It’s one of the great mysteries of modern computing: why does Apple, a company that makes some of the most popular consumer electronics devices in the world and has proven itself capable of producing stunning software, suck so badly when it comes to the provision of online services?
From its doomed attempt to compete with AOL in the 1990s, with eWorld, to the hair-pullingly frustrating MobileMe, Apple’s online tools have been so awful they would make even that paragon of restraint, Wayne Rooney, utter the occasional bad word.
Sure, MobileMe is usable. Just. But the convoluted way in which email, Address Book contacts and calendars sync – or, as often as not, don’t sync – makes using it an exercise in extreme masochism. Introduce an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch into the equation and it becomes only a shade less painful than pulling your fingernails out one by one. Slowly.
Then there’s iDisk, online storage for people who are prepared to wait all day to upload a few files and then risk not being able to find them when they switch to a different Mac. It’s a damning indictment on Apple that the best iDisk experiences are provided by third-party applications such as Panic’s Transmit.
While Google has established itself as the go-to provider for anyone who needs webmail, online document or calendar sharing, or even directions to the nearest supermarket, Apple has barely progressed at all.
That was fine when Apple and Google were BFFs. But now that Eric Schmidt is no longer on Apple’s board, and Google, with Android, is kicking Apple where it hurts most – right between the iPhones – it’s time for Apple to take the cloud seriously. And it doesn’t come much more serious than one million square feet of data centre packing 12 petabytes of high-tech storage. That’s the facility Apple is about to open in North Carolina, apparently to support the new iTunes locker service on which we’ve been reporting in MacUser.
That service, which analyst Toni Sacconaghi says will cost $5 (about £3) per month, looks set to compete with Amazon’s Cloud Storage and Cloud Player. It will also compete with the new music streaming service on which Google is reported to be working. Just as importantly, it will allow Apple to improve MobileMe and capitalise on a couple of recent acquisitions. With proper location-based features, combining Find My iPhone with Facebook’s Places or Foursquare, say, it may, at last, get it right online.
One big shift we’ll see is a reduction in the extent to which Apple relies on third parties such as Google to provide services like mapping for Apple’s mobile devices. You don’t need to be Steve Jobs to realise the potential for combining an iPhone, GPS, iAds and a decent set of location-aware software tools. So prepare, perhaps as soon as iOS 5, to see the removal of Google Maps as a default installation on the iPhone and iPad. In its place will be a mapping app that uses the Pushpin API Apple bought last year when it acquired PlaceBase. As with most of its recent acquisitions, Apple didn’t by PlaceBase because it thought the company itself was a good investment for shareholders, nor because that $50 billion was burning a hole in the pocket of its stonewashed 501s – though it is, and the stench is begin to annoy stockholders. The PlaceBase acquisition was about access to technology, specifically the Pushpin API. The same is true with Apple’s purchase of Siri, which makes ‘digital assistant apps’.
You already know Apple is the ultimate control freak, so it hurt to rely on Google or anyone else to provide the enabling technology for mobile domination. It hurts no more. There’s a huge silver cloud drifting over the horizon and it’s shaped like an Apple.
One key question remains. Google has succeeded brilliantly with its online services because it understood that we, as users, place very little value on them, despite how much use we make of them. So it priced them accordingly and charged nothing. Amazon has the same understanding, which is why its S3 storage is as cheap as chips and is used by small and medium-sized companies the world over. Where Google has stumbled is in understanding the extremely high value we place on privacy and the security of our personal data (remember the kerfuffle over AdSense adverts in Gmail?).
If Apple is serious about this cloud stuff, it needs to do three things: make the services as easy and enjoyable to use as its offline software; price it as close to free as it possibly can; and ensure that, while capitalising on personal information with iAds and other revenue-generation wheezes, it doesn’t show the kind of scant regard for personal data that causes the authorities to take a personal interest in it. Get all that right and Apple might have a suite of online tools and services that are capable of competing with the might of Amazon and Google.
