iCloud and Siri Teams at Odds as Apple Seeks to Move Cloud Services In-House

[whiteonline]

When Apple simplified their product line in the 90's they sold $15 billion in product.
Last year Apple sold over $220 billion in product.

Of course they expanded their product line

Skipping pre-iPhone 2000's is an unfair comparison. Apple continues to ride the iPhone momentum, which was timed absolutely perfectly (handset functionality and supporting infrastructure development).

 

[Cole Slaw]

Oooh, Siri versus iCloud.
Local storage toughs Dropbox and Onedrive, along with the lovely Cortana, are on the sidelines loudly chanting
"FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT..."

 

[cmwade77]

Really, SIRI was a lot better before Apple purchased it. For an example you could say something like find something free (or cheap) and fun to do this weekend and it would take into consideration the things you like to do and find something for you to do. I have yet to see Siri be able to do this since Apple purchased it.

I personally wish that they would have simply developed their own assistant from scratch.

 

[Jax44]

Why in-source everything and risk putting everything in one basket when they don't have the expertise and the funding may be questionable due to slowing sales? I'm siding with the team to outsource and distribute it across Google first then Microsoft and Amazon cloud.

Funding is questionable?

WTF

 

[ThomasJL]

This is what happens when a company has an incompetent leader like Tim Cook. Apple was much better in the Steve Jobs days when there was less "collaboration" among teams, back when Jobs would make decisions for them. While software and services under Jobs had their fair share of flaws, it's nowhere as much as it is now during Cook's rein.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

More of its own equipment?

Is Apple making servers again, or is the place going to look like Swiss cheese with MacPros on their side? Barf

 

[Stirlo]

Siri and iCloud - two things from Apple that I refuse to use. They just aren't good at services.

Siri has improved significantly since first release. Give her a shot now!


iCloud though. Needs a lot of patching and fixing. Still no deep search into iCloud Drive app, Dropbox does it fine.. Why can't you be more like your older brother Dropbox, iCloud Drive? He has a PH.D.!
[doublepost=1461292690][/doublepost]

Yes, this is obvious - home sharing is really broken; music match is on the way out; only MUSIC gets resources. Users like myself using home haring cannot understand why a multi-billion company cannot assign even a single engineer to fix bugs in home sharing; or improve AirPlay on the AppleTV (all gens, including aTV4 airplay transmit silence for music video's; yet the store SELLS these for more than single music tracks!).

This is the new Microsoft at work: fight for power replaces bug fixes for existing software users. I've already written to eddie, but he's busy talking to Bono ...

I'm shocked at how often I now reboot my ATV4. At Launch software was a beta 1 to be generous.

It's now more like a 1.0 but still getting random weirdness - when you go to AirPlay select, does yours have random numbers after device name? The older atv3 bulletproof and shows up, might use that for AirPlay but that's pretty damning on the tvOS team.
[doublepost=1461292872][/doublepost]

Ugh all I know is iCloud needs an overhaul... It needs a straight up storage system like google drive, and it also needs to be "fixed", it's so slow and weird.

On my iPad and iPhone for the past 2 years I've had one-way syncing for contacts and reminders, but that's it. Everything else is fine, sorta. Syncing of those two things isn't used TOO often but when I do use it it's especially frustrating. It goes only from my iPad to my iPhone but not my iPhone to my iPad. It used to effect everything, but luckily that fixed itself. I moved to a whole new iCloud account and it is still screwy... Probably iOS is screwy as well so that's not happening.

Also it's slow. Things sometimes take awhile to transfer over, and iCloud Photo Library is a mess. It gets stuck sometimes and it won't upload. Sometimes photos are uploaded but the device won't pull them down from iCloud. Real annoying.

Siri just isn't useful for anything other than making haphazard reminders or setting alarms or timers. And she mishears everything.

Train Siri again - don't speak into the bottom or yell, guide here but shouldn't be this non intuitive I agree

http://www.mackungfu.org/is-siri-going-deaf-getting-siri-to-understand-you

 

[LovingTeddy]

Who's side is Apple really on? They chose a nation that could never invent and begged their way out on isolation in 1974.We invented the sever and they chose china! Major espionage daily from and Apple has been hacked!View attachment 627972

China gets bigger population, so it makes sense that China executes most inmates.

And we Chinese people support death penalty, ask any Chinese if China should abolish death penalty, they will tell you China should keep death penalty.

And by the way, we invented paper, gun powder, campuses. Do not look down China, because one day, we will take over US. Proud to be Chinese and Chinese will take over US!

 

[Scary Spice]

I think I read a piece on Stratechery that the reason for Apple's poor services is not so much due to infighting or incompetence, but because the company is organised along making great hardware, which in turn is a poor fit for refining software.

Simply put, Apple is a victim of its own success.

https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroads/

So what the writer suggests that Apple does is to spin off its services into a separate company and make the people running that organisation accountable for every last cent of profit they make. This would give them more incentive to improve, while also freeing them from the yokes of Apple's organisational culture.

Claris worked out so well....

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Apple's iBooks store and iTunes movie services go dark in China. http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-ibooks-store-and-itunes-movie-services-go-dark-in-china-2016-4

...and the strings.

 

[Rogifan]

This is what happens when a company has an incompetent leader like Tim Cook. Apple was much better in the Steve Jobs days when there was less "collaboration" among teams, back when Jobs would make decisions for them. While software and services under Jobs had their fair share of flaws, it's nowhere as much as it is now during Cook's rein.

So you think a good culture is one of a dictatorship where some supreme leader makes all the decisions?

 

[ThomasJL]

So you think a good culture is one of a dictatorship where some supreme leader makes all the decisions?

Yes, if the leader is as competent as Steve a Jobs was in regards to being a visionary and has a knack for innovation.

Just look at the latest OS X and iOS UIs: Tim Cook decided to copy Microsoft (and Google, which copied Microsoft) in implementing flat design and getting rid of skeuomorphic design. The latter is far more intuitive thus user friendly, but Cook wanted to be a follower and jump on the flat design bandwagon. When Jobs was CEO, Apple was the one creating the darn bandwagon that all their competitors would jump on. Under Jobs, Apple led and others followed.

 

[milo]

Ah,yes. Always good to double down on the things you do worst.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I'm shocked at how often I now reboot my ATV4. At Launch software was a beta 1 to be generous.

It's now more like a 1.0 but still getting random weirdness - when you go to AirPlay select, does yours have random numbers after device name? The older atv3 bulletproof and shows up, might use that for AirPlay but that's pretty damning on the tvOS team.

I'm just surprised how bad the remote is. It's so damn sensitive...

 

[Stirlo]

I'm just surprised how bad the remote is. It's so damn sensitive...

I've got mine on max sensitivity but you can change that (track pad part at least) in settings

 

[maxsix]

No doubt true, but nonetheless not unlikely either. Steve may have been harsh in some ways, but his driven nature kept things moving and streamlined, and at least seemingly focused on core issues. I've feared for some time that under current leadership, Apple may become a burgeoning bureaucracy plagued by indecisiveness and conflict in lower levels.

Yet even the mighty Steve Jobs spoke publicly about MobileMe being Apple's greatest failure.