New from : iWork Cross-Platform Incompatibility
Last week Apple introduced iOS 8 and, along with it, a reconfiguring of iCloud document storage. Moving from the old, sandboxed system in which apps had access only to their own documents stored in iCloud, iOS 8 brought iCloud Drive, which allows apps to open documents in iCloud from other apps. This has been a long time coming, but there is a hitch in the transition. It’s this: when you activate iCloud Drive, all of your iCloud documents are moved into the new storage system.
That means, sadly, that apps using the old Documents in the Cloud method of accessing iCloud documents won’t see any of the iCloud Drive files. That includes all apps on Macs that aren’t running a version of OS X that supports iCloud Drive. Such as Mavericks (OS X 10.9)—the most current Mac OS that Apple has released. iCloud Drive capability is coming with OS X 10.10 (“Yosemite”) sometime next month.
This belongs in the Department of WTF. How can Apple have allowed iCloud Drive to go live, hijacking the documents of so many people? Michael Cohen offers a matrix in this article, showing which types of devices can share files with other devices. It’s pretty sad that this has happened; Apple needs to release an iCloud Drive update for Mavericks now, so people don’t lose access to essential documents.
What Michael Cohen forgot to point out is that Apple released an iCloud Drive app for Windows a few days ago. So if you use Windows, you can access all your documents. Seriously.
via New from : iWork Cross-Platform Incompatibility | Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal.
I thought the invitation to activate iCloud Drive seemed a bit vague about what it actually was all about, but it seemed fairly clear at least that I wouldn’t be able to access any of my documents from my MacBook until Yosemite was was released if I activated it. It seemed a bit astonishing that Apple would do something quite as stupid as this! But I’m usually on the lookout for stuff like that happening with any OS upgrade. Pleased I didn’t activate it right now.
It wasn’t really a “stupid” thing for Apple to do. It only seems that way if you have a Mac and iOS devices sharing iWork documents…
… But if you have a Windows PC and iOS devices, or you ONLY have iOS devices (e.g.. an iPhone and an iPad), then iCloud Drive is VERY useful!
People who currently have Macs running Mavericks have been well aware that the iCloud drive won’t work with iWork on Mavericks, and they have the choice not to install it yet.
We are only a few weeks away from the release of Yosemite. So if you are still running Mavericks (and not Yosemite Beta 3 like many people are doing) then it is just a short wait, and your patience will pay off!
But the bad part of that, Yosemite being “a few weeks away”, is that Apple is effectively making users then jump to YET ANOTHER x.0 operating system that is likely to bring a host of bugs. I recommend to my clients to not go to x.0 OSs until they’ve been tested publicly for a while, especially with Apple. So now that means that smart Mac users who prefer getting their work done vs fighting Apple bugs will be waiting even LONGER. Pretty shameful for Apple to roll a solution for Windows 7 while leaving Mac Mavericks users hanging.
Well, yeah, I am waiting. But actually, I’d never even heard of iCloud Drive before the iOS8 update!
Fuss about nothing. It’s been very well trailed that you “update to iCloud Drive” later in any iOS 8 upgrade where sharing documents with a Mac until Yosemite. And you can migrate when you choose… so no insistence on x.0 versions (although the earlier comment clearly isn’t intended to include iOS 8.0 as the “problem” can’t arise on iOS 7/ Mavericks combinations). So until you are comfortable the wrinkles are fixed and you want the new features stay where you are or go with the OS excluding upgrading iCloud. It still works the current way until then… seems to me to be the Apple way – user choice and no forced upgrades.
If you have an iCloud account, you can access iCloud beta site (https://beta.icloud.com) on which you have now access to iCloud Drive. You can place files on the iCloud Drive or export local from iCloud Drive. Sure it is not as integrated as having iCloud Drive in the Yosemite Finder but any one can do that on any OS X version or Windows using a iCloud compatible web apps web browser. So you can have access to all you documents which are in the iCloud Drive.