Don't upgrade Pages, Numbers, or Keynote for iOS if you rely on WebDAV

Posted:
in General Discussion
The latest iOS versions of Apple's iWork suite of apps will no longer upload to WebDAV servers, and instead must be saved locally, to iCloud, or another compatible service.

Pages, Numbers, and Keynote make up the iWork Suite of apps
Pages, Numbers, and Keynote make up the iWork Suite of apps


Apple has announced that its latest version 10.0 updates to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, has lost a significant feature. If people currently upload documents from these apps to a WebDAV server, perhaps because they run one for their business, they will have to find an alternative -- and Apple just happens to provide one.

"After you update to Pages, Numbers, or Keynote 10.0, you won't be able to upload documents to a WebDAV server," says Apple in a new support document. "To make sure you don't lose any changes that haven't been uploaded, save any pending uploads to your device, iCloud, or another location."

This is specifically for the iOS versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. There is currently no equivalent support document for Macs, and in AppleInsider testing, uploading to WebDAV remains unchanged on macOS because it is a straightforward Finder mount. However, previous support documents that detailed using WebDAV for the Mac versions now route directly to generic user guides for the different apps.

While Apple does not give any reason for the change, it does follow the introduction of iCloud Drive Folder Sharing. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents that are in a common iCloud Drive folder are automatically able to be collaborated on with other users, and without having to be specifically selected and shared.

It won't be possible to upload new documents, but Apple says existing ones will remain on the WebDAV server. For documents that were in the process of being uploaded, Apple recommends using the apps' Save a Copy command, and choosing a new location.
dewme
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 29
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    elijahgboboliciousdysamoriaElCapitanmike54
  • Reply 2 of 29
    boboliciousbobolicious Posts: 1,139member
    Exactly.
    This seems the new Apple since Jobs.
    Why I am still using High Sierra on pro Macs from that era.
    Why I no longer recommend macs, hoping (as unlikely as it may be) this will change, along with onboard memory, and all roads increasingly leading to the Cupertino iCloud.

    THIS lifetime Apple user doesn't want ANYTHING on your foreign servers, encrypted or not, if for nothing more than dependence on the internet, the hack risk, the Patriot Act and the environment.

    Apple's business, my wallet. So very disappointing after so many, many years.

    edited April 2020 dysamoriaelijahgrazorpitElCapitanmike54flyingdpbonobob
  • Reply 3 of 29
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    razorpit said:
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    Same for me. WebDAV isn't exactly a difficult thing to maintain, it's a pretty simple protocol based entirely on HTTP extensions. Removing things like this only makes things more difficult for Mac users, especially when it's not noted in the release notes. That may be a major feature for an enterprise user, and now it's gone with no way to revert. Great, thanks Apple.

    Seems each release these days removes almost as much as it adds - Numbers got bigger sheets and background colours, a new theme browser (wow!) and lost WebDAV. That's it. All of that in a big-number point release. It's still hugely lacking in cell referencing (you still can't even fill down or specify a range). Lack of ranges is especially annoying when using graphs, as you have to add every single row's reference, plus with thousands of points Numbers slows to an absolute crawl (i9 2019 iMac here), while Excel and OpenOffice are both fine.

    The push toward (or perhaps requirement to use) their own services and protocols is extremely reminiscent of MS in the late 90's and early 2000s, when Apple was championed as "open". Unfortunately these roles seem to be slowly reversing, I do not like it one bit.
    edited April 2020 dysamoriarazorpitmike54flyingdp
  • Reply 4 of 29
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    elijahg said:
    razorpit said:
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    Same for me. WebDAV isn't exactly a difficult thing to maintain, it's a pretty simple protocol based entirely on HTTP extensions. Removing things like this only makes things more difficult for Mac users, especially when it's not noted in the release notes. That may be a major feature for an enterprise user, and now it's gone with no way to revert. Great, thanks Apple.

    Seems each release these days removes almost as much as it adds - Numbers got bigger sheets and background colours, a new theme browser (wow!) and lost WebDAV. That's it. All of that in a big-number point release. It's still hugely lacking in cell referencing (you still can't even fill down or specify a range). Lack of ranges is especially annoying when using graphs, as you have to add every single row's reference, plus with thousands of points Numbers slows to an absolute crawl (i9 2019 iMac here), while Excel and OpenOffice are both fine.

    The push toward (or perhaps requirement to use) their own services and protocols is extremely reminiscent of MS in the late 90's and early 2000s, when Apple was championed as "open". Unfortunately these roles seem to be slowly reversing, I do not like it one bit.
    This has been an observation of mine for some time, too. Not just in regard to the pushed services, but also in the mounting plethora of unresolved bugs and clear obsession with MBA-style business “leadership”.

    Apple aren’t what they used to be. At this point, Tim Cook’s progressive sociopolitical stances are the only thing for me to like about him...

    ...but I know he’s stuck in the wealthy-person’s bubble (or self-isolated in an ivory tower); his economic echo-chamber must have an impact on the way he sees things when he’s thinking “socially progressive”. Survivorship bias, a problem of so many “successful” business people, must be an issue there.

    Also, Apple are another big company that have been using their cash stockpiles to increase share prices, which the current economic crisis has proven to be a short-sighted and self-destructive practice... as is the whole “public ownership” gambling system we’ve mistaken for an economic system.

    Apple have a history of acting like they know what’s best for everyone via their product and design choices, but they’ve been doing a lot of self-sabotage since 2013, and it always seems to be about power users being shafted while pushing for yet more dependence on Apple and focus on mass-market end-users (“because iPhone sales”)... which is itself odd and notably flawed in how Apple keep behaving as though all customers are the same level of wealth as Apple’s neighborhood in California.

    I don’t use WebDAV, but I do see this change as a way to push an Apple service... one which many power users and businesses don’t want to be forced to rely on because it costs them extra (extra time, extra subscription fees, reliance on outside management and support, etc). That hurts such users, and it will eventually contribute to how Apple are constantly hurting their opportunities with organizational customers.

    Apple were always a weird company, but the weirdness continues to grow into increasingly self-blind territory. 
    razorpitelijahgmike54
  • Reply 5 of 29
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    dysamoria said:
    elijahg said:
    razorpit said:
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    Same for me. WebDAV isn't exactly a difficult thing to maintain, it's a pretty simple protocol based entirely on HTTP extensions. Removing things like this only makes things more difficult for Mac users, especially when it's not noted in the release notes. That may be a major feature for an enterprise user, and now it's gone with no way to revert. Great, thanks Apple.

    Seems each release these days removes almost as much as it adds - Numbers got bigger sheets and background colours, a new theme browser (wow!) and lost WebDAV. That's it. All of that in a big-number point release. It's still hugely lacking in cell referencing (you still can't even fill down or specify a range). Lack of ranges is especially annoying when using graphs, as you have to add every single row's reference, plus with thousands of points Numbers slows to an absolute crawl (i9 2019 iMac here), while Excel and OpenOffice are both fine.

    The push toward (or perhaps requirement to use) their own services and protocols is extremely reminiscent of MS in the late 90's and early 2000s, when Apple was championed as "open". Unfortunately these roles seem to be slowly reversing, I do not like it one bit.
    This has been an observation of mine for some time, too. Not just in regard to the pushed services, but also in the mounting plethora of unresolved bugs and clear obsession with MBA-style business “leadership”.

    Apple aren’t what they used to be. At this point, Tim Cook’s progressive sociopolitical stances are the only thing for me to like about him...

    ...but I know he’s stuck in the wealthy-person’s bubble (or self-isolated in an ivory tower); his economic echo-chamber must have an impact on the way he sees things when he’s thinking “socially progressive”. Survivorship bias, a problem of so many “successful” business people, must be an issue there.

    Also, Apple are another big company that have been using their cash stockpiles to increase share prices, which the current economic crisis has proven to be a short-sighted and self-destructive practice... as is the whole “public ownership” gambling system we’ve mistaken for an economic system.

    Apple have a history of acting like they know what’s best for everyone via their product and design choices, but they’ve been doing a lot of self-sabotage since 2013, and it always seems to be about power users being shafted while pushing for yet more dependence on Apple and focus on mass-market end-users (“because iPhone sales”)... which is itself odd and notably flawed in how Apple keep behaving as though all customers are the same level of wealth as Apple’s neighborhood in California.

    I don’t use WebDAV, but I do see this change as a way to push an Apple service... one which many power users and businesses don’t want to be forced to rely on because it costs them extra (extra time, extra subscription fees, reliance on outside management and support, etc). That hurts such users, and it will eventually contribute to how Apple are constantly hurting their opportunities with organizational customers.

    Apple were always a weird company, but the weirdness continues to grow into increasingly self-blind territory. 
    I completely agree. The occasional "fallow" year we get with iOS and macOS updates is supposed to fix vast numbers of bugs, but nothing much seems to change. I have no idea where all the R&D money Apple is spending is going, the R&D spend seems to be rising at an exponential rate with an exponential decline in the number of features/products, and the quality of the software. 

    I've never been a fan of Cook. Whilst I do agree with his sociopolitical stances generally, I think him using Apple as a platform to spout them is wrong - I have met people who won't use Apple's products due to Cook's stances. And yes he is definitely stuck in the wealthy person's bubble. His fairly socialist ideals, sharing and equality, doesn't help Apple's sales or his message when their phones start at twice the price of the average Android one, plus Apple's wealth is more than anyone else. There's nothing socialist about that at all. 

    I agree on the buying back shares point too. That again goes against Tim's message, all it does is increase income for shareholders, not the poorer in society. It also proves Apple hasn't a clue what to do with the cash pile they have - which wouldn't be so massive if their prices were a bit more reasonable.

    The pushback against Apple's "we know best" seems to have become stronger in recent years. I'm still really pissed they removed 32-bit support, and essentially forced an upgrade to Catalina if you wanted (or had a new device with) iOS 13. It's unfortunate that Apple refuses to accept people want choices. People need to interact with Windows, with Windows servers, Linux servers, Oracle servers and everything that isn't Apple. They block themselves out through their own incompatibilities. It's not even just power users - businesses use those power user features too (WebDAV for example) and Apple just throws them in the bin. That's it, you're SOL, your entire business's workflow is screwed overnight. 

    The forced reliance on an external service is especially stupid now when Internet load is at an all time high. With WebDAV you could have sync setup at quiet times, or overnight. With iCloud there is no option for that, it just uploads whenever it wants and if you don't live in an urban area with a high speed symmetric connection, your connection is hosed for hours. iCloud backups absolutely hammer ADSL connections. Maybe with Apple's software engineers working from home they'll realise how woefully lacking the iCloud sync client's bandwidth fairness/QOS is.

    I have to agree. I used to love Apple, I would never hear a bad word said about them. I would suck up the things that weren't quite right as they were vastly outweighed by the progression. I used to be excited to see what new things they were adding or what new products they were releasing, I now have a fear for what has been removed in each release instead. Which really damps the elation I used to experience every time a keynote neared :( 
    edited April 2020 mike54flyingdpdysamoria
  • Reply 6 of 29
    tommy65tommy65 Posts: 56member
    We are moving to a service driven economy with centralized control. That’s something we cannot stop and is not limited to Apple alone, it is just the way the world is moving on. People are still strange but not the CEO of a large enterprise unfortunately.
    edited April 2020 watto_cobra
  • Reply 7 of 29
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    tommy65 said:
    We are moving to a service driven economy with centralized control. That’s something we cannot stop and is not limited to Apple alone, it is just the way the world is moving on. People are still strange but not the CEO of a large enterprise unfortunately.
    That may be so, but at least other companies let end users choose which service to use. In the last 5 or 6 years Apple has gradually removed compatibility with third party services and even removed built in value added services that allowed ad-hoc remote access to Macs (Back to my Mac). Having to use third party apps all the time to reinstate these removed capabilities makes the macOS's capabilities closer and closer to a decent Linux distro on a PC, only with an Apple tax ontop.
    razorpitdysamoria
  • Reply 8 of 29
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    mike54 said:
    Agree with all the above comments.
    I'm not a fan of Tim Cook and the changes he is continuing making under his tenure, and I'm constantly being proven right. But its been good for the share price and the investors though, and that what he probably cares about.

    Weeeellll, since their user base is still growing, you haven't been proven right at all, have you.

    Here's something Cook has to worry about that you clearly don't: the big picture.

    How many of their user base uses WebDAV? Is this number rising or falling?
    Are users in general switching WebDAV, or are they using cloud services from the likes of Google and Microsoft? (the last outfit I worked for has switched from in-house servers to Google services)
    If they can control the storage stack then can they introduce some benefit that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise?

    Not everything is as simple as it seems if you look further than your armchair.

    As Tommy65 has said, Cook is most likely just responding to where the market is going. Annoying, but that's kind of his job.

    StrangeDaysdewmewatto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 29
    sjworldsjworld Posts: 94member
    Damn. Getting rid of another good feature while adding useless ones and breaking long-standing ones. Shit...I might just upgrade iPhones every 4 years instead of 3.
    elijahgdysamoria
  • Reply 10 of 29
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,192member
    It's time to "thank" Apple again for discontinuing SMTP, IMAP, CardDAV, CalDAV, etc., too. I'm still losing sleep over figuring out decent replacements and worrying when my servers fail.
    edited April 2020 elijahgdysamoria
  • Reply 11 of 29
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    elijahg said:
    dysamoria said:
    elijahg said:
    razorpit said:
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    Same for me. WebDAV isn't exactly a difficult thing to maintain, it's a pretty simple protocol based entirely on HTTP extensions. Removing things like this only makes things more difficult for Mac users, especially when it's not noted in the release notes. That may be a major feature for an enterprise user, and now it's gone with no way to revert. Great, thanks Apple.

    Seems each release these days removes almost as much as it adds - Numbers got bigger sheets and background colours, a new theme browser (wow!) and lost WebDAV. That's it. All of that in a big-number point release. It's still hugely lacking in cell referencing (you still can't even fill down or specify a range). Lack of ranges is especially annoying when using graphs, as you have to add every single row's reference, plus with thousands of points Numbers slows to an absolute crawl (i9 2019 iMac here), while Excel and OpenOffice are both fine.

    The push toward (or perhaps requirement to use) their own services and protocols is extremely reminiscent of MS in the late 90's and early 2000s, when Apple was championed as "open". Unfortunately these roles seem to be slowly reversing, I do not like it one bit.
    This has been an observation of mine for some time, too. Not just in regard to the pushed services, but also in the mounting plethora of unresolved bugs and clear obsession with MBA-style business “leadership”.

    Apple aren’t what they used to be. At this point, Tim Cook’s progressive sociopolitical stances are the only thing for me to like about him...

    ...but I know he’s stuck in the wealthy-person’s bubble (or self-isolated in an ivory tower); his economic echo-chamber must have an impact on the way he sees things when he’s thinking “socially progressive”. Survivorship bias, a problem of so many “successful” business people, must be an issue there.

    Also, Apple are another big company that have been using their cash stockpiles to increase share prices, which the current economic crisis has proven to be a short-sighted and self-destructive practice... as is the whole “public ownership” gambling system we’ve mistaken for an economic system.

    Apple have a history of acting like they know what’s best for everyone via their product and design choices, but they’ve been doing a lot of self-sabotage since 2013, and it always seems to be about power users being shafted while pushing for yet more dependence on Apple and focus on mass-market end-users (“because iPhone sales”)... which is itself odd and notably flawed in how Apple keep behaving as though all customers are the same level of wealth as Apple’s neighborhood in California.

    I don’t use WebDAV, but I do see this change as a way to push an Apple service... one which many power users and businesses don’t want to be forced to rely on because it costs them extra (extra time, extra subscription fees, reliance on outside management and support, etc). That hurts such users, and it will eventually contribute to how Apple are constantly hurting their opportunities with organizational customers.

    Apple were always a weird company, but the weirdness continues to grow into increasingly self-blind territory. 
    I've never been a fan of Cook. Whilst I do agree with his sociopolitical stances generally, I think him using Apple as a platform to spout them is wrong - I have met people who won't use Apple's products due to Cook's stances. And yes he is definitely stuck in the wealthy person's bubble. His fairly socialist ideals, sharing and equality, doesn't help Apple's sales or his message when their phones start at twice the price of the average Android one, plus Apple's wealth is more than anyone else. There's nothing socialist about that at all. 
    You guys are nuts. If you know people who won’t buy Apple because Cook is outspoken about gay and women’s rights, what does that say about the people you hang out with? Gross. 

    Cook has socialist ideas? The CEO of our most successful capitalistic public firm in history? You seem very confused. 

    You know what is socialist tho? $1200 relief checks to private citizens. $500 billion in bailouts to private corporations. The Fed’s $1.5 trillion in 0% lending to banks, etc etc... Socialism is and has been part of American policy for decades. 

    And I am LOL at your outrage that top-tier iPhones cost more than the average knockoff piece of shit. Oh nos! Good thing iPhones start at $449 tho. 
    edited April 2020 dewmeraulcristianmpw_amherstwatto_cobra
  • Reply 12 of 29
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member

    mike54 said:
    Agree with all the above comments.
    I'm not a fan of Tim Cook and the changes he is continuing making under his tenure, and I'm constantly being proven right. But its been good for the share price and the investors though, and that what he probably cares about.
    I am not a stockholder but am a developer, and am very happy with the work Apple has achieved under Cook. Excellent products and platforms, the best iterations of them by far. I gladly purchased new Macs (mini, iMac, MBP), multiple iPads and iPhones, multiple Watches, multiple AirPods, multiple ATVs, and many services. The platforms are vastly superior to the knockoffs such as android and windows. 

    “But mah WebDAV!” If you believe normals use this, you’re sorely mistaken. I doubt many small businesses do either. I work enterprise and we use commercial cloud services...the writing is on the wall. If you’re a fringe case that’s fine, but that isn’t what a mass market consumer company caters to. 
    edited April 2020 mdriftmeyerdewmewatto_cobra
  • Reply 13 of 29
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member

    sjworld said:
    Damn. Getting rid of another good feature while adding useless ones and breaking long-standing ones. Shit...I might just upgrade iPhones every 4 years instead of 3.
    Sure you will. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 29
    sjworldsjworld Posts: 94member
    elijahg said:
    dysamoria said:
    elijahg said:
    razorpit said:
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    Same for me. WebDAV isn't exactly a difficult thing to maintain, it's a pretty simple protocol based entirely on HTTP extensions. Removing things like this only makes things more difficult for Mac users, especially when it's not noted in the release notes. That may be a major feature for an enterprise user, and now it's gone with no way to revert. Great, thanks Apple.

    Seems each release these days removes almost as much as it adds - Numbers got bigger sheets and background colours, a new theme browser (wow!) and lost WebDAV. That's it. All of that in a big-number point release. It's still hugely lacking in cell referencing (you still can't even fill down or specify a range). Lack of ranges is especially annoying when using graphs, as you have to add every single row's reference, plus with thousands of points Numbers slows to an absolute crawl (i9 2019 iMac here), while Excel and OpenOffice are both fine.

    The push toward (or perhaps requirement to use) their own services and protocols is extremely reminiscent of MS in the late 90's and early 2000s, when Apple was championed as "open". Unfortunately these roles seem to be slowly reversing, I do not like it one bit.
    This has been an observation of mine for some time, too. Not just in regard to the pushed services, but also in the mounting plethora of unresolved bugs and clear obsession with MBA-style business “leadership”.

    Apple aren’t what they used to be. At this point, Tim Cook’s progressive sociopolitical stances are the only thing for me to like about him...

    ...but I know he’s stuck in the wealthy-person’s bubble (or self-isolated in an ivory tower); his economic echo-chamber must have an impact on the way he sees things when he’s thinking “socially progressive”. Survivorship bias, a problem of so many “successful” business people, must be an issue there.

    Also, Apple are another big company that have been using their cash stockpiles to increase share prices, which the current economic crisis has proven to be a short-sighted and self-destructive practice... as is the whole “public ownership” gambling system we’ve mistaken for an economic system.

    Apple have a history of acting like they know what’s best for everyone via their product and design choices, but they’ve been doing a lot of self-sabotage since 2013, and it always seems to be about power users being shafted while pushing for yet more dependence on Apple and focus on mass-market end-users (“because iPhone sales”)... which is itself odd and notably flawed in how Apple keep behaving as though all customers are the same level of wealth as Apple’s neighborhood in California.

    I don’t use WebDAV, but I do see this change as a way to push an Apple service... one which many power users and businesses don’t want to be forced to rely on because it costs them extra (extra time, extra subscription fees, reliance on outside management and support, etc). That hurts such users, and it will eventually contribute to how Apple are constantly hurting their opportunities with organizational customers.

    Apple were always a weird company, but the weirdness continues to grow into increasingly self-blind territory. 
    I've never been a fan of Cook. Whilst I do agree with his sociopolitical stances generally, I think him using Apple as a platform to spout them is wrong - I have met people who won't use Apple's products due to Cook's stances. And yes he is definitely stuck in the wealthy person's bubble. His fairly socialist ideals, sharing and equality, doesn't help Apple's sales or his message when their phones start at twice the price of the average Android one, plus Apple's wealth is more than anyone else. There's nothing socialist about that at all. 
    You guys are nuts. If you know people who won’t buy Apple because Cook is outspoken about gay and women’s rights, what does that say about the people you hang out with? Gross. 

    Cook has socialist ideas? The CEO of our most successful capitalistic public firm in history? You seem very confused. 

    You know what is socialist tho? $1200 relief checks to private citizens. $500 billion in bailouts to private corporations. The Fed’s $1.5 trillion in 0% lending to banks, etc etc... Socialism is and has been part of American policy for decades. 

    And I am LOL at your outrage that top-tier iPhones cost more than the average knockoff piece of shit. Oh nos! Good thing iPhones start at $449 tho. 
    I hope you realize that these “knockoff piece of shit” are made of the same material as iPhones. Slap iOS into one of them and you won’t be able to tell them apart.
  • Reply 15 of 29
    sjworldsjworld Posts: 94member

    sjworld said:
    Damn. Getting rid of another good feature while adding useless ones and breaking long-standing ones. Shit...I might just upgrade iPhones every 4 years instead of 3.
    Sure you will. 

  • Reply 16 of 29
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    elijahg said:
    dysamoria said:
    elijahg said:
    razorpit said:
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    Same for me. WebDAV isn't exactly a difficult thing to maintain, it's a pretty simple protocol based entirely on HTTP extensions. Removing things like this only makes things more difficult for Mac users, especially when it's not noted in the release notes. That may be a major feature for an enterprise user, and now it's gone with no way to revert. Great, thanks Apple.

    Seems each release these days removes almost as much as it adds - Numbers got bigger sheets and background colours, a new theme browser (wow!) and lost WebDAV. That's it. All of that in a big-number point release. It's still hugely lacking in cell referencing (you still can't even fill down or specify a range). Lack of ranges is especially annoying when using graphs, as you have to add every single row's reference, plus with thousands of points Numbers slows to an absolute crawl (i9 2019 iMac here), while Excel and OpenOffice are both fine.

    The push toward (or perhaps requirement to use) their own services and protocols is extremely reminiscent of MS in the late 90's and early 2000s, when Apple was championed as "open". Unfortunately these roles seem to be slowly reversing, I do not like it one bit.
    This has been an observation of mine for some time, too. Not just in regard to the pushed services, but also in the mounting plethora of unresolved bugs and clear obsession with MBA-style business “leadership”.

    Apple aren’t what they used to be. At this point, Tim Cook’s progressive sociopolitical stances are the only thing for me to like about him...

    ...but I know he’s stuck in the wealthy-person’s bubble (or self-isolated in an ivory tower); his economic echo-chamber must have an impact on the way he sees things when he’s thinking “socially progressive”. Survivorship bias, a problem of so many “successful” business people, must be an issue there.

    Also, Apple are another big company that have been using their cash stockpiles to increase share prices, which the current economic crisis has proven to be a short-sighted and self-destructive practice... as is the whole “public ownership” gambling system we’ve mistaken for an economic system.

    Apple have a history of acting like they know what’s best for everyone via their product and design choices, but they’ve been doing a lot of self-sabotage since 2013, and it always seems to be about power users being shafted while pushing for yet more dependence on Apple and focus on mass-market end-users (“because iPhone sales”)... which is itself odd and notably flawed in how Apple keep behaving as though all customers are the same level of wealth as Apple’s neighborhood in California.

    I don’t use WebDAV, but I do see this change as a way to push an Apple service... one which many power users and businesses don’t want to be forced to rely on because it costs them extra (extra time, extra subscription fees, reliance on outside management and support, etc). That hurts such users, and it will eventually contribute to how Apple are constantly hurting their opportunities with organizational customers.

    Apple were always a weird company, but the weirdness continues to grow into increasingly self-blind territory. 
    I've never been a fan of Cook. Whilst I do agree with his sociopolitical stances generally, I think him using Apple as a platform to spout them is wrong - I have met people who won't use Apple's products due to Cook's stances. And yes he is definitely stuck in the wealthy person's bubble. His fairly socialist ideals, sharing and equality, doesn't help Apple's sales or his message when their phones start at twice the price of the average Android one, plus Apple's wealth is more than anyone else. There's nothing socialist about that at all. 
    You guys are nuts. If you know people who won’t buy Apple because Cook is outspoken about gay and women’s rights, what does that say about the people you hang out with? Gross. 

    Cook has socialist ideas? The CEO of our most successful capitalistic public firm in history? You seem very confused. 

    You know what is socialist tho? $1200 relief checks to private citizens. $500 billion in bailouts to private corporations. The Fed’s $1.5 trillion in 0% lending to banks, etc etc... Socialism is and has been part of American policy for decades. 

    And I am LOL at your outrage that top-tier iPhones cost more than the average knockoff piece of shit. Oh nos! Good thing iPhones start at $449 tho. 
    You're the one that's nuts. You jump on every single post that isn't 100% pro Apple and always claim things are better this way. Apple could stab you in the eye and you'd still say it was for the best. You opinions hold absolutely no value at all for this reason.
    razorpitsjworlddysamoria
  • Reply 17 of 29
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,623member
    sjworld said:
    elijahg said:
    dysamoria said:
    elijahg said:
    razorpit said:
    While I don't use WebDAV, I imagine there are a lot of people out there that do.

    This is the type of stuff I have my gripes with Apple on. Why stop people who know what they are doing, building low cost in-house services, and force them to use more costly, maybe less secure services which they do not have complete control over?

    Never mind, I think I just answered my own question...
    Same for me. WebDAV isn't exactly a difficult thing to maintain, it's a pretty simple protocol based entirely on HTTP extensions. Removing things like this only makes things more difficult for Mac users, especially when it's not noted in the release notes. That may be a major feature for an enterprise user, and now it's gone with no way to revert. Great, thanks Apple.

    Seems each release these days removes almost as much as it adds - Numbers got bigger sheets and background colours, a new theme browser (wow!) and lost WebDAV. That's it. All of that in a big-number point release. It's still hugely lacking in cell referencing (you still can't even fill down or specify a range). Lack of ranges is especially annoying when using graphs, as you have to add every single row's reference, plus with thousands of points Numbers slows to an absolute crawl (i9 2019 iMac here), while Excel and OpenOffice are both fine.

    The push toward (or perhaps requirement to use) their own services and protocols is extremely reminiscent of MS in the late 90's and early 2000s, when Apple was championed as "open". Unfortunately these roles seem to be slowly reversing, I do not like it one bit.
    This has been an observation of mine for some time, too. Not just in regard to the pushed services, but also in the mounting plethora of unresolved bugs and clear obsession with MBA-style business “leadership”.

    Apple aren’t what they used to be. At this point, Tim Cook’s progressive sociopolitical stances are the only thing for me to like about him...

    ...but I know he’s stuck in the wealthy-person’s bubble (or self-isolated in an ivory tower); his economic echo-chamber must have an impact on the way he sees things when he’s thinking “socially progressive”. Survivorship bias, a problem of so many “successful” business people, must be an issue there.

    Also, Apple are another big company that have been using their cash stockpiles to increase share prices, which the current economic crisis has proven to be a short-sighted and self-destructive practice... as is the whole “public ownership” gambling system we’ve mistaken for an economic system.

    Apple have a history of acting like they know what’s best for everyone via their product and design choices, but they’ve been doing a lot of self-sabotage since 2013, and it always seems to be about power users being shafted while pushing for yet more dependence on Apple and focus on mass-market end-users (“because iPhone sales”)... which is itself odd and notably flawed in how Apple keep behaving as though all customers are the same level of wealth as Apple’s neighborhood in California.

    I don’t use WebDAV, but I do see this change as a way to push an Apple service... one which many power users and businesses don’t want to be forced to rely on because it costs them extra (extra time, extra subscription fees, reliance on outside management and support, etc). That hurts such users, and it will eventually contribute to how Apple are constantly hurting their opportunities with organizational customers.

    Apple were always a weird company, but the weirdness continues to grow into increasingly self-blind territory. 
    I've never been a fan of Cook. Whilst I do agree with his sociopolitical stances generally, I think him using Apple as a platform to spout them is wrong - I have met people who won't use Apple's products due to Cook's stances. And yes he is definitely stuck in the wealthy person's bubble. His fairly socialist ideals, sharing and equality, doesn't help Apple's sales or his message when their phones start at twice the price of the average Android one, plus Apple's wealth is more than anyone else. There's nothing socialist about that at all. 
    You guys are nuts. If you know people who won’t buy Apple because Cook is outspoken about gay and women’s rights, what does that say about the people you hang out with? Gross. 

    Cook has socialist ideas? The CEO of our most successful capitalistic public firm in history? You seem very confused. 

    You know what is socialist tho? $1200 relief checks to private citizens. $500 billion in bailouts to private corporations. The Fed’s $1.5 trillion in 0% lending to banks, etc etc... Socialism is and has been part of American policy for decades. 

    And I am LOL at your outrage that top-tier iPhones cost more than the average knockoff piece of shit. Oh nos! Good thing iPhones start at $449 tho. 
    I hope you realize that these “knockoff piece of shit” are made of the same material as iPhones. Slap iOS into one of them and you won’t be able to tell them apart.
    Not only that, they would be better in many areas. Users would never see a 5W charger again!

    On this subject, I feel the complaints are warranted. As they are for a lot of areas where functionality was taken away.

    Claiming no one uses them or not enough people use them are bogus IMO and are not limited to Apple either.

    As usual Apple has fallen at the lowest hurdle: communication.

    This news should have been put out to users the very same day Apple decided to drop the features. That is the easiest part but I think Apple is more interested in people upgrading and holds off on anything that might cause users to hesitate before upgrading. They have done it time and time again. 

    I stopped taking iWork seriously when they screwed up format support between platforms when the iOS Apps were released. From that moment on I knew Apple wasn't truly committed to the project.


    AppleScript?
    Aperture?
    iTunes?
    QuickTme to QuickTime X?
    FCP to FCPX?
    Disk Utility?
    Finder?

    What a mess and most of the time users found out the hard way. When they had already upgraded.

    With all those billions sitting in the bank, these are the tiny decisions that rub people up the wrong way and claiming that few people use them, misses the root issue.

    If there are valid security reasons, then communicate them to the users involved - and in good time.

    It should be clear that both iOS and MacOS have suffered from being on strict release paths and if they suffer, users suffer.

    We have seen some truly awful quality assurance for software over recent years yet people still claim Apple releases things only when they are fully baked. That has never ever been true, going right back to the original OSX. The best systems have been those that were focused on improving the update that came out the year before it.

    Ask any long term user for their favourite system and watch Tiger and Snow Leopard appear in abundance.


    elijahgdysamoria
  • Reply 18 of 29
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member

    mike54 said:
    Agree with all the above comments.
    I'm not a fan of Tim Cook and the changes he is continuing making under his tenure, and I'm constantly being proven right. But its been good for the share price and the investors though, and that what he probably cares about.
    ....

    “But mah WebDAV!” If you believe normals use this, you’re sorely mistaken. I doubt many small businesses do either. I work enterprise and we use commercial cloud services...the writing is on the wall. If you’re a fringe case that’s fine, but that isn’t what a mass market consumer company caters to. 
    Not a single person here claimed that. Just because you don't use WebDAV, doesn't mean no one else does. You don't need to use it to see the problems this is going to cause for those that do. Let alone Apple mentioning WebDAV was removed AFTER the updates were released and on people's machines. 
    elijahgavon b7bonobobdysamoria
  • Reply 19 of 29
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    avon b7 said:

    I stopped taking iWork seriously when they screwed up format support between platforms when the iOS Apps were released. From that moment on I knew Apple wasn't truly committed to the project.
    This really pissed me off too! As soon as the iOS versions of iWork apps came out half the features vanished from the Mac version. It was ridiculous, they went from pretty full featured to basically mobile versions. It was like Apple couldn't shoehorn all the Mac features into an iOS app so rather than popping up a dialog saying "sorry you can't do X on mobile" they binned half the features of the Mac version. I think they did that so people couldn't say well an iPad isn't a proper computer since it can't do half the stuff a Mac can. So they just binned the things the Mac could do so people couldn't compare. A popup happens for the table of contents, you can't edit that on mobile and it tells you. (mind, it's been like that for what, 5 years now?) Image captioning for example went the way of the dodo. Gone and has never come back. You have to group an image and text box together, then the wrapping screws itself and it's just terrible. Then sometimes an image will jump to a random place on the page and you cannot move it. It just jumps back to that page again. It drives me mental! In Numbers if you use error bars there's a 4+ year old bug where all the error bars are offset by one so you have to add a bogus "0" in your data to remove the offset. Reported it to Apple, it was forwarded to engineering and ignored.
    avon b7 said:

    AppleScript?
    Aperture?
    iTunes?
    QuickTme to QuickTime X?
    FCP to FCPX?
    Disk Utility?
    Finder?
    So many yesses! Apple often promises the missing features will return, but there is no timeline and then they just don't. It's unbelievable that it took them almost a year to implement iCloud folder sharing. How can that take a year, the infrastructure is already there for file sharing, it can't be difficult to create a UI for the folder (already exists for non-shared folders) and add folders to that existing code. The FCPX transition lost Apple a _lot_ of very loyal pro users. The BBC used to use FCP almost exclusively, now they use Avid on PCs. Disk Utility too, you're now pretty much resigned to the CLI to create a disk image. So many things that used to be easy on the Mac are now just not. It's a real shame.

    And as you say - security updates contain a detailed changelog, so why can't they do that for everything? More often than not updates just say "bug fixtures and stability enhancements". Great.
    edited April 2020 avon b7dysamoriarazorpit
  • Reply 20 of 29
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    You can upload to DropBox, iCloud Folders. Why in the hell do I care about a localized WebDAV? Corporations all use commercially certified and financially protected Cloud Services.
    watto_cobra
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