The Information has published a report that claims “deep organizational issues” within Apple are holding up iCloud development and complicating products. The cloud-based service, which helps keep data in sync between iPhones, iPads, iPods and Macs, reportedly lacks from a centralized iCloud team at the Cupertino-based company.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was particularly keen on the idea of iCloud, a platform that he introduced shortly before his death in late 2011. Jobs had a particular interest in keeping photos, one of the most highly shared forms of media, in sync between devices. Yet, over three years later, Apple has not reached the full potential it envisioned with iCloud.
For an example of this, one must look no further than iCloud Photo Library, a feature that allows iPhone or iPad users to store full-sized photos across all devices. The feature was supposed to be one of the headline additions to iOS 8, but it missed its deadline and currently remains in beta. The functionality is also absent on OS X, pending the release of the forthcoming Photos for Mac for machines running Yosemite.
While Apple is known for providing a top-notch integrated software and hardware experience, its ability to provide services, particularly those that run remotely, has been scrutinized in recent years. Apple Maps was a fiasco on its own, leading to a shakeup of the company’s executive team, and the company hasn’t fared particularly well since.
According to the report, iCloud Photo Library has been in flux because of the lack of a “centralized team working on core cloud infrastructure” at Apple. iCloud Photo Library also lacks a project manager to lead the initiative at One Infinite Loop, leaving developers responsible for working on “nearly everything on their own.”
“One person close to the company says Apple is taking some steps to build some common cloud technology but has moved slowly in part because it’s used to projects residing in isolated teams,” the report claims.
A massive celebrity photo leak attributed to iCloud in September hasn’t made things any easier for Apple, which was highly scrutinized about privacy issues surrounding its cloud-based system after the photos leaked. Apple has been aggressively reminding users about two-step authentication and other security measures in light of the situation.
Despite the internal struggles, iCloud Photo Library has rolled out to a wider number of users through iOS 8.1 and Photos for Mac on OS X Yosemite is on target for an early 2015 launch.
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Apple – face it – you don’t know how to make cloud services and none of your tries ever worked even “good enough”. People sync their photos for a long time using other services now. You missed the train and I don’t anymore miss you catching it. After all the woes and data losses I experienced with generic file syncing, I am not going to trust you with my photos for sure.
So they should stop trying?
Hope you don’t live your life in that terms.
I think at a point you have to admit you’ve lost the race and focus on races you’re still in or leading. The big email/cloud storage solutions out there are so far beyond Apple, by the time Apple catches up, cloud will be something entirely different. They should simply buy a successful cloud company and move on their next “big idea”.
I mean to say “their” next big idea.
@Michael:
Thing is, I don’t think that Apple can hold its position these times without its own cloud solution.
At some point this may be the best way to go forward: stop wasting yourself on trying to do what others already did better and look for something new, which you can do better.
Really? I’ve been happily using all iCloud functionality since it’s launch, and have never ONCE experience even the slightest data loss on that service. In fact recently, their uptime has been better than the leader in cloud, Microsoft.
I’d argue their service is MUCH beyond the “good enough” stage. iCloud Photo Library, despite the Beta moniker, has worked flawlessly since I turned it on.
good for you, truth is, iCloud is WAAAAAYY behind other services that are FREE!
And yet none of those cloud systems, and I emphasize NONE sync up all my devices and content as well as iCloud. That is part of the beauty of iCloud, and what set’s it miles ahead of the competition.
Just stop trolling, you’re becoming the next herb for god sakes…
Let’s hope this fix this sooner rather than later.
1. The “celebrity photo leak” is completely unrelated to Apple’s effort in creating a good iCloud service
2. I wouldn’t want to call Apple Maps a “fiasco”; everything worked just fine in my part of the world
3. I fully agree that iCloud Photos is not working. I understand it’s in Beta, but the design, so far, is, well, shyte. Accessing Photos in a browser, ticking on ‘Videos’ gives me a page from which I cannot return to Photos. I also cannot create albums from their web interface. The new Photos webpage won’t allow me to view my Shared Photo Streams I created in Aperture. The list goes on. But since it’s in Beta, and the fact that we don’t have the Aperture & iPhoto replacement app ‘Photos’ makes me need to tone down on their iCloud implementation. Still, it worries me, a bit, seeing what they give us now in their Beta release.
Your thoughts?
Its a total fiasco. Perhaps not 100% attributed to iCloud, but try in less than 30s trying to explain apple id for itunes vs apple id for icloud. Its one thing if a “cloud syncing” service was revolutionary. Its another thing that there are a number of competitors that have kicked iClouds ass in adoption and ease of use for iOS devices.
Apple ID for iTunes vs iCloud? Uh, they’re the same thing, not sure what you’re leading on about…
And because of iCloud’s deep integration with iOS and OS X, it is easier to use for Apple product owners than competing, overlay products.
Not sure what you’re on about…
@Edison
Apple ID for iTunes / iCloud may not necessarily be the same, they can be if you initially set it up that way but not necessarily. There are many users who have had iTunes accounts long before iCloud and for those people there’s a good chance that their iTunes ID will be different than the Apple ID for iCloud.
And in all honesty, especially if you want family sharing of content, it’s a good idea to have your iTunes Account ID be different than your Apple ID for iCloud.
Actually having two Apple ID accounts makes it more difficult to organize everything and keep iOS devices logged into both services properly. Having and using two separate ID’s on a single device is not only a horrible organizational approach, it’s asking for trouble.
This would explain why I haven’t had any junk mail filtered from my iCloud account since Yosemite debuted. One second tier support representative will speak to an engineer and tell me that it’s a bug and they’re working on it and another will speak to an engineer and tell me that the Mail client no longer filters iCloud email for junk and that is a feature. There’s a bunch of idiots over there who don’t communicate with each other. I’m starting to lose my faith in Apple after being a user for almost 30 years.
I may just switch to Windows so I can buy cheaper computers and expect stupidity as a matter of course and not be shocked by it.
Seriously, I don’t understand people like you with these types of comments…
I use iCloud EXCLUSIVELY for my main personal email, and I get exactly ZERO spam in my Inbox. I haven’t seen spam for almost a year now, and they’ve proven to be excellent at filtering that crap out.
I’ve also spoken to engineers at One Infinite Loop on many occasions during the Yosemite beta program, and when compared to the “alternative” world of “tech” support powered by those mindless monkeys from Microsoft, thanks, I’ll take Apple ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.
If you wanna go buy a crap Windows box that has, for all intents and purposes, a compromised immune system, go ahead. You’ll come screaming back to Apple faster than you can say “holy f**k that was bad”!
“Seriously, I don’t understand people like you with these types of comments…”
Understand that not everyone has had a seamless experience with the transition to Yosemite. I also use iCloud exclusively, have since .Mac days, and have had very few problems until I started beta testing Yosemite on a secondary computer this past summer. Every installation of a new beta version let more junk mail through Mail’s filters, regardless of whether I was running Mail on my MacBook Air, the test machine or the MacBook Pro which was still running 10.9.5. Since Yosemite went live I’ve had zero junk mail filtering. Nothing gets stopped by the junk mail filter and the only items in the junk Mail folder are the ones I put there manually.
Note that this was going on during an election cycle when I was receiving well over 300 emails per day. I brought this up with tech support, did much troubleshooting and am still getting conflicting answers from Applecare. It has gotten on my last nerve which precipitated my final comment which could be translated as ” If I have to put up with shit I might as well buy shit so I’m not surprised when shit happens.”
I have higher standards for Apple from long experience and Yosemite and tech support have not been living up to those standards. I actually had a tech support agent deny that Apple supported HTML5 last week!
So if Yosemite is working out for you, congratulations but be cognizant that not all of us are sharing in your good fortune.
many people do real work for a living, so they use Windows machines. Just because you can job surf at starbucks on you macbook without getting spam is hardly a survey of real world results.
And how many professors, engineers, carpenters, lawyers, real estate agents, scientists, doctors, dentists (list goes on and on) that use Mac’s aren’t doing their work on them?
Your last few postings have been pure troll, please cut it out. We don’t need another herb around here.
That’s right, Edison.
The emails for pens enlargement aren’t spam. They know you really need that important medical information, so get out your credit card and follow the links. The holidays are coming and so should you.
I’m sure the money you make for making up positive crap about Apple (and posting it) will be well spent.
After all, every big d!ck should have a big d!ck.
Can you possibly have a lower IQ? I don’t think you’re quite stupid enough yet… What a fucking idiot.
Do that already, please and stop whining.
So when their software breaks and their technicians display their ignorance for all to see I’m not supposed to say anything in order to prevent damaging your delicate little point of view?
That’s the difference between an Apple user and an iSheep. When Apple screws up I’m not afraid to talk about it. While Tim Cook make talk a good line, Steve Jobs did a much better job making sure quality products were the end result. No one needs lickspittle sycophants like you telling people who are actually having problems to stop whining.
The article in the Information referred to reflects a lack of knowledge about Apple. Its argument is based around Apple running its development teams and management like the rest of the industry. That is not the case, and overall that is a good thing. iCloud has a long and troubled history from .mac to .me and has certainly had reliability and usability issues in the past; I think the current effort is pretty much on track.
@edison.. apple id may be the same assuming you are an individual user. Take the simple example of a husband and wife who share an itunes (apple id) so that their “library” of music, videos are the same. In other words, one unified account for payment etc. Lets call that account A. You now setup a icloud account for accountA. Suppose the wife would like to sync her photos, contacts, files to a separate icloud, accountB. That requires a separate apple id. Now, add kids to the mix, they all want to use “dad’s account to pay for things w. his apple id, but dont want all of their data merged. Umm, yea, its a fiasco.
No, that’s called family sharing, and it’s very simple to use.
No, it’s not a fiasco, it’s called a dumb setup that people like me have to constantly fix…
Thankfully, Apple fixed that, it’s called Family Sharing, and it works great!
ok.. agree to disagree. Family sharing is a step in the right direction. Came out two months ago. iCloud was launched…..? Im as much of an apple fan boy as anybody else. As a family we have 12+ devices, love the products but think iCloud has been less than impressive. If you disagree, fair enough. I use dropbox, google drive, box and others. All significantly simpler than icloud. Sad to say.
Without any substance. Cheap journalism.
Mac Rumors is much better.
Guessing that’s where you originate from, your type of FUD is common on the comments sections there. Perhaps you should book a keystroke back there, I think they miss you. We won’t won’t when you’re finally GONE.
It took me three tries to log in with iPhone having to reset password twice since (a) keychain does not work as advertised and (b) second attempt was not remembered. Keychain sucks case iCloud sucks
Think I am missing something here…. happy with Mail, iTunes Match, Photostream and data from Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Never lost anything, easy to access and no brainer to use unlike Dropbox
There’s more to iCloud than what you mentioned, there’s also email which some of us are finding to be very buggy, there’s contacts which will restore old contacts and old phone numbers which have been deleted or changed on one but not all devices, there is keychain which will occasionally restore old passwords after new ones have been generated.
Seeing problems like these has reduced my confidence in iCloud. I have some important documents that I’ve converted to Pages and Numbers but save on the computer so I can be assured of a backup should anything happen. When saving to iCloud the only place the documents exist are on iCloud. They’re not saved to any particular device nor any location on the computer’s hard drive so they don’t get backed up along with everything else.
I like the idea of iCloud, but Apple needs to put far more work into it before I trust it with anything important.
“Apple Maps was a fiasco on its own, leading to a shakeup of the company’s executive team, and the company hasn’t fared particularly well since.”
What part of the company has not fared particularly well since?
Apple Maps is one in a long line of failures.
Sori has been out for, what, 3 years and it’s still just a punchline to a joke.
JUST STFU YOU GOD DAMNED PIECE OF CRAP! I’m so sick of your tired, stupid ass trolling on this site!
Apple might consider spinning off iCloud as a separate, yet wholly-owned, company.
I use iCloud services since it started and I love it. No problems with syncing and I have no need for another free service.
Also, the new iCloud Mail Drop is incredible and eliminated my need for other free services that do the same thing. You guys can point out iCloud’s flaws… from my PERSONAL use, it’s flawless