Katie Marsal
Apple's work-in-progress iCloud Photo Library still hasn't fully realized the original concept, code-named "Hyperion," that was pushed years ago by late company co-founder Steve Jobs, according to a new report.
Jobs was said to be particularly fond of the Hyperion photo syncing project, according to a new report from Jessica E. Lessin of The Information. But even the new iCloud Photo Library, which missed its deadline and remains in beta, is not yet what Jobs and others at Apple had envisioned.
Its predecessor, Photo Stream, would sync a user's most recent photos captured on their iPhone. iCloud Photo Library syncs all images and is paired with new, cheaper iCloud storage plans.
But Apple is said to have had problems in rolling out iCloud Photo Library, which people familiar with the operation say is as a result of the company's internal structure. Specifically, sources told Lessin that Apple has been hampered by not having a "centralized team working on core cloud infrastructure."
Developers at Apple are reportedly expected to build "nearly everything on their own," while the iPhone maker also lacks a product manager overseeing the entire iCloud Photo Library project.
"One person close to the company says Apple is taking some steps to build some common cloud technology but has moved slowly in part because it's used to projects residing in isolated teams," the report said.
iCloud Photo Library will tap into a new Photos application for OS X Yosemite, but that wasn't completed in time for the launch of the new Mac operating system. Apple has said that Photos for Yosemite will debut in early 2015.
In fact, iCloud Photo Library wasn't even ready for the debut of iOS 8 in September. Apple allowed select users to opt in to the beta service at launch, before making access to the beta more widely available with the release of iOS 8.1 in October.
On the Web, too, the photo syncing service has seen a gradual rollout. Last week, iCloud.com users gained the ability to upload images to their photo library, though support remains limited only to .JPG files, and does not accept images in any other format.
Jobs himself took the wraps off iCloud in 2011, and promised that it would be a step up from its predecessor, MobileMe, which he said was not Apple's "finest hour." Apple hasn't provided an update on the total number of iCloud accounts since mid-2013, when it said there were 300 million active users.
Cloud services like Apple's iCloud have come under public scrutiny this year, in the wake of a large number of private celebrity photos that were leaked online. Apple has said that any stolen images were a result of weak passwords, not vulnerabilities in the iCloud service.
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67 Comments
Nice to see AppleInsider isn't above republishing this unsubstantiated bullshit, nor Macrumors (which falls over itself to do so).
"While company executives say they are making progress, interviews with nearly a dozen current and former Apple employees paint a different picture."
Yeah, sounds like complete hose-shit. As if "current employees" are going to give "interviews" and offer anything of substance. Apple is taking it's time rolling out iCloud features, and making sure they get things right. Isn't that the right thing to do? iCloud Drive, extensions, iCloud photo library, etc are pretty big leaps from what we had before. Everyone starts shrieking when there's any kind of bug in any Apple service, and they start bitching and whining when Apple spends time to get it right. Every month we get an article describing "deep issues" within Apple, and we have yet to see real-world results of these "issues" beyond record smashing sales and profits. Click whoring at its finest. It's funny, Google's web services are buggy as **** (get weird error messages everyday) but somehow thats not a big deal, even though thats Google's core business.
Also, what's up with this reporters nose?
Cook needs to hire someone to run their cloud services. I think Eddy is plenty busy with iTunes, AppStore ?Pay and ?TV.
Doomed. Those iPhone sales, tho.... Not only have Apple managed to push out the best iPhone they've ever made (both of them), but they've yet again produced the finest smartphone (both of them) the market has ever seen. The iPhone was released in June 2007, and to this very day it remains the single most sought-after piece of consumer tech, bar none. It's not by accident. They'll get iCloud sorted out. All those services have to run on something, and Apple hardware - running iOS - is without peer. Just ask the competition how important cloud services are when the user is forced to experience them through shitty hardware and terrible user interfaces. I'm sure either Samsung and Microsoft could give, say, around 10 million reasons why they aren't. Over a weekend.
[quote name="Slurpy" url="/t/183576/lack-of-centralized-cloud-infrastructure-team-hampering-apples-development-of-icloud-services-report#post_2644142"]Nice to see AppleInsider isn't above republishing this unsubstantiated bullshit, nor Macrumors (which falls over itself to do so). "[COLOR=333333]While company executives say they are making progress, interviews with nearly a dozen current and former Apple employees paint a different picture."[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]Yeah, sounds like complete hose-shit. As if "current employees" are going to give "interviews" and offer anything of substance. Apple is taking it's time rolling out iCloud features, and making sure they get things right. Isn't that the right thing to do? iCloud Drive, extensions, iCloud photo library, etc are pretty big leaps from what we had before. Everyone starts shrieking when there's any kind of bug in any Apple service, and they start bitching and whining when Apple spends time to get it right. Every month we get an article describing "deep issues" within Apple, and we have yet to see real-world results of these "issues" beyond record smashing sales and profits. Click whoring at its finest. It's funny, Google's web services are buggy as **** (get weird error messages everyday) but somehow thats not a big deal, even though thats Google's core business. [/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]Also, what's up with this reporters nose? [/COLOR] [/quote] This isn't coming from a tabloid like Business Insider. Jessica Lessin is a respected journalist. I doubt tabloid "hose-shit" would be behind a paywall.
In the time of Jobs, Apple's start-up mentality served it well.
Now, it needs to start behaving like Microsoft and actually get organised.
It’s clear that there has been nothing other than mundane iteration for some years, and that appears to be the case for the next several years, due to the lack of any technological breakthrough. Apple should therefore use this breathing space to do the boring stuff: bug-squashing and refinement. Those are the things that will have the greatest impact on users and be most likely to cultivate productivity.