Microsoft
- Open a terminal, and go to the CloudStorage folder – for me, this means typing “cd /Users/ianbetteridge/Library/CloudStorage”, but you will obviously have to replace that with your username.
- Type “ls” – this gives you a list of what directories are in there. For example, I have folders called OneDrive-IanBetteridge and Dropbox, for the two cloud storage providers I use.
- Now the dangerous bit. Type “sudo rm -r NameOfDirectoryToDelete” (replacing, of course, “NameOfDirectoryToDelete” with the name of the folder you wanted deleting). Terminal can autocomplete names, so you can just type the first few letters of a unique name, hit tab, and it will fill in the rest.
- Hit return, and you will be asked for your password. Type it in, hit return again, and that directory and all its contents are gone from your Mac, for good, with no real possibility of getting them back. So really do make sure that you’re deleting the directory that you want.
Removing cloud storage providers from macOS
One of Apple’s most annoying habits is changing things to make them harder for users to “make mistakes”. Almost without exception, these actually degrade the user experience in one way or another.
A case in point is the changes that Apple made a while ago to how third-party cloud storage providers such as Dropbox, OneDrive, and Proton Drive create and store their files. In the past, these were held in common or garden directories in the user’s folder – so, for example, OneDrive used to store its files in /Users/ianbetteridge/OneDrive. You could even change this location if you wanted to put it somewhere else.
That, obviously, was too simple for Apple. Now, the “approved” way of being a cloud storage provider is to store files in /User/Library/CloudStorage. This uses the macOS File Provider extension rather than custom kernel extensions, and Apple has indicted it will get rid of custom kernel extensions at some point. It hasn’t happened yet, and some storage providers – notably Nextcloud – still use the old method.
The drawback of this is that the CloudStorage director is, like everything in /Library, hidden. You can’t get to it without either holding down option and selecting the Go menu in the Finder or using the terminal. That means if you remove a cloud provider’s drive from the Locations bar in the Finder windows, you have a fun time trying to find those files again.
More importantly, if you remove a provider, it’s hit or miss whether your files will also be removed. I’ve seen instances where deleting a cloud storage provider’s application also asks if you want to delete the locally stored files. But more often, those files will just stick around, in a directory you can no longer easily access, hogging disk space.
That’s fine as long as you have infinite disk space and didn’t locally cache many files. But I like my files local where possible, which means if I delete, say, OneDrive (which has tens of gigabytes of files in it) I just lose that disk space.
However, I hear you say, can’t you just navigate to them and delete the directory? Well, no: Apple (helpfully, again) locks those directories against deletion in the Finder. You can delete the files in them, but the folder itself sticks around like a bad smell. And if you reinstall the cloud storage provider again, things seem to break: when I tried this, the folder refused to sync, and of course, couldn’t just be moved, and if it did appear to sync files didn’t open because the Finder was confused about their sync status.
Thank you, Apple. You have replaced well-written kernel extensions with your own “universal” version, which actually works less reliably. Well done, people.
Thankfully, you can completely delete a folder. You just have to go to the terminal and do a little bit of Unix to do it.
And that is what I mean about Apple’s ability to make things less usable. If I was able to just navigate to the folder in the Finder and delete it normally, it would be in the Bin and so, if I make an mistake, easier to recover. But because Apple first instinct every time is to “protect” users and “make it easier”, you need to go to the command line and use a Unix tool which is far more user-hostile and dangerous.
Thanks Apple.
So I got a Surface Pro X
Earlier this year I bought myself a shiny new Mac. This was the first Mac I’d bought since 2015, when I bought the 12in MacBook, a machine which lasted me four years but which was starting to struggle a little with battery life and a few other things.
The Mac I chose was one of the new retina MacBook Airs, the base model. As you can guess from the fact that a Core m3 MacBook was capable being my main machine for four years, I’m not a particularly demanding power user. I’m not running Photoshop, I don’t have to compile code. Mostly, I write, I do spreadsheets, and I browse the web. Mostly spreadsheets.
The Air is nice. Having TouchID built in is great, the keyboard is adequate, it’s fast enough and although it only has 128GB of storage, in the age of cloud applications and sync engines that are smart enough to work out what to sync and what you don’t ever use, that’s actually not as much of an issue for most people as you’d think.
But I don’t love it. Unlike the MacBook, which for at least two of the years I used it was an absolute darling of a machine, the MacBook Air has just always felt a little half hearted. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s probably the first Mac I’ve ever owned that I just don’t love.
Meanwhile on the other side of the Mac/Windows divide, Microsoft has released the Surface Pro X, and it’s as if they basically created a computer purpose-built to press all of my technology lust buttons. It’s light and portable – I love light and portable – and at the cutting edge thanks to its ARM processor. It’s got LTE built in, something I’ve been desperate for on a Mac for years, and something that made me use my iPad a lot. Oh and it’s a tablet too, and I absolutely adore tablets.
I don’t think I’ve prevaricated about buying a computer more than over the Surface Pro X. On the day it was announced, I added it to my basket on the Microsoft store. On the next day, I took it out. Repeat that three times and you’ll have an idea of how much I agonised over whether to buy one or not.
The reviews, when they came out a week or so before release, should have made up my mind that this was not a device for me. And yet… Reader, I bought one. And not just the lowest end one: I went for the fully tricked out 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD version, because if this thing is going to be my main computing device for a few years, I want some future proofing.
Pricey. No, REALLY pricey
You are of course paying through the nose for all this. Even for the base model, you’ll barely get change out of £1200 once you’ve bought the keyboard (yes, you need this) and pen. Even if you’re lucky enough to get an education discount, you’re still looking at a machine that starts expensive and moves quickly to the level of pricing that will make trigger automatic offers by your credit card company to raise your limit. If you want the fully-loaded 16Gb of RAM and 512GB storage version, you’re going to pay the best part of £2,000.
What you get for that money is basically what all computers should be like in 2019. Silent, always connected, light, with a great typing experience and an amazing screen. Usable in a variety of modes, and equally adept in all of them. It’s a computer that makes you feel productive.
I’ve always believed that Apple makes the best hardware in the business, and in some areas this is true (the new iPhone 11 is shockingly good). But when it comes to computers, Microsoft now beats it, pretty easily. It’s arguably better than the design of the iPad Pro, and I love that device.
Hardware without software is a paperweight
As an iPad user allow me a moment of schadenfreude: One of the biggest criticisms of the iPad from the Windows community has been its failure to run “real” desktop apps “like Photoshop”. Now, the leading edge of Microsoft devices is something which also can’t run Photoshop.
The good news is that the vast majority of applications that I use on a day-to-day basis are already ported to 64-bit ARM, which means I get good performance out of them. Using ARM applications also improves the battery life: whatever emulation system Microsoft is using to run Win32, it pushes the processor hard enough to significantly decrease how long you’ll be using the Surface Pro X without plugging it in. It’s still not bad – but you’ll definitely get a better experience if you can go ARM-only or ARM-mostly.
By and large, if you’re using ARM applications you’re going to find the experience of using the Surface Pro X really positive. That means most of Microsoft’s own apps, including – of course – Office (but weirdly not Teams), plus some staples like Spotify and WhatsApp Desktop.
The Surface Pro X can also run 32-bit Intel apps… but “run” is sometimes a generous way of putting it. It’s hit and miss whether an app will run properly, and if it does run at all, it can be prone to random freezes and crashes.
iTunes is a good example of this. It’s a Microsoft Store app, and it’s Win32, so it should work fine. But whenever I used it, it would randomly lock up while trying to do innocuous things like switching to a playlist. 1Password works, but the desktop client is slow and painful to use.
However, there’s now an ARM version of the new Edge browser, and Edge lets you run pretty much any web site as an application that appears in your task bar, you can run apps like Apple Music and Slack as web apps rather than their native equivalents. Because Microsoft has got into Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in a big way, this is actually a good experience. And 1Password has a Chrome extension version – 1Password X – which is almost as fully-featured as the client, which means you can run it as part of the browser since Chrome extensions work well with the new Edge.
The right device for me… but maybe not for you
If you’re the kind of person who lives in Office 365 and browser-based applications, you’re going to find performance on the Surface Pro X is good, battery life is excellent, and built in LTE is wonderful. Microsoft has built the best device for experiencing its own software, and if you live a Microsoft life you’re going to love it.
This describes my computing world at the moment, so unsurprisingly I love this device. Ironically, it was my experience with the iPad Pro that helped me understand the Surface Pro X could work for me. I’ve never had a problem using the iPad Pro for almost all my work and a sizeable bit of play. I’m mostly deep into the Office 365 ecosystem, and the iPad Office apps are good. And I also knew from the iPad that ARM is capable of more than enough performance to support everything I want to do.
And remember too that for three years a MacBook was my everyday carry work machine. I’ve lived the life of USB C-only for a while. I know that performance is less important to me than lightness. The iPad taught me that integrated LTE and an all-day battery was also very high on my list of requirements.
All computers are inherently a compromise between size, design, performance, mobility and ease of use. You can buy a beast of a gaming “laptop” that weighs a tonne but absolutely screams at
So does anyone want to buy a barely-used MacBook Air?