iCloud Drive

Apple has just informed developers that it will be wiping all CloudKit-based data stores on July 7th. This includes iCloud Photo Library, Mail Drop and iCloud Drive. Apple warned developers that this might happen with the release of the first iOS beta and it is not uncommon for wipes to happen several times during iOS and OS X beta cycles.

Dear Developer,

We will be performing a server-side data wipe on all CloudKit public and private databases for iOS 8 beta and OS X Yosemite Developer Preview users on July 7, 2014. The following iCloud features will be affected: iCloud Drive, iCloud Photo Library, and Mail Drop.

Photos and videos stored in iCloud Photo Library will remain on their original iOS 8 devices and will upload to iCloud Photo Library again automatically. iCloud Drive can be re-enabled from Set up Assistant after upgrade. If you choose to store your documents in iCloud Drive, your Documents & Data will automatically be copied to iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive will not update across earlier seeds or operating systems. Attachments sent through Mail Drop will expire and need to be resent after you upgrade.

If you have any questions, visit the Apple Developer Forums.

Best regards,
Apple Developer Technical Support

Affected files for Mail Drop and iCloud Drive will not transfer across automatically on the release of the next beta seed. Photos and videos will automatically restore, however, as they are not deleted from local storage. It is likely that new seeds of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite will follow this data wipe, as new seeds of these operating systems are already due.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Prior to OS X Yosemite and Apple’s new iCloud Drive announced on Monday, Mac developers were explicitly required to succumb to the restraints of the Mac App Store to allow their customers to use iCloud file storage within their apps.

Now with the introduction of iCloud Drive, which gives users much clearer access to content stored in iCloud, developers can distribute their apps outside of the Mac App Store and trust that their users can opt to use iCloud for document storage as if they were sold in the Mac App Store…
Expand
Expanding
Close

I wrote a piece last month arguing that it was time for Apple to up its iCloud game, showing that the company is serious about cloud storage by focusing more on fast, reliable syncing, and by matching the functionality, storage capacities, and pricing of Google Drive.

In the WWDC keynote, Apple did exactly that. MobileMe may not, in Steve Jobs’ words, have been Apple’s finest hour, but it did at least include iDisk – an online drive we could access directly to store anything we liked – not just documents created in Apple’s own apps. It’s been a long time coming, but iDisk is finally back in the form of iCloud Drive.

The new iCloud pricing, too, looks set to be exactly what I asked for – comparable to Google Drive… 
Expand
Expanding
Close