Why iCloud is Not Business Friendly-Updated

Updat­ed: 5/9/2014

Blog arti­cles can get dat­ed. So when I first wrote this arti­cle in 2011, iCloud was not the best tool for one’s busi­ness. I want­ed to give a brief update since I wrote the blog below. As I write this update, iOS 7 is the cur­rent oper­at­ing sys­tem for iPads/​iPhones. Apple has made a tremen­dous leap for­ward in the busi­ness world by adding some real­ly great updates for busi­ness users. In more recent months, we’ve seen them add Apple Pages, Num­bers & Keynote as stan­dard busi­ness apps. If you are not famil­iar with these three apps, basi­cal­ly it is sim­i­lar to Microsoft­’s Word, Excel and Pow­er­point. By adding these three apps to the desk­top, online ver­sion and mobile apps, iCloud is not a much more busi­ness friend­ly solu­tion for small busi­ness­es. The cal­en­dar fea­tures seem to be the only area that is a lit­tle lack­ing com­pared to Google Cal­en­dar or Microsoft 365. Yet, it will do the job…it can work. If you are try­ing to use less 3^rd par­ty pro­grams and sim­pli­fy things, iCloud for your busi­ness is a good solu­tion. You can use it for your email, cal­en­dar, con­tacts, word doc­u­ments, spread­sheets and pre­sen­ta­tions! You can store your doc­u­ments in iCloud too, but it is still not as pow­er­ful as Drop­box, 365 or Google Dri­ve. What I hope will come soon is that Apple will real­ly make an iCloud for busi­ness. What I mean is that they mar­ket it to busi­ness­es in a way that lets us all know it is ready to han­dle a lot more. It still feels light and ​“per­son­al.” Octo­ber 2011 Blog

First Off, Why Apple Again, David?

Each month, a grow­ing num­ber of con­sumers turn to two mobile devices, Android or Apple, for their per­son­al and/​or busi­ness needs. Although I like Android devices, I have giv­en Apple iPhone two thumbs up for being the most busi­ness friend­ly. Two reasons: 

1. Apple was first to cre­ate the pop­u­lar down­load­ing of ​“Apps.” (i.e. App Store). Why is this impor­tant? Because devel­op­ing an App is expen­sive, and an App on an iPhone does not work on an Android. There­fore, devel­op­ers typ­i­cal­ly cre­ate an Apple App before they cre­ate an Android ver­sion. The Android Apps I’ve tried for busi­ness are typ­i­cal­ly more bug­gy, because Android has a low­er stan­dard for allow­ing Apps; the Android Mar­ket is open source, mean­ing any­one can cre­ate an App and post it. Apple has very strict stan­dards and can take an App off their store at any­time. One good exam­ple is Face­book’s App for the iPhone and Android. The iPhone App is incred­i­ble and has 10x more fea­tures than the Android ver­sion. A busi­ness own­er or employ­ee can man­age a busi­ness page direct­ly from the iPhone App, but not from the Android (yet).
2. It is just a very handy device and fun to use. The Android, to me, as very many cool fea­tures, but Apple has less mov­ing parts on the screen. I get less dis­tract­ed when using the iPhone and find myself play­ing around too much with the Android fea­tures. I stick to busi­ness on the iPhone!

Now for the Update on iCloud for Business

In mid Octo­ber, Apple released what seems to be their biggest soft­ware update ever: IOS 5. It tru­ly is remark­able. I wrote a quick sum­ma­ry of my favorite fea­tures last week. Because it is such a big jump from ver­sion 4 to 5, there are still a few bugs. I’d go ahead and upgrade your iPhones if you have not already, but just know you will encounter a few small bugs. Most of these bugs seem to clear up quick­ly, either on their own or when you restart. I’m sure their first update 5.1 will fix all these crit­ters. Now, Apple is claim­ing their biggest update in IOS 5 is the new iCloud (for­mer­ly MobileMe). What I read about iCloud sound­ed spec­tac­u­lar: updat­ing Apps on mul­ti­ple devices, tak­ing a pho­to on your iPhone and it show­ing up instant­ly on your work/​home com­put­er, file stor­age, email, cal­en­dar sync­ing and shar­ing etc. I also real­ized that Apple sells pri­mar­i­ly to con­sumers and not small busi­ness or Cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. I had many peo­ple ask me what I thought of the new iCloud and if it was a good tool for busi­ness. My answer is sim­ple: iCloud is NOT a good busi­ness tool. It is meant for indi­vid­ual, per­son­al use. Do I like iCloud? Over­all, yes! It is easy to use. But I am very dis­ap­point­ed about a few things: 

1. Only one email per account: A fam­i­ly or even a busi­ness can­not have mul­ti­ple email address­es with­in iCloud. Each per­son has to cre­ate their own iCloud account. The prob­lem with this is…
2. Pho­to Shar­ing is for Per­son­al Usage: Because each per­son needs his or her own iCloud account, the new Pho­to Stream fea­ture does not allow shar­ing with oth­er iCloud users. It works with 1 account only. So as a busi­ness own­er tak­ing pho­tos of a job site or busi­ness activ­i­ty while using Pho­to Stream, the pho­tos will be uploaded and streamed instant­ly to his com­put­er, not to his mar­ket­ing per­son, admin or anoth­er co-work­er. That pret­ty much defeats the purpose.
3. Can’t Delete Pho­tos Eas­i­ly: Apple offers 5GB of Free Stor­age. This will add up fast when you turn on Pho­to Stream. Once you take a pho­to, it uploads to iCloud. You can­not delete indi­vid­ual pho­tos with­in iCloud. So if you take 5 quick shots of a job or per­son, all the bad ones are uploaded with the good ones. Now there are some techie work arounds, but with the first release of iCloud, Pho­tos are there to stay in the clouds. You can delete pho­tos on your phone and com­put­er only. You can also wipe ALL pho­tos off iCloud and start from scratch, but why would any­one want to do that? The idea of iCloud is to help con­sumers be more mobile and save every­thing off site to avoid hard dri­ve crash­es and pro­vide easy access to info on the go.

1. Cal­en­dar and Doc­u­ment Shar­ing Do Not Exist: The bot­tom line is iCloud is for a sin­gle user, you or me. If you want your co work­ers or fam­i­ly to share infor­ma­tion, you can cre­ate 1 iCloud account, but it is not safe and is just not a good idea. iCloud will not replace Egnyte, Drop­box or Google Apps.

What should a busi­ness do with IOS 5 and iCloud? 

I know some of you are think­ing, ​“Run that by me again, Dave. Why is the iPhone bet­ter than the Android?” It is true that Android tech­nol­o­gy is a Google prod­uct, and I like Google. Yet there are too many devices and fea­tures to fig­ure out with Android and only 1 with Apple: the iPhone. That’s it. Also, just because iCloud is not busi­ness friend­ly, does­n’t mean you need to ditch the phone. What I did was this: 1) I basi­cal­ly kept every­thing the same: Synced my Google Apps for Busi­ness account (com­pare with MS Exchange) with my iPhone. 2) I switched from MobileMe to iCloud for per­son­al use. I use my iCloud account for Pho­to Stream­ing so I don’t have to down­load and upload pho­tos to my com­put­er. I then can take those pho­tos on my com­put­er and share the ones I want with oth­ers. 3) I con­tin­ue to use Drop­box and Google Docs for my file stor­age. In short, the new upgrade is busi­ness friend­ly if you cus­tomize it to your lik­ing. I am just not endors­ing the iCloud for busi­ness, and I think Apple would agree with me that it is meant for per­son­al use. I hope Apple releas­es an iCloud for Busi­ness! At this point they are rolling in the dough sell­ing their new prod­uct to indi­vid­u­als. They don’t need to be all things to all peo­ple (just yet). It is good mar­ket­ing. They know their audi­ence!

Your Turn

What do you think of the new iPhone 4S, IOS 5, SIRI, and iCloud? Are you hap­py with the changes Apple made?