minimally more intuitive and interacting in more conversational language has had an edge for "the rest of us" - where "us" means everybody except Jolt Cola Coders.  

 

I've been working with some friends for many years, and the same damn Q's keep coming up.   

 

They can't learn (or at least remember) shortcut keys.  They have no concept of having more than one browser tab or document or window at a time open, but if they have the money they'll go right for the MBP-R (not even knowing anything about the screen) - and then stress it hard - right to its LIMITS! - by watching low res videos and posting on fb.  Also, they DO just throw everything on their desktop.  

 

And when they ask you questions by email, chat or over the phone, they have no vocabulary to communicate any specific sense what their problem is.  

 

E.g., it doesn't matter whether they're putting a picture from a device TO facebook, or grabbing an attachment FROM an email - or putting something on a thumb drive to TRANSFER it to another device - they have one word for all three:  "uploading."  And when stuck, they neither know nor can tell you where they are in a program or the OS to give you clues.  I have to constantly get them to start reading what's on their screens to me from the upper left to even get a sense of where they're rat-holed.  

 

And then, when I start to tell them what to do next to back out or move forward, they've already clicked something else I didn't ask them to and are now somewhere else - and they'll do that many times during a remote help session even if I beg them "don't do anything I haven't asked you to."  

 

Nor do they practice safe computing or back up or....  

 

...wait.....  

 

Now I see where Apple's heading.....  ...it's the next step in hiding computing from users of computing devices.  

 

...which I'll live with - as long as gearheads are served too and can get at things and organize them for ourselves.  Although that Apple iCloud "privacy" policy is some scary stuff as well......

But Dropbox doesn't allow you to save a file opened on your iOS device. That does work now from iOS device to iOS device, sans OSX. Which is coming this month.

1. iCloud does not replace iDisk, Dropbox, or anything you might believe it to replace. It's a new paradigm.
2. Dropbox asked a 9 figure. Since Apple didn't buy them maybe Steve thought it was too expensive. Maybe they build iCloud because of that. I don't know. As much as I miss MM Gallery, I understand why Apple didn't buy Dropbox, looking at their implementation of sharing photos. Yeah yeah, came out afterwards.

Thanks for the link!

Great¡ Now instead of having your Mac doing it's backup over USB/FW/SATA2/PCIe or whatever speed we are going to rely on a always-up internet connection with DSL/FO/Coax speed. I don't think people want that.

Excellent comment! That is my main gripe with the optional 'Documents In The Cloud' How the frik do I back this up? How do I take it off-site?


Are you able to make changes on your files, no matter what device you are using and seeing those changes on another device? Currently with Apple that only works from iOS device to iOS device, but will come to the lap- and desktop this month.

Yes.  SkyDrive is completely cross platform between Windows, Mac, Windows Phone, iOS, and Android.

https://apps.live.com/skydrive

 

Panic, another excellent long time Mac only developer like Omni, has similar issues wi iCloud bugs preventing integration working as it should.

My own personal speculation is that iWork '12 is being held up by iCloud and further that 10.8 would have been scheduled for WWDC if not for being held up by iWork... Either apple is fervently patching iWork '09 to work on 10.8 right now or they're cutting it very close on finalizing iWork '12. It'll be interesting to see if Apple actually pulls is all together in time for a July launch.

Even if folks can understand it, many don't want to be bothered with it. They have a computer to do things, not create folders etc.

Yes it does.

 

The system duplicates the contents into another application, i.e., in this example, from TextEdit to Pages. At that point, the 'Pages' version is an entirely new file, with all the features that Pages allows. When you save the new Pages document, the file name will contain the Pages extension. If you are worried that you can't remember which file is most 'current', view the 'modified' date.

 

If you, as you say, "work on its copy" when you open it in Pages, it is now a Pages document. you can't save is as a TextEdit file. You can though, export it as such.

 

When you close the new Pages file, it will ask you if you want to save it. If you do, it will save it with the same name if you choose, but with the .pages extension. 

 

Remember also, that you have a choice where you want to save the document.

 

I disagree. While it does run incredibly well most of the time, there are more than a few bugs in the 10.8 GM that I feel should be fixed before launch. I think the timeframe is as they always intended it.

A question and please forgive me if this has already been discussed but I already use iCloud with my iPhone and iPad and look forward to sharing docs with my Mac. But once installed is there any easy way to bulk copy files to iCloud without opening each individual document in an app and then saving the document to iCloud within the app? I see this as a big issue with me. For example I bet I have a 100 pdf's I'd love to get out on iCloud. Do I have to go into Preview and save each individual file? If so, this is going to be a real pain. I don't mind working within the model setup from now on, but I'm just thinking about how to get all my files initially over to iCloud. Thanks

 

I only put DP3/4 on a test machine out of curiosity mostly and just started running GM in production last week so I can't really speak to the stability of any of it with authority.  It's has been stable for me once I sorted out the changes to XCode/X11 which wasn't made easier by my deciding at the same moment to switch from macports to homebrew which is how I install mant of the development tools I ACUTALLY use... I digress.

 

The issues I have seen are all around iCloud, so I do still feel that iCloud is ultimately responsible for most of the blockers to 10.8 releasing, whether that is also because of iWork needing to be iCloud enabled or not, is again just wild speculation on my part but seems reasonable to me.

So do all documents on iCloud show up in search or just those created by built-in apps (like in iOS)?

That covers the case when you switch to a new file format, but you are still left with an extra copy that could easily be used later having forgotten about the other file. Why should that extra file be left there? What happens if I open it another text editor with more features? They would have the same name by default.

What about if you are editing a .jpg and then save it as a .jpg. As per your description, the default will be to save it with the same name, but associates it with the new program. At this point, there will be two duplicate files, only able to be differentiated by the changes made and the modification date, neither of which are readily apparent in a spotlight search, which is the only way to search for all iCloud files. The default search view does not contain modification date so they will see two files with similar content and no obvious way to discern which one they should use.

My point with this is that novice users are going to get confused with this setup as much or more than with a file system. I like that they are trying, but the method will cause many issues as the number of documents fills up their iCloud. They will then be forced to use Spotlight, but, without knowing all the tricks to actually make it work, will be left with a long list of files that is no different than what they have on their desktop, as many posters on this thread have said about the users.

 

I wanted to do a followup to my question with a solution I found to mass copy files to iCloud. Just go to iCloud.com in Safari and then go to iWork. You can then highlight multiple files in Finder and drag them over to iCloud in Safari. Seems to work fine. Problem solved if there is no other way to do it within ML itself.

iCloud mail metadata syncing has also improved in ML. Previously when a new message arrived you would get a red "1" badge on all your devices, and if you then read the message on (e.g.) your iPad, the badge would remain on your Mac. No more, if you read the message on any iDevice that fact is instantly propagated to the Mac and the badge disappears from the Dock.

Did they fix that bug? Wow, finally! Really strange that it took them 100B push notifications and now finally realize they ought to have a pull mechanism in place as well. Do hope this won't be limited to Mail.ipa but be iOS system-wide, i.e. all notifications get updated on all your devices, OSX included.

I agree, it took them a long time to fix. iOS 6 is not required, my iPad is still running iOS 5, but my Mac is running ML GM. And yet the Mac Dock reflects instantly when a message is read on the iPad. So maybe it is not the OS on the iPad that is broadcasting the change, but the mail server itself. In which case it may only be fixed for iCloud (my email service) and not all mail services and/or clients.

Still seems like a clunky workaround rather than a true solution, lacking the drag-and-drop ease of file management with which Apple originally earned its reputation. I understand and welcome the security benefits of app sandboxing, but it really seems like Apple could have found a way to have the OS sync documents to the cloud, and restrict document access to only the creating application, in the background without visibly hiding the docs in the Finder.

 

If they're truly taking the iTunes approach to having the OS manage the documents like iTunes manages the music, perhaps they should truly rework the Finder to work (not just look) more like iTunes. The left pane of the "iFinder" could feature each application (which users could arrange in whatever order they'd like) that, when clicked on, would show all the documents for that application. With "Get Info," users could bring up an iTunes-styled information window where they could enter all sorts of metadata about each file. Users could create "doclists" and "smart doclists" in much the same way they create playlists and smart playlists now by dragging and dropping docs to the lists or, utilizing the Get Doc(s) Info window.

 

I agree that most users either keep their documents well organized or they don't (most don't), and that most users (even those that are well organized) shouldn't be burdened with file management. I'm not crazy about Apple's iCloud solution though. The transition path they seem to have laid out, particularly for long-time users (i.e., those with lots of existing files), isn't very intuitive or encouraging.

What does that mean for OSX in the enterprise in a mixed environment? For example, I work on large proposals. There are word docs, PDFs, excel sheets, images (of multiple types). There are multiple contributors, revisions and versions, etc. Right now I can have proposal specific folders, open it up and find what I want. (Not perfect, but quick. Yes I know stuff like SharePoint is out there for managed team collaboration, but I'm talking here of my personal local workflow as a contributor to such systems.)

The only way I could see making this work is if I establish and enforce a naming convention for ALL files associated with a proposal. From experience this is not easy to do when working with an extended team of contributors. (Since most are not on macs, much of this doesn't apply to them anyway, but I'm concerned here with only my workflow.) More importantly, I don't have to implement or worry about enforced naming conventions in order to find my files right now.

Perhaps I'm a bit dense, but this works for a handful of documents best. If you are running a business, or on projects that have dozens of different documents from many different apps, it seems like a nightmare.

So I guess this iCloud thing doesn't really mean much for me in this context? I'll just need to keep everything in a local files system and continue with Dropbox or such?

I wonder if novices and casual users had that much difficulty with the Finder and the file dialogs (the userface of the file system) in the Mac OS 6 era. Those days it was "the system folder is sacred. Other than that, do whatever you want."

 

I remember how much freedom we had. I, for example, organized my things inside, say, "workplace folders": my word processing folder would contain both my text editing apps and my documents' folder organization, the same happened with my image editing folder, etc. Others would, say, put all apps inside a folder and have their document folders around. It was fairly simple.

 

Today it is "careful with OS X side's folder organization, with your user account floating some levels deep down. At that, careful with your user account's folder organization, which mostly doesn't work as you'd expect, really. And put all your apps inside the app folder or else, more or less, and you better don't try to tidy them up inside subfolders, as updates could break." OS X made us approach Windows' level of complexity.

 

Also, isn't it a bit cheeky that Apple bemoans user confusion when they no longer care for doing even the tiniest amount of handholding? No manuals, no interactive courses, no videos, at all (and an abysmal help system). When you buy your first Mac, it is implicit that you aIready know how to use it, which is absurd. I remember this little interactive Finder course disk I got when I bought my Mac Classic. It helped, lots.

 

I'm not that much of a greybeard, meaning I wouldn't want to go back to the pre-OS X days, but OS X mightily complicated things, Finder-wise, and I don't think iOS' ways really will solve it: they don't scale terribly well as user's needs grow, so Apple'll eventually have to introduce some way of grouping, be it playlists, folders, whatever.

Will it bringing document sync'ing to Windows 7 (and beyond) also? The Windows iCloud Control Panel allows syncing of 'Photo Stream' (as well as calendar items, mail, etc), but no docs. Just curious if this will bridge the document sync gap as well?

You have to be kidding?

 

The name may be the same, (sans extension) but it is not a duplicate file.

 

The default search view? Make your own, i.e., Add modification date view or any of the other metadata attributes that Spotlight tracks.

 

If folks are going to have issues finding documents in their iCloud account, it won't be anymore than they experience now on the local setup.  

Let me illustrate what I *think* you're missing (assuming I've read the article correctly):

 

You have an image that you've opened and saved to iCloud with Preview. But Preview is a limited tool, so you open the image and make changes via Photoshop at work. When you open the image with Photoshop, iCloud makes a copy of the image you stored with Preview. When you save the modified image, it's tied to the Photoshop workspace; the image stored with Preview has not been changed.

 

When you get home to the machine that doesn't have Photoshop, you open Preview to look at it—but it's not there, and you see the unedited version instead.

 

I *hope* that you could somehow still find the modified image via Spotlight search, but it's not clear to me. Unless you also changed the file name you'd need to look at metadata such as modification date/time to find the right image. And you'd still have the unedited (and perhaps now unwanted) image stored in the Preview space.

 

It doesn't seem that it's possible to edit the original document created in one app with a second app; only copies tied to the new app's sandbox may be changed. That may be good on some levels, but it's not what I personally desire. (Again, assuming I've understood the article correctly.)

Downloaded ML and Documents in the Cloud is almost usable. However, though I can save pdf files to iCloud through preview, there is no way to open them on my iPad since there is no Preview app. Am I missing something?

Try PDF Expert. It's $10, but it allows you to edit and save PDFs on your iPad.

In your case it would be better to keep your current workflow. Especially considering you can't make local backups if moving your iWork documents to iCloud. And welcome to the forum.

Thanks for this info. Using iCould (.Mac) email myself as well, so will appreciate this change.

I will look into it, thanks.

It seems to me that the new direction Apple is heading (removing the visibility of the file system) will be great for people who don’t really do a lot of work on their computers (i.e. just browse the web a bit and create a few simple documents from time to time), just don’t understand folders/files, or just completely lack the ability to organize. It sounds backwards, and I think Apple is shooting themselves in the foot, and in a hypothetical world where this is the only change Microsoft will recapture market share in the next 5 years.

 

Why?

Like several other people have pointed out, organizing your documents is intuitive, and just like you have drawers and cabinets in your desk at home, you want folders on your computer, so you can store files at intuitive places. Let's say I wanted to look up some work I did during semester 3 of my Master's degree in 2005, but I don't remember anything about the file name, or even what language it was written in. With today's file system I can easily find the file by heading (on my MacBook) to "Documents --> Education --> Master's Program --> Semester 3 --> Projects". In that folder i will find all files that belonged to this project, together at the same place (for example an excel, word, PDF -and zip file). With the new iCloud file system I can only imagine what hell it would be to find these files and view them quickly. I would have to guess file names or extensions to search among "five hundred thousand" files, just thrown together in one folder. And if I, against all odds, find say the word file, I will have to search again, without any idea what to search for, to find the xls, and so on with the other files. A good metaphor for iCloud is to sit and write an essay by hand, and when done you just throw it into an enormous drawer with 500,000 other documents you have written. You will have to  remember something about the file (text in the file, or file name, or such) and use a search function to find the file. I am sweating just thinking about it. I don’t remember the name of all the thousands of files that I have on my computer, and they are written in different languages, so i cannot search by content either. With today's file system I can easily find the file by navigating down the folder-hierarchy to the place it was most likely archived.

 

And PS: SugarSync seems significantly better than DropBox. If I want my "Documents" folder (or any other file/folder) synchronized on all my computers, that is done seamlessly, without having to move my entire folder structure and default saving location, to the "special" DropBox folder. Incredibly surprising to me that DropBox has become so popular without allowing you to choose what folders to synchronize.

 

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Magnus

Congratulations to Apple Insider and the author of this article. After searching exhaustively for weeks, this is the first comprehensive article I've found that explains iCloud inside and out. Thank you and bravo!