For Apple's revamped photo experience to work, iCloud changes are needed

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  • Reply 81 of 161
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by konqerror View Post

     

    The problem is Apple fails at the cloud. They never developed their own cloud storage, they buy Microsoft Azure Cloud Storage and Amazon S3. You can easily see your Mac and iPhone connecting to their servers. This means they're paying Amazon rates... about 2.75 cents / GB*Month and about the same per GB downloaded from the cloud.

     

    If you run the numbers, iCloud storage is already operating at a loss. The $3.99 200 GB plan costs up to $5.50 in storage, not counting traffic.

     

    The problem is that Apple has forgotten how to pay technical "taxes". You don't have great UX because you developed cheap cloud storage. You have great UX enabled by cheap cloud storage. What makes Google good at these things is that they have no problem spending big bucks on everything they can think of, which includes purely technical aspects, that eventually trickle down into products. Apple is too focused on products and when other people can't provide the foundation (like ARM, Imagination, Qualcomm, etc.), they fail.


     

    Complete bullshit. Yeah, Apple has spent billions building out massive data centers, have even larger ones being planned, have developed their own CDN, yet they've forgotten how to "pay technical taxes". Yes, Apple is focused on products, but they have a history of bringing technologies in-house, and have not stopped doing that. If anything, they've increased it. Custom developed ARM chips, their own CDN, their own maps, etc. There's also this myth that Google are Gods of the cloud. Not really true, it's just that people ignore and excuse their issues for some reason. Android doesnt even have a full, comprehensive cloud based backup solution like iOS has had for YEARS. Why is that ok? You have to dig for 3rd party bullshit to do that. When you restore an Android device, it also seems random what you get back, and what you don't. But hey, it's Google, they're "good" at these things, so let's look the other way. 

  • Reply 82 of 161
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pfisher View Post





    iCloud is confusing. I stopped using it and use the vastly simpler OneDrive and Google Drive.

     

    Oh yeah? So how are the "vastly simpler" OneDrive and google Drive handling your iOS backups? Oh wait, they don't? How are they handling all these tasks: https://www.apple.com/ca/support/systemstatus/

    ?

     

    Oh wait, they don't?

     

    Next time try for a little honesty, instead of sensationalism. No, you didn't stop using iCloud.  You stopped using one tiny aspect of iCloud, and these services don't replace 95% of what iCloud does or can do. Photo and File storage are one small aspect, and although you find them "confusing" they're implemented in a much more integrated way if one is an iOS/OSX user.

  • Reply 83 of 161
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Slurpy View Post

     

     If anything, they've increased it. Custom developed ARM chips, their own CDN, their own maps, etc. 


     

    My point exactly. ARM sponsors university research and pure R&D. Based on a lot of this work, they developed ARMv8, for example. One of the things that they found out is that speculation (branch prediction) can be made energy efficient than 32 bit ARM's conditional codes. I know a number of people who get their work paid for by ARM. Apple pays ARM bucks per iPhone, even though the only thing they get from ARM is an assembly programming manual.

     

    Same thing with Qualcomm. They spend big bucks on standards work and university research. Pretty much every university has comm work paid by Qualcomm.

     

    Ever see Apple do any advanced R&D? Fat chance. Look at any company Apple's size. HP Labs, Microsoft Research, Google's work on say quantum computing, Cisco Research Center. Apple= zilch.

     

    Maps: Apple tried to license TomTom data because Navteq, the far superior source, was tied up by Google. Look how well that worked out.

     

    Anyway, if Apple's datacenters are so good, why does my Mac keep connecting to Amazon's? Answer?

  • Reply 84 of 161

    Apple's profits won't continue to increase unless they get people to buy more products or services.  At some point they have to start charging a majority of users for cloud storage and other cloud services because they will have a longer replacement cycle eventually.  iPads kinda prove this out.  People don't replace them as regularly as an iPhone so sales appear to "slump", thus profits appear to "slump" (Yes, I know they aren't losing money in reality, but stock price and confidence in a company's profitability isn't based on reality these days.)  Eventually even iPhones will be powerful enough that things won't feel sluggish if you let 3 or 4 refresh cycles pass without getting a new phone, which will hurt the way profits "look".

     

    For Apple to remain dominant in profits, they need to start getting service income to stack on the amazing profits they already have to keep the YoY machine chugging along.

     

    They will not give much away for free.  If this was false we'd have 32,64,128GB storage on devices, not 16,64,128.  This is all part of the "plan".

  • Reply 85 of 161

    In my opinion the entire article is complete nonsense. I know many iPhone & iPad owners and none of them have any problems of this type.

    Sounds like the article author has this problem or knows some that do, but that doesn't mean that even 0.001% of iOS users do. 

     

    If I buy a Windows PC with 12TB raid storage, do Microsoft or Dell provide me with 12TB of cloud storage?

  • Reply 86 of 161
    You surely can't have just said iTunes Match is 'flawless'. iTunes Match is the most Sony product Apple has ever released. Followed very closely in second by iCloud... Good luck explaining to the average user (or frankly even to understand it yourself) what is the 'original photo' and how the other versions of it relate.
  • Reply 87 of 161
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,192member

    iCloud pricing reeks of "We will not be taken advantage of!", when it's customers that are being taken advantage of, both with the pricing and the experience.

  • Reply 88 of 161
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Slurpy View Post

     

     

    I kind of agree. I don't respect or sympathize with people who spend $700 or whatever on an iPhone, use it for dozens or hundreds of tasks every single day, is the most important single device they own, and yet can't be fucking bothered to spend a few minutes to understand the most basic and fundamental options. I'm the Apple "go-to" guy for everyone I know, and I get constant calls, emails, Qs about the most basic stuff, from people who have basically never even bothered to venture into the settings app. It's not rocket science. 5 min on Apple's website would give a very good idea of what iCloud is and what it does, and how to enable backups. If I buy and use something, I'll be damned sure to learn about it so I can use it to the fullest. I'm not talking about learning the finest settings, and I'm not referring to 80yr old grandmothers, which understandable cant wrap their heads around the cloud (though my grandma can, and has a 5C). I'm talking about young people who are too fucking lazy to learn anything about the device they just bought, beyond facebook, texting, and candycrush, and then howl and whine when something goes wrong because of an incorrect setting.

     

    That being said, most people are fucking stupid and lazy, so it would probably serve Apple best to raise the free tier to 10GB, in order to save itself millions of support calls and a lowered user experience. 


    I don't understand why there is a settings section where you go to set the settings for all of your apps. It should be in the apps.

     

    For instance, in photos, there should be a setting right there that lets you toggle "Backup Photos".

     

    Settings is a mess, a disaster as a UI for users. 

  • Reply 89 of 161
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Slurpy View Post

     

     

    Oh yeah? So how are the "vastly simpler" OneDrive and google Drive handling your iOS backups? Oh wait, they don't? How are they handling all these tasks: https://www.apple.com/ca/support/systemstatus/

    ?

     

    Oh wait, they don't?

     

    Next time try for a little honesty, instead of sensationalism. No, you didn't stop using iCloud.  You stopped using one tiny aspect of iCloud, and these services don't replace 95% of what iCloud does or can do. Photo and File storage are one small aspect, and although you find them "confusing" they're implemented in a much more integrated way if one is an iOS/OSX user.


    Google and MS are vastly better than Apple iCloud.

     

    I can share folders with G-Drive. Can you do that on iCloud? No.

    I can save any kind of document on G-drive. Can you do that with iCloud? No.

    Google Picassa is far better that iPhoto. It doesn't import or mess with my photos and put them in its own library. What happened it Image Capture on Mac? Oh, yeah, its gone.

    Google also add much more storage for free (although I have 100 GB)

    I can use G-Drive on my Mac and Chromebook. (Android and) iPhone. Can't do that with iCloud.

     

    Need I go on? Apple is proprietary, only gives 1 GB to non-Mac users. Why not 5 GB, as chinzy as that is for iOS/Mac users? Why can't I share folders on iCloud? Why can't I save non-iWorks apps on iCloud? 

     

    As someone said, Apple keeps rebranding the same product. 

     

    I use what is best and I don't have any confidence in Apple services. 

  • Reply 90 of 161
    Thanks for the article! I actually had to open up my computer to Apple due to back end server issues where I could not access my greyed out images in the iCloud app. I would like to see a "What's in my Cloud" section, showing what is uploaded, such as images, documents, or contacts/mail by user, by device, and by date to help delineate what is there when it got there, and who put it there. Something like this would help train users in using the proper preferences, thereby helping them control and conserve space as well. At the moment, all we get is item count, and space used for our Cloud devices. While this idea may create an issue with privacy, which Apple is renowned for, I'd like to see a method for finding what is being stored in my account in a simple, straight forward menu.
  • Reply 91 of 161
    Originally Posted by pfisher View Post

    I can save any kind of document on G-drive. Can you do that with iCloud? No.

    What happened it Image Capture on Mac? Oh, yeah, its gone.

    I can use G-Drive on my Mac and Chromebook. (Android and) iPhone. Can't do that with iCloud.




    Lies, but whatever.

  • Reply 92 of 161
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pfisher View Post

     

    Google and MS are vastly better than Apple iCloud.

     

    I can share folders with G-Drive. Can you do that on iCloud? No.

    I can save any kind of document on G-drive. Can you do that with iCloud? No.

    Google Picassa is far better that iPhoto. It doesn't import or mess with my photos and put them in its own library. What happened it Image Capture on Mac? Oh, yeah, its gone.

    Google also add much more storage for free (although I have 100 GB)

    I can use G-Drive on my Mac and Chromebook. (Android and) iPhone. Can't do that with iCloud.

     

    Need I go on? Apple is proprietary, only gives 1 GB to non-Mac users. Why not 5 GB, as chinzy as that is for iOS/Mac users? Why can't I share folders on iCloud? Why can't I save non-iWorks apps on iCloud? 

     

    As someone said, Apple keeps rebranding the same product. 

     

    I use what is best and I don't have any confidence in Apple services. 


     

    I'm running Yosemite, and have image capture open right now. It never went anywhere, not for a second. What made you think image capture was gone, and why wouldn't you spend 1 second checking before making that claim? 

     

    The rest of your post is a mess, and completely besides the point. In 2011, the first thing SJ stated when introducing iCloud is that they're not interested in making a "harddrive in the cloud", like everyone else was doing. By design, the focus was on tight integration with Apple hardware, services, and apps, as well as syncing. iCloud was meant to be the backend to get your content seamlessly everywhere, within the apps themselves, without going back to the archaic model of the filesystem. You're bitching that iCloud isn't multiplatform?  Why would Apple be interested in doing that, and why the hell would Apple waste its time cloning what everyone else has? All these services (dropbox, google drive, onedrive) are multi-platform, yet you want Apple to offer the exact same service with no differentiation. Point being?

     

    You're also wrong about how you can't access iCloud on a chromebook. iCloud Drive is available from any web browser. So is almost every feature of iCloud, including photos. Small detail, I know.

     

    iCloud's entire purpose and design has flown so far beyond your head, and your comparisons make it clear you're unable to rationally assess it. It's now gaining more traditional filesystem features, but that was never its focus.

     

    Picasa? Google hasn't updated that application in ages. I know, I use it. Oh, and can Picasa be setup to auto-download (or even show) photos taken with your phone? Nope, but make sure to leave that out of your comparison too. You're stuck using a shitty web-view and loading every photo from a browser if you want to access anything in Google+

     

    You're free to use any of the other 67,982 services on your Apple devices if all you care about is online file storage. Noone is stopping you. The fact is, you can use every single service you mentioned on an iPhone, so you're missing nothing. But pretending to ignore all of iCloud's other exclusive features, is pretty reprehensible. 

  • Reply 93 of 161
    ecatsecats Posts: 272member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by PopinFRESH View Post

     

     

    This sounds to me like you either want more storage for free, or you want more storage for free. Back in the real world, storage isn't free and it costs Apple a significant amount of money to build and maintain their data centers for iCloud. As pointed out by coolfactor, there is a big difference in making purchased content from one of Apple's stores (iTunes, App Store, iBooks) available to several users and storing user created content. In the situation of Apple's stores, they are already storing 1 copy of the content on their servers and all that needs to be stored per user is the license to that file. In the situation of storing user created content such as a users Photos library each file is unique and the storage needed for that is exponentially greater than the storage Apple needs for the music already in iTunes.

     

     

    This is a totally different issue and has to do with how Apple managed the installation of the Delta updates from one OS to another OS.

     

     

    I'm not sure what you are trying to convey with this statement. Are you implying that Apple should make the iPhone take lower quality pictures so they wont use up as much storage? Are you trying to say Apple should somehow regulate how many pictures or videos you can take? If so I completely disagree and much prefer their current system to that of one where they arbitrarily try to control how or when I use my iPhone's camera. I am currently only limited by the technology I chose to purchase. If you want to take a tremendous amount of photos and video you are free to upgrade to the 1TB of iCloud storage for $20/mo and have a rather massive photo library.

     

    -PopinFRESH




    I don't think you're following the mode of discussion. Indeed you've missed the points I've made entirely for the sake of obvious 'data centres aren't free' and 'duplicate data is smaller than unique data' arguments. (f'n duh.)

     

    There is clearly a problem with on- and off-device storage. Consumers will always use more and more data because it's not reasonable for them to delete old photos or email. Since iOS gives limited options in what can be stored online (for user-simplicity sake) it's more a case of all your photos or none of your photos backed up online. E.g. backups are the full photo library at full resolution, instead of just selected albums/favourited photos/or at a reduced resolution.

     

    In the case of users who own iDevices and not a desktop computer (a growing share) this leaves users with no options other than iCloud for backup.

     

    So YES! I am suggesting apple allows for more backup space for iDevice's crucial features such as photos and mail. There is nothing wrong in this request either, the price of online storage is plummeting and other web services Yahoo/Dropbox/Microsoft/Google/etc all seem to understand this better than Apple and have changed their default storage capacity/pricing to match. I daresay Apple can even offer more than 5GB for iDevice users, since services who offer nothing but online storage are offering more.

     

    And yes, I (and indeed everyone) are fully aware how Match/Apps/Books can be offered due to duplicate data, but you're missing the point about a consistent user experience and solving the problem.

  • Reply 94 of 161
    Is it possible part of the IBM alliance was to strengthen the iCloud infrastructure?
  • Reply 95 of 161

    I think it's time that Apple ditch all the low storage spaced items.. No more 5GB iCloud and no more 16GB iDevices  PERIOD

     

    Look at Google and MS. I have storage with them. 100GB's Why do I need to pay Apple for 20GB?

  • Reply 96 of 161
    I'm seeing a lot of "[MS | Google | [I]other[/I]] give me[I] blah blah [/I] amount of storage so why do I need iCloud?" as a rhetorical question, which is usually either preceding or following a comment about how Apple should give them more iCloud storage. So why do you need more iCloud storage if these other companies are giving you so much more storage? Why even comment on it? Why not just use the service that suits your needs better? Why does Apple have to match or best everyone in everything or else be considered a shit company that doesn't know how to do online storage and computing?

    Personally, I only use two of the major file storage services: iCloud (for all my data synced between devices, as well as Automator workflows), and Dropbox (for all my data that I share with others, as well use for work). These work great, and each has their pros and cons, but I have desire to have Dropbox replace iCloud or iCloud replace Dropbox.
  • Reply 97 of 161
    welshdogwelshdog Posts: 1,897member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Digital_Guy View Post



    Have been with Apple since owning my first Apple II in 1984. iCloud is easily one of the most confusing things I have ever seen come from them. In my opinion, if any remote storage is to be successful and gain any significant amount of traction among users, it must be 3 things, equally: 1) simple, 2) transparent and 3) complete. iCloud currently does not meet these 3 criteria. There's a reason that Apple doesn't boast about "80% of our installed base uses iCloud". Because they, including me, don't.

    I also have been using Apple products since before 1984. I also find the entire iCloud photo, music whatever system to be a bit clunky and confusing. I am a tech oriented person and even worked for Apple doing iOS phone support for a while. It is astonishing how many ways people find to mess up their iCloud storage and options. I am amused by some on this thread who think that every iPhone user should be able to set up anything and everything in their phones. That they should be utterly familiar with every aspect of the Settings app. That they should always have the structure of their iCloud storage top of mind so as to be a good Apple user.  I seriously doubt anyone high up at Apple feels that way. Certainly when I was being trained we never considered the aptitude of our customers. We just helped them. Period.

     

    Apple could do more to make iCloud and it's various functions more clear and simple. Honestly I think a fun, clear infographic that gives people a visual concept of where their stuff is would help a lot.

  • Reply 98 of 161
    arlorarlor Posts: 532member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Perfectionist View Post



    "Apple" and "free" never go together.

     

    So why not charge for the first 5gb? 

  • Reply 99 of 161
    arlorarlor Posts: 532member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by konqerror View Post

     

    The problem is that Apple has forgotten how to pay technical "taxes". 


     

    If you listen to the IRS, Apple has forgotten how to pay actual taxes, too. Hurr hurr.

  • Reply 100 of 161
    >>>having it totally free would need a huge investment in storage from apples side and I dont see it as a viable solution.

    Apple is already making a huge amount of money off all of us. It wouldn't hurt them to make it free. Either that, or pay their surrogate employees in China more or charge us less. Either way, they are taking way too much money out of our economy.
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