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Documents in icloud also on your computer?

T

tigress666

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 14, 2010
3,288
17
Washington State
Alright, just gotta ask. With how icloud works now, when I put something in the icloud folder, is it also still on my computer as well as on icloud (like will I have access to it if I'm offline) or does it store it solely in the "cloud" so to speak.

Like does it work to synch my documents or does it actually store my documents for me (I am hoping the former).
 
It's just like Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. All files in iCloud Drive in the Finder are also saved locally in the same location, so they can be accessed offline.
 
danielceleste said:
It's just like Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. All files in iCloud Drive in the Finder are also saved locally in the same location, so they can be accessed offline.
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At least with OneDrive you have the option to keep a copy locally or not. The problem with iCloud Drive is you may have 100gb of data in iCloud which is fine to keep a local copy on your desktop but not on your laptop due to small SSD Drive. I assume they would not keep all of your files local on the iOS Devices.
 
Does this mean that the files propagate on all your hard drives? I have an iMac and want to save my files to iCloud Drive in order to access them from all my devices (IOS and OS X) The problem is that my Macbook Air and my IOS devices have storage capacities which are way too small for the number of files I wish to keep on the iCloud Drive.. What is the point of subscribing to a 1Tb disk plan, if my MacBook Air only has 256Gb and my IOS Devices only 128Gb?

It seems crazy that instead of one copy sat on a remote disk, there will also be four local copies of the same file!

Surely the whole concept of cloud storage is that a document placed on a remote server can be served wherever you wish? It should never need to be on a local drive.
 
Martin29 said:
Does this mean that the files propagate on all your hard drives? I have an iMac and want to save my files to iCloud Drive in order to access them from all my devices (IOS and OS X) The problem is that my Macbook Air and my IOS devices have storage capacities which are way too small for the number of files I wish to keep on the iCloud Drive.. What is the point of subscribing to a 1Tb disk plan, if my MacBook Air only has 256Gb and my IOS Devices only 128Gb?

It seems crazy that instead of one copy sat on a remote disk, there will also be four local copies of the same file!

Surely the whole concept of cloud storage is that a document placed on a remote server can be served wherever you wish? It should never need to be on a local drive.
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Exactly my point. But I think it does not try top copy all files to iOS. Only on all Mac's.
 
Exactly my point. But I think it does not try top copy all files to iOS. Only on all Mac's.
Click to expand...

It seems to me that if what we're seeing now is correct, then the whole iCloud Disk thing has missed the point. Surely if the files can be accessible to IOS devices without a local copy, then it shouldn't be beyond Apple to do the same on OS X devices. As it stands for my Macs, I would be better saving to a network drive accessible to both Macs, that way I'd have a unique copy of the file and the disk space to keep unshared files. Of course I'd lose the ability to access them away from the network.. Which is where I believed iCloud disk was going to help.

Oddly, the mail app on IOS doesn't seem to permit attachments from iCloud Disk either.. This just feels like an unfinished product we're being offered. I can't believe anyone at Apple seriously believes we want to store copies of the same file on each of our hard drives and also on iCloud Drive!
 
iCloud lacking an intuitive process

Martin29 said:
It seems to me that if what we're seeing now is correct, then the whole iCloud Disk thing has missed the point. Surely if the files can be accessible to IOS devices without a local copy, then it shouldn't be beyond Apple to do the same on OS X devices. As it stands for my Macs, I would be better saving to a network drive accessible to both Macs, that way I'd have a unique copy of the file and the disk space to keep unshared files. Of course I'd lose the ability to access them away from the network.. Which is where I believed iCloud disk was going to help.

Oddly, the mail app on IOS doesn't seem to permit attachments from iCloud Disk either.. This just feels like an unfinished product we're being offered. I can't believe anyone at Apple seriously believes we want to store copies of the same file on each of our hard drives and also on iCloud Drive!
Click to expand...

I was just about to post my own thread when I saw this one.

ICloud is very unintuitive. I am a fairly smart guy and I cannot figure it out. I like that it can sync contacts between my mobile devices and my iMac. When I change or add an address in my address book it suddenly appears on my mobile device's address book as well. I'd like to be able to utilize it to sync/copy select documents between and from the same devices.

I thought I would put some of my text documents (.doc or .pdf) from my iMac on to my mobile devices. I sometimes send the pdf's to prospective clients from my iMac. I thought I would put them in the cloud and I would be able to send the same documents from my mobile device while in the field, saving the time I would have taken by waiting until I got to my computer. However, I cannot attach them to an email from my mobile devices. This is weird. If I can attach a document to en email from my iMac, shouldn't I be able to do the same from an iPhone or iPad?

Either I am missing something or iCloud and Mail have some serious shortcomings.

It seems to me that Apple by design wants everything to be used on iCloud and offers very little flexibility for users to use it for only select purposes.
 
Double space use!

It looks like files copied from a local disk into a folder in iCloud drive using Filer, are actually copied into the Mobile Documents folder in /user/Library and then synced with iCloud.
So: take 10Gb of local docs, copy them to iCloud Drive, and you'll need an additional 10Gb of local storage AS WELL!

Presumably there has to be a way that OS X is going to manage this - otherwise there will be overfilled HDDs all over the place soon!

I'm going to carry on copying files into iCloud Drive and see what happens to my local storage - I will report back.
 
Martin29 said:
Oddly, the mail app on IOS doesn't seem to permit attachments from iCloud Disk either.. This just feels like an unfinished product we're being offered. I can't believe anyone at Apple seriously believes we want to store copies of the same file on each of our hard drives and also on iCloud Drive!
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100% correct.
 
Well, I'm going to go against the grain and say I like this. I agree with some one that maybe there should be a switch that you can put to say if you want it to do this, but I know I myself would want it to do it.

I want to be able to access my files offline as well. And more importantly, I want a copy myself of my stuff and not be at the whim of it being on a server (basically if I some how get cut off of icloud and can no longer use it I don't want it to be that easy to cut me off from my files).

I see it as a good way to synch my files across computers but I don't want to work on the files over the internet (basically I don't want to use my devices as dummy terminals).
 
What you see in in Finder as iCloud Drive is just an 'alias' to 'user/Library/Mobile Documents'.

Somewhere along the line Apple will need to introduce selective syncing, otherwise many disk drives, on laptops or SSD's especially, will run out of space. Currently, if you fill your 1TB of Cloud Drive with documents, you need the equivalent space on your iCloud Drive on your computer (this does not include the space taken up by photos uploaded in Photos Beta, which still counts against the Cloud storage).
 
reese2147 said:
You're not missing anything... (for me) iCloud is simply not a good tool for managing files in the cloud across multiple devices.
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In your opinion, what do you think is the best alternative? Are the only "good" alternatives Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive/OneDrive? (And please don't say SugarSync)! I mainly am looking for photo and video storage that doesn't auto-sync with my iPhone and doesn't totally reduce pixel/image quality.
Thanks in advance!
 
xoAnna said:
In your opinion, what do you think is the best alternative? Are the only "good" alternatives Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive/OneDrive? (And please don't say SugarSync)! I mainly am looking for photo and video storage that doesn't auto-sync with my iPhone and doesn't totally reduce pixel/image quality.
Thanks in advance!
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Try Flickr. You can upload many megagigs of images at full resolution, and the basic service is free. Doesn't synch with anything as far as I know.
 
xoAnna said:
In your opinion, what do you think is the best alternative? Are the only "good" alternatives Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive/OneDrive? (And please don't say SugarSync)! I mainly am looking for photo and video storage that doesn't auto-sync with my iPhone and doesn't totally reduce pixel/image quality.
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I have been a very happy user of OneDrive for many months and absolutely love it. For what you are asking for, it would work just fine and provides excellent cross-platform compatibility.
 
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