iCloud again!

[Dave2002]

Very recently I received an email informing me that I’d used up about half of my free iCloud storage.
What I now want to know is how this has happened. I haven’t knowingly wanted anything to be sucked up into anybody’s cloud, and I thought I turned off all the tick boxes which might have triggered this. Has Apple managed to subvert my attempts and dragged my data off anyway?

I know some people don’t mind, and some find this useful, but I really don’t want this to happen. I haven’t got much which is really problematical, but some of my files are confidential, and I don’t like the notion that an OS knows better than I do what to do with all of this data. Apple seems to be incorrigibly arrogant in this respect.

[richardfinegold]

I don’t want to be redundant, but if you recall, I recounted how my iTunes collection went missing a few years ago, only to appear a few months later when Apple launched Apple Music. Apple support was useless here, but I was able to google articles and apparently this was a common issue. Apparently Apple moved many people’s files to the cloud (and I had never purchased any Cloud Storage). To answer your question, this was highly upsetting

[Cockney Sparrow]

When I first began to get to grips with PCs and supporting their use in the family, I spoke to contacts, referring to problems on Windows PCs and the divide became apparent "I can't really say I have any problems....I have an Apple, and it just works......." Other comments, on forums etc, were "any problems just get fixed overnight" or "you just go to the genius bar at the Apple shop and they sort it out for you".

My take on it was that you paid the upfront cost of the Apple and you got the above sort of experience for the premium paid. But, not unexpectedly, I also thought it would be necessary to plan for a life of say 5 years on average, regardless of quality. Aside from a, say, 6 year old device being a poor performer in relation to superseded components, now you can expect it to be unuseable by OS upgrade (or stick with an OS and find it unsupported and increasingly unuseable). Fair enough, taking into account the time and trouble of malfunctions, and occasional trips to the PC shop for retrieval/repair the cost over, say 5 years , even with eye watering premiums for being granted higher memory, I could see the case for Apple users. I never made the switch as by that time we all had a PC or a Win laptop and it all became more stable and I also instituted a backup /image regime as a safeguard.

But I have noticed these references such as Richard F's loss of his music (temporary I assume) and now copying of data into the cloud without true consent. I'm even more unwilling to pay the premium where part of the package is loss of control.

I was also unwilling to adopt Windows 10 for much the same reason - the affrontery of downloading the upgrade folder (many Gb) onto Win 7 PCs without the users proper consent (i.e. not buried in EULA) forced upgrades which then make your programs unuseable.... In general Microsoft in charge of one's PCs .

It seems I will need to consider become a Linux user, re-learning the software I use for web, spreadsheet, word processing and audio purposes. And the unenviable task of converting Mrs CS to Linux, except we will have one Win 10 PC (or a dual boot option version) for her continued use of Sibelius, which given the non-professional use it gets these days, doesn't warrant replacing by any other software.

I don't read science fiction, but it seems these large corporations are taking control of lives, having made us dependant on their technologies (side reference here to UK government trying to make the max number of interactions "digital"). At least I still have CDs to play - that is, until Apple or some other corporation buys up all the mechanism patents and manufacturing plants and declares a cut off date for outdated physical music player production...."

[JimD]

...and declares a cut off date for outdated physical music player production...."

There is an interesting micro-parallel in Amazon's recent withdrawal of the Lovefilm DVD service.

[Bryn]

When I first began to get to grips with PCs and supporting their use in the family, I spoke to contacts, referring to problems on Windows PCs and the divide became apparent "I can't really say I have any problems....I have an Apple, and it just works......." Other comments, on forums etc, were "any problems just get fixed overnight" or "you just go to the genius bar at the Apple shop and they sort it out for you".

My take on it was that you paid the upfront cost of the Apple and you got the above sort of experience for the premium paid. But, not unexpectedly, I also thought it would be necessary to plan for a life of say 5 years on average, regardless of quality. Aside from a, say, 6 year old device being a poor performer in relation to superseded components, now you can expect it to be unuseable by OS upgrade (or stick with an OS and find it unsupported and increasingly unuseable). Fair enough, taking into account the time and trouble of malfunctions, and occasional trips to the PC shop for retrieval/repair the cost over, say 5 years , even with eye watering premiums for being granted higher memory, I could see the case for Apple users. I never made the switch as by that time we all had a PC or a Win laptop and it all became more stable and I also instituted a backup /image regime as a safeguard.

But I have noticed these references such as Richard F's loss of his music (temporary I assume) and now copying of data into the cloud without true consent. I'm even more unwilling to pay the premium where part of the package is loss of control.

I was also unwilling to adopt Windows 10 for much the same reason - the affrontery of downloading the upgrade folder (many Gb) onto Win 7 PCs without the users proper consent (i.e. not buried in EULA) forced upgrades which then make your programs unuseable.... In general Microsoft in charge of one's PCs .

It seems I will need to consider become a Linux user, re-learning the software I use for web, spreadsheet, word processing and audio purposes. And the unenviable task of converting Mrs CS to Linux, except we will have one Win 10 PC (or a dual boot option version) for her continued use of Sibelius, which given the non-professional use it gets these days, doesn't warrant replacing by any other software.

I don't read science fiction, but it seems these large corporations are taking control of lives, having made us dependant on their technologies (side reference here to UK government trying to make the max number of interactions "digital"). At least I still have CDs to play - that is, until Apple or some other corporation buys up all the mechanism patents and manufacturing plants and declares a cut off date for outdated physical music player production...."

I have a lot of sympthy with most of what you write there. However, but recently I have had a bit of a doh! moment. When Windows XP came along I found a few of my most used programs no longer worked. I had an old 98SE laotop tucked away, so I resurected that to run programmes such as Audio DVD Creator. A few moths ago I thought I would try running that program under Windows 10. At first all went well, but just as I got to the stage of trying to burn to DVD-R the program crashed. A colleague suggested trying to run it as administrator. Again it failed. "How about checking compatibility mode/" I did, and everything ran smoothly. What is more, it was using the settings for XP SP3, so I could have been running it when that arrived on the scene. Moral? Always check compatibiliity mode if a program does not run after a Windows update.

[Frances_iom]

I paid about £90 each for 2 now 10year old Leonovo X200s + about the same for a larger T series of the same vintage being ruggedly built models for the professional market tho I did buy new batteries at about £12 average cost - all 3 will happily run the latest versions of Linux tho I usually run an older version as I prefer the old style interface - nearly all of my XP vintage Microsoft paid for software will run under the WINE program - I can easily move programs, hard drives etc between machines - I also have a couple of machines (again low cost 2nd hand) that I've set up to run specific tasks - all this for probably 25% of a single Apple or 40% of a newish W10 machine which non-Linux machines would treat me as a poor idiot who has no real control over the actions of the machines. However as seen from the frequent complaints on these boards few seem to follow Einstein's sensible dictum that if a proposed attempt at a solution to some problem fails then why keep on repeating the same attempt in the hope that some 'magic' will make it right in the end. Ok if you are into cutting edge digital video editing then maybe you need to get more modern machines but I suspect most users merely do some word-processing and web browsing etc and such machines without the baggage of antivirus etc can easily handle such loads.

[Dave2002]

Ok if you are into cutting edge digital video editing then maybe you need to get more modern machines but I suspect most users merely do some word-processing and web browsing etc and such machines without the baggage of antivirus etc can easily handle such loads.

I'm afraid I do do digital video editing!

[Dave2002]

PS: I think Blender and DaVinci Resolve can do video editing within Linux, though the latest Resolve is not free. That paid for version also includes high end audio editing - it is claimed.

[Bryn]

PS: I think Blender and DaVinci Resolve can do video editing within Linux, though the latest Resolve is not free. That paid for version also includes high end audio editing - it is claimed.

But would one not still need a rather modern, fast processor and several GB of RAM? Not the sort of thing F_i was referring to.

[Dave2002]

But would one not still need a rather modern, fast processor and several GB of RAM? Not the sort of thing F_i was referring to.

Very probably a multi core/multi processor system with at least 16 gbytes of main memory (some people use at least 10 times that), plus 1 Tbyte of SSD memory, plus significant amounts of disc based backing store. A Tesla rather than a Nissan Leaf - not the sort of thing you add to the shopping trolley in Sainsbury’s with the grocery shopping, nor a 5-10 year old hand me down from a bygone era.