Apple is having iCloud Sync problems today

[Brendan]

Hey Everyone,

I’m getting a lot of feedback from customers saying that Tap Forms is no longer syncing. It’s natural to assume there’s a problem with Tap Forms. However, after digging further into the problem and doing research on the Apple Developer Support Forums, I’m hearing from a LOT of other app developers that they are also having troubles with iCloud sync today. It started on December 31st actually.

I thought it was a problem with my development code suddenly breaking, but it’s happening to other people using the production version of Tap Forms which was syncing just fine a couple of days ago.

Apple provides developers a login to developer.icloud.com which shows us what is stored in iCloud for our applications. Right now anything I try to store in iCloud shows up there, but with a status of “File Upload Pending”. Normally that happens only when the file hasn’t uploaded yet and within a few seconds or minutes it changes status to available. But now it’s sitting in a pending state.

This pending state will cause Tap Forms to hang when you try to do a sync if Tap Forms is trying to access these pending files.

So please bear with me as I continue to investigate this situation.

I’ll post back here when I know more.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Brendan]

There still seems to be an issue with Apple’s iCloud servers.

Just to see if I wasn’t crazy and that it’s not just a Tap Forms problem, I did a simple test using the TextEdit application on my Mac. I created a sample test file and saved it in iCloud. Then I logged into my developer.icloud.com account to see the status of the file. After 20 minutes or so, the file is still in a “File upload pending” state.

Looking in Console’s log output, I see these messages:

2013-01-01 5:36:44.861 PM librariand[285]: item update observer error: Connection invalid
2013-01-01 5:37:04.133 PM librariand[285]: unable to download file://localhost/Users/brendan/Library/Mobile%20Documents/com~apple~TextEdit
/Documents/Test.rtf (0x8000000000000000): The operation couldn’t be completed. (UBErrorDomain error 6 – The item is in cloud, but we couldn’t reach the iCloud servers.)
2013-01-01 5:37:11.265 PM sandboxd[21114]: ([21092]) mdworker(21092) deny file-read-xattr /Users/brendan/Library/Logs/Ubiquity/brendan/ubiquity_01.log (pre-plugin fstype:hfs fsflag:480D000 flags:240000004C diag:0 uti:com.apple.log plugin:/Library/Spotlight/RichText.mdimporter – find suspect file using: sudo mdutil -t 25824361)

So it’s definitely not just Tap Forms which is having troubles. Even Apple’s simple TextEdit program cannot upload files to iCloud.

[Brendan]

I tried syncing some Keynote files today and they’re also failing to be uploaded to iCloud. Yet it worked fine for a friend of mine. It may be affecting certain users only. Not sure at this moment.

[Brendan]

A few moments ago iCloud sync started to work for me between my iPhone 5, iPad mini, and my MacBook Pro.

Is it working for anyone else now too?

Thanks for your patience with this issue while Apple worked things out. Lets hope this never happens again.

Brendan

[msclaren]

Hi Brendan,

Afraid it’s still not working for me here in the UK. I have used the app on my iPhone and iPad for ages now with no problems whatsoever. I have installed tap forms for mac on my mac yesterday and although all three of my machines appear on the list, the mac version remains empty and will not change when I sync and when I try to sync my phone or iPad it still hangs. Looking forward though to being able to access my data on my mac though as well as the portable devices.

David

[kenclarkeis]

I have been trying to get this to work for several days and it has been driving me insane. Just checked here and found this problem. Sync has worked a few times over last couple of days but mostly not working. Not working at all at present.

The Apple status page claims there are no issues with icloud. Are they sorting this out?

Ken

[khimmel]

… also not working in Austria since four days :-(

Kurt

[khimmel]

TF actually synced several times correctly on iphone and ipad.
Hope the syncing via Backup/Dropbox is over …

Kurt

[Brendan]

If you’re still not able to sync, I’d say that during Apple’s iCloud sync troubles for the past few days, it’s possible that one or more sync files in Tap Forms have gotten stuck.

The best way to clear that up is to use your iPhone or iPad and tap on the Reset iCloud Sync button, then re-enable iCloud Sync on each device one at a time. Wait until all devices show up in the list of Registered Devices on each of your devices.

Once that happens, click or tap on the sync button on one device at a time. Wait for each device to sync the changes automatically before you tap or click on the sync button on the next device.

Thanks,

Brendan

[msclaren]

please ignore – problem solved

[LDamers]

After no luck with the reset icloud sync button and not being able to turn on icloud sync I went to settings, icloud, storage & backup, manage storage, tap forms and deleted all the data. Went back and turned on icloud sync on my iPad and everything synced between my iPad and iPhone. Haven’t tried the Mac yet hoping since the icloud data was refreshed it won’t hang anymore. Brendan I’m not sure this was the right way to handle the problem for other people but it worked for me.

Louie

[Brendan]

Hello Louie,

There’s always multiple techniques which will work for different people. The Reset iCloud Sync procedure simply deletes the data within the SyncDocuments folder in the Tap Forms Mobile Documents folder. But doing the Manage Storage and clicking on Delete All will delete everything else as well that’s stored in iCloud. That’s kind of the nuclear bomb version of Reset iCloud Sync.

I’m glad that fixed your sync problems.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Cagou.77]

Hello, after a test time synchronization between Ipad and iphone, iphone and ipad, I noticed that the alerts were well received but they were not active on the receiving device.
Good reception.

[Brendan]

Hello Cagou,

Yes, you’re right. The alerts themselves are only functional on the device they are created on. I have not yet written the code to go through all the records which may have alerts on them and activated them on the device after a sync. But that’s on my to-do list.

Thanks,

Brendan

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