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Comment by 8ig8 | Hacker News Reader

Cirrus sounds useful for us MacOS users.

> Cirrus has four main functions. It can download and evict (from local storage) items stored in iCloud so that you can manage them properly. It provides full details about files and folders held in iCloud. It performs a test file upload, which can help unstick pending uploads. It also provides specialised access to iCloud-related log activity.

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This looks like a very useful utility, but why would you use iCloud if problems like this are this frequent? Compared to Dropbox, for instance?

It's not that frequent and other cloud storage options have their own set of quirks. That said, iCloud has more serious flaws and limitations:

- It's unreliable. E.g, I found that some old folders I hadn't touched in years were empty after an OS upgrade. The files were just gone (but I had backups).

- No file versioning, no protection against ransomware.

- Limited sharing with non-Apple platforms

- Slow syncing

iCloud also has some great features that not many others have, such as end-to-end encryption.

I don’t know that these issues are super frequent, but the fact iCloud is directly integrated seamlessly into the user directory and across devices without futzing is nice. Dropbox I found to be relative expensive and not well integrated. As an extension of the OS, when enabled I cloud manages a lot of the user home directory without a “drop box” folder. This is important especially for people who aren’t particularly interested in computers and just want them to work. The fact there’s a special place for loading files across devices and backup is cognitive load 99% of the universe doesn’t want. Even myself who is fine with the cognitive load found that the lack of fuss with moving things around and just always working is convenient enough that despite having at various times Dropbox / box / others that I just used iCloud. Finally there just isn’t any material advantage to Dropbox over iCloud that I could find. While things delaying their sync or whatever might be annoying occasionally, you can unstick it with small gestures like creating a directory and deleting it, but you can also achieve this by simply waiting longer - which is what most people do. In the very rare case that I am trying to tightly synchronize files between devices and it’s stuck, it’s mildly annoying, but the continuous advantage of the tight and seamless integration with the user directory is a constant advantage. I suspect almost all the times it’s stuck I didn’t even realize it

That small gesture is a much bigger mental overhead vs a separate folder Also, Dropbox added a Home backup feature

I quit stalled “cloudd” process via System Monitor when iCloud Drive is stuck et voilà!

> This looks like a very useful utility, but why would you use iCloud if problems like this are this frequent?

The reason is implied by your question: problems like this are not that frequent. Not that it’s an excuse for the complete lack of feedback when they do happen.

> Compared to Dropbox, for instance?

Dropbox is fine, but not without its problems either. The client is a resource hog, a far cry from the seamless experience it was ~5 years ago. It’s also not really integrated into any application. But for me the kicker was when they decided that I didn’t have the storage space they gave me as freebies anymore. If I cannot trust them on that, I won’t trust them with my debit card.

For me, mostly because I was already subscribed for photo storage. It’s not worth paying for other cloud storage when it’s already there, even if it’s sub-optimal imo.

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