So I did a quick test myself using Pages on my iPad by creating a document (iCloud is turned on in Pages). Logging on to the iCloud website, my document showed up in iWorks without any issues. I then created a documents with Pages on my test Mac which runs 10.7.2 (again, my main systems are still on 10.6.8) and uploaded this document via the web (the only way to do it since the Mac versions are not yet integrated with iCloud where I can save directly to the cloud). After a few seconds, the document popped up on Pages on my iPad where I was able to load it without issues.
I let this sit for a few hours and returned to both Pages on my iPad and the iWorks web app. My documents were still there. So just from this simple test, the issue isn’t happening consistently to everyone and seems to be specific to each individuals configuration. In the event anyone comes across this, my iCloud account was setup new during the seed and I previously was not a MobileMe user. In the iCloud preference panel on the iPad, the only two things I have enabled is Mail & Notes and Documents & Data.
I did mention previously that I was a bit wary of iCloud when taking into account Apple’s poor history regarding its online web services (Apple does a lot of things right but their online initiatives were not one of those; it seemed it was designed and supported as afterthoughts). From 2000 (the original free iTools), I was familiar with the downtime of the different services, slow iDisk speeds, the initial absence of any sort of system status (which was later addressed with some laughable set of indicator graphics in .Mac), and the general poor value of the service (the total yearly cost in 2002 for an account with 1GB of disk space was $460 but that dropped to around $150 by 2004). The main advantage at the time was there were no bandwidth limits which was great since I hosted my own QuickTime media files for progressive streaming (back then, YouTube did not exist and other video hosting sites which were QuickTime media friendly were virtually non-existent; the ones that were around only supported Real or Windows Media). My paid stay with .Mac ended in 2005 due to the number of intermittent outages and lack of any recourse (since Apple didn’t even guarantee any form of uptime).
When .Mac was rebranded to MobileMe, I stayed away even though the value proposition looked more reasonable and came with a really nifty web photo gallery. Fast forward 3 years — in an unsurprising Apple-giveth, Apple-taketh fashion with the move to iCloud, Apple is leaving some of its MobileMe customers SOL by not migrating over some features like the web gallery, iDisk, web page hosting, and synchronization of things like the keychain. Fortunately, there are 3rd party providers like Dropbox, Box.net, SugarSync, and Wuala (just to name a few) which offer seamless syncing and hard disk in the cloud type of services which work across a variety of platforms and devices (iCloud on the Mac forces one to upgrade to Lion which I am not ready to do on my main systems and as written before, likely won’t until I have no choice like when upgrading to a new system). The ones who make use of iDisk for hosting a website will need to deal with a bit more complexity in moving to a hosting company.
It is these sorts of decisions (promote a service with features and completely abandon it later, or completely locking out customers using the previous version of Mac OS X) however which explains why I’m wary of relying too heavily on Apple’s services for anything critical. Their track record in online services and enterprise products (I’ve ranted about OS X Server enough) is not stellar so it takes a huge leap to trust my critical and important data to Apple’s iCloud until they show over time, a better track record of reliability than what existed in the not so distant past. Because of this, I’m one of those who believes Apple has a very narrow timeframe to get these various iCloud issues squared away before peoples perceptions of the service is cemented in stone. iCloud is a key cornerstone to Apple’s future plans in terms of expanding its ecosystem. Having some users documents randomly vanish is definitely not the way to inspire confidence. Then there are simple things like not having a simple way to delete unwanted photos in ones Photo Stream; something that is so brain dead obvious which is yet another reason why Apple needs to open future iOS seeding and testing to a larger demographic. The majority of iCloud testing was performed in conjunction with the iOS 5 seed and most of this was only available to those in either the Mac or iOS Developer programs. Unfortunately, there is only so much scenarios Apple can test in-house or via those in the developer programs (many of whom are probably more pro-occupied with their own apps).
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