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KPOM

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 23, 2010
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Has anyone else noticed that ever since Apple deprecated a key KEXT that many cloud applications relied upon, OneDrive, among others, has been totally unreliable. I can't get my files to sync, and have had numerous issues migrating to a new Mac, with files reverting to old versions after using Migration Assistant.
 
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Google and Dropbox seem to be fine under Monterey 12.5. It's definitely Microsoft. I battled to get OneDrive to work on a Mac Pro for about a year (had to change file names to be compatible, insure drive formatted with APFS, which required updating the system and various apps, etc, etc, etc). I FINALLY got it working under Big Sur, and then wham, broken (again!) under Monterey. Nope, I'm done. OneDrive is not a well supported product for macOS.
 
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OneDrive doesn't work well for my coworker on Windows. I do wonder if the changes they made to the Mac had a spillover effect on the Windows side of things.

I'm not sure how Dropbox catered for Apple's changes. But, I don't see a Dropbox entry in ~/Library/CloudStorage and ~/Dropbox has all the actual files there. That's kind of what OneDrive used to be like.
 
Working flawless here. I am a little bummed at now looking at all folders in OneDrive but hey can't do much about that.
 
Egnyte and Box had to rewrite their desktop clients for the exact same reason. OneDrive has always been pretty crappy, on both Windows and macOS — I would not blame Apple for this one.
 
There's a thread on the Dropbox forums about their struggles with the Apple change.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/App...3-Monterey-support/td-p/589896/highlight/true

There are posts as recently as last week. I haven't read the whole thing, but after a 5 minute perusal I came away with the understanding that Dropbox has not finished rolling out the change to support Apple's restrictions. Also, they are having problems with the new implementation and users are complaining.

It appears I'm running the old version of the software, so I'm having no trouble. I'm not sure how that software is getting around the Apple restrictions unless the restrictions are not yet fully enforced.

At this point, I'm not prepared to consider Dropbox to be a contrasting example that proves OneDrive messed up.
 
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There's a thread on the Dropbox forums about their struggles with the Apple change.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/App...3-Monterey-support/td-p/589896/highlight/true

There are posts as recently as last week. I haven't read the whole thing, but after a 5 minute perusal I came away with the understanding that Dropbox has not finished rolling out the change to support Apple's restrictions. Also, they are having problems with the new implementation and users are complaining.

It appears I'm running the old version of the software, so I'm having no trouble. I'm not sure how that software is getting around the Apple restrictions unless the restrictions are not yet fully enforced.

At this point, I'm not prepared to consider Dropbox to be a contrasting example that proves OneDrive messed up.
I’ve had zero problems with dropbox or google drive in the last 4 years, through 4 different versions of macos including monterey. In contrast I’ve had 3 different major problems with OneDrive either requiring or resulting from system upgrades. This is the hard data from which I am drawing a conclusion.
 
I’ve had zero problems with dropbox or google drive in the last 4 years, through 4 different versions of macos including monterey. In contrast I’ve had 3 different major problems with OneDrive either requiring or resulting from system upgrades. This is the hard data from which I am drawing a conclusion.

I'm very interested in your experience and setup.

What version of the Dropbox client are you running? I just installed a fresh download and it's v154.4.5363.

Do you have Dropbox entry in ~/Library/CloudStorage?

If you do have an entry in CloudStorage, then that's great news. I won't dread it as much when my Dropbox is updated to that new Apple framework.
 
I'm very interested in your experience and setup.

What version of the Dropbox client are you running? I just installed a fresh download and it's v154.4.5363.

Do you have Dropbox entry in ~/Library/CloudStorage?

If you do have an entry in CloudStorage, then that's great news. I won't dread it as much when my Dropbox is updated to that new Apple framework.
It's version 154.4.5363, which still has root directory in /Users/username. OS 12.5 with OCLP 0.4.10. But I did just notice an "Upgrade" button on the drop down menu. I have not tried that yet... Oops, that's not a software upgrade - that's to upgrade the account. I seem to be running the latest version without issue. You have to specify which folders you want to remain resident on your mac in Preferences->Sync. Full disclosure: I don't keep much in this folder - it's used as a convenient cloud-based way to sync certain kinds of files with a tablet. For general use I am using Google Drive (which my employer pays for), which also works great.
 
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Has anyone else noticed that ever since Apple deprecated a key KEXT that many cloud applications relied upon, OneDrive, among others, has been totally unreliable. I can't get my files to sync, and have had numerous issues migrating to a new Mac, with files reverting to old versions after using Migration Assistant.
We use the OneDrive for Mac app at work. Honestly, it has it's stupid design flaws, but in terms of it being stable, I've had no issues, let alone since the KEXT deprecation. Google Drive for Mac, on the other hand, has been a flaming hot mess that continues to get worse by the week.
 
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One Drive is Microsoft's fault, 110%. Literally nothing to do with anything Apple does. If companies like DropBox can do it just fine, Microsoft should be able to do it just fine too.
 
It's version 154.4.5363, which still has root directory in /Users/username. OS 12.5 with OCLP 0.4.10. But I did just notice an "Upgrade" button on the drop down menu. I have not tried that yet... Oops, that's not a software upgrade - that's to upgrade the account. I seem to be running the latest version without issue. You have to specify which folders you want to remain resident on your mac in Preferences->Sync. Full disclosure: I don't keep much in this folder - it's used as a convenient cloud-based way to sync certain kinds of files with a tablet. For general use I am using Google Drive (which my employer pays for), which also works great.

Thanks for that. That's the version I'm running, and it is the version I downloaded yesterday (just to be sure I had the latest).

I believe the new implementation has not been rolled out to us yet. It could be that it's just a switch on our Dropbox accounts and that that there will be no software upgrade required to make the change.

From what I understand, Dropbox will ultimately relocate the documents into the Library's CloudStorage folder. You'll also see "Dropbox" under the "Locations" section in the Finder sidebar. This conversion for OneDrive was problematic for some people.

Fingers crossed that things go better when Dropbox makes the switchover.
 
One Drive is Microsoft's fault, 110%. Literally nothing to do with anything Apple does. If companies like DropBox can do it just fine, Microsoft should be able to do it just fine too.

I'm absolutely not challenging you; just a question...

Do you have evidence that Dropbox has actually made this conversion already? I have vague evidence that they have not, and that similar problems that OneDrive had will happen to Dropbox when they do it. I linked a thread to the Dropbox forums above that discusses this issue.
 
I would recommend completely resetting OneDrive using the command in the app bundle: /Applications/OneDrive.app/Contents/Resources/ResetOneDriveAppStandalone.command

Since then it's been much more reliable, including on the Ventura Beta. Not perfect, but much better!
 
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For the heck of it I installed Google Drive to see how they handled things. They did not use Apple's cloud files framework (I forget what it's called, but it's the thing that puts files into ~/Library/CloudStorage). I understand what they've done and it's very powerful. However, you don't get the little icons on files to indicate the sync status. Perhaps that's now reserved for Apple's framework.

I also noticed that Dropbox no longer puts the sync status indicators on files. Maybe Dropbox has been updated, but also chose to not use Apple's framework. I have a feeling that's the case.

So, now the question is, whose fault is it that Microsoft's OneDrive is not great. Is it their fault for choosing to tow the line and follow Apple's recommended approach to cloud storage? Or, is it Apple's fault for providing a crippled framework for cloud storage?

I blame Apple. They reserved a much simpler approach for their own iCloud Drive. They sync ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs and put symbolic links from there to ~/Documents and ~/Desktop. This is exactly the approach I used to use to sync stuff to Dropbox that wasn't inside the Dropbox folder. Why didn't they provide such functionality to Microsoft and others? (By the way, I did try linking from ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive to a folder outside that location and it didn't work.)

Apple put Microsoft in a tough spot; they had to choose between custom work or the Apple approved approach. You can easily argue that Microsoft made the wrong choice. But, both choices have limitations. Apple's inadequacy forced those limitations onto its users.
 
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The only data loss I've had in the past 5 years has been with OneDrive. And that had nothing to do with kernel extensions.
Google Drive has not been exemplary in their upgrades when Apple changes things - but never had a catastrophic data loss with them.
 
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