Inside the new Files On-Demand Experience on macOS

I just read Jack Nichols' Update 2/1/2022, amended to the original blog post.

Loads of technical motivations on why the change happened and the best efforts Microsoft implemented to live within the limitations of macOS.

That's all great info, but you know what? I don't care. Really. "I'm a bit of a scientist myself" and the crucial part missing in this whole blunder is the humanitarian oversight.

Last weekend OneDrive wanted to do an update which I've let it do so many times before because nothing's ever broken before. So I trusted the update. Not one mention of the fundamental, momumental changes that were about to take place. Zero warnings, not even a blip of "we're changing things and moving things around up but don't worry. We got you!"

What I got instead was me clicking to my OneDrive folder like I have for years and getting errors that the folder no longer existed. I have a Mac to put files on. That's the point of me having it and having those files removed from the OneDrive folder I'd come to trust was the worst possible thing that could've happened.

I wrote this to OneDrive support over email:

"Maybe next time the Engineering team could give this same experience to their mom and watch her freak completely out when her OneDrive folder is completely empty. No two decades worth of pictures. No documents and photo scans of newspaper clippings of family history research dating back to the 1880s. No documents on her father’s death. No covid vaccination records. Nothing in the folder at all."

Sure, Microsoft posted this article on Jan 12th outlining the "upgrades" and another before that last June, but again I don't care. I don't read the OneDrive blog. I didn't even know it existed until my life was turned upside.

Like seriously, how hard is it here in 2022 to throw up an alert that says, "Hey... big changes are coming to OneDrive, read this blog post before you update."

Apparently it's too hard.