Hey Apple: Why Hast Thou Forsaken Us?

I have been an Apple fan boy ever since I owned my first Apple Computer (an Apple IIe) back in 1984. Beyond the aesthetics and hype surrounding Apple, I have always believed, even in dire times, that they had an edge over their competitors. The deep integration of Mac OS with Apple hardware and services made for an unsurpassed user experience that could not be found anywhere else.

As much as I hate to admit it, I have, unfortunately, grown very frustrated over the last few years with their latest services because they don't just work anymore! The philosophy of Apple products used to be about making things simple for the end user by empowering them with metaphorical and intuitive tools that made every task a tap or a click away. Hence, the legions of blind Apple fans that have been blessed by such a wonderful and unbelievable user experience that their dedication to the brand can only be compared to a religion in which Apple Stores are churches, and masses are held by "Genius" priests… One can't help but wonder why services don't end with Apple flavored drinks at the bar.

Ok, ok... I digress… Let's get back to my point:

We now live in the age of cloud computing and I must confess that if there is one thing that Apple never got right it is Cloud & Sync services.

iDisk was their very first attempt at creating an online Hard Drive for Mac users and it was an epic failure… As much as I wanted to use it, I could never understand how they expected me to use such a slow and buggy tool… Upload speeds were close to zero, iDisk would often crash the Finder and files kept disappearing…

The came MobileMe which promised to be "Exchange for the rest of us"… Even Steve Jobs admitted a year after the service was released that it was unreliable and didn't quite fit with all the great products that Apple had.

Then came iCloud that, I'll give you that one, worked for a few years… Syncing contacts, calendars, Notes, Reminders and backing up iPhones & iPads mostly worked as advertised… Mostly because sometimes Apple fan boys that trusted iCloud to back up their iPhone data learned the hard way that iCloud backups were not to be trusted as they would sometimes only partially restore their data when in need to do so…

But Apple didn't learn from their mistakes… They went on to release iCloud Photo Library which promised to solve everyone's problems with photos and videos by automatically syncing them to the cloud and across computers… What a brilliant idea… If only it had just worked…

I was one of the first users to blindly install the update as soon as it became available. After a whole week of uploading 100Gb worth of data, I came to the painful realization that the service magically resurrected long deleted photos that were not present on any of my iOS or Mac computers… To put it in a simple way: Apple had kept hidden from me pictures that I thought were gone forever after I had carefully deleted them from my camera roll, photo stream, and deleted pictures folder… This is just not acceptable in terms of privacy.

Although this may have disastrous consequences in the lives of many, it keeps getting worse as iCloud Photo Library (the one and only stop Apple would want you to think of when it comes to saving & syncing hundreds of gigabytes of photos & videos) can't deal with large photo libraries… Oh wait ??? Isn't this service all about such huge libraries?

Well… I have 100Gb worth of photos and videos. I use an iPhone 6 Plus with 128Gb of memory and have activated the "optimize iPhone storage" option for photos & videos (otherwise I wouldn't have much memory left to use my iPhone for anything else).

Every time an app needs to access my photos it takes about 15 seconds… I can only name two apps that behave correctly in doing so: Facebook & Instagram. Those 2 apps actually access, by default, the most recent photos instead of accessing my entire library. This is an easy and simple work around that every app should use and most importantly that Apple should enforce and write guidelines about. Unfortunately, none of these measures have been implemented since iCloud Photo Library was released more than 6 months ago.

When I take a picture, it sometimes takes 30 seconds to show up in my camera roll (using the buit-in camera app and camera roll)…

For the last 6 months, I have been dreading doing anything that involves photos or videos on my iPhone 6 Plus and iPad because I know that I am going to have to wait 30 seconds for any task related to this… This is not acceptable…

There are forums describing this problem which seems to appear with Photo Libraries that have more than 25.000 pictures… I have 52.000 pictures and 600 videos in mine…

So, as sad as I am to announce this: I'm not gonna buy Apple's next iPhone and am switching to Android as I have lost faith in Apple which made my user experience a nightmare for the last 6 months.

So long Apple…

The Holy Grail Of Synchronization

As you might have figured, I'm a bit of a geek and if there is one field of computing that my friends agree I'm knowledgeable about it is data synchronization. Until we see the day where cloud storage becomes mainstream and total (by that I mean literally running a virtual machine in the clouds with not even on OS on the local host), we will have to deal with fragmented services. As a matter of fact, if you want to back-up your data online or synchronize it among different computers, you will need to use different services. Having synced data across multiple computers and phones for years, I consider myself quite proficient (with my usual modesty) in this field. So, here is what I would suggest for anyone that would like to keep multiple devices in sync:

- For Contacts, Calendar, Notes & Tasks: In my experience and as much as I hate to admit it, nothing beats Microsoft Exchange. There are great companies that offer hosted Exchange services for a small fee. I've been using 123Together.com for the past 3 years and have been very happy with them. For less than US$ 15 per month, I get a great service and I don't have to deal with the expenses and maintenance costs of having my own Exchange server installed on a local computer.

Thanks to 123Together, I can keep all my contacts, Calendar, Notes & Tasks in sync across 3 macs, one PC, one iPad (soon 2) and all my iPhones. Their monthly service also includes an Outlook 2007 license. As for macs, iPads and iPhones, they're natively compatible with Exchange 2007.  If you would like to sync your Notes and Tasks on your iPhone as well, I recommend the IMExchange app that works like a charm (Notes & Tasks aren't supported natively on iOS devices).

I have tried different solutions in the past but none work as well as Microsoft Exchange. MobileMe is unreliable at best, tethered syncing from one device to another sucks big time. Gmail offers the ability to push sync contacts, calendars & emails natively to your iPhone but it won't support desktop syncing (unless you get a premium account).

- For syncing files and data backup: Besides making frequent backups of my computers on external hard drives, I also use an online backup service. My service of choice is SugarSync. Not only does it allow me to backup all my data online, it also lets me sync folders across multiple computers. A pure blessing when using multiple computers! I can save a file in a synced folder on my iMac at work and when I get home in the evening it will be sitting in the same folder on my home PC. SugarSync also released an iPhone and Android app which lets you access all of you synced data from your phone and view or send it from anywhere. In case of a fire at your home, all your important files will still be available and retrievable on their servers!

Dropbox offers a similar service but is a lot less flexible when it comes to syncing multiple folders or different sets of folders from one computer to another.

If you have further questions, don't hesitate to drop it in the comments, I'll be more than happy to help!