14 DAY TRIAL // A message from Transmit developer Panic reveals that Apple has started enforcing new rules for third-party file managers / download managers, preventing these apps from ever sending anything outside the app itself to the cloud.
Transmit for iOS is a Swiss army knife downloader and manager. It lets you connect to your FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, or Amazon S3 server and manage the files in there from the comfort of your touchscreen. You can transfer stuff, make folders, rename, delete, set permissions, etc.
The magic of Transmit
The iOS 8 Share button allows you to share stuff directly to a server, and in the case of compatible apps like iWork, you can use the Open In... function to open a document directly from your server. There’s one more ability in Transmit, and this one is directly impacted by Apple’s recent decision: upload back to your server.
Previously, you could use Transmit as your own seamless cloud storage. Now, that’s no longer the case. Here’s the story from the Panic blog (excerpts):
“... at Apple’s request, we had to remove the ability to ‘Send’ files to other services, including iCloud Drive. In short, we’re told that while Transmit iOS can download content from iCloud Drive, we cannot upload content to iCloud Drive unless the content was created in the app itself.”
Same goes for every other cloud
Had iCloud been the only service excluded from that list, no “Panic” would have ensued. However, since the app has to follow the iOS Data Storage Guidelines which puts iCloud Drive in the same “sheet” as other cloud services (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive), Panic had to exclude them all.
“Since we can’t touch the sheet, we can’t remove just iCloud Drive from the sheet, so we have to remove the whole sheet,” the company says. “Our seriously sincere apologies to everyone who used or purchased Transmit iOS with this feature,” Panic adds.
There’s also some good news, according to the company. Even crippled, Transmit remains a highly versatile app. Basically, the only thing you can no longer do is upload, but the management features are still there and the downloading bit remains intact.
Panic hopes Apple will have a change of heart, as it has had in the past when it blindly enforced rules that seemed to destroy perfectly good services (like James Thomson’s PCalc widget). There’s a good chance Apple will backtrack on its decision and / or even amend its guidelines if there’s enough backlash.
