ICloud and Apple’s truth: can you win if you don’t play?

It seems to me that Topolsky's complaint can be summarized as, "Apple is is messing this up by not providing a web-based front end to these services, a front end with which I can access my iCloud data from any device, anywhere."

But do 80% - 90% of customers want this? Doesn't the complaint that iCloud services are not accessible from any computer rest on the assumption that people are frequently accessing their data from different computers? What are the reasons someone would do this? I could think of a time a few years ago when, say, I was at a friend's house, sans laptop, and needed to check my email, so I logged into Gmail, etc, but I have my smartphone now. The email is with me on the go. Where is the data to support the claim that consumers use web services frequently on anywhere other than their own computers? I'd like to see that.

And I think Apple had a study sample in MobileMe that showed that even with web front ends to the 3 arguably most important on-the-go services: contacts, calendar, and email, that customers rejected (or didn't need) the web app because they owned smartphones! What's more, this is a biased sample, the customers who found the service so compelling that they paid $99 a year for it. It was very likely that the data showed that the web apps were by and large ignored.

Apple's iCloud represents a bet that the rest of the Internet services--Google, Flikr, Facebook, can take the other side on, and we'll still be able to use those services on Apple products.

I don't know on what information the article is based and really doubt that Apple will not provide at least some sort of web access. And iOS users aren't forced to use iCloud - GMail, Dropbox and all the others will still be available ... even in iOS.

But Joshua Topolsky mixes two aspects here: Having (limited) web access vs. providing full-fledged web apps that make a native app obsolete.

Apple is selling hardware and therefore is interested in pushing native apps instead of web apps. Google on the other hand sells no hardware and uses web apps to sell advertising. These are completely different approaches.

Moreover, its not really fair to write down a product that was just announced, is 3 months from release and wasn't seen and used by anyone.

I agree completely. Apple's stance on the web is confusing. On the one hand they do make an excellent browser, so they must understand that it's important to their customers. Yet on the other hand I feel that iCloud is them finally saying that they will not participate in the web economy.

I don't know how consumers will react to this. I don't know if the convenience of signing up for iCloud because you have an iPhone is more important than the inconvenience of not being able to check your mail anywhere. It doesn't work for me though. If I'm shopping for a new computer or a new phone and I have to stop and consider whether or not it is compatible with my email provider; it's time to ditch the email provider.

It simply doesn't make business sense for Apple to build a suite of web apps. Their business is built on hardware sales. Web apps commoditize hardware.

They don't want customers asking themselves why they're buying shiny expensive Apple hardware when they could get 95% of the same experience on any computer or mobile device with a modern browser.