Apple's Services Teams to Start Working Together to Improve Siri, Maps, iCloud, and iTunes

[smaffei]

This is one part of the business I would rather see Apple rely on AWS/GCE/Azure. Why? They're behind, and I don't see them them catching up anytime soon. They're going to be reinventing the wheel the next few years, trying to replicate designs that those other companies perfected years ago.

I'll believe they've caught up when they're publishing papers on data center/server design innovation, and it's on the mark with with the Big 3 are doing.

Also, Swift has been an open source success, but if Apple is serious about backend architecture, they should also be open sourcing part of their work there as well. This (infrastructure) is where Google is quite a bit ahead.

Agreed. I would have relied more heavily on M$ and distanced the company from Amazon and Google. Oddly enough, Microsoft is not a real competitor is most markets Apple is interested in these days.
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And music app in the iOS 10 is still convoluted mess.

Yes, and that's why a die hard Apple user like me is paying Spotify instead.

 

[DNichter]

I hope they will. The iTunes for me was becoming more and more cluttered and complex. I still think the itunes few years back was the best. Maps are still not there, Siri is limited and icloud needs work. They have a long way ahead of them but they should really start putting some effort. And music app in the iOS 10 is still convoluted mess.

I don't know if I agree. Could there be improvements? Sure. But for me, I have been really happy with iCloud, Maps, and Apple Music. I haven't run into many issues at all with these services. Now with iTunes, I really don't use it, so maybe I am in the minority here, but I am not really looking for any improvements or changes here as I have no use for it. Siri though, definitely would have to agree, it really needs some improvements.

 

[jdmar2004]

I'm also thinking about ditching Apple Music. It would be nice if they included Apple Music with the 1TB cloud storage and charged 15 a month. That way everything could be tied together.

 

[Rogifan]

So the "services team" gets relegated to the old campus. It's great they're unifying in one place. Now they just need a leader to run this. Eddy Cue is not the guy. Cook should add another SVP level position for cloud/internet services and poach someone from Amazon, Google or Microsoft to run it.
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Apple knows that services and add-ons is where the $$ is at. Mobile device development is starting to hit a plateau with marginal improvement on the specs versus performance side (asides from battery technology), so people will likely use their devices for longer than the 1 year cycle that's been common thus far. If you want to secure a steady stream of profit, it's from sources like these.

Outside of Apple Music and iTunes/App Store downloads and what Apple charges for cloud storage where are they making money off services? And on the storage side Apple is going to be under a lot of pressure to offer more storage at cheaper prices. They have to stay competitive with Google. I just don't see where all this new services revenue is going to come from.

 

[citysnaps]

I have had an iPhone, an iPad a MacBook Pro for three years. During that time, the cloud sync across all those devices has not worked for ONE DAY. I thought I would leave this here.

Have you tried Apple support? I'm sure it's something simple.

My three desktop Macs, my MBA, my iPhone, and iPad all synch together fine. It's not something I even think about anymore, it just works as expected. Handoff and AirDrop work great too.

In fact, Notes works so well across all platforms I stopped using Evernote a year or two ago.

 

[Kajje]

interesting. I would have imagined that they would already be collaborating more heavily.

You're right. It's downward scary to find out that there has been so little collaboration in the past. How can a serious technology company in this era be so blind to think collaboration will be so much better when sitting in the same building?

On a positive note having this important issue addressed does make me excited and I cannot wait to see the results.

 

[drewyboy]

If there is this type of management ineptitude, it makes you wonder what else they are woefully behind on or at least could be improved by moving into the 21st century management and collaboration styles.

What little trust I have in their ability continues to erode.
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How can a serious technology company in this era be so blind to think collaboration will be so much better when sitting in the same building?

Arrogance.

 

[weup togo]

Put your tray down on the table before you sit down? Reverse manoeuvre to stand up.

"You're standing up wrong."

Wow.

 

[Thunderhawks]

'Pie'. I get it, neat name and so many ways to slice it when you need an analogy discussing the consumption of Apple's many cloud services.

iPie, better be careful to use all the correct letters or we'll have issues.
Let's hope it's not going to be pie in the sky type execution.

But seriously folks, Apple is really far behind, so ANYTHING they do will help.

I keep looking to ditch dropbox, but every time I check iCloud I am not impressed.

For starters being less stingy with GBs would help.

 

[McScooby]

They're going to be reinventing the wheel the next few years

Yeah, 4 of them if we're lucky, let's hope that team work together from the start!

 

[mtcowdog]

Siri improvements. Yes please. iCloud improvements. Big yes to that. iTunes improvements. Wait, what? Maps is much better lately. But by all means, hammer away.

Can't imagine any of this was not planned by Apple for some time. But regardless, it is about time. Improvements in these areas will make more difference to me as a user than "new" hardware.

 

[Sandstorm]

There's no Clock app so...

And why the hell isn't? How hard it is to make a Mac clock app? These little details are disappointing. All apps from Apple imo should be on all devices. Like Weather (not on Mac and not on iPad), calculator (not on iPad - come on!). Other apps missing from Mac that come to mind - Home, Find my friends.

 

[flappple]

There is not enough office space at Infinite Loop to house all of these teams in years past. Apple isn't building a second campus for nothing.

 

[Defthand]

Ah, the inefficiency of large business. Some operations, like supply chain, can be scaled effectively and even outperform humble ones, but administrative and r&d activities expectedly suffer when there are too many contributors, existing processes and internal politics. Large companies eventually stumble from their inertia and complexity.

I enjoy recollections of Apple's romantic beginnings when small rag tag teams accomplished groundbreaking things. Some of today's start ups are following their example.

 

[Hanzu Lao]

Siri, itself, doesn't really do anything but send and receive commands through apps. It's not going to do things that the Mac couldn't do before without third party solutions.

Feature parity is needed and OS X has many ways to execute a timer. The problem is nobody bothered.

 

[B.K.]

Siri on OS X is a real head scratcher for example. Not being able to set a timer? Come one apple.

This is the only thing I use Siri for... and even then she messes up about half the time.

 

[gaximus]

About time they started improving these because they're seriously behind everyone. My experience with these services so far:

• The photos from my iPhone take hours or days to sync to my Mac, and about half of them never make it across with no progress bar, no error message, no explanation at all.
• Because of iCloud, there is a duplicate of every single photo I take stored on my iPhone which already hardly has any free storage. Each photo takes up double the storage space for no reason at all.
• If you ever have issues with iCloud, God help you. There are no settings or anything you can fix.
• If you ever turn iCloud off, you will lose all your contacts and all your calendar events. You can't even really restore them from Time Machine, because doing that will turn iCloud back on.
• Maps just can't figure out addresses, simple as that. While Google Maps can solve almost any badly written, incomplete, misspelt address you throw at it, Maps can't even figure out the simplest ones where you made sure everything is correct. Since I can't find most addresses I search for, the whole thing is totally useless.
• Notes take ages to sync, doesn't sync, or creates numerous duplicates across Mac and iPhone.
• Siri is great when it works. But often it takes more time to respond than just doing it manually.]
• The new iTunes is a horror in UI design. Brings back memories from when Skype was redesigned a few years ago.

Sounds like you have something wrong with your system. I don't have any of those problems. Even when turning off iCloud I get a message asking if I want to delete my contacts, or leave them.

 

[dor.pnhs]

This is one part of the business I would rather see Apple rely on AWS/GCE/Azure. Why? They're behind, and I don't see them them catching up anytime soon.

What that have anything to do with smartphones cloud services?
AWS, GCE and azure are cloud compute services. It's not regular cloud like iCloud or Dropbox.

 

[DoctorDoctor]

About time they started improving these because they're seriously behind everyone. My experience with these services so far:

• The photos from my iPhone take hours or days to sync to my Mac, and about half of them never make it across with no progress bar, no error message, no explanation at all.
• Because of iCloud, there is a duplicate of every single photo I take stored on my iPhone which already hardly has any free storage. Each photo takes up double the storage space for no reason at all.
• If you ever have issues with iCloud, God help you. There are no settings or anything you can fix.
• If you ever turn iCloud off, you will lose all your contacts and all your calendar events. You can't even really restore them from Time Machine, because doing that will turn iCloud back on.
• Maps just can't figure out addresses, simple as that. While Google Maps can solve almost any badly written, incomplete, misspelt address you throw at it, Maps can't even figure out the simplest ones where you made sure everything is correct. Since I can't find most addresses I search for, the whole thing is totally useless.
• Notes take ages to sync, doesn't sync, or creates numerous duplicates across Mac and iPhone.
• Siri is great when it works. But often it takes more time to respond than just doing it manually.]
• The new iTunes is a horror in UI design. Brings back memories from when Skype was redesigned a few years ago.

I can watch photos sync to both iCloud and my Macbook almost instantly after taking a shot with my iPhone. There is no duplication of photos on your iPhone if you choose the option to let the iPhone manage storage. Turning off iCloud does not delete your data in iCloud. It will ask if you want to delete if from the device but you have the option to NOT delete the data.

Ok, that is enough. Sounds to me like you have no clue how to use your devices. Apple offers some instructions on their site. I suggest instead of posting incorrect info here that you use your time to learn how things really work.

 

[mattopotamus]

One of the most annoying things to me is email badges. They do not sync across devices. If I open the email on my mac, the badge does not go away on my iphone until I launch the app on my phone. Messages works like it is suppose to...why the hell cannot mail not!

 

[Beck Show]

They need to do something. Their cloud services are terrible - nothing ever synchs properly.

It works like a dream for me. Sorry you're having issues though.

 

[Glassed Silver]

Maybe one day they can actually add features and functions to iworks so that it can be used in the office and be a serious alternative to microsoft. This news is actually good, it's just that iworks is so far behind at this point that i would have thought it would be given some priority.

Tell me about it.

I naively created some iWork projects in the past where I just ASSUMED that the given application should suit me well, I didn't need excessively dedicated features and even thought Apple's software would make things even easier both workflow and cross-platform-wise (iOS and macOS).

Boy was I mistaken.

Apple and their software rewrites... What a hot mess!
It's **** like this why I don't want to see any more of this, even with applications that would otherwise need a lot of improvement.

Just don't rewrite ****, Apple these days break more than they create.

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[kemal]

Bring back the old iTunes.

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

One sore point of syncing, based on my experience, is Safari tabs. There's always some kind of lag long after I've closed a tab/went to a new webpage; the old tabs still show on other devices and sometimes the only way to get rid of them is to delete them manually on that device. It's annoying.

Photo synchronization, OTOH, has been nearly perfect–so far.

 

[Beck Show]

Every company has to start somewhere. Apple is the "new kid on the block" and have a long way to catch up with Google Maps and perhaps others as well.. But they got to start somewhere. They will always be lacking, compared to Google Maps, even in future.

If you have bought into the Apple ecosystem, as I have, then even with deficiency, I would be quite happy to be used as a guinea pig by Apple Maps so that it can be improved over time.

In August, I was on holiday in States and Canada. I made a journey which started in NY, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, Rhode Island, New Haven and back to NY. Did almost 2500 miles in 3 weeks and used only APPLE MAPS. I was checking local restaurants, on Yelp, etc and then using Apple Maps to get there, without getting lost once ! I was a bit worried, reading all the negative comments I had read about Apple Maps on these forums, but was glad it was much much better then what I had thought it would be.

I think with time & a lot of improvement it will be a good addition to other iOS apps. If you believe in a brand, you got to support it as well.

So yes, I am mildly excited.

I vastly prefer Apple Maps to Google Maps. I think it just depends on who you ask and yes, all these services will only get better and that excites me as well.