A word of caution from Josh Marshall about syncing and iCloud backups using OSX Sierra . . .

[Journeyman]

Josh Marshall, editor and publisher of "Talking Points Memo" (talkingpointsmemo.com), posted an insightful account of a major problem with Sierra's automatic uploads to iCloud. The entire article is well worth reading.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/maybe-be-careful-with-osx-sierra

If you use Macs you may have heard that the new version of OS X has a system that automatically uploads all documents in your Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud. This not only gets you a backup, which is nice. It also allows you to access the files on your desktop from your iPad or iPhone or another desktop if you're not at that computer. That's awesome. I was excited to try it. I have a Mac at work, a Mac at home and then also a Mac Air for when I'm not at either place. I also have an iPad and an iPhone. All good.

So today at work I had Sierra start syncing my work Desktop and Documents folders. Later I checked in iCloud and there it all was. Awesome.

What I didn't see were my Desktop files from my home computer. That was odd because I'd upgraded to Sierra at home the night before. So why hadn't it worked from home?

<snip>

After moving a bunch of files, I tried again. Success! It let me do it. Then in a flash all the files on my desktop disappeared and were replaced by the files from my work desktop. (emphasis in original)

Arghghgghhgghgh!

<big snip>

I'll spare you all the other details. But the gist is that based on my own experience and discussing this with multiple Apple Care support folks, OS X Sierra had some major problem with syncing multiple desktops and is liable to think a second computer you try to sync is the same as the first one and try to sync over the second computer. Needless to say, that's not good. To explain everything that happened, what we figured out about where it put the data, etc., would take a post five times longer than this one. Suffice it to say, working with the Apple Care folks, I had to erase the entire computer and begin restoring my data from my Time Machine back up. (emphasis added)

A cautionary read, well worth the time, from a long-time Mac enthusiast.

[PJMcK]

1. There are other problems, as well

At the urging of my computer guru, (aka my 20-year old son), I upgraded to Sierra a couple of days after its release. With most "regular" applications, such as Microsoft Office and Apple's own software, (Safari, etc.), Sierra is beautiful. It's very smooth and attractive with several new features including Siri.

However, any specialty software could likely have big problems. As one example, I use the music software Finale which just released a new major upgrade of their program about a week before Sierra's release. According the Finale's website and support staff, the new version was optimized for Sierra. Guess what? It doesn't work and now their website indicates that they will release a free update "shortly." This means that I cannot work on any projects until either I get the update OR I downgrade the OS to El Capitan. Given that the upgrade to Sierra took several hours of downloading and customized set-up, that's an unattractive choice to make.

This is a major screw-up and it's infuriating that users are enthusiastically urged to "upgrade now!" when the products are not ready for release. Actually, this is why I stopped being a beta-tester more than a decade ago: why should I edit and fix their product? Fix it before you release it, damn it!

Thanks, Apple. Thanks, Finale.