Why is iCloud support MAS only?

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DylanMuir
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Re: Why is iCloud support MAS only?

Post by DylanMuir »

~/Library is hidden, but at least at the moment it is always present, and that is where iCloud documents are synced to.

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ozean
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Re: Why is iCloud support MAS only?

Post by ozean »

Also it seems to be highly unlikely that Apple would not keep a copy in the local filesystem, since users need a fallback mechanism when they do not have a network connection (and they'll continue to do so for many years to come). Nonetheless: the way Apple developed its approach to this seems to rely on hiding stuff from the regular UI – which will make work-arounds for these issues troublesome.
rpcameron
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Re: Why is iCloud support MAS only?

Post by rpcameron »

Yes, iCloud documents at present reside in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/, but the files that one may find there may not be complete. The document storage API in iCloud implements its own file handling routines where it sends and receives the modified chunks of data, not the whole document. So, what lives in that folder at the moment may be the complete document, at some point in the future you may find that you have a series of data chunks that all represent portions of the file at different times, but without iCloud you cannot read those chunks.

At the moment this may sound like fear-mongering, and perhaps to an extent it is. However, if you use iCloud, only Apple has access to how those files are actually saved, stored and accessed. You are no longer directly saving to the file system, but rather relying on Apple to be your middle-man for all of your documents, whether you are creating new ones, modifying previously created files or accessing files created/modified on another device. Yes, it is incredibly convenient, but that convenience does come with some real concerns that very few developers seem to be addressing ...
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nvalvo
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Re: Why is iCloud support MAS only?

Post by nvalvo »

Eyal Redler wrote:
nvalvo wrote:I recently re-purchased/upgraded Mellel through the Mac App Store, and yet my copy does not appear to support iCloud.

I infer that iCloud is not supported by the greyed-out text "iCloud not enabled" in the File menu.

What am I doing wrong?
Did you enable iCloud in System Preferences?
Thanks for your reply.

I had, indeed, already enabled it. Now it works, but I don't think I changed anything. Mysterious.
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