Steve Jobs fired Mobile Me’s Product Manager for not delivering on the promise. I wonder whether he’d react as strongly to iCloud were he alive.

Despite constant rants from several analysts about the way Apple has limited iCloud’s scope to Apple’s devices, I personally do not care much about that (perhaps because I consistently use several Apple devices). I also welcome how Apple has tried to approach the problem of the cloud very differently: Apple’s iCloud marries the power and richness of native applications with the comfort of syncing them to the cloud and being able to access them from anywhere (as long as it is from an Apple device). At least in theory.

If those were the only problems with iCloud, I would not be writing this post. But unfortunately, iCloud just does not work as seamlessly as Apple would have you believe it does.

Let’s look at a few use cases.

Contacts and Calendars

I use Google Voice as a single phone number but also as single place to store my voicemails and send and receive SMS’es. Therefore it makes sense for me to keep my contacts in Google. Since Apple doesn’t provide any calling service per se (yes they have Facetime and iMessage), there is little reason for me to store contacts with Apple. The way I sync contacts with my iPhone is via a Google Exchange account configured in my iPhone Settings. Because my contacts are synced directly with Google on the cloud, I have turned off my Contacts sync in the iCloud.

Same applies to Calendars. While iCloud offers a way to offer calendar over the web, it doesn’t provide the features and ease of Google calendars on the web, which makes it easy to share calendars, send a Google calendar invite and so on. Also, since I use Outlook at office, I sync my device calendar with both Google and Outlook. There is no reason for me to store this content in iCloud, because Outlook and Google are the services that my colleagues and friends use.

In the case of contacts and calendars, I use other providers because they offer better services. But that’s not it. The problem with Apple’s syncing and cloud solution is that Apple not only allows syncing content between a device and iCloud but also between a Mac and a device. So if a user turns on the iCloud and also syncs content with the Mac, she will end up with duplicate entries.

Reminders

With Contacts and Calendars, at least the naming is (nearly) consistent. Reminders app doesn’t have a naming counterpart on Mac, and is hidden under iCal. With Lion OS moving closer to the iOS model there is even more reason for having a separate app for Reminders. I am sure Apple thought about having a separate app for Reminders on Mac rather than combining it with iCal (where it arguably belongs), and ruled it out for reasons I can’t fully understand. 

(For more on how Mac and iOS devices are converging, read Back to the Mac or welcome to the iOS?)

Since I don’t use iCal much anyway, I decided to turn off Reminders sync. Instead by virtue of syncing with Outlook, my Reminders are synced with the cloud (Microsoft’s in this case) anyway. On a Mac, they are available in Outlook.

Notes

This is one feature I would have loved to use iCloud for, but when I turned it on, it asked me to create a free Mobile Me account. I understand that there are some technical and legacy reasons (which I won’t get into here) why this is required, but isn’t this what Apple is supposed to hide from the user? I already have 2-3 Mobile Me accounts (one I created for free and didn’t continue beyond free trial, and another created for “Find my iPhone” (which is the same as my Apple ID)), none of which work for the purpose of syncing notes.

So not surprisingly, I decided to use my Google account to sync my notes to as well. Now my notes sync to Gmail > Notes label, and are also available on iPad since I use the same syncing settings there.

Even if Mobile Me problem didn’t exist, there are two additional problems. First problem is the same as it exists with almost everything else in iCloud: If I sync Notes to my Mac as well as iCloud, I end up getting two copies. Second is that there is no app called Notes on a Mac. You have to find it under Mail application, which I never use!

Bookmarks

While I do not use Safari much on a Mac, I do use it on iPhone (since it is preinstalled and works great), and therefore occasionally use iCloud for Bookmarks and Reading List. But this didn’t work smoothly either. If it did, you would not see tons of complaints and questions on the web.

Things that work really well with iCloud are all rich media related. For example I love the way Photo Stream stores the most recent pictures taken from my iPhone and how the pictures become available on my Apple TV as well. I also love how TV Shows are instantly available on the cloud regardless of where I bought them (as long as they were purchased via iTunes of course), and how iTunes Match ($24.99 a year) makes my music available on the cloud. These solutions are not perfect – for example, TV Shows do not synch the playback position, and music is not available for streaming (except on Apple TV), but only for download. But they are good enough.

Final Thoughts

Apple’s stronger relationships with studios make it easier for Apple to “upload” music to the cloud, since all it needs to do is sync libraries rather than the songs themselves. This results in substantial time saving for consumers, and also puts Apple at a cost advantage, even when factoring in the licensing fees and revenue share for the studios. 

Arguably, Apple’s hybrid approach with the cloud will also allow it to offer a better streaming experience as compared to to the jittery and delayed streaming associated with the likes of the Amazon cloud.

However, Apple has failed to woo me on any other aspect of the iCloud, and I continue to use other cloud solutions for most of my productivity needs. While I have tuned iCloud settings (see the picture above) the way I want to make things work “seamlessly” for me, iCloud is way too complicated and messy for an ordinary consumer. Apple’s cloud solution is embarrassingly unimpressive and not ready for prime-time yet.

Most people are quick to point out that the fundamental problem is with how Apple approaches the solution in a hybrid fashion. Compare it to the way Google does it for example — since there are no copies, “syncing” and settings are not required. A user doesn’t even have to know that “cloud” exists.

I, on the other hand, still believe that Apple’s approach is welcome because it is unique in many ways and offers a few advantages (due to native richness) over Google’s approach, but if Apple can’t figure out a way to make this work seamlessly, this will be a lost opportunity.

(Also read what’s up with iCloud and Will vertical integration prove key in the race to the top? to see why iCloud’s success is crucial for Apple)