iCloud sync

[Brad]

I've heard similar stories about issues with iCloud sync (Squirrel, Money...).  I'm fine with wifi sync or something else for the eventual Savings iOS app if iCloud is too unreliable for what you ultimately want to do. 

Apple's broken promise: why doesn't iCloud 'just work'?

[Yi Lin]

Hey Brad,

Thanks for the link. This article, and the ones linked from it, reflect precisely my experience with iCloud. What frustrates me is Apple's stance of keeping everything secret, so we don't know what went wrong when sync stops working, or whether they are working on addressing the issue. So, after dumping buckets load of hours into this as many other did, I moved on to UI parts of Savings for iPhone.

For the past few months I've been very busy on many contract work that I have to do to pay the bills, but I have constantly been thinking and working on Savings for iPhone. I have actually just turned off iCloud sync completely (because it dies every couple of days) and been using the iPhone app exclusively for the last two months to keep track of receipts and balance my checkbook. I have not used Savings Mac during this time, kind of a way of forcing me to add features that I need on a daily basis.

I am gearing up to put some meaningful hours to wrap up the iPhone app and some of the features I've been working for the Mac. I'm even thinking about getting some extra hands to help me, because with my client work there are some basic coding that I could delegate to others. My plan is to get everything ready and polished on the iPhone end, and then revisit the sync problem.

As the article says, WWDC is around the corner and Apple may fix iCloud by then. That said, I do agree with the other developers that iCloud's architecture is fundamentally challenging, or some may say, flawed. The "it just work" approach is almost too good to be true from a technical standpoint, and is probably the reason why they are struggling with it. It's good to get confirmation from the article that my suspicion is shared by other developers. In any case, there will be a way to build cloud sync with or without iCloud. Others have built it (e.g. Things), so it can be done -- although they did spend two years building it. I'll revisit it after seeing what happens in WWDC, the rest of the app should be pretty complete by then.

Yi

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 5:15 PM, Brad <bradbu...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've heard similar stories about issues with iCloud sync (Squirrel, Money...).  I'm fine with wifi sync or something else for the eventual Savings iOS app if iCloud is too unreliable for what you ultimately want to do. 

Apple's broken promise: why doesn't iCloud 'just work'?

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[wbiv]

Hi Yi,

relieved to hear the iphone app is on the way - been growing tired of logging entries on ical and tediously transferring entries to the mac!

jay

[Yi Lin]

I hear you. My goal is to finish all UI parts of iPhone by June (WWDC), and I'll try to get some answers if I get to attend the show, if not, at least afterwards regarding iCloud. There are a few sync options I'm considering right now, but won't worry too much about it until then.

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