14 DAY TRIAL // Apple is having serious “organizational issues” when it comes to the products and services associated with remote access and cloud syncing, according to a number of people familiar with these matters, including current employees.
A well-connected industry source reveals this week that, although Apple builds and seamlessly integrates hardware and software like no other, “it has long struggled to build services reliant on software that runs remotely rather than on devices.”
iCloud is in “deep” trouble
Almost a dozen current and former Apple employees reveal to The Information that, “while company executives say they are making progress,” things are quite different in reality. “Deep organizational issues are holding up releases and complicating products,” according to the interviews.
The report stops here for those who aren’t on the list of subscribers, while members can go on to learn that Apple’s “photo vision” in particular has yet to materialize. The company is experiencing grave problems in the iCloud Photo department, including ties to the upcoming Photos app for OS X.
Many of the things associated with photo syncing across devices and Apple apps have been delayed because of those aforementioned “organizational” hurdles, according to the employees.
iCloud Photo Library will reportedly remain incomplete for at least a few months, which means that Photos could also be delayed. However, unlike with other products waiting on the launchpad (i.e. Apple Watch), Photos doesn’t have a definitive release date yet.
An eternal problem at Apple
While the news certainly isn’t pleasant for anyone in the Apple ecosystem, it’s also something we could’ve easily guessed on our own. In fact, we often wondered why Apple never fixed some widely reported CDN problems (particularly visible in this part of the world), or its System Status page which 99 percent of the time says that everything is A-okay when, in fact, one or more iCloud services are acting up.
iMessage, for instance, is highly unreliable at times. Apple Maps has been plagued by cloud problems as well, and the same goes for Siri. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that, when Apple fires a bunch of people (including one of its top executives) over such blunders, things aren’t exactly smooth as silk internally.
Let’s not forget that the transition from MobileMe to iCloud has been a painful one for everyone involved, including Steve Jobs, who reportedly threw a tantrum when Apple’s first attempts at creating a reliable cloud failed.
Hopefully, this time around Apple won’t have to fire more people to get the show on the road. Frankly, the iPhone maker was the last company we expected to struggle with “organizational” issues for this long.
