Apple says it just works...iCloud syncing...although my current situation would belie the apparent truth of that statement...
It has been more than six weeks since I embarked on what has become a long journey...to get help from Apple's paid support service to get my contacts syncing again...between my computer and iCloud...and between iCloud and my iOS devices...
I thought everything had been going perfectly...until the day I happened to notice that there were 2,082 contacts on my computer...but only 2,039 contacts on iCloud...that venerated place...the one near heaven...where all good information goes to live should you decide to have faith in Apple and give up all control...
Let me say this upfront: I have never been good at giving up control...and this incident is not going to make it any easier...
iPhone...sitting very still and waiting for all of its contacts to finally arrive...
I figured out I had a problem when I went to meet a new client...except the address was not on my phone...even though I was sure I had just added it days before...six weeks later, I have now worked with at least seven different Apple customer support representatives...
I deleted the one contact Apple initially identified as the cause of the problem...it didn't change a thing...later, I granted permission for Apple to delete all the photos for all my contacts, the next thing they thought was causing the problem...our understanding what the contacts would be restored to iCloud sans photos...and Apple did delete the photos...along with 147 more contacts...
I had to call them and ask where my contacts had gone...I inquired if they had utility software I might use to compare the files in both places so I could find the missing items...to my great surprise, I learned that the AppleCare support reps do this kind of compare manually...two reps sit side-by-side, each comparing the same contact in two different files, one at a time...it took more than two hours for them to scan mine...and when they gave me the final list, it included contacts that were already there...other contacts were left off...
So I bought a compare utility...its called Kaleidoscope and it works really well...it enabled me to identify every difference between the file on my hard drive and the one in the cloud...so I could correct the one on my drive and then back up the file...so that no matter what other innane thing I might be asked to do before this is over I wouldn't lose any more information...
And now I'm adding each contact back in, one by one...waiting to see which one is persnickety...which one recreates the issue...which one I'm going to be saying "bye bye" to soon...it will be the one I will need to add back in manually, as I say a silent prayer that this will finally fix the problem...and Siri will once again be able to tell me where to go...