“Apple is fond of talking about its secret sauce, about the things only it can do because of its unprecedented combination of hardware, software, and services,” Dan Moren writes for Macworld. “But for all that it has been very successful with its strategy of making the whole widget, from soup to nuts, it’s pretty clear that all three of those areas aren’t exactly on equal footing.”
“Hardware, sure. The company’s been making computers since the late ’70s, and it’s never seriously moved away from that—let’s not talk about the awkward fumbling of the clone years,” Moren writes. “Likewise its software, which has gone from revolutionary operating system to also-ran back around to venerable and respected veteran of the computer industry.”
“But then there’s services,” Moren writes. “Services have and continue to be a weak spot for the company, and its biggest challenge in 2017. This chink in its armor has left Apple vulnerable to its competitors, for many of whom services are a strong suit.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: All lot of the gee-whiz stuff that other companies do is because those companies don’t give a whit about users’ privacy.
It’s not that Apple can’t do some of these things, it’s that Apple won’t do them because they’re playing the long game.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s cutting-edge ‘differential privacy’ is opt-in – June 24, 2016
Apple’s cutting-edge ‘differential privacy’ offers unique option for technology users – June 20, 2016
Apple’s use of cutting-edge tech will peek at user habits without violating privacy – June 16, 2016
Apple unveils iOS 10, the mother of all iOS releases – June 13, 2016
Apple previews major update with macOS Sierra – June 13, 2016
If you use any kind of device that connects externally, there is no such thing as privacy.
Agreed. As an encryption professional I can safely say nothing is uncrackable online.
An algorithm is just a very complex calculation… in other words it is not impossible to solve, just time consuming.
Too bad iCloud is only 5GB for all devices you own rather than 5GB per device. So someone who owns 1 device gets the same amount of free storage as someone who owns several.
Compare that to getting 100GB of Google cloud space for a year for every Chromebook you buy.
Why is Apple so stingy with storage? One would think that will all the cash Apple has they could build the biggest and best data centers in the world. Why is it so difficult for Apple to provide more storage just for Apple product users? What is Apple using its data centers for, anyway. It’s not as though Apple has a service like Youtube which consumes petabytes every month.
Apple spent $5B on some fancy headquarters and it’s been said a large data center could cost from $250 – $500 million or so for the size of a center Facebook or Alphabet might use. Don’t tell me Apple can’t afford to drop that money on more storage for users. I honestly don’t understand why Alphabet and Facebook can easily afford data centers and yet Apple can’t manage it. I’m not complaining, I just don’t understand Apple. Do they really want to drain users dry with all sorts of extra costs? I think the more services Apple offered for less money, maybe the more hardware they could sell. That’s just making their hardware more attractive by offering more services bang for the buck. It’s almost as though Apple is trying to make Apple product users look elsewhere for better deals.
Because Alphabet and Facebook make the money they use to build their datacenters by selling “you” to the advertisers. Apple is just charging you directly.
Microsoft provide 1TB free with Office365.
This shows Apple is short-sighted for online business. By offer only 5GB free storage for iCloud, it break the good “just works” iCloud backup user experience. You can look around to see how many people around you with iPhone who has “Your backup failed”. In addition, this reduce the stickiness of the iPhone when users choose Google, Microsoft or other cloud services, which will lead to future customer lost when they no longer come up a good iPhone. Users are much easier to move to other phones since large amount of their data is already in other close service. This shows how stupid Tim Cook is asking customers paying for iCloud storage.
By “long game” do you mean for it’s customers to be waiting for a looooong time for just about everything?
More like, when Google, etc. blow up due to privacy trampling, Apple will be standing right there to collect their disgruntled users.
Been using Apple’s online offerings since iTools and iCloud is their best effort to date.
At the beginning I had terrible trouble syncing photos and albums but I got that sorted by Apple Support and ever since it’s been trouble free.
I wonder why your positive experience has just 3 stars. I’m thinking that star ratings here are awarded for the greatest level of cynicism.
iCloud has been one of Apple’s greatest challenges since … MobileMe … 😉
At best, iCloud is a useful but highly awkward suite of services. With a bit of effort from people who actually use such services, they could be spectacular.
iCloud is reliable but oh so slow.
Pages still has no proper dictionary and there are dozens of other small but very annoying issues that persist.
What exactly is the world’s biggest company doing?? Is everyone on vacation or something?
Their Ambition Meter is clearly sinking.
Apple needs a VP of Services to take this out of Eddy Cue’s bailiwick. I don’t know what Eddy is actually doing, but whatever it is, it appears that it is diverting far to much needed attention to Services. When you add up all the elements that make up Apple Services it is immense. They may need more than on VP to get them all up to “A” quality.
ICloud is way too slow. And not reliable enough to replace Dropbox. Ever tried to send a link to an iCloud file or folder? You can’t.
I agree 💯 %. Dropbox is much faster and more convenient than iCloud. I am just shocked and surprised why Apple 🍎 is still far away from Dropbox technology!
iCloud and its ancestors have been an huge challenge to Apple for a couple decades now. Why TF can’t they get it right and provide the services users require? Apple consistently HOBBLES its cloud service as if to keep the niche open for other services, including those from Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
W T F ? ! I wish Apple would take the plunge and provide the perfect service that does it all exactly how we want it. And YES, that mean end-to-end, ‘Trust No One’ encryption with full device backups at reasonable pricing.
(Despite what RastaMouse said above, from the perspective of the length of a human lifetime, YES perfect encryption is not only possible, it already exists. It’s silly to say otherwise. Just because it’s hard to find a service that knows how to do it right, hello stupid Backblaze, doesn’t mean it isn’t available from a seriously professional service. Apple build it into macOS! Make an encrypted sparse bundle disk image using Disk Utility and enjoy!)
When I pay Apple price and buy a 128GB iPhone, I should at least be given 128GB free iCloud space.
By charging people price showing Apple does not understand the online Service. They are breaking the good user experience for some profit. Not to mention Google Photo free space attracts some iPhone users. Apple practically handed the user big data to Google. How is this a long game for Apple?