The IT Nerd

Last night I installed macOS Sierra, and I’ve tripped over something that Apple either overlooked, or chose to go ahead with even though it may not be a good idea in my opinion. It’s a feature called Optimized Storage. In short, if you’re getting low on space on your mac, macOS Sierra can automatically upload older and larger files to iCloud and then delete them from your Mac, and leave an alias that will download the file from iCloud as required.

Now that sounds good in theory. The thing is, this feature is absolutely useless unless you pony up for extra storage on iCloud, and a lot of it. You see, Apple gives you 5GB of free storage. So if you have a MacBook Pro with 256GB of storage, you need to have 1TB of storage (at $12.99 CDN per month) to make this feature work. Now I don’t mind paying for storage as I pay for $1.29 a month for 50GB of storage, and use 9GB of it for my iCloud Photos library, and several hundred megabytes to store important documents. But seeing as macOS Sierra offers to turn on Optimized Storage when you install the OS, which I think that less savvy users will do, you’d think that Apple would offer you way more storage than 5GB to allow you to try the feature out if they chose to pop up an offer to turn it on. But they don’t and that is a #fail. It makes me wonder if this is some sort of cash grab by Apple to get people to use iCloud and further lock them into the Apple ecosystem. 

The other area where Optimized Storage falls apart is the fact that it only works if your computer is connected to the Internet all the time. If you have an iMac that is always on your desk and connected to the Internet, that’s a non issue. However if you use a MacBook Pro like me, and you’re not always connected to the Internet (for example, you’re on a plane), then that’s a problem. You see without Internet access this feature is useless and will leave you without a file that you really need, but is sitting on iCloud because Optimized Storage decided that you didn’t need it to be stored locally. Another #fail.

For those reasons, I’ve turned off Optimized Storage and you should too. Here’s how you do it. Go to System Preferences > iCloud. Here you can switch the feature on or off for files stored on your iCloud Drive. Click the Options button next to iCloud Drive:

Note the words “Optimize Mac Storage”. Uncheck that as I have in this screenshot as when I went here, it was checked. You should also uncheck “Desktop & Documents Folders” if it’s checked as well. That way, you can ensure that nothing gets synced to iCloud. I’ve done the same for my wife’s MacBook Pro as well so that she doesn’t complain to me about this feature as that would not end well for me.

What do you think? Am I out to lunch or do I have a point? I’m open to feedback, so please post a comment and share your thoughts.

This entry was posted on September 21, 2016 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.