Massive Growth in Apple's Cloud-Based Services Eclipsed by Debate on Financials

gnasher729 said:

Works fine for me. Over 20,000 songs on iPhone, iPad, computer in my study, computer at work. It even matched songs that I recorded myself from LPs.

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I have less than 1000 songs in iTunes. It's been nearly 2 weeks, and Match hasn't finished syncing them. It keeps trying to re-sync songs that are already in the cloud. When does manage to sync a single song, it relaunches the entire process of searching my library and trying to match the results with Apple's servers. And I always end up with the infamous "unknown error 4002." I've been through all the supposed resolutions to that problem, even having a long conversation with AppleCare. (The guy had me convert a bunch of songs and delete some others. That still didn't solve the problem.) Match has been gradually syncing my library, but only about a dozen songs per day before it halts. If it were a beta, like Siri, I'd cut it some slack. But I'm paying for a service that I expected to be a bit more seamless.

charlituna said:

You can't do that with a Mac so until that happens, you won't see a Windows version.

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Reliability aside, many folks think that MobileMe was right and that's what Apple needs to go back to.

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I know a lot of folks that don't understand what the two colors mean and still don't understand why you can't iMessage to non Apple products.

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I find it amusing that for almost any other company, massive growth in a key service in terms of users and profits levels that didn't go down would push the stock value up, but with Apple it goes down. Given that the veil of 'Steve worked on that' is ending (erroneously perhaps since tech companies develop stuff for years before we hear about it) this is now the first perceived 'Tim Cook's Apple' period and since he's seen as a numbers man and not a designer many didn't expect much. That things stayed steady in terms of profit should be seen as a good thing. Demand is good on the iMacs which is why the supply hasn't recovered etc, iPhone sales are good, the iPad mini is flying off the shelves. Steve would have been proud of that, I think. So why the fleeing from the ship

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Growth is flat lining. Thats why the drop.

fredf said:

If iCloud is the future, then why isn't Apple investing some time and resources to improve it?

I keep saying, it's software not hardware that is the near term future. And Apple hasn't put nearly the resources necessary into software development on the iOS side.

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In fact they ARE putting resources, they are building another huge data center in the US' Pacific Northwest, talking about building one in Hong Kong at a new science park, and who knows what other information we aren't privy to. If you look at jobs posted at Apple's site you will see tons of listings devoted to expanding and enhancing Apple's web services. I personally would like to hear more about a rapid increase of data centers strategically located around the world to help with diffusing the steady load of requests. But what I really want to see is Apple making more developer friendly APIs for iCloud. I don't need a dropbox if a pdf is tagged a certain way so that any app that can open pdfs can pluck it from my iCloud account.

mdriftmeyer said:

Syncing your messages would require access to third party messaging services and that requires contractual agreements. Or are you going to think people who use iMessage exclusively chat only to Apple based server accounts?

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I think the way he bolds never twice indicates he never expects everyone to use iMessage. Something like AirDroid (for Android obviously) kinda does what he is talking about except it is all sms. Contracts and direct access to smsc is not required.

jayducharme said:

I have less than 1000 songs in iTunes. It's been nearly 2 weeks, and Match hasn't finished syncing them. It keeps trying to re-sync songs that are already in the cloud. When does manage to sync a single song, it relaunches the entire process of searching my library and trying to match the results with Apple's servers. And I always end up with the infamous "unknown error 4002." I've been through all the supposed resolutions to that problem, even having a long conversation with AppleCare. (The guy had me convert a bunch of songs and delete some others. That still didn't solve the problem.) Match has been gradually syncing my library, but only about a dozen songs per day before it halts. If it were a beta, like Siri, I'd cut it some slack. But I'm paying for a service that I expected to be a bit more seamless.

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You have something else installed or running that's interfering with it.

alent1234 said:

there is not much extent to icloud

i dump lots of official documents into dropbox. i scan them with my iphone and the app converts them into a pdf and uploads to dropbox. if i need them i have access to them anywhere from any device and any OS.

i scan my day care receipts this way, dump to dropbox and then put in an FSA claim all online with no paper and no faxing. impossible with icloud.

icloud is like al gores social security lock box.

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iCloud is....
iTunes Match
Game Center
iTunes in the cloud
Documents sync
Photostream
iPhone backup
Etc

topmounter said:

Without Dropbox functionality... For what?

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For backups of my iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Well I know now that Apple has become a 100% iOS company because now my File Sharing on OS X has been completely busted with no solutions. Apple just doesn't give a flying crap about Macs anymore.

I've been using iTunes Match since the day it was available and has worked perfectly, i love the way everything is synced on all devices. (I have an apple centric household, Mac Mini, 2 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, 3 apple tv, 5 iPhones and 2 iPads).
However, for the last couple of weeks i switched to a windows 8 phone (HTC 8X), solely for the purpose of testing it, seeing the potential myself. One thing i absolutely love about the phone is the direct integration with XBox Music and it's huge catalog. i tag a song, play (and or download) it instantly and when i got bored of it (because i play it a billion times in less than a week) i can go to the next song.
The things i hate about it are: it's almost impossible to make playlists and those are not synced, and neither are the individual songs.

so what i want is the syncing as it is now, but instead of having access only to your own music in the cloud i want access to the entire iTunes catalog, and yes i'm willing to pay €10 to €20 a month for this. it's not that expensive when compared to what i spend now to have access to only my own music and the new buys every year. ( €25 Match subscription, €60 at least 5 songs a month, €50 cd's I buy = 135€)

deannnnn said:

It's enabled by default to replace text messaging. Half the people who use it don't even know they're using it. It's not popular in the traditional sense where something new comes out that everybody wants to get and use.

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And that is the true beauty of why I like and buy Apple products.

So seamless, you don't even know you're using it

deannnnn said:

It's enabled by default to replace text messaging. Half the people who use it don't even know they're using it. It's not popular in the traditional sense where something new comes out that everybody wants to get and use.

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I disagree with that! Everyone I know is very aware of iMessage and how it works because they know it is free and they LOVE not having it count for text messages. They even get annoyed when people do not have an iDevice because then they can't iMessage and it counts as texts! The integration is beautifully implemented though!

A separate thought: Does anyone think we will actually see iWork updated this year on the Mac or will it go into iCloud, or both??? I hope both!

The thing I am MOST EXCITED for this year is actually all the software! iOS 7, OS X, both with design from Jony, iLife, iWork, Logic X, yet another Final Cut Pro X update, iCloud update, Aperture X and maybe more

deannnnn said:

It's enabled by default to replace text messaging. Half the people who use it don't even know they're using it. It's not popular in the traditional sense where something new comes out that everybody wants to get and use.

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Kinda like the sales figures for Microsoft Windows?

jabingla2810 said:

"Files" are not something in Apple's future plans.

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This is where Google gets it IMHO. The idea of having no files mostly works on an iDevice but these are very much about information consumption. It also probably works for your average consumer who has to write the odd letter. For a knowledge worker, who works on complex projects OTOH, being able to organise documents on a per project basis is absolutely vital. But if I open something like Textedit, select to open a document and then select iCloud, all I get is a flat space.....

If this is how Apple is planning on evolving going forward, then perhaps a computer running OSX isn't going to be much good as an engineering workstation, a few iterations down the line .

I worry that Apple may be losing site of what a personal computer is for (and I'd rather not go back to using Windows for my home PC).

I think everything is being eclipsed by Apple's financials. I was in a Windows forums reading about Windows 8 and sure enough, by page 3 I was seeing images of Apples stock charts posted in the thread.

Meandmunch said:

Only 2 Billion iMessages a day? That equates to a single high school full of teenagers. I think they should look at those numbers again.

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...Not to mention those "group chats" that you can't opt out of, so you have to either turn iMessage off or put up with people spamming the chatbox with "NI**ERZ" over and over and over...

iCloud should have been here when we had unlimited data on the big carriers.

Now the focus should be on local storage since they want to charge by the gb now.

Greedy @$$3$

Great new to hear that iCloud is a big plan for the company.

iCloud numbers are misleading. You don't have use it to be counted as an iCloud user. It is almost as mandatory as an iTunes account at this point.

cxny said:

Not sure what happened over the Christmas break but iCloud messed me up.
A complete strangers photos appeared in my Photo Stream including gross pictures of a sonogram and pregnant woman's belly, very weird! I deleted everything then my iPhone lost all contacts (except for what I presume were the other guys phone numbers) Apple were less than helpful and I ended up restring to a back up from months ago.
Just an anecdote but I'm not ready to touch Cloud Anything for a looong time...

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That's unsettling, makes you wonder who's watching your pictures. A stark reminder to keep it 'squeaky clean' with your own photo stream.

putongnihongo said:

In fact they ARE putting resources, they are building another huge data center in the US' Pacific Northwest, talking about building one in Hong Kong at a new science park, and who knows what other information we aren't privy to.

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Yeah, well I'm not looking for more data centres. I'm looking for better software.
That's the point.

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