Open Radar

 
Having iCloud serve as a sync broker between all of my devices is a wonderful thing. More often than not, I am content to make a change on one device, say a new calendar event, and let iCloud automagically propagate that change to all of my other devices. This is what we want computers for: to take the repetitive tasks off of our hands and let us go about our business. But computers are not perfect and neither is iCloud. Sometimes the sync operation breaks midstream or an error is introduced in some other way and then the “truth” dataset stored in iCloud is corrupted, breaking the usefulness of the dataset on all devices. Currently, there is no way to alter that data set beyond turning off iCloud syncing for a particular function, e.g. bookmarks, in System Preferences or Settings.app, making changes on a device, reenabling sync and then waiting a certain amount of time for iCloud to work it all out. Sometimes things go off without a hitch and sometimes you have to repeat the operation again and again. This is not a good user experience.

in MobileMe there was a crude method to force overwrite which dataset was the “correct” dataset. I say crude because it was buried under a series of panels and not readily available to the average user. But, as a function, it worked. It would be appreciated if iCloud had a similar feature— allow a user to determine which device had the proper and complete dataset— but done better than it was in MobileMe. Ideally iCloud would feature this dashboard on-line so that any device (computer, iPhone, iPad, etc) could interact with it rather than having the functionality buried in Settings.app. This would not need to be an in-depth site. In fact, a series of simple icons and questions would be best. For example:

"The Bookmarks are correct on?”
My Home Computer / My iPhone / My iPod / My Work Computer

“The Calendar is correct on?”
My Home Computer / My iPhone / My iPod / My Work Computer

Thank you for your consideration,
jkb