Well since I heard you need 2 computers to get iCloud to work better, I have been working on getting iCloud Syncing installed in Windows 8 in Parallels to see if I could get my bookmarks cleaned up on iCloud, and it seems to have worked.

It seems that iCloud sync works much better on Windows than on Mac. First off they have included Chrome, Firefox and IE bookmarks sync, which they don’t have on the Mac side (trying to force you to only use Safari I am assuming), but I didn’t even have to erase my bookmarks to get it to work, I just downloaded my good bookmarks from X-Marks, installed iCloud Control Panel and iCloud extension for Chrome, and on my Mac, my bookmarks updated with my good X-Marks bookmarks and they showed up on my iOS devices. WTF!

Apple you need to fix this issue, because not everyone has parallels installed on their mac!

I have already posted about Apple getting rid of direct bookmark sync in iTunes and only being able to use iCloud sync to get your bookmarks to iOS 7 devices, well this would be great if iCloud sync worked at all!

As I have said before I cannot get my iCloud bookmarks to clear and they are completely messed up. Apple needs to do what every other sync company does, and what they used to do and allow you to choose to merge or overwrite your iCloud bookmarks instead of having no controls whatsoever!

I have been turning off iCloud sync on my Mac, iPad and iPhone and then manually deleting all bookmarks on my mac, then turning on sync, and manually deleting all bookmarks that show up. And repeating until no bookmarks show up at all, assuming that my bookmarks would then be clear.

I then downloaded my clean bookmarks from Xmarks (I currently use Chome as my browser of choice on my Mac, with Firefox as a backup), and turned on iCloud syncing. There was no Merge message as I assume the bookmarks were clear on iCloud, but when I then turn on Safari syncing on my iOS devices, my bookmarks on my iOS devices remain bank. What the hell?

And after a little while my Safari bookmarks get screwed up again from the iCloud sync, my Favorites Bar bookmarks moving to a BookmarksBar folder, and my Bookmarks getting all messed up, with dividers all moving to the bottom and things moving around, many folders become empty and some are dulpicated! WHAT THE HELL!

THIS IS WHY I TURNED OFF iCLOUD SYNC OF BOOKMARKS AGES AGO! APPLE NEEDS TO HAVE A SETTING TO OVERWRITE DAMN iCLOUD BOOKMARKS!

On forums I can see that you can get your iCloud bookmarks clear if you have 2 Macs, but I do not! I have one Mac and am pretty technically inclined but just cannot get my Bookmarks to clear on iCloud!

MacPerformance Guide has a great article on Apple’s iCloud being broken for him, just like it is broken for me!

I have been talking for some time about how my iCloud Bookmarks are completely messed up and I can’t fix them! There is no option to wipe out what is on the server, and my server bookmarks are screwed up! Now it may have something to do with me using X-Marks, but that is how I keep my bookmarks synced between Chrome, Firefox and Safari, but my Safari bookmarks constantly were screwing up the mix, so I had to turn off iCloud for bookmarks and just manually sync my bookmarks if I want them to end up on my iPhone and iPad.

I first posted about my problems on May 20th of 2012, and again on March of this year!

Arstechnica has an interesting article on problems of working with Apple’s iCloud.

It is really interesting to hear that developers are having so many problems with iCloud, since as a user I have completely given up on iCloud because I have found it to work so incredibly badly.

My first issues were with bookmarks and iCloud. I use X-marks to sync my bookmarks between browsers, since Chrome (and formerly Firefox) is my browser of choice, and I don’t use Safari at all, but since Safari is what syncs to my iPad and iPhone I needed it to have my bookmarks.

And every time X-Marks overwrote them it worked fine and they were correct until they went to the cloud. The cloud ones had become corrupt and would overwrite not only Safari on my mac, but also on my iPhone and iPad. And there is no way to get rid of the bookmarks! Now most companies would create a way to overwrite either on your computer or online, but not Apple. Their simplified iCloud bookmarks have no way to get rid of the bookmarks from iCloud, so I had to turn off iCloud syncing and just do a direct sync via itunes, which directly brings Safari’s bookmarks to my iPad and iPhone.

My Second issue cropped up when I moved from an iPad 1 to an iPad 3. I had been a Mobile Me user, so I got 25GB of space on my iCloud (necessary to backup an iPad, and not enough for both my iPad and iPhone), and had 3 months previously moved to iCloud backup. When I attempted to move everything to my new iPad, it would not work. None of the apps would install. They started to download, and then stopped there, for days! And I could get no help on the issue, so I ended up going to my 3 month old previous backup on my home computer and have been syncing with my computer every since.

Why should I even try putting stuff on iCloud when I have no control over it? And it does seem to get corrupted often! So why not just leave everything on my Mac and use Dropbox or Sugarsync or box.net or even my Synology NAS to sync to. They all actually work and don’t seem to screw up all the time, like iCloud does.

iCloud at the very least needs basic controls to allow overwriting of items on the cloud or on your computer (though they could probably get away with just overwriting iCloud, since that is where the glitches happen!).

For years I have lamented the dumbing down of Apple products for the masses, especially when OS X is build on the so powerful UNIX operating system, but it has certainly gotten much worse of late. Just look at Lion. It now hides you Library folder where all preferences and other user system files are stored, and it even password protects your Utilities folder. This may be fine for an average user, but for a power user they are just frustrations that add steps to the normal things we do every day, but that is not the worst of it. The worst part is when they dumb something down too much and it doesn’t function right. It is not like Apple has good customer support, unless you want to go into an Apple store, and I am not brining in my tower, ipad and iPhone to get iCloud to work right!

A little explanation is necessary here, but I use both Firefox and Google Chrome as my primary browsers, not Safari, but I do have an iPhone and iPad, and like them to have the same bookmarks as my main browsers, so I use X-Marks to sync my bookmarks between all browsers, but recently it stopped syncing my bookmarks correctly to my iPhone and iPad. I looked on Apple’s forums, and tried all sorts of methods to clear my bookmarks off of iCloud, which seam to have become corrupt, but nothing seems to work. With iSync you could always set to overwrite the bookmarks in the cloud, because these things happen (and you can do it in X-Marks), but they have dumbed down iCloud to the point where it has basically zero controls, so when something like this happens you are just SOL!

And I already had to give up cloud syncing for my iPad and iPhone as when I moved from my trusty iPad 1 to my the New iPad, I tried syncing my iPad from the cloud and it basically hung every time, and I had to revert to my last backup from iTunes, which was 4 months old, but at least that worked. Now I don’t trust iCloud at all, and use iTunes to backup and sync bookmarks as that actually seems to work with some consistency (though don’t even get me started on how old and out of date iTunes is).

Now unfortunately iCloud is completely useless to me as it is broken on two fronts, and I have no way to reset things in the cloud to make them better. No way to see those files, or delete them and start over. Maybe if I went into an Apple store I could get them to do it, but honestly I don’t have time. And for files i have moved away from the now defunct Mobile me to services from SugarSync, DropBox and Box.net as they work and won’t have features pulled as I continue to use them, only get better.

I have been an Apple man for years and years, since I was a little kid and got an Apple IIC, but really the company is making many stupid decisions and I think a lot of them will end up biting them on the ass, like the whole killing Final Cut Pro 7 thing. I continue to like Apple products, have have never been a fan of windows, but have been considering getting a windows machine to edit and do graphics on, and possibly that will mean that my only Apple products are my iPhone and iPad, and the computers I so loved will no longer matter to me, but I sure hope that doesn’t happen.

Apple you are not perfect and your products are not either, please restore a modicum of control to us users to fix thing when they do have issues.