I know people from those teams as well. Pretty sure Siri, iTunes Match, iTunes Store, App Store, iMessages, iCloud etc use just a little bit of data so clearly they aren't idiots.
And with the acquisition of the guys from FoundationDB pretty sure they will have at least some skill in high end database engineering.
You just listed a bunch of broken products that do nothing but make me skeptical of apple even being able to properly store my data, let alone analyze it.
imessages is notorious for not even being able to deliver messages in order many times. It is easily apples worst service, and should be brain dead simple.
App Store is s bare minimum store that's only real change since its inception was just now supporting videos and a higher reliance on curation (because they can't possibly figure out more automated ways). It loads horribly, and barely has any helpfulness in suggesting new apps. Search is a mess that will often not give you an exact string matchas the first result. It's a joke compared to a real online store like Amazon, and it doesn't even have physical products or difficult problems like figuring out shipping.
iCloud has had repeated public embarrassments, and can't seem to guarantee basic uptime and service despite being overpriced, and IsItself the result of several relaunches due to predecessors making such a bad reputation for themselves (.mac, MobileMe).
Siri was a purchase, and despite having is integration does not compete that great against Google now. Same goes with mapping of course.
Apple may get good at services someday, but that day is not now.
1. iMessages is not dead simple. Not sure if you've ever worked on highly concurrent, real time systems but they are never as trivial as it seems to the lay outsider. And whilst I can't comment on it getting messages out of order (never happened to anyone I know) it isn't widespread based on media reports.
2. Not sure why you are comparing App Store with Amazon when Apple has an equivalent: the Apple Online Store. It does have physical products and has to deal with figuring out shipping across multiple regions. It's actually comparable to Amazon since they both use the microtransactions approach to billing.
3. iCloud is free up to 5GB and isn't hugely overpriced compared to Google Drive/Dropbox given that it isn't just a drive. Agreed that it has a checkered past but actually is pretty good given that it has more functionality than what Google or Microsoft provides.
4. Siri was initially a purchase but was completely rebuilt on a pretty impressive Mesos based architecture. It is a world apart from what it was originally and as I've mentioned below the integration of Cue and Spotsetter should make them far more competitive with Google Now.
I am not saying that Apple is the best at services but I think people grossly underestimate the scale at which Apple is operating with some of their services.
> 2. Not sure why you are comparing App Store with Amazon when Apple has an equivalent: the Apple Online Store. It does have physical products and has to deal with figuring out shipping across multiple regions. It's actually comparable to Amazon since they both use the microtransactions approach to billing.
Are you serious? The idea that Apple's online store is even vaguely comparable to Amazon in terms of complexity is just laughable. To start with, Amazon sells essentially everything Apple's store does - plus millions of other products too. And unlike Apple, they're tracking a wide variety of promotions and offers over those millions of products. Then we can talk about all the third-party providers that also sell via Amazon. And how many orders of magnitude more difficult Amazon's search problem is. Not to mention Amazon's recommendation engine. Or the order of magnitude more online users and transactions (Apple's user base is in the same ballpark, but how many of them buy online vs in-store or via a retailer or carrier?). And on and on.
1. Here you go, first result from Google search: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4408578?start=0&tstart=.... Problem starts in 2012, still going end of 2014. 50,000 views. My current issue with iMessages is the completely random behavior of whether my computer or phone will get the message. Before iMessage it was pretty deterministic, now its like a game! The frequent solution is to text my iMessage email AND phone number, so then I'm in a group message with myself.
Its dead simple because other services seem to have figured this out. Twitter does actual real time systems, and its not 1-to-1. Slack meanwhile seems to have no trouble delivering me messages. iMessage however is the outlier here, maybe because they don't live and die on this system like the others I mentioned. If you're going to make a new system to replace the old one (text messages), make sure it works first.
2. The comparison is because it is a strictly easier problem and they still do strictly worse. If you want to compare Apple Online Store to Amazon Online Store, the report card is equally bad: imagine if every time Amazon added a new major product they took the ENTIRE STORE DOWN FOR HOURS.
3. It seems to me that iCloud is the thing that is more like "just a drive". Google has Photos, Calendars, and email too, so I'm not sure what you're referring to with all this Google comparison. 5GB is kind of nothing when we start talking photos and email, and Google actually does cool stuff with my Photos, and Dropbox still hilariously feels more integrated with the OS than iCloud, not to mention having integration with other services.
The truth of the matter is that they do bare minimum on all their services, which is FINE btw -- just absurd to claim they have any special competence in the area. Nothing about their services stands out, with each one its literally one step above nothing which would be unacceptable. With email they NEED some basic email to give you with your devices. With the App Store they NEED some way for you to get apps. With the online store they NEED some way for you to order products.
Now compare Apple to Apple (ha): look at their absolutely, everyone agrees, stellar physical stores. Thats something to write home about. Look at their amazing supply chain where they can replace or fix a phone in hours -- truly surprising every time I go in. This is something they have clear core competency in.
Its dead simple because other services seem to have figured this out. Twitter does actual real time systems, and its not 1-to-1. Slack meanwhile seems to have no trouble delivering me messages.
I can confirm these problems. When I had an iPhone and iMessage, they were out of order all the time, and delivered unpredictably.
However, Slack, Twitter, etc. are not solving the same problems. iMessage does end-to-end encryption and has perfect forward secrecy (which, if I understand correctly, implies that they need to re-key fairly often).
