Let’s start with the Mac.

To move an iWork document from your Mac to iCloud, you (1) log in to iCloud in a Web browser and go to the iWork section, (2) click the name of the specific iWork app you want to access and (3) drag the icon of the desired document from the Finder to the iWork app’s webpage (see ).

That’s correct. There is no automatic syncing between Macs and iCloud. If you later edit the document on your Mac, your changes are not automatically updated to the copy on iCloud. Instead, you have to repeat the just-described procedure. Assuming the name of the file is unchanged, you will be asked if you want to replace the existing iCloud file. However, if you have made changes to the iCloud version in between these uploads, those changes will be lost when you replace the file.

This is all in contrast to how software such as works. Here, you drag an item to the Dropbox folder on your Mac and it syncs everywhere that Dropbox goes. Subsequent changes on any device sync to all devices. Clean. Simple. Why doesn’t iCloud work this way?

I see no good reason why Apple couldn’t have an iCloud folder on your Mac that works similarly to the Dropbox concept. In fact, it would be in keeping with Apple’s push toward “sandboxing” of a program’s documents. Even so, there remains a critical reason why automatic syncing between Macs, iCloud, and iOS devices would be difficult, if not impossible, to pull off right now: The Mac and iOS versions of the same iWork document are different. When you load a Mac version of an iWork document into an iOS iWork app, the document is converted to the iOS format. Mainly, this means that the iOS app strips out features of the document that iOS does not support. If the iOS version automatically synced back to the Mac, replacing the Mac version, you would lose all the Mac-only features of the document.