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

1234568

Comments

  • Reply 141 of 161
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    ash471 wrote: »
    Except that you're wrong. iCloud does not back up your contacts, or at least it didn't in December 2014. I got to a very high level in Apple technical service and the guy acknowledged this was a problem. Contacts aren't backed up because they are an iCloud service. The backup only backs up the data not on iCloud.
    And yes, of course I tried to restore from backup. Duh.
    To be fair, we don't really know how the contacts got deleted. The syncing with the new device is just a guess. However, I had over 400 contacts and if it wasn't a syncing problem I would have to "accidentally" delete 400 contacts one by one.
    And who the f'k do you think you are telling me my post is false and invalid. You think because it didn't happen to you it didn't happen? What an idiot.

    Syncing is a hard problem because if you deliberately delete contact A you want that deletion to propagate but if you, or the OS, deleted all contacts automatically you don't. A solution is some kind of recoverable trash or versioning for contacts.
  • Reply 142 of 161

    My largest complaint about iCloud is that you can't buy enough storage. Only 1TB in today's smartphone camera world seems kind of low.

  • Reply 143 of 161
    iCloud is beyond confusing. Where to start. For one, why are all of the components separately branded with names that don't even follow the same scheme? iTunes Match. iCloud Drive. iCloud Photo Library. What? You shouldn't have to decide what component you wish to use. The cloud should recede from the user experience. That's how companies that with successful products that leverage the cloud have succeeded. Pick any startup that runs on AWS for an example.

    Look at how document management works with the iWorks suite. It's a horrible mess. They could have just stuck with the familiar file browsing metaphor they've used in the Mac OS for decades but decided to supplement it. You have to separately choose the iCloud location. It's bizarre. The Dropbox approach is far simpler and even novice and "naive" users readily pick it up, use it, and understand its value. That's what iCloud should have been.

    Worse yet is that iCloud just plain doesn't work. It constantly has syncing conflicts. Even then, there's no way to see what's different between conflicts. That doesn't instill confidence in the underlying technology stack.

    As for commenters saying, oh if you can't figure it out, you're too stupid or too old, give me a break. Read my comment above about synchronization conflicts then please tell me that iCloud is a viable system for seamlessly and confidently syncing your documents. It doesn't work simply, it simply doesn't work, and it doesn't even provide an interface for you extreme power users.

    Finally as for free/not-free: it's not about entitlement. What a ridiculous, throw away statement.

    It's about market share and competition and user experience. Once again, Apple is losing at cloud services. Rebranding it as iCloud doesn't wash away the stink of all of its predecessors (and unfortunately) seems to pick up right where they left off.
  • Reply 144 of 161
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by PopinFRESH View Post

     

    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.


     

    We're borderline on 1TB now... does it work if we go over? I'd much rather buy 200GB/year and have it use my home iMac as the master copy. 

     

    Put a full-quality version of images online at first (plus any recent changes), then once the appropriate syncing is finished keep the full copy only on my home Mac and keep a compressed copy online. 

  • Reply 145 of 161
    Apple absolutely needs to do a better job of educating users about what iCloud, backup, and iCloud Photo Library do. But concluding that it should be free mainly because user education hasn't gone well so far is impractical.

    It's also fundamentally flawed: Google indeed starts users with a higher cap of 15GB versus iCloud's current 5GB. But extra storage is absolutely not free:
  • Reply 146 of 161
    iCloud has been confusing since launch. Its confusing for the users, but also for developers.

    Apple appears to lack a service design capability as good as its product design. There isn't a lot of difference in principle between service design and other UX design, but the focus is lacking in general and Apple is no different to many in the IT sector in this regard.

    I think this has to be addressed sooner rather than later as its a significantly negative user experience and I completely agree with beluga, the mess will get worse if something isn't done about this fairly soon.
  • Reply 147 of 161
    I think £2.99 for 200 GB is a great price especially as Dropbox, which I was using before, only offers me a 1TB option for a whopping £7.99 a month.
    I'm using approximately 150GBs for documents, video and photos so it works well for me (my music is on iTunes Match).

    It would be great if they made iTunes Match free (like Google's service) but it's so cheap that it doesn't bother me ...
  • Reply 148 of 161

    iCloud works fine for its initial purpose, backup ur phone apps/data/settings and transfer to new device, etc. The '5Gb free' was at a time when phone cameras had lesser megapixels and videos were not that common. Nowadays, as google, MS, amazon do, it would make sense for apple to offer free photo uploads unlimited, and some more overall free storage (maybe 15 or 30Gb as of now). However, i believe their bigger issue is the management options of the icloud drive.

     

    Their current options :

    a) store reduced size photos/videos on device and full size on iCloud drive

    b) store full size photos/videos on device and iCloud drive.

     

    lots of issues with these simple sounding ('it just works') options -

     

    problems with a)

    If you a big library (lets say 10Gb+ of photos/videos), and everything is uploaded, when you want to view a photo or video in the photos app, it takes multiple seconds for any photo or video to pop up. If you then want to zoom in, move to the next photo, etc, again multiple seconds (sometimes 10s of seconds) delay. When any other online storage/viewer (netfliz, amazon, youtube, flikr, onedrive, google drive, facebook, etc) can handle smooth photo scrolling and immediate video playback, this delay on the iCloud drive is problematic and will turn users away from this storage option.

     

    problem with b)

    once again, lets say u have a big library (10Gb+) on ur iphone. u also have an iPad with lets say 3Gb of photos/videos. If you choose to keep full res photos/videos on device, it works in this way. The 10Gb (iPhone) and 3Gb (iPad) and both uploaded to the iCloud drive, and then all 13Gb are synced (downloaded) to both the devices, where u might not have the extra space.

     

    so both options have flaws.

     

    iCloud drive needs to get the option of uploading some photos/videos from the iPhone, so that these can then be deleted from the iPhone, so that people can take more photos, and keep backing up older ones on iCloud and then see all of them in the photos app. This option is not possible, maybe because apple thinks this is too complicated (nobody will pay around with 1000s of photos, back some up, dont back up others etc, nobody has that kind of time). As soon as you delete any photo from the device, it will get deleted from the iCloud (at next sync).

     

    to conclude, the free storage is a red herring. Google, MS, amazon, etc (apart from flikr) all have monthly rates similar to apple for higher tiers - 200Gb, 200Gb, 1Tb, etc, and many people pay for this for storing photos/videos in full resolution. People will be ready to pay apple too, but the storage options currently on iCloud drive for photos/videos lack flexibility and are the big drawback

  • Reply 149 of 161
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    Nice piece which addresses Apple's real issues.
    iCloud has 2 key issues in my book; it's performance is totally dependent on your internet connection & people can't see beyond files in folders on drives.

    When played back on my ATV; my gorgeous, 25Mbps 1080p videos of the family delay & stall on my 12Mbps internet connection, infuriating when I know at least one of the devices on my home network has the video! Also, I got PhotoStream's idea of keeping photos by exception, that photos expire unless you consciously decide to keep them- but who else did?
    It makes sense for Google to keep a good enough copy of everything for facial recognition as they map then manipulate society but this isn't Apple's business model. Yet.
  • Reply 150 of 161
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    iCloud has been confusing since launch. Its confusing for the users, but also for developers.

    Apple appears to lack a service design capability as good as its product design. There isn't a lot of difference in principle between service design and other UX design, but the focus is lacking in general and Apple is no different to many in the IT sector in this regard.

    I think this has to be addressed sooner rather than later as its a significantly negative user experience and I completely agree with beluga, the mess will get worse if something isn't done about this fairly soon.

    You realise Apple invented UX before it was coined UX? For them the technology always served the design. Though you are right, they never seemed to translate that well from products to services.
    Perhaps people who design their own services, should write their own software, should make their own hardware.
  • Reply 151 of 161
    ash471ash471 Posts: 705member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismY View Post





    That makes no sense. When you backup your device to iCloud or iTunes, it includes all your Contact data.

     

    You are correct, it makes no sense.  But it is Apple that has (or had) things screwed up, not me. Apple decided that since the contacts are already in the cloud, contacts didn't need to be part of the iPhone backup.  The idea was to save space in the backup. 

    Trust me, I had plenty of iPhone backups.  iPhone backups do not include backups of your contacts.  You can test it if you want. Delete your contacts and then restore your phone to an earlier date.  I dare you to do it without exporting your contacts.  

  • Reply 152 of 161
    ash471ash471 Posts: 705member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post









    Syncing is a hard problem because if you deliberately delete contact A you want that deletion to propagate but if you, or the OS, deleted all contacts automatically you don't. A solution is some kind of recoverable trash or versioning for contacts.



    Agreed.  I think a recovery system is critical to any cloud storage system. And so is file sharing with other accounts.

     

    And that is exactly why Apple has their head up their a$$.  Why don't they just copy DropBox. How hard can it be? A college CS dropout could figure this out.  Why can't Apple with its 40,000 employees and $180 billion in the bank figure it out.  

     

    Dropbox is not confusing.  There is no need to make it more simple. Just copy. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  

  • Reply 153 of 161
    ash471ash471 Posts: 705member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismY View Post








    I'm not sure why you think Apple has iCloud right. Most of us bitching in this article are probably like me and have 10's of thousands of dollars worth of Apple hardware and recognize good products when we see them.  iCloud is $hit.

  • Reply 154 of 161
    undefined
  • Reply 155 of 161
    ash471ash471 Posts: 705member

    I bought iCloud storage before I realized that iCloud doesn't let you share folders with other people like DropBox does. (i.e., you can't set up a shared folder and let people with other accounts add to or delete from the shared folder).  In other words, Apple is not even attempting to take on DropBox.  They need to make that clear to users.  iCloud is simply "online storage" and syncing between your own devices.

  • Reply 156 of 161

    For me, Mobile Me 'just worked.' Uploaded pics to my Gallery. Able to share them with all publicly or by invite, including persons using Windows computers. Instructions appeared simple & concise for PHOTO SHARING. With current iCloud Photo Sharing, it appears that photos can ONLY be shared with Apple devices using up-to-date software (makes sense), but not with users of PC's or other devices (non-sense). So, my experience with iCloud is, if I share pics of a family event with invited family members, only those with Apple devices can see them, & the rest of the family can't. I had that ability with Mobile Me, which appears to have been removed by Apple when it 'upgraded' me to the new opportunity of iCloud.

     

    All I am asking is that they add back into iCloud Photo Sharing, the capability the share photos with other devices, such as was technically capable years ago in Mobile Me. A similar capability was just added to the iCloud iWork Suite:

     

    http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/02/13/iwork-for-icloud-now-available-to-users-who-dont-own-apple-hardware

     

    For reference:

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe

     

    http://www.brighthub.com/computing/mac-platform/articles/20197.aspx

  • Reply 157 of 161
    pmcdpmcd Posts: 396member
    Going back to mac.com Apple has never gotten the cloud right. I don't know why but it just doesn't seem to be their forte. They are great at so many things but just terrible when it comes to internet based products. They need a whole new team looking into this, maybe people not at Apple.
  • Reply 158 of 161
    ash471 wrote: »

    I'm not sure why you think Apple has iCloud right. Most of us bitching in this article are probably like me and have 10's of thousands of dollars worth of Apple hardware and recognize good products when we see them.  iCloud is $hit.

    400 400 400
    400 400 400
    400 400 400
  • Reply 159 of 161
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    ash471 wrote: »
    I bought iCloud storage before I realized that iCloud doesn't let you share folders with other people like DropBox does. (i.e., you can't set up a shared folder and let people with other accounts add to or delete from the shared folder).  In other words, Apple is not even attempting to take on DropBox.  They need to make that clear to users.  iCloud is simply "online storage" and syncing between your own devices.

    So Apple are now responsible for your inability to read?
    How would you word this "we're not like Dropbox" marketing? Should they also add other services they're not like? Here, I'll start you off;

    "And for the assumptive idiots out there..."

    (By the way. Apple services used to be able to share files across the web 15 years ago, it was just a crap idea)
  • Reply 160 of 161

    I would suggest that apple did a fast one on these people by removing the 32 GB option knowing that the price difference would probably "encourage" existing users to continue with16GB versions of the new phone. Its quite obvious, but honestly, rather dirty and unexpected tactics.

     

    The problem exists, customers are getting tired... so it needs a amenable solution. the obvious one would be increase size of "free" icloud storage...simpleeesss everyone would be smiling and Apple would come out smelling like roses

     

    PS (Im a sucker so bought the 128GB version im not talking about myself..just for your info)

Sign In or Register to comment.