Recently the father of a friend of mine tried to send me a photo that he had taken of my wife and I on our wedding day. The platform with which he chose to share his photo with me was iCloud, one of the more recent additions to Apple's suit of polished uber-products.
'This should be easy', I thought as I clicked the download link in the email.
As a seasoned software developer, owner of a digital agency and 'nerd shepherd' ( a term coined for me by the best man at my wedding ) I would normally have classified such a task as 'trivial'.
A task like this should be trivial. Sharing a photo over the Internet is something that even the most technically inept user should be able to accomplish in this modern age of tablet computing, fast Internet and wifi fridges.
Upon clicking this link, the assumption was that the photo would instantly appear in my downloads folder, ready to be processed, printed and generally appreciated by my friends and family.
But no.
Without boring you with the technical detail, what followed was a mind boggling two hour journey through a labyrinth of terrible user interfaces, software incompatibilities and requests for my credit card details. And all this from Apple, the supposed world leader in product & software design.
I'm sure that if I was part of the warm, fuzzy Apple ecosystem where everybody is under 25, good looking & slightly smug with a myriad of overpriced, milled aluminium Apple products at their fingertips, then upon clicking this link the photo would have been instantly assimilated, via iCloud, into my iPhoto, iTunes, iPhone, iPad and any other general iObject in my possession. Unfortunately however iCloud doesn't work on Android (without a lot of hacking anyway), which makes it about as much use to me as a small piece of used cling film.
The thing about these brand ecosystems is that they are great if you completely buy into them. If however, like me, you prefer to pick and choose your products based on the quality of the product and not just the brand then it can make things a little difficult. I, for example, run an iMac on my desk, a macbook when I travel, an Android tablet, a kindle and an Android phone.
It's for this very reason that building an ecosystem isn't a great long term strategy for a technology company like Apple. Sony tried it in the naughties with their own brand memory cards - the 'Memory Stick' - but gave up when consumers got wise to the fact that they were no better than normal memory cards, just a lot more expensive.
Apple have been steadily nursing their ecosystem since their return to glory a decade ago and are still releasing proprietary technologies such as their ridiculous Thunderbolt interface, which nobody ever uses, and their Lightning phone connector, which is no different to USB just more expensive and less flexible. It is a strategy that works as long as you can guarantee that you will always be able to manufacture the best products on the market, because then you can justify the increased price and people won't mind being locked in.
With Apple however, though they kicked off a revolution with the iPhone, it is no secret that they have been lagging behind Android for a couple of years now in the mobile handset market. The iPhone 5 looks like a dinosaur next to some of newer Android handsets that have recently been coming onto the market and is woefully underpowered and expensive in comparison. As a result the exodus to Android is well underway with thousands of die hard Apple fans making the leap every day.
On the computing front, Apple's recent, quite preposterous decision to glue the battery, memory and hard drives into all of their new macbooks has disillusioned a large proportion of the tech community, who were arguably the early adopters that helped Apple onto world domination in first place.
If they want to make devices that are un-repairable and un-upgradeable then I, along with many other techies out there, certainly won't be buying them.
To keep their precious ecosystem intact Apple will need to pull some pretty amazing stuff out of their hat very soon. While other tech companies are pushing ahead with wearable devices such as Google's Glass and Samsung's Smart watch, all Apple seem to be doing is putting smug videos on YouTube featuring Jony Ive rabbiting on about some mediocre iteration of a device that was invented when Steve Jobs was still alive. If only they could bring back Steve for some revolutionary inspiration.
I did find a solution to my photo problem in the end. It took many hours of sweary frustration and a good dose of wristpain before I finally gave up, replied to my friend's father and asked him to send me the photo via Dropbox.
This article appeared in the March 2014 edition of Gallery magazine. Thanks to the team there for letting me put it on my blog too!
