iCloud Development Held Up By 'Deep Organizational Issues' at Apple

[kds1]

You make it sound like Google is selling your data. That's not accurate at all. Brands ask for specific demographics and customer profiles and they help serve ads on their network to those brands based on criteria. At no time are they selling YOU (specifically) or your personal information.

Also - you can opt out.

Clearly no one can help you either.

When I say "you" I mean "you" in general as, in all the users of Google's products. Your data is still mined.

Opting out only stops them from serving up ads relevant to your location, etc. Your mail is still read by machines and ads are served to you based on key words in your mail. I don't care if it's a machine or a human, I don't like that. I don't like their business model - a lot of people don't. Just "Google It"

 

[JamesPDX]

You're Reading it Wrong

Hey Bro, you know what? I think you're just the man to replace Tim Cook. Contact the Board of Directors and send them your resume posthaste.

I'm not criticizing, I'm coaching.

But thanks for thinking so highly of me.

 

[KALLT]

Maybe it's time for you to upgrade your 4 year-old phone if you want it to continue functioning with an ever changing software world

I will, but it's still a very dickish move. Apple was the one who compelled everyone to move their stuff into the cloud. All of a sudden you can't access it anymore. Offering customers to store their personal data into the cloud comes with a certain responsibility.

At least some developers like AgileBits (1Password) were clever enough to offer alternative cloud options, like Dropbox. Needless to say, I'm done with iCloud. I won't use it anymore.

 

[Oletros]

When I say "you" I mean "you" in general as, in all the users of Google's products. Your data is still mined.

Opting out only stops them from serving up ads relevant to your location, etc. Your mail is still read by machines and ads are served to you based on key words in your mail. I don't care if it's a machine or a human, I don't like that. I don't like their business model - a lot of people don't. Just "Google It"

And suspiciously no mention of selling data. Backpedaling?

 

[s2mikey]

Bingo. Couldn't agree more with your assessment. That special rock-solid excellence of experience is gone. Nowadays it's somehow a lot of show-biz hype/celebrity with Microsoft technical execution.

Cook seems to just be grinning from ear to ear with satisfaction though. Don't see him waking up anytime soon.

Yes. More flash and less dash. Shoving thug celebrity products on us or using obnoxious, ancient rock bands as their pimps now. Yuk. I prefer Steve and his no nonsense approach to things. Tim Cook is a nice guy but seems more concerned with gay marriage and other social crap. Please.

 

[Macneck]

Apparently, to Tim Cook, all that matters is selling hadware. As long as there is no drop in that, all else is fine or can be pushed back to the next software update. This mode of operation will catch up to Cook and his hardware sales eventually.

You can bet on that! Little by little Apple is becoming just another company that sells phones and computers. That, we don't need. We need a company that makes a difference. And please, Apple, we are customers, not beta testers!

 

[MrCrowbar]

Maybe they should reconsider their decision to scrap Aperture.
And maybe they should consider getting away from this insane yearly OS release nonsense. They are clearly releasing things not yet ready for prime time (iOS 8, OSX 10.10).

The "core rot" at Apple is getting worse.

Agreed, Aperture is great albeit very slow and iPhoto is still way better for organizing a library. If they could merge them both in a meaningful way, that would be quite great. I'd personally would love to have a personal library (family pics etc.) and something more professional (like photoshoots, cool pictures I found, etc.) separated. Maybe also a picture dump for when I take notes by just taking a picture of it with the phone.

 

[2ms]

Yes. More flash and less dash. Shoving thug celebrity products on us or using obnoxious, ancient rock bands as their pimps now. Yuk. I prefer Steve and his no nonsense approach to things. Tim Cook is a nice guy but seems more concerned with gay marriage and other social crap. Please.

I don't have any problem at all with his beliefs. I think the world is much better off with an Apple giving it excellent products than anything else, however. For example, instead of providing advertisements with Cook sappily touting how profoundly wonderful his renewable energy powerplants are, I think he should make damn sure that public transportation maps are included with his phones. iPhones currently effectively discourage use of public transportation. It makes you wonder how sincere his intentions really are, to be honest.

 

[iolinux333]

I would like it if all iCloud was, was Time Machine for the iDevice, that was always free as a part of buying the iDevice, and always keeps a complete bit for bit copy of the device, all files accessible through a web browser. I think that would be easy to code, and fit more with the Just Works idea. Apple would just need to quit being so stingy with offline storage.

 

[paulsdenton]

This is something I really hope they can get right, as I would very much like to use it.

I really hope they put in compatibility with .rtfd files so I can use it with Scrivener.

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Yes. More flash and less dash. Shoving thug celebrity products on us or using obnoxious, ancient rock bands as their pimps now. Yuk. I prefer Steve and his no nonsense approach to things. Tim Cook is a nice guy but seems more concerned with gay marriage and other social crap. Please.

Tim Cook and his team seem to have done pretty well with the stock price. Steve was a visionary and a genius, but he still brought us the Newton.

 

[iososx]

My biggest problem with the whole iCloud Photo Library is the "all or nothing" approach Apple seems to have towards it.

For example, enabling it will disable the ability to sync photos from Aperture or iPhoto to your phone. Completely.

It's as if Apple expects me to upload my entire photo collection (several hundred GB) to the cloud to be able to continue to do what I do now, which is view selected parts of my photo library on my phone.

Not. Bloody. Likely.

Photos are among the most important data I have. They are irreplaceable. A few are private and I don't want them on the Internet. Apple has also failed to tell us exactly how we are supposed to BACK UP the iCloud Photo Library. All indications point to the cloud library being authoritative. Does Apple really expect us to trust them with the ONLY authoritative copy of our photos? Are they insane?

They did not think this through. Hopefully the delays mean they ARE thinking it through now and will implement it properly. However, I'm not holding my breath and I'm keeping my options open for now.

Make no mistake, certain Apple products are simply stellar. Other than Cloud Services and a few other much smaller areas Apple does an amazing job.

However one of their greatest weaknesses, is how special they believe they are. Ego and a culture of superiority created largely by Steve is a true liability.

Being confident is one thing, a healthy way to operate. But this idea Jobs nurtured, one of being beyond reproach has come back at warp speed like an out of control boomerang to bite them hard.

Oh sure it's easy to laugh that off as long as revenue holds. But nothing lasts forever. An attitude shift would be highly beneficial.

 

[Tiger8]

I don't know what your experience has been of late, but I'm increasingly frustrated by the bugs, glitches, and unfortunate surprises Apple has been bringing to the table. The world will not end if people take their time crafting great products. But rushing technology could literally mess things up for a lot of people. Pick your battles.

I hear you, my experience with icloud has been terrible, I don't think Apple is quite ready for the crowded cloud space.

 

[Cmdrx3]

Dropbox, it just...*cough*.... works!!

 

[Michael Goff]

Still waiting a single link about that, they don't share any data because it would be stupid sharing that data to advertisers

The "you're the poduct" mantra is just one of those things people "know". Who needs pesky things like evidence when you KNOW something to be true?

 

[grahamperrin]

"deep organizational issues,"

understatement of the year

I assume that you perceive the issues to be broader than those in the opening post. Can you elaborate? Or is it just a feeling that you get from reading articles such as this, from using Apple software?

 

[Razeus]

Remember, Apple doesn't care about features to give it their all.

The features are only there to sell products.

Yes, they hardware is great, but their software is slowly but surely becoming a complete mess.

They really need to consider teams of people. They need complete and separate teams that work on:

iWork
iTunes (basic organization, iTunes Match, streaming/Beats)
iCloud Photo Library
iCloud Drive (if Dropbox has a whole company that just works on this "feature" then so should Apple)
iOS bugs (iOS 8 is a mess, let's face it).

Just let these team be and let them make the best products they can make that has features that users request without interference from other teams. The way it is now, Apple simply pulls people from all over the company to work on making a deadline (iOS versions for example). If they would hire more people in a team setting, this would be less of an issue. All teams just have to make the iOS version deadline or face the consequences.

 

[iososx]

The impression one gets since both MobileMe and iCloud have both been problematic is that Apple is not taking the challenge very seriously. Yet common sense says that's too simple of an explanation, that Apple must comprehend the importance of getting a handle on Cloud services to protect their reputation.

Perhaps what seems so obvious isn't, which aligns with the fact that we only get filtered second hand information. What is obvious is the end result, the user experience. Failing to live up to Apple's standards it's very important they meet the expectations they've set for the users. Why they continue to fail is a mystery.

 

[kdarling]

Apple's always been weak in cloud services.

Heck, remember when the iPhone first came out and the activation servers would be down every other weekend for "maintenance"? You could buy a new iPhone on the weekend, and half the time it couldn't be setup until Monday morning.

Taking down servers for updates is so 1990s. And they do that for their main site, their store, their dev site. It's ridiculous.

Either they're so compartmentalized that they can only do things this way, or they have someone in charge of cloud stuff who's an amateur.

 

[longofest]

Yeah, pretty much everything under Eddy's domain is either faltering or playing catch up to the competition. I'm surprised he's still there TBH. But I heard he's good friends with Tim so I don't see him going anywhere anytime soon. It's unfortunate because Eddy presides over services and that is the weak link in Apple's hardware, software and services strategy.

Apple Pay isn't doing too badly.

 

[MarsViolet]

And AAPL is 118.48.

Apple is doing well because they are targeting customers who don't actually do anything with their computers other than visit Facebook and take iPhone photos of their food. All of their aesthetic and software functionality decisions are now made with the goal of increasing hardware sales to this do-nothing demographic. They don't care if you complain or don't like what they're doing. All they care about is their hardware sales. If they crap all over OS X and it results in wide adoption, that will, in turn, lead to more hardware sales, and the cycle will repeat.

 

[MarsViolet]

Maybe it's time for you to upgrade your 4 year-old phone if you want it to continue functioning with an ever changing software world

Apple loves it when you talk dirty.

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The market disagrees with you.

The market is a retarded child.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Apple is doing well because they are targeting customers who don't actually do anything with their computers other than visit Facebook and take iPhone photos of their food. All of their aesthetic and software functionality decisions are now made with the goal of increasing hardware sales to this do-nothing demographic. They don't care if you complain or don't like what they're doing. All they care about is their hardware sales. If they crap all over OS X and it results in wide adoption, that will, in turn, lead to more hardware sales, and the cycle will repeat.

I agree.

This also makes sure that customers are easier to please:
Much less hassle having to deal with these new easy-going customers than the Sys Admins (Xserve, Xserve RAID, Xsan, Mac OS X Server) and hardcore Professional Users (complicated Pro-apps, etc.)

Sys Admins and Pro Users are much more fussy and in need of professional support, and, of course, are a much, much smaller target audience.

Easy-going users like to upgrade fast, love new features and don't bother with technical stuff. This is a much easier business model (if you can keep up "innovating") but... these customers also easily change ship.
You keep these easy-going customers by having cool products with cool features, good branding and making sure your stuff works fine, not necessarily technically the best.

At the moment, Apple is doing wel in being the "cool"-brand, and are being this (arguably) ever since introducing the iPod with white earbuds (2001).

 

[McDave]

My biggest problem with the whole iCloud Photo Library is the "all or nothing" approach Apple seems to have towards it.

For example, enabling it will disable the ability to sync photos from Aperture or iPhoto to your phone. Completely.

It's as if Apple expects me to upload my entire photo collection (several hundred GB) to the cloud to be able to continue to do what I do now, which is view selected parts of my photo library on my phone.

Not. Bloody. Likely.

Photos are among the most important data I have. They are irreplaceable. A few are private and I don't want them on the Internet. Apple has also failed to tell us exactly how we are supposed to BACK UP the iCloud Photo Library. All indications point to the cloud library being authoritative. Does Apple really expect us to trust them with the ONLY authoritative copy of our photos? Are they insane?

They did not think this through. Hopefully the delays mean they ARE thinking it through now and will implement it properly. However, I'm not holding my breath and I'm keeping my options open for now.

I don't get your issues. With iPhoto, forget albums and organise by shared photo streams/folders that way they're shared across all your devices, no iTunes sync required. They're also easy to share with others. I organise by specific events and by groups.

For backup just set iPhoto to capture My Photostream as monthly events. Time machine backs this up for me just incase the beta iCloud Library gets wiped.

 

[McWizard]

Apple is doing well because they are targeting customers who don't actually do anything with their computers other than visit Facebook and take iPhone photos of their food. All of their aesthetic and software functionality decisions are now made with the goal of increasing hardware sales to this do-nothing demographic. They don't care if you complain or don't like what they're doing. All they care about is their hardware sales. If they crap all over OS X and it results in wide adoption, that will, in turn, lead to more hardware sales, and the cycle will repeat.

Targeting 99% of the population seems smart to me!

 

[zorinlynx]

Targeting 99% of the population seems smart to me!

I miss the days when you needed more than two brain cells rubbing together to use a computer.