I so rarely write notes on the go that it doesnāt bother me. On the iPad, for the meetings use case, Iād create a markdown file first, and then edit it. Not ideal, but itās perfectly useable. But, honestly Iām still in the thick of this as well.
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Iāve always found that the process of writing forces me to clarify my thoughts and feelings about a topic. I canāt write or communicate clearly if I donāt first have a solid understanding of the topic.
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I do have many of the boxes for apps checked under iCloud in System Preferences, so folders for apps do appear on iCloud Drive.
But the only ones I use are the folder for the PDF Viewer app (Iāll throw a PDF in there if I think Iāll need it when Iām out and about on my iPhone) and a folder named To Be Shared (which has nothing in it at the moment).
I still drag some files over to my iPhone when I plug it into the Mac via USB cable for a backup or OS upgrade. An example is the database file for the Strongbox password app.
Other apps like NotePlan (with its Calendar integration), Contacts, Apple Books, and Safari do use Appleās CloudKit to sync behind the scenes from Mac to iPhone. But I also try to remember to confirm my iPhone is up-to-date before leaving the house as Iāve been caught out with old data on occasion.
My EagleFiler everything-bucket app is Mac-only. I install the Due reminders app and Downcast podcatcher only on my iPhone. I donāt uses Apple Notes or Reminders. My photos are stored in a Finder folder structure rather than the Photos app.
It is obvious that iCloud permeates everything Apple but I do my best to reduce my reliance on it.
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A quick question, whatās the ground truth here? Perhaps it is not that the MBP is not uploading the changes, itās that the other devices have not downloaded the changes from iCloud. What does www.icloud.com/notes say? Accessing through the web interface should help you understand what is in iCloud servers.
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Thanks everyone for the genuinely helpful advice. I appreciate it more than I know how to adequately express.
I have made two decisions and one is still pending.
First, I am going to do all of my writingāshort, long-form, and book in Ulysses. It has everything I need. And while I was out on my run today the obvious struck me, āwhy am I concerned about a $40/year subscription for a high quality writing app? That is about the cost of one meal at a modest restaurant.ā Duh.
Second, since Iām giving up on Apple Notes (Senior tech called todayāstill no solution), I donāt feel compelled to integrate with Reminders. Iām going back to OF. I know how to use it, I donāt find it hard to use and it has the power for my complex projects like Strategic Planning, yet, I can keep it as simple as I need.
My ongoing guandry is selecting a note app.
- Craft fits the bill but it does not have end-to-end encryption. I have to decide how important this is. Craftās summary of the issue is:
You data is stored in the cloud (AWS), itās encrypted during transfer (TLS) and also at rest (default RDS encryption for document content and personal data, and SSE-S3 encryption for uploaded binary content). However, at this point we do not provide end-to-end encryption of your data.
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Obsidian is workable. I can deal with the friction in creating the occasional table and I can link to documents and open them outside Obsidian. Those friction points are not show stoppers. The sticking point is getting follow-up tasks out of Obsidian and into OF. There does not seem to be a good way to do this. It would be a manual cut/paste affair. Not insurmountable but hardly elegant.
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Other?
In my case, new Notes on my MBP are not showing up in Notes in iCloud on the Web, they are not syncing with the server.
This basically means that a Craft employee or subcontractor could conceivably access your data. Not bad per se, specially thinking that Apple rolled out E2E encryption this week.
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That is good to know. I think my exposure would be pretty limited.
Now thatās strange, because you mentioned before that you nuked your MBP and have a fresh Ventura install, right?
Is everything present on icloud.com downloaded to the MBP? Perhaps it wonāt upload until everything has been fully downloaded.
In all of your (extensive) recovery attempts, have you tried starting with a āfreshā user account on your Mac, or have you been using a ārestoredā user account? Just curious if that could be a source of a small problem in a library file somewhere. You might try creating a new user account and logging into it with your iCloud credentials just to see if that works?
That is correct and believe me, after ~4 hours on the phone with senior engineers we have covered all of the possibilities. The short version is that after I made some folder changes and deleted a few notes 4 or 5 days ago, none of the changes I made or make subsequently to Notes on the MBP sync up to iCloud. It remains as it did before I made changes. If I make changes on a mobile devices the changes populate on all devices including the MBP.
I have created a new account to test it but I donāt really want to go down that road. I have pretty much my whole digital life in Appleās cloud and Googleās. I certainly donāt want to migrate my stuff to a new account. I would have thought (but perhaps Iām being too kind to Apple) that senior support engineers would have asked about a library file. They have not. They want me to send a bunch of log files to them once they get back to me.
I think the suggestion is to create a new local user account on your Mac, but using the same iCloud credentials. Could be helpful, but if you are already after a fresh nuke and pave, I donāt really know.
This is infuriating me, I cannot begin to understand your levels of frustration.
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Itās worth noting that Obsidian is a bit of a resource hog. In my local tests DEVONthink (hardly a lightweight) used less than half the memory and a small percentage of the CPU. But, thatās Electron for you. You might never notice, but itās worth knowing.
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Itās worth noting that āiCloud syncingā is not one thing. There are at least three methods I am aware of, which came to my attention mostly during my saga.
I found, for example, that Ulysses would not sync but KeepIt would, and so would Notes. I think those are representative of the three methods.
- āOld schoolā file-based syncing. Ulysses has a special folder somewhere in the Library folder that it simply writes files to and āhopesā that the OS takes care of things.
- āNew fangledā file-based syncing. KeepIt also has a special folder, but itās in a different part of the Library structure and this method has allowed them to hook into more recent APIs so that they can, for example, surface as a āLocationā in Finder where you can simply open the KeepIt folder in Finder and view the contents.
- Data-based sync. I suspect this is how Notes and Photos work, and I am almost certain Reminders works this way, as it wouldnāt make sense for there just to be āfilesā.
In my case, it was everything that used method 1 that was broken. The other two were absolutely fine the whole time.
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This morning I was setting up NetNewsWire, which syncs via iCloud, and read this by Brent Simmons.
āApple limits how fast you can access and retrieve updates from their iCloud servers and puts understandable limits in place to prevent abuse. This can impact the data we sync for NetNewsWire, especially with an established account with history. In our opinion, Appleās limits are too restrictive, however the cost of iCloud is inexpensive, so I guess we are getting what we pay for.ā
Iāve found discussions of Apple Notes that wonāt sync dating back to 2012. If Apple has had this problem for ten years the situation it isnāt likely to be resolved in the near future.
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You are absolutely right on being too restrictive. However I think the real issue that the syncing process and mechanism is so opague like it has to be the best kept secret. This makes extremely poor user experience and management of expectation
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Iāve lost all faith in iCloud a long time ago with repeated problems. I think this has always been Appleās Achillesā heel despite their wish to push services. Iām only using iCloud for things that I use infrequently ā contacts, calendars (I use Outlook for work).
@Bmosbacker Iām currently trialing Things for task and project management and Craft for PKM/Second Brain. Iām also not fond of blocks in Craft but they have made improvements in this area, at least in regards to selecting large amounts of text/ multiple blocks.
Despite my hope to use Apple for everything in the interest of simplicity, it just canāt be trusted. If it were me, Iād turn to Dropbox and something else for notes and reminders.
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āAppleās limits are too restrictive . . . ā was a quote but I agree with it. However as long as iCloud will sync Drafts and NetNewsWire Iām good with that.
Apple makes excellent hardware and I get excellent results using it with other companies software and services.
Hey @Bmosbacker - been hanging around the forum for a while and seen your workflow progress.
For tasks I would probably +1 OF, it seems to do everything you need and you already have it and experience with it.
What is your ānote app specā? Do you want Markdown? Rich text? I would either wholeheartedly recommend Obsidian or wholeheartedly discourage you from it, depending on what youāre looking for. IMO itās designed for a Zettelkasten-type workflow - anything else, be it project notes or wikis or whatnot, is probably better suited for a different app. If you have a Zettelkasten going, adding project notes in there would be okay - but if you donāt, Obsidian is probably not the app for you.
For meeting/project notes, etc, have you considered Drafts? I also love Joplin, although it may not be up to your standards. Have you considered an app like Muse, which may cover your use case but is not strictly for ānote takingā?