Today I learned that all of my important files were being uploaded to iCloud and was filling up space. I turned it off and accidentally pressed the wrong button and now all of my files have disappeared. I can redownload all of my files, but there is 100GB which will take a day, and while I am downloading my IDE and other file viewers appear to not work properly. I am scared to run any of my code while this stuff is redownloading.
Given how much apple invests in making UI intuitive, the design choices here really jump out. Given that Apple is an industry leader and puts more thought than others into UI, one can really only conclude this is intentional. There is an obvious asymmetry here that any person would realize. One can delete all of their photos and documents at the press of a button for not purchasing the next tier, but will require lots of effort to recover them. This sort of behavior seems almost like extortion: Apple is threatening your files in exchange for a few bucks a month. This is reminiscent of the cheaper off-brand android phones that run ads.
Certainly, Apple needs to make a profit. The iCloud segment is 2.5% of Apple's revenue. Apple's profit margins are 27% and the services segment, which includes iCloud, is certainly much larger at 76%. If this doing this grew the iCloud segment 100%, Apple's margins would be at 29% in the short run. In exchange, Apple has sold their luxury brand image for 2% more profits. Even then, I'm not sure if you're seeing this sort of growth despite this aggressive marketing.
I am not on Apple's marketing team, but if I were, I would dial down trying to push iCloud so aggressively. I use AWS and Google drive for a lot of my files, and have already purchased 200GB of iCloud as a courtesy for my photos. Threatening the user's files, and time, this way is extremely coercive. This cheapens the whole Apple brand. I think anybody who has spent thousands of dollars on the apple ecosystem would be quite annoyed by this.
Now, for my question: is it safe to run C++ code on files that haven't been downloaded yet? My IDE is not loading some of these files.
