Nowhere is Apple's rudderlessness more apparent than their cloud "strategy."

>– Strategy: catch up to Google cloud services and leapfrog them (Photo Stream, cloud storage)

iCloud is an embarrassment. I can't tell you how many people I have met who dont understand why their phone stops backing up, and that they need to pay $1/m for more space. To absolutely ruin someones ios mobile experience over $12 is inexcusable. iCloud and iTunes backups are completely incompatible. If you attempt to use both you end up with forked independent backups. To check all of your available iCloud restore points, you either need to call Apple Support and confirm the times or wipe a device and get back to the restore screen. Let me repeat that: you need to ERASE YOUR PHONE TO CHECK __IF__ A BACKUP EXISTS. Then there is iCloud Drive, iCloud Backup, yet I cant browse through backups in the cloud, I can only do a full restore to a device.

Photos has "iCloud Photo Library" "My Photo Stream" "iCloud Photo Sharing" etc. And iCloud has Photo backup in the iCloud section of settings. How many different ways is Apple going to reinvent localstore, sync, cloudbackup, sharing of photos? It's almost starting to feel like its too late for them to catch up to Google Photos. It is a telltale sign of rottenness in Denmark that Google Photos is coming to the rescue to save Apple users FROM a lack of unified iPhoto/iCloud backup+share.

My Passbook/Wallet needs to be recreated every time I set up a device?

Apple needs three things

1) a visionary. a leader who makes arbitrary design decisions and cuts through committee banality and risk aversion. Someone a tiny bit reckless, ready to make bold decisions that dont have statistics to back them up. A person actually forging a unique strategy path through the untamed cloud wilderness. The current level of cohesiveness and interoperability IS NOT GOOD for a company trying to compete in the 2016 cloud space. Microsoft Teams is Microsoft merging Exchange/Sharepoint/Skype into one interface. Apple should be scared by how independent they have left their software silos. There has been no movement whatsoever.

2) to start spending its cash reserves on acquiring fully fleshed out software companies. Microsoft needed a mobile Mail app? They acquire the team and software and rename it Outlook. Apple needs to seriously evaluate every piece of Office/Productivity software that Google and Microsoft (and Adobe and Facebook) make, and acquire a competitor. And not roll the team into their existing product, but SCRAP their existing product and migrate the data over cleanly. They should look at the best apps in the apps store, that dont have Microsoft and Google competitors, and buy those too, thus making their Office and Productivity suite unique. Buying Adobe might be a good start. Adobe's Marketing Cloud would position Apple in a new market against Salesforce and Microsoft. Buying Hubspot could do similar. Apple could buy THOUSANDS of the companies represented in its app store, and have first party titles like Nintendo. First party development studios are a great way to attract people to your platform, while letting your other services become cross platform. They should be throwing cash at the wall of potential, nurturing unprofitable but useful/addictive products, and hoping they stumble bassackwards into the next Minecraft or Dropbox before it costs billions. Yet the Valve model of make just a platform, no games, seems to be winning out.

3) recognizing that cross platform software is a gateway drug. A lot of people got into Apple stuff because iPods worked with Windows computers. Apple is where it is because iTunes released for windows and was easier and safer than Napster/Kazaa. They need to recognize that they wont convert everyone from Android and offer Android and Windows versions of their cloud software. If they sow and nurture seeds, iOS wont feel foreign in the event a person decides to finally leave Google or Microsoft. Obviously its important that it work Better on iOS/macOS, but people need to get a taste before they convert to a new ecosystem. Gmail works good on every platform, but it works BETTER with Google Assistant. Apple has 18% mobile marketshare, if they want iMessage to become WhatsApp or Messenger, they need to release it elsewhere, otherwise it will always be second best.

and a bonus fourth thinking a bit outside the box.

4) recognize Yahoo's place in the cloud world is collapsing and offer refugees an alternative. Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Fantasy Football. Maybe buy and save Flickr, and turn Flickr into an iCloud Photos Social network for professional photographers. If only they had a good word they could use to name their nonexistant social cloud product instead of the current word salad they are serving up (hint it's iPhoto.) Apple is very poorly positioned against Instagram, Google Photos, and Adobe Cloud. They should put the effort into Photos that they have into Music and Streaming. Pinterest could be another option. Buy OpenFolio and Robinhood, merge them, and create something better than Yahoo Finance ever was. A finance driven social network could be Apple's way of finally becoming social, without being a "meetoo" like Google+ or a flop like Ping. The state of Fantasy Sports is atrocious, ESPN, NFL, and Yahoo all spend time and effort making their apps worse. CBS is a pay platform minimizing its visibility so most people dont know how good it can be. Can you imagine the cash Apple could print if it was loosely affiliated with sports betting? Apple obviously wants to get into content distribution, and after saying they dont want to acquire ATT, maybe they could look at Medium or The Atavist.

4b) There is a HUGE gap in the world in the Banking/Payment industry. Venmo and Facebook are making payment social. SplitWise could be a great foot in that door. Mint Bills (Check) and the defunct manilla were great cloud bill backups and calendars. Mint and Personal Capital are meta-bank managers that let you see across all your accounts. OpenFolio lets me see all my investments with different companies. Intuit (TurboTax and Mint) have a market cap of 4 billion, buy them.

tldr: Flickr+OpenFolio+Medium+Adobe, and suddenly Apple could be giving Facebook and Google some fair competition, albeit with a lot less AI. Probably let Adobe run the "cloud strategy" part of the company tho.