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Google Drive Issues on Mac

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  1. Chris Mellor 1

    Google Drive Issues on Mac

    Ha! Here;s a corrective fior hacks thinking they are God or near to God.The text below was sent by a reader of the Google DRive Launch story. It's great fun:

    -------------------------------

    re: Google Drive

    Might I suggest 10mg of Xanax every 6 hours until you stop your Mac addiction. It'll help you get over that sense of outrage and entitlement Mac users suffer from, especially with shaky initial launches on the first day by a global company offering a free service, trying to work out the kinks.

    I find Mac users greatly benefit from it standing in line for their their semi-annual "get fucked by our hero company" pilgramage to buy a new iWhatever.

    ------------------------

    I'm off to the pharmacist now :-)

    22 4
    1. Bobbicus Anthropithicus
      Reply Icon

      Re: Google Drive Issues on Mac

      Oh my. Google Drive works fine for me on Mac and Windows 7, and I'm actually grateful that Google is providing the service. Worse yet, although I've used Mac's since 1984 so must have contributed to the black turtleneck fund I don't recall ever standing in line to submit a Steve tax. And I much prefer beer to Xanax.

      Should I seek professional help?

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  2. GreggS

    But works absolutely fine on Windows

    7 at least.

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    1. Miek
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: But works absolutely fine on Windows

      Worked fine on my Android and chrome too :)

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    2. Sordid Details
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: But works absolutely fine on Windows

      It installed and works fine on my Windows 7 netbook, but when I shut it down it crashes with a memory error.

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  3. truCido
    IT Angle

    On windows at least it didn't try and synchronise everything...unless I told it to in the setup?

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  4. Efros
    Devil

    Google and Apple

    Hope you're supping with a very long spoon!

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  5. mrdalliard
    Thumb Down

    Down with this sort of thing....

    Aside from any software issues the author might have had, I wouldn't touch Drive due to their awful T&Cs regarding ownership and what they can do with your data.

    I know Dropbox has its flaws, but I'll stick with that, thanks.

    6 4
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Down with this sort of thing....

      Ownership? Rubbish. Have you even read Google's T&Cs? Both Google and Dropbox explicitly state they don't claim ownership of your data (" In short, what belongs to you stays yours." - Google, "You retain full ownership to your stuff" - Dropbox).

      Ownership aside, what exactly is it you think they can do with your data?

      4 2
      1. mrdalliard
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Re: Down with this sort of thing....

        Yes, I've read them.

        "When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

        This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. "

        Have you?

        6 1
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Down with this sort of thing....

          You're rare in that you have been smart enough to read past the positive bit :).

          I cannot believe how many people don't bother reading what I consider almost the most heinous terms of business on the planet (only Facebook beats it).

          ANY business which has an obligation to maintain confidentiality moves itself into non-compliant state the moment they use Google for anything else but web searches or translation (and even there a degree of care has to be taken - better use start page.com).

          As for end users, they seem to be unaware that they are dealing with a company that is actively collaborating with those that want to nuke privacy as far as they can get away with. A return of proper and correct privacy laws (i.e.pre the 9/11 excuse) would substantially harm their business of flogging their details to whoever pays the most..

          3 3
        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Down with this sort of thing....

          You can copy-and-paste! Well done. You might have even read them now too. Or do you still think they have nasty terms about ownership?

          Anyway, you haven't actually answered the question asked. What do you think those terms let Google do with your data, exactly? What is it you think they can do that Dropbox can't?

          Bear in mind the limited purpose applied to those rights, and the privacy policy that also applies.

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    2. VeganVegan
      Reply Icon
      Pirate

      Re: Down with this sort of thing....

      Google is like a black hole.

      First it hoovered up all web pages on the intertubes.

      Then it nabbed onlline videos.

      It tried/is in the process of sucking in all the holdings of librairies.

      Now it is trying to grab everybody's files.

      Fancy doing a Google search on somebody else's private documents?

      I say use Google Drive only if your files are heavily encrypted.

      <icon: Google are ultimate pirates! /icon>

      3 3
  6. spencer

    Not a great service

    It's the first of the 'cloud storage' type services I've tried to use. It's not that great to be honest, but then I don't think dropbox would be much better.

    As for your review - If you set the same set of morals on this software onto the software/hardware that you wrote the piece on I don't think it'd pass.

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    1. sisk
      Reply Icon

      Re: Not a great service

      I haven't tried Google Drive (and probably won't), but Dropbox works great. On a PC (and presumably on a Mac) it simply creates a folder that automatically syncs to the cloud. I can't imagine a smoother way to do cloud storage. Incidently, that's why I haven't picked up Google Drive.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Dropbox works great

        and on Android, and on Symbian....talk about 'just works - install and use

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  7. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Stop

    Am I alone?

    I thought, think, and will continue to think that the only possible sane use for a remote storage service is precisely that: storage of *data* - and maybe, at a pinch, metadata - that is otherwise in every respect managed on my personal PC, laptop, or whatever.

    There is absolutely no need for any service to interf[ere|ace] with your OS other than to appear as another drive...

    We seem to be moving from a data-centric view of the world to a view which encompasses the application which created the data, and I don't think I like it.

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    1. DZ-Jay
      Reply Icon

      Re: Am I alone?

      >> We seem to be moving from a data-centric view of the world to a view which encompasses the application which created the data, and I don't think I like it.

      I must say that this has always been the goal of personal computing. Why is it important to access files directly when you can only use it with specific applications? Isn't it the job of the applications to handle their own data types, rather than deferring all this administrative work to the user?

      I want my photo application to have access to my photos and show them to me, and allow me to edit them. I further want this access abstracted. I profit not in the least by having them thrown in with a bunch of text files and other documents of myriad type; it just adds to the confusion and the maintenance burden.

      Likewise for word processor documents: why would I ever need to see them thrown anonymously in a folder without context? If I ever need to access them is to read, edit, or share them, and a suitable application would allow me to do so.

      Compartmentalizing the file system by document type (or application-specific function) using folders goes someways towards this, but why not extend this to its logical conclusion and abstract the entire file system.

      -dZ.

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      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Am I alone?

        >>Isn't it the job of the applications to handle their own data types, rather than deferring all this administrative work to the user?

        Well, no... perhaps I want to open Word documents with Open Office; HTML documents with any old browser; text documents with whatever's handy... I might want to edit a text, or assemble or compile it; I might want simply to view an image - should I require all of a picture editor to do that?

        It's bad enough that W7 (and I suspect it's predecessors) won't even display fundamental information - e.g. file size - for certain files, but driving an entire operating system on the assumption that a file has only one application which can work with it? That way lies madness...

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  8. eSeM
    Happy

    Doesn't work on a Mac, who gives a fuck! ...... probably not Google.

    :-)

    6 1
  9. geekclick
    WTF?

    Trolling is the new form of reporting and reviewing!

    At its best, that wasnt a review it was whinge about being a fanboi in the extereme, i expect this sort of reporting from the Daily Mail!

    I have my G drive installed, syncing and working fine accross 3 Windows machines (one laptop and 2 desktops) and an 2 Android phones!

    El Reg, cut this nonsense immediately!

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Trolling is the new form of reporting and reviewing!

      What do you expect from the same reg hack who created some very dodgy graphs to fudge his whinging about perfornance on a hardware review.

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    2. Chris Mellor 1
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: Trolling is the new form of reporting and reviewing!

      In reply to GeekClick....

      At once sir, at once!

      1 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Trolling is the new form of reporting and reviewing!

        If I was being a cynical bastard I'd suggest he does it on purpose to drive demand for comments, hence more adverts served

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        1. spencer
          Reply Icon

          Re: Trolling is the new form of reporting and reviewing!

          Joke is on him then, I can't see any ads on the forum pages...

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  10. DrXym

    Dropbox has had its problems too

    Such as turning off all password authentication for an unknown period of time during one incident.

    But it works pretty well and therefore I'm not in a hurry to switch to Google. The one thing that *would* make me switch to Google is if it supported proper client side encryption, i.e. if I could generate a keypair to encrypt content so not even Google know what I'm storing. To me it looks the same but Google sees garble on their end.

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    1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: Dropbox has had its problems too

      Why on earth would they do that? Haven't you read the T&Cs? Google Drive is their way of letting you give them all your stuff for them to have and use free. If you encrypted it, they wouldn't have anything except garble.

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    2. SYNTAX__ERROR
      Reply Icon
      Alert

      Re: Dropbox has had its problems too

      Useful information for all:

      T R U E C R Y P T

      It seems I have far fewer data security worries than many others.

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  11. The Dark Lord
    Megaphone

    Lucky escape

    Frankly, if a piece of software designed to steal all my content didn't work properly, I'd consider that a lucky escape!

    Why anyone's capitulating to this IP landgrab I really can't understand.

    5 2
    1. jai
      Reply Icon

      Re: Lucky escape

      because google fanboys are just as bad as apple fanboys if you dare to suggest their beloved choclate factory is anything less than uptopian perfection...

      2 2
  12. jai

    Thanks so much

    I was going to try it out and see if I was missing something that would make it useful for me.

    But thankfully, after seeing the troubles you've been through, i'm not going to bother. If i ever need to store generic documents in the cloud, i'll stick with dropbox.

    It's worrying that Drive begins to copy everything. They only give you 5gb, right? I have far more than that on my machine - how does it know which 5gb i'd want to sync?

    0 7
    1. Steven Raith
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: Thanks so much

      It creates a folder called Google Drive under your home folder (on OS X at least - I'd expect it to do the same on Windows, under the %user% folder), and syncs any existing contents of Docs down to your device, and anything you add to it gets uploaded/shared to other devices.

      Try actually looking into something rather than just opening mouth without engaging brain.

      it's worrying that Unicorns are taking over the world, it must be true because I presumed that's what's happening without looking out of the window!

      I swear the internet used to be for the elite - now they let any mouthbreather on.

      Oddly, no problems on my late 2008 Macbook/Desire S running Cynagenmod 9 Alpha.

      Steven R

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  13. SiempreTuna
    FAIL

    Fail on Android

    I got the same, "feck off, we're not ready for you" (I'm paraphrasing) message on my Droid, even though it had appeared on my updates list without me asking for it.

    I'm taking it personally ..

    2 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fail on Android

      Indeed!

      As it doesn't work on my <device>, I can only assume that it works on no ones <device>. Rather than checking this I suggest we vent frustration in the guise of a news article and clutter up the register.

      It would appear that is the case given this is the 2nd article in as many days regarding "doesn't work in my Mac waaaah waaaaaah waaaaaaaaaaah"...

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    What a tool

    Clearly has it in for this product, and goes out of his way to try and make it cock up, and then posts about his experiences.

    Slow news day. or shares in Dropbox?

    6 4
    1. Chris Mellor 1
      Reply Icon

      Re: What a tool

      Lovely post. Reminds me not to take myself seriously.

      And, no, no shares in Dropbox...

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  15. This post has been deleted by its author

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mine works fine on the following

    2 android devices and a vista and a win 7 box.

    maybe you're all doing it wrong.

    Have you tried calling your local tech support to hold your hand/

    1 0
  17. Voland's right hand Silver badge
    Joke

    You are asking too much

    If Google wants me to try Google Drive then it needs to take the handbrake off and get out of first gear.

    First gear? California? The Holy Land of Automatic "because it pollutes less"? You gotta be kidding, when was the last time you saw a manual gearbox in Silly Valley?

    2 1
    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: You are asking too much

      Er, automatics have gears too (with the exception of CVTs).

      Guess which one they use when going slowly?

      0 0
  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You might want to check T&Cs too...

    You give Google a license to reuse your content. DropBox and others make it clear that with them you do not.

    2 3
  19. Joe Harrison

    I'll use it but not really sure why

    You can store all your data "in the cloud" somewhere. Maybe (or maybe not) you will be able to access it again later depending on availability of your internet connection. And you don't know who else is messing with your stuff unknown to you.

    Or you can carry everything with you on a tiny cheap flash memory and have guaranteed high-speed private access to it whenever you like.

    Not that it matters since Google Drive does not seem to work behind a corporate proxy requiring authentication, which I imagine is the case for most of us.

    1 0
    1. jonathanb Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: I'll use it but not really sure why

      Alternatively, you can do what I do, which is to get a computer, attach 15TB of hard drives to it, plus some more drives for backup, install a server operating system of your choice on it, configure it for a variety of filesharing protocols, put a strong password on it, connect it to the internet, then I can access them anywhere where there is an internet connection, or access to my LAN. At home, it is much faster than cloud storage, meaning it is possible to fill up the server with stuff in a fortnight or so, anywhere else, it is about the same speed as Google Drive, DropBox, SkyDrive etc.

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      1. pixl97
        Reply Icon

        Re: I'll use it but not really sure why

        -attach 15TB of hard drives to it-

        Spend a bunch of money

        -plus some more drives for backup-

        spend even more money

        -install a server operating system-

        have in depth technical knowledge of computer operating systems and hardware

        -put a strong password on it-

        have in depth knowledge of computer security.

        -connect it to the internet-

        have working knowledge of router configuration and a static ip or DDNS

        The rest of the world will just use $cloud_drive because it's quick, easy, and relatively more secure then they could do it themselves with out having to call, contract, or wait on IT. That's why lots of people use iDevices, quick and easy and pretty much work without in depth knowledge.

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  20. HeNe
    Meh

    "The Cloud Ate My Documents" - a new excuse/vulnerability

    Right now, there's the whole, "We have a search warrant, decrypt your hard drive" vs "I'm sorry, officer, I forgot that password." / "I'm sorry officer, I have no data on that hard drive." tussle.

    The person being served might be telling the truth, or might not be telling the truth.

    Now, we have a similar issue involving document storage on "the cloud".

    Maybe the cloud service truly ate the user's documents, or maybe the user is just making excuses.

    I'm sure lawyers will profit from this somehow.

    1 0
  21. Geoff May

    Searching Google ...

    Reveals this interesting post ... scroll down to the answer from "Rishi S".

    That appears to have worked for several other people who had the same issue.

    0 0
  22. squilookle
    Pint

    Not sure of the point of this article and the one posted the other day. The first one was possibly the most emotionally charged article I ever read over something so unimportant. This one less so, but is inevitably going to stir up more of the same response from the commentards. .

    Does the author wish to see this new Google service fail, and if so, is this is shameless way to attack it? Is the author being really clever and wanting to see it succeed, following the old idea that any publicity is good publicity? Or does he just want to announce that he is a Mac user?

    If none of the above, he must be trying to get a lot of hits by writing anything about Macs and Google. Or he may be annoyed at something else and need something to take it out on. I'm really not sure, but good luck to him whichever it is. It's Friday, only 7 hours to go until the pub :)

    4 0
    1. Chris Mellor 1
      Reply Icon

      I'd like Google to succeed

      It would be great big Google out-dropboxed Dropbox and give me same convenience, if not better, and more free space. Instead it's provided crap software that doesn't work ... yet. I guess it will, Google being Google. But, compared to superb Google Earth, the Google Drive experience is second rate, IMHO that is.

      0 1
      1. squilookle
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Re: I'd like Google to succeed

        That's fair enough. I haven't tried it myself as my primary box at home is Linux and I already have Dropbox and Ubuntu One anyway, but the more options we have, the better.

        If Linux support appears, then I probably will give it a try.

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  23. Ben Liddicott
    Pint

    "This cloud tech is supposed to be for my convenience, right?"

    What planet are you on? On Google Drive, everything is stored in cleartext. That's not for your convenience, since there is no reason for it.

    It's for Google's convenience, for the convenience of the three and four letter acronyms.

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