Setting up a new MacBook Pro with a 2TB internal drive has made me think again about iCloud drive. My 13" M1 MBP only had a 256GB internal SSD, so I used "Optimize storage," which was acceptable given internet access and adequate bandwidth. That doesn't sound like it should be a problem today, but a couple of vacation houses in the Finger Lakes proved to me that indeed, broadband access isn't everywhere.

On the 14" M3 MBP, I'm not using "Optimize storage," except for Photos. I haven't solved my excessive image problem and it seems the best I can do is to keep it from burgeoning ever faster. (High speed electronic shutters have proven a boon for the SSD industry, as has 4K video, I'm sure.) But I can keep all the files in my Documents folder stored locally and in iCloud Drive.

But working with the same document on two different computers can become problematic, at least in my experience.

Because I've been burned by this more than once, I've become very careful about how I work on the marmot between the iMac and the MBP (either one).

In Settings, there's a setting near the bottom in the Windows pane (heh). It says, "Close windows when quitting an application (the little toggle) When enabled, open documents and windows will not be restored when you re-open an application."

It seems to me that this is a very important switch. While it's really convenient to have the files you were working on re-open when you launch the app, I think this is where it gets tricky.

I'd work on the marmot on the iMac, then go somewhere and try and do some blogging from the MBP. Now, typically, Tinderbox is open when I close the MBP. The MBP just goes to sleep. If the battery dies because I haven't used it for a looong time, the state at time of sleep is stored in a snapshot and restored.

But now, that marmot file is out of date with the one in iCloud. I haven't done this in a while, and I'm disinclined to experiment with it again, though I could use some kind of test file, so my memory may be faulty. I think I'd be presented with some kind of alert that the files were out of sync, and I'd try to get the latest one from iCloud. I'd get that, but it'd be missing a post or two. It didn't have the most recent version, perhaps because that file was still open on the iMac, sleeping away at my desk.

I seldom "save" the marmot. In fact, these days, I have no idea how often you should use the "Save" command, since most files are saved automagically anyway. I don't know when iCloud gets the currently open file. I'm pretty confident that the MBP never complained that the file was open on another computer and therefore couldn't be opened locally.

Anyway, in fumbling around with a marmot minus a couple of posts, it would ultimately become the marmot in iCloud, "and hilarity ensues." (Some number of posts would have to be recreated from the exported html files.)

I'm sure this is all very murky. Suffice to say, I no longer rely on the marmot in iCloud. The file is still stored there, but I duplicate it on a 64GB thumb drive. When I'm going to take the marmot on the road, I "Quit" Tinderbox, which presumably automagically saves the latest version and uploads it to iCloud.

I've turned on that switch to "Close windows when quitting an application," so it won't restore the marmot from a locally saved "version" or "snapshot" on launch. I'll have to either double-click the marmot in Finder, or select "Open.." from the file menu, and get the most recent or current version from Documents in iCloud.

If I get a wonky version from iCloud, I'll have the current version on the thumb drive.

It's possible that I'm just becoming cognitively impaired in my incipient dotage, but I don't recall ever reading a clear and straightforward explanation about how all this stuff is supposed to work. If such an explanation doesn't exist, perhaps it's because it's not a "clear and straightforward" process.

It almost makes one pine for the days of floppy disks.