6 ms·

Wouldn't this make a successful iCloud even more embarrassing for Microsoft? They have the technology, but can't market it or make it easy for consumers to use?

• jharrison 15y ago
  And how bad would it be if it wasn't so successful? Apple gets to point fingers at Microsoft for not being able to keep up if things go south.
  • pyre 15y ago
    That would only matter if Apple was having infrastructure problems. If people just didn't want the product, those claims wouldn't make sense.
    • varikin 15y ago
      From a logical standpoint, you are correct. From a marketing or political (business, no government politics), Apple could blame Microsoft for iCloud failing, regardless of the truth, to a point. To put it another way, I frequently tell people "Businesses choose Java because if it fails, it isn't because they choose Java." This means that if the Director of IT says to build with the industry standard of Java (or .Net), it is not the Directors fault if/when the project fails. The project manager, the developers, QA, middle management, etc failed to do it correctly. It is a safe choice since it is industry standard and thus well proven. If it takes longer and costs more, it means it was a much more difficult problem then they expected, but since they used Java they got it working. If on the other hand, they went with Rails/Django/Node.js/Erlang/NoSQL/etc, and it fails, the Director chose to use "new and untested" technologies, he/she is the root cause. Regardless of the fact that it could just be that realistic goals/management were never used. I am not trying to say Azure is industry standard or the safe choice, but the way to shift blame is the same.
      • felipemnoa 15y ago
        Considering the amount of none trivial work about having to port your apps from one Rails version to the next I would be surprised if the Director didn't get part or most of the blame for forcing them to use Rails. And saying that they could just stay in an old version is not valid. When bugs are discovered in the old version most likely they will not be fixed because everybody has already moved on. Enterprise projects already have a high rate of failure and building it on a platform that has a history of making substantial changes on every new version is a really, really bad idea. An honest risk analysis of the enterprise project would raise a huge red flag for using a technology that continues to change substantially in every version such that it is not backwards compatible.
        • varikin 15y ago
          And it was non-trivial to go from Java 1.4 to 1.5.
          • felipemnoa 15y ago
            With all due respect, I don't know what you are talking about. Programs in 1.4 run fine in 1.5. Every time there is a new version of Java I install it in my machine and just continue working as usual. I would be really upset if I had to spend time trying to make everything work again with every new version. They deprecate methods and functionality but they do not remove it. Java is not that much older than Ruby/Rails and it is pretty stable. Ruby/Rails may be great but I really don't want to go through the pain of having to port my code to the next version. I rather spend my time on adding new features. Even Android, which is many times younger, never does this. Everything is always backwards compatible. Android developers would be up in arms if they just decided to break all apps in a new version of Android. Granted, it could still happen because nobody is perfect. Although it has never happened in any of my apps and I don't know if it has ever happened at all except for the early Beta period. When something is no longer supported they deprecate the functionality but do not remove it.
            • speleding 15y ago
• smackfu 15y ago
  Dollars is dollars.
• plasma 15y ago
  I don't think so. Apple are most likely wanting to concentrate on their core competency (making the iCloud product) and not have to worry about (more) data centers/storage/etc to support the product. As others mentioned it sounds like a good win for both parties; Apple get to concentrate on the product directly, Microsoft get to concentrate on their code competency (providing the hosting).
• statictype 15y ago
  Of course not. It's akin to saying any successful Rails app is an embarrassment to 37signals because they had the technology to create it but didn't.
  • misuse-permit 15y ago
    I think Karl meant infrastructure, not technology.
    • statictype 15y ago
      Well, I think my reply stands. What I'm trying to say is that just because Apple made a successful product on top of Microsoft's infrastructure, it doesn't reflect badly on Microsoft that they didn't do it first - with Azure, it wasn't their intention to build a cloud-based product - it was their intention to build an infrastructure to support cloud-based products.
      • pyre 15y ago
        Your analogy would only make sense if 37Signals was actively trying to compete in the Rails startup's space.
  • j_baker 15y ago
    Yes, in the land where everyone is logical and only makes decisions based on pure reason, that's true. But on planet earth, people act irrationally. From a strictly logical sense, it's meaningless. But symbolically, it says a lot. The fact that Microsoft failed at something and then got bested by someone using their technology is symbolic of how far Microsoft has fallen.
    • bad_user 15y ago
      Microsoft shines when they provide infrastructure, not finished products (with a few exceptions). Services like Azure are what Microsoft should be about.
  • 15y ago
• pedalpete 15y ago
  Microsoft has 'cloud services' baked into Windows Phone, but doesn't have the market penetration for the product recognition. In the current release, contacts are automatically synced, I'm not sure about calendars, and photos, video and I think office can be set to automatically sync. From my understanding there is deeper integration in the next release (Mango). So Microsoft is there and doing it, but they aren't competing in the same marketing space as Apple, and it seems few people know Windows Phone even exists.
• cageface 15y ago
  It makes sense for Apple to outsource this but I wonder if this is going to limit them down the road. I think Google has a tremendous advantage with their in-house expertise and infrastructure here. My instinct is that it's harder to get that right in the long run than it is to build acceptably user-friendly interfaces. The real connaisseur may continue to prefer Apple UI but Google's good enough for the rest and I won't be surprised if cloud integration becomes the key differentiator down the road. Sun was right on the money when they claimed that "the network is the computer". They were just a decade too early.
  • dillona 15y ago
    There is opensource software (via OpenStack) to run a distributed blob store like this at scale. My guess is Apple just doesn't want the hassle of dealing with it and/or this is temporary while they get their hardware set up
    • cageface 15y ago
      That's like saying that Google's prowess with map-reduce is irrelevant because we also have Hadoop. This stuff is very hard to get right and nobody does it better than Google.
  • Angostura 15y ago
    I wonder whether this is just a function of the beta while they are waiting for the paint to dry on their new data centre.