[RANT] iCloud sucks

[unobtainium]

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Since "upgrading" to iOS 5 and iCloud everything, and I mean everything, has slowed to a crawl. Dead solid apps I have used for months suddenly start to crash. My iCal appointments disappear myteriously - like my flight info for December. I am so disappointed in this whole thing! I'm going, as soon as I can, to an Apple store and opting out of iCloud. I can't risk losing important info anymore. I'll stick with syncing with a cable. Seriously, if I didn't know this was an Apple product, I'd swear it was windows.

Buck

Huh? Why do you need to go to an Apple store to opt out of iCloud? Just turn off iCloud backups and disable Wifi syncing in iTunes, then you can go back to using your cord for everything.

 

[Buckland]

Undo

I would go to an Apple store just to let them know how unhappy I am.

Buck

 

[vitzr]

1) Gmail is also a cloud based system. iCloud is just Apples version of it. What's your point?

2) Wake up buddy,

3) average people are using iPhones and those same average people are using iCloud. They may not even realize what it is, but they're using it. The average person may not nerd out about it like we do and nitpick every last grain of it, but they're still using it to backup their contacts and app data, especially since its free.

4) There have been (guesstimating) 5+ million iPhone 4S sales in under 2 weeks. Id bet close to 70% are using iCloud.

1a) We know about Gmail in the cloud. It works great, along with other Google services. The OP made his/her points. If you need to ask, perhaps you should read it again.

2a) It's inappropriate comments like this that reflect poorly on the author. (that would be you)

3a) That's no surprise, nor does it prove anything. They're already been setup by Apples marketing hype.

4a) Like you, they bought into the hype of it being free.

You only get partial iCloud functionality for free.

Now that Apple is like WalMart, a mass market retailer, they know the power of the word "Free". The average Joe stops reading after he see's free. It's the biggest joke in town.

Let's not forget the concept of a forum. It's to _discuss_ individual viewpoints, not to insult or incite with juvenile comments like "Wake up buddy".

I think iCloud is a decent attempt.

It's still young, let's give Apple time to work out the bugs, and then judge it. Not every Apple product can provide instant gratification to those with no patience.

 

[fuzion11]

Personally I'd have to agree with OP...I ONLY use iCloud for FindmyiPhone, which works great btw.

iCloud sucks too much battery power and I hate the fact it adds an additional camera roll folder to my phone...why does it need to have the same identical two folders for??

I'm sure it'll get MUCH BETTER with iOS 6.0...I'll likely hold off using it until then.

Plus I prefer to sync to my PC as I've always done so in the past...once iCloud is a little more useful I'll likely make the full switch over...but only if there's one photo folder. lol

 

[AbSoluTc]

Personally I'd have to agree with OP...I ONLY use iCloud for FindmyiPhone, which works great btw.

iCloud sucks too much battery power and I hate the fact it adds an additional camera roll folder to my phone...why does it need to have the same identical two folders for??

I'm sure it'll get MUCH BETTER with iOS 6.0...I'll likely hold off using it until then.

Plus I prefer to sync to my PC as I've always done so in the past...once iCloud is a little more useful I'll likely make the full switch over...but only if there's one photo folder. lol

Your two camera Albums are only identical because you are taking pictures on only one device. If you had lets say an iPad and you took a picture, that photo would show up under Photo Stream ONLY. Not your Camera Roll. It would only show up in your camera roll after you save it from photo stream. I hope that makes sense.

If you had 3 devices and all took different pictures, the photo streams on all 3 devices would be the same - which is the purpose of iCloud. However, their camera rolls would all be different.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

First of all, I'm a techie person and I really find it complicated.

Obviously your not ....

 

[thelookingglass]

Personally I'd have to agree with OP...I ONLY use iCloud for FindmyiPhone, which works great btw.

iCloud sucks too much battery power and I hate the fact it adds an additional camera roll folder to my phone...why does it need to have the same identical two folders for??

I'm sure it'll get MUCH BETTER with iOS 6.0...I'll likely hold off using it until then.

Plus I prefer to sync to my PC as I've always done so in the past...once iCloud is a little more useful I'll likely make the full switch over...but only if there's one photo folder. lol

Care to explain to me on what basis you claim that iCloud "sucks too much battery power"? Both of my devices have iCloud on and my battery life is just fine. Upgrading was a breeze, have nothing but good things to say about the whole process. Apple took what could've been an immensely complicated process and simplified it as much as possible.

And, FYI, you can still sync to your PC. With iCloud, you have the added convenience of never having to think about backing up - does it automatically when you're plugged in. I took my phone into the Apple store yesterday to run some diagnostics. They had to wipe my phone clean to assess the problem. After they were done, I just restored from my iCloud backup while in the store and walked out as if nothing had changed. Couldn't have been any easier.

 

[globalist]

I generally like Icloud but since this is a rant thread (though the "techie OP" seems to be quite clueless by his own fault really) let me add some points:

Photostream - Wish it also synced videos, at least to the PC. But it only seems to work for photos? Also wish it had a web interface, something along the lines of online Picassa.

Mail - not even coming close to gmail in terms of options and functionality. I'd like to switch from gmail but pls wake me up once apple starts to take the web side of Mail seriously

Contacts - greatest feature for me and I've gladly switched from Gmail contacts

Calendar - pretty much on par with Google calendar but I've switched anyway

Find my iphone - working fine and useful but doesn't seem to work without data connection? When I was abroad with data roaminf off my wife could not locate me...

iWork - I hope they change this to a dropbox-type of service at some point. As it is it's useless for me.

 

[Cave Man]

Most of the iCloud features work for me, except iWork. It is not intuitive at all and the fine print seems to suggest it's mostly for iOS 5 devices and not Lion. It seems peculiar that I have to log onto icloud.com and then upload files from my computer. That seems to defeat the purpose of syncing.

 

[Abazigal]

Trying it out now, and it seems to me the only real use is the auto-synching of contacts.

 

[mncmoore]

Only thing that doesn't work for me is photo stream on iPad. It takes forever.

 

[Xgm541]

TLDR;

icloud saved my ass yesterday. I got my iphone stolen, purchased another one and got my information including texts, numbers, apps, even the order of the apps, as well as most information from within the apps working within about 30 minutes.

 

[NMF]

So, in review:

OP is mad that his EXCHANGE contacts and non-iCloud calendar aren't syncing via iCloud.

Does your brain work alright, OP? Obviously iCloud is made to sync iCloud stuff. And it does a damn good job. After suffering with Google and Exchange syncing for the past year I was thrilled to move over to iCloud where everything syncs flawlessly. If you want your contacts synced, migrate over to iCloud exclusively and delete your Exchange account. Same with calendar. Exchange is a POS anyway.

iCloud works flawlessly at syncing. Obviously you have to use iCloud for that to work. 2+2=4. Geez.

 

[vitzr]

iCloud Doesn't Suck... It Confuses Users

I'm not to agree that iCloud sucks, BUT it is overly complex, not well explained on Apple's site, nor in their support documentation.

For all the chest pounding and bragging Stevie Boy did about how fantastic iCloud was going to be, the product as we have it now, is far from intuitive.

In my immediate family and circle of friends I'm the "tech guy" so they naturally come to me with questions. I've read absolutely everything that Apple has published about it, as well as reading info from other sources, and although I now understand it pretty well, I find it simply way more complex that it needs to be.

Considering the hundreds of times I read Apple's tired slogan "It Just Works" in this forum, I can say without hesitation that iCloud does NOT "Just Work".

I might ad that it actually does one thing very well. It confuses the hell out of the general public who buy into the Apple hype about iCloud.

This is one service, or product (whatever you want to call it) that Apple has a lot of work to do, if they are going to backup their claim "It Just Works".

 

[kemo]

WTF is a "techie person"?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/techie

 

[shotts56]

I can tell you this muck the iBooks bookmark feature doesn't work. I'd switch back and forth between my phone and my iPad well reading the Steve jobs book and the bookmarks were NEVER synced. I'd have to manually find my place every time I switched.

Mine's syncs ok between my iPhone and iPad.

Are you sure you have the syncing in iBooks set to "on" ? Mine previously was, and when I upgraded to ios 5 I noticed that it changed to off and I had to turn it back on manually. Which does seem a bit daft.

 

[Roy62659]

Up Time is the real issue

I have experienced temporary problems with iCloud functionality...most of which was my fault. I do however have one big bone to pick about iCloud...the up-time should be 99%+...it is much less than that...I would guess it is down 10% of the time. That prohibits using iCloud in any business application! C'mon Apple...this was not an issue with MobileMe.....fix the up-time issues!!