A word of caution from Josh Marshall about syncing and iCloud backups using OSX Sierra . . .

[PJMcK]

1. There are other problems, as well

At the urging of my computer guru, (aka my 20-year old son), I upgraded to Sierra a couple of days after its release. With most "regular" applications, such as Microsoft Office and Apple's own software, (Safari, etc.), Sierra is beautiful. It's very smooth and attractive with several new features including Siri.

However, any specialty software could likely have big problems. As one example, I use the music software Finale which just released a new major upgrade of their program about a week before Sierra's release. According the Finale's website and support staff, the new version was optimized for Sierra. Guess what? It doesn't work and now their website indicates that they will release a free update "shortly." This means that I cannot work on any projects until either I get the update OR I downgrade the OS to El Capitan. Given that the upgrade to Sierra took several hours of downloading and customized set-up, that's an unattractive choice to make.

This is a major screw-up and it's infuriating that users are enthusiastically urged to "upgrade now!" when the products are not ready for release. Actually, this is why I stopped being a beta-tester more than a decade ago: why should I edit and fix their product? Fix it before you release it, damn it!

Thanks, Apple. Thanks, Finale.