iCloud came out in October 2011 replacing MobileMe. There is not doubt the platform evolved considerably over the years adding features. The service was not revolutionary, but was one of the best at syncing photos and seen a rapid expansion. Now just over 4 years later, there is no doubt a lot of change happened, but if you compare to other cloud services iCloud is starting to lag behind.
Yes! You can get an email @icloud.com, but it still requires you to have an alternate email address. Most people have more than one email address and we know that, but what about the new users on the system. The only way to get an iCloud address without and having an alternate one is to create an Apple ID when setting up a new iPhone, MacBook, etc. In these ages, children generally get their first electronic devices at a really young age and they are more likely to stay with the brand then an adult adopter. There is need for improvement too on the email service itself with the other big names offering automatic filtering iCloud seems to lag behind most likely for privacy reason.
Sure! Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free for everybody who want to use them, but there is no dedicated app for any Windows, Android or nothing. Pushing people to buy Apple products at all cost is again blocking features for the rest of the users and it should not happen. Google Docs is free and Office kinda, but they are primarily available on virtually every platform. Under downside of Apple’s productivity suite and it might not be your opinion, but i don’t find it as intuitive and as complete as other productivity suite. One of the feature missing is the ability to work multiple people on one document at the same time and there is no reason nowadays for it to be missing.
Backup and Photos are great! When they work those features are truly great, but to many time issues arise. Multiple time my iPhones or iPads would stop backing up with iCloud because of errors and photos can be slow to show from one device to the other. Too many times people have lost pictures taken because of photos corrupted into iCloud. It’s seem clunky to use and again it is not available on other platform besides Windows if you don’t use the wed version.
5GB of free storage! Wow! Isn’t that crappy in 2015, but the price for a 1TB is not so bad. So what is Apple doing? Trying to make money or not to lose money. The storage tier are not the greatest and the free 5GB is better than nothing, but they should offer free unlimited devices backup at least considering Apple makes most of their money on devices sold.
All of those little issues make for me an experience that is at the same time good and bad when regarding to iCloud. Instead of relying on iCloud to provide the basic services between devices, Apple in my opinion should use it as a major plus and stay to the forefront of the technology to bring people into the ecosystem and that would start by providing a little more on rival platform like they did with Apple Music and capitalize on the fact that people will upgrade their storage plan if they use iCloud intensively instead of partially using it like it is right now for most people.
What do you think?
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