Apple VP Overseeing iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime Infrastructure Leaving Role

[rocknrollme]

Not sure of how this could be good news or not. But iCloud is surely years behind the competition. All that file syncing and sharing that Dropbox & Google Drive have nailed for years is a joke in Apple’s ecosystem. Same thing for all the apps on iCloud.com. Mail, Notes and Reminders just to mention a few are crap compared to what’s available out there.

 

[stuartfuk]

New arrival, please add a tier above 2TB for families.

Apple wants to you buy the top tier of Apple One for that. Although that maxes out at 4TB

 

[stuartfuk]

An option for Time Machine backups to iCloud would be high on my list.

 

[sers]

Maybe the next guy can add a search function to icloud drive on the web. Can't believe this function is still lacking in 2023.

 

[d686546s]

That is a very good point. Looking over a number of recent changes in code for Ventura and approaches to third party solutions and factoring in Apple’s approach to Silicon…. Things seem to be moving very firmly in the direction of Apple proprietary first.

This will mean more and more third party solutions in both software and hardware will begin to lose support and ultimately break.

Honestly I don’t see this as a consumer friendly nor a long term Apple friendly approach.

Further closing the ecosystem will burden Apple with more and more effort to maintain entire product lines for ever more ancillary and esoteric APIs and hardware devices.

It’s a strategy that failed before and is unlikely to become successful a second time.

If anything this will just further establish the value of more open frameworks like the many Linux distributions and yeah even Microsoft’s solutions.

Microsoft’s been very steady in the market by reducing their focus and strategy to software as a service. Apple can’t decide what they want to do but a full stack design approach for the entire computing life cycle is too much for one singular entity to absorb effectively. It was hard before and it’s even harder now. I just don’t see how they can maintain this.

SMH

I would add that Apple isn't so much diversifying as it's mostly doubling down on their hardware dependency.

Rising profits from services is great, but their services are primarily a way to enhance their hardware rather than a standalone product. I can't really think of a single service or application that Apple offers (in the consumer space) that offers a significantly better user experience than their competitors. Apple Pay may the be one exception simply because it seems to be more widely accepted online, but frankly most people probably wouldn't really know or care about the difference if they had to use Google Pay for their daily transactions.

That leaves Apple entirely dependent on their hardware business. As long as they keep making devices that sell like crazy it's a great way for Apple to really push you into their services by locking out the competition in some areas. But, and that's a big hypothetical but, if the iPhone tanks it would probably take most of Apple's service business with it.

 

[Danfango]

There's a saying with technology ... the problem is often between the chair and the keyboard.

PEBCAK - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

I've personally never lost anything in over 22 years with Apple's cloud services ... through .Mac to MobileMe to iCloud. All contacts, bookmarks, files, mail ... smooth transition every time.

Same here. I back everything up to external disk with rdiff-backup as well and can confirm that I have never lost a single file because I actually test that regularly.

Everything that has gone wrong was attributable to me doing something stupid when I was drunk.

 

[dk001]

There's a saying with technology ... the problem is often between the chair and the keyboard.

PEBCAK - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

I've personally never lost anything in over 22 years with Apple's cloud services ... through .Mac to MobileMe to iCloud. All contacts, bookmarks, files, mail ... smooth transition every time.

That you know of.
You realize iCloud is only 11 years old…

 

[citysnaps]

Holy smokes! An executive that has been at Apple for 4-5 years, after previously being an executive at three other tech companies, has left the company!

And the forum goes nuts with innuendo and a good rant because that's never happened before in Silicon Valley!

 

[7149041]

I've personally never lost anything in over 22 years with Apple's cloud services ... through .Mac to MobileMe to iCloud. All contacts, bookmarks, files, mail ... smooth transition every time.

Same here, but I only use it for files, contacts and photo library

 

[coffeemilktea]

I wonder where he's going now? Maybe Google can hire him to sort out the labyrinth mess that is their various attempts at messaging apps? 🤭

 

[GeoStructural]

Not sure Abbott's role, but iCloud is absolutely the worst product of Apple's services division. The product is convoluted, unreliable, slow and behind its competitors in areas like collaboration and sharing.

Totally. I have said it before: iCloud is the worst cloud service in the market. The only reason I use it is because it connects nicely to my Mac, iPad and iPhone. Other than that it is the poorest feature-wise. A few years ago you could not even drag-and-drop! or share a folder with people using Windows. It has gotten better but it remains behind the competition.

 

[citysnaps]

Totally. I have said it before: iCloud is the worst cloud service in the market. The only reason I use it is because it connects nicely to my Mac, iPad and iPhone. Other than that it is the poorest feature-wise. A few years ago you could not even drag-and-drop! or share a folder with people using Windows. It has gotten better but it remains behind the competition.

I've been using iCloud since the beginning. Zero issues or problems.

It just works.

 

[maxoakland]

Not sure Abbott's role, but iCloud is absolutely the worst product of Apple's services division. The product is convoluted, unreliable, slow and behind its competitors in areas like collaboration and sharing.

Storage tiers are also pathetically low and easily bested by the competition. Kinda like the storage on their computers, now that I think about it. Maybe giving users very little space is a company policy?

 

[maxoakland]

You forgot emojis.

Seriously. I bet if they took just half the emoji budget their could hire a competent person to redesign Settings

 

[ADGrant]

Thank God. Now that I think about it, each one of those services has only gotten slower, laggier, more bloated, and less secure in the last 3-5 years. Now if they can just soft-fire whoever decided to make the Ventura settings menu look like an iPhone we might be in business.

[edit] And whoever is responsible for the abominations known as Mail, Pages, and Numbers.

Maybe someone could fix the huge security flaws.

 

[citysnaps]

Maybe someone could fix the huge security flaws.

Which security flaws have you encountered - and reported to Apple?

 

[ADGrant]

Which security flaws have you encountered - and reported to Apple?

See the thread in this forum: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...es-to-steal-your-entire-digital-life.2381922/

 

[MaxLt]

Hopefully, this will bring some improvement. Apple iCloud and could products in general need to step up big time both in terms of quality and features.

 

[Bearygoodfries1]

Not sure Abbott's role, but iCloud is absolutely the worst product of Apple's services division. The product is convoluted, unreliable, slow and behind its competitors in areas like collaboration and sharing.

… Worst that Siri?

 

[zapmymac]

Apple saving money. 3 peoples jobs condensed into 1 person job now.

 

[CordovaLark]

… Worst that Siri?

Siri is a self inflicted problem as the devs can't collect data in real time whether from apple maps(which can't either) or other sources. So it stays stagnant indefinitely, come to think of it I don't think I have never seen Siri updated like Google Assistant, or Bixby is without a system update.

But hey good news Siri can now recognize a dog in pics after a decade. So.. baby steps.

 

[ADGrant]

Siri is a self inflicted problem as the devs can't collect data in real time whether from apple maps(which can't either) or other sources. So it stays stagnant indefinitely, come to think of it I don't think I have never seen Siri updated like Google Assistant, or Bixby is without a system update.

But hey good news Siri can now recognize a dog in pics after a decade. So.. baby steps.

Great, but why does anyone care.

 

[genovelle]

They need to fix iCloud Drive.

I like iCloud Drive. I use it daily. I hate google drive because it cumbersome and poorly designed making it clumsy and confusing. I have to use it for work and would rather go to the dentist.

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

Partially true. iTunes was an exception where they bought an existing app and then created iTunes from that, but they don't do that for _most_ of their products.

They bought iTunes. They bought Final Cut Pro. They bought DVD Studio. They bought Lala and turned it into iTunes Match. They bought Shortcuts. They probably bought Logic.

 

[ian87w]

iCloud had a lot of potential. Remember when Apple demoed iWork on iCloud? I thought that was a beginning of something, Apple finally taking iCloud to compete head to head with Google/Microsoft. But then nothing. It's even worse the fact that Apple is talking big on services, yet iCloud, their core services that they had since .mac, are left languishing. Sure, there's Apple One, but that's more of simply bundling the other services together.

There's an opportunity, and the pandemic/remote working should've borught this into attention of the big tech companies. But nobody's taking it. Currently, there's an empty chair for micro-business solutions. Sure, Microsoft have 365 for business and Google has Workspace, but if you look closely, they are tailored for at least medium to large companies/enterprises, especially if you want a fully featured tool like MDM. Meanwhile, personal and micro businesses who don't have the capital are left using the consumer-grade solutions, which are basically nothing, and inadequate at best.

I thought Apple can take iCloud into bringing value here, making enterprise-level solutions for the mere mortals with their tightly integrated hardware and software. And we're not talking of just cloud storage, I'm talking the whole set of tools ala MS 365 Enterprise, all in one from email to MDM. Families and micro businesses of today have multiple devices, with everyone and everything being digital. Yet there's literally no solution from Google, Microsoft, nor Apple for consumers for multi-user controls of devices. Wouldn't it be great to have something like enterprise level MDM for your family devices, keeping everyone secure?