Even Apple's Biggest Defenders Say iCloud Is In A 'Calamitous State'

Screenshot of Apple keynoteSteve Jobs introducing iCloudApple has a service called iCloud. It doesn't work as well as it should, and even Apple's biggest defenders concede its a real problem.

iCloud is supposed to allow users to sync photos, emails, video, music and lots of other data between their iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It's also supposed to allow the people who build apps for iPhones, iPads, and Macs to build in data-syncing.

The problem is that, for this second use, iCloud doesn't always work very well.

Yesterday, The Verge's Ellis Hamburger published a massive story on the topic, calling iCloud "Apple's broken promise."

Hamburger writes, "Customers demand iCloud integration more than ever from third-party developers, but it’s a total mess to implement."

The story goes on to quote lots of developers complaining about iCloud and Apple.

Here's how you know Hamburger is on to something. Two of Apple's loudest – sometimes crankiest – defenders on the Internet linked to his story and gave it high compliments.

Daring Fireball's John Gruber, who gets private briefings with Apple executives before product launches, once called a story by Busines Insider's Steve Kovach "jacktastic," because it said that Samsung was out-innovating Apple lately.

But yesterday, he linked to Hamburger's story and called it a "devastating piece" on "the calamitous state of iCloud Core Data syncing: users want it, but it simply doesn’t work reliably."

Late last year, Gruber wrote post suggesting that iCloud is so bad, Apple should actually spend billions of dollars acquiring Dropbox.

He wrote:

One recurrent theme I see in nearly every single “how I write on the iPad” story is Dropbox. It’s the linchpin in the workflow. Scary, because Dropbox is outside Apple’s control. Scary, because if not for Dropbox, many of these people would not be using their iPads as much as they are. Scary, because Apple’s iCloud falls short of Dropbox.

Then there's The Loop's Jim Dalrymple.

Dalrymple is an almost comically intense Apple partisan on the Internet. Once, All Things D's Peter Kafka once noted that Apple doesn't break out sales figures for the iPad Mini. For this crime, Dalrymple wrote a blog post calling Kafka an "assclown." Rude.

But yesterday, Dalrymple linked to Hamburger's story and said: "Ellis Hamburger wrote a great piece about why we haven’t seen more app developers supporting iCloud."

There's a reason iCloud's failures are so important to Apple defenders like Gruber and Dalrymple.

In our increasingly Internet-connected world, consumers will have the simple expectation that their software and data will travel with them for device to device.

If Apple can't meet that expectation, someone else will. Probably Google, maybe Amazon or Samsung.