My theory is that the culture of internal secrecy at Apple prevents the teams from collaborating. So you get products that work fine in isolation. Also a factor would be date-driven-development. Steve would want to demo a new offering at WWDC, so everything was driven by making that date.
My hope is that now that one person (Jonathan Ive) has been put in charge of product development, things might get better.
For one, Windows Azure is a pretty big deal. Secondly, XBox Live is a pretty big deal. Third, Bing might be struggling to gain traction but it most certainly works.
So can you point me to a Microsoft web property or service that is as wonky as iCloud at all?
Apologies not needed. That raises a question though.
I was implying that Apple and Microsoft don't do as well building web services. I wouldn't argue that Azure can't scale but the overall approach seems to be a little bit "unfinished".
Let me explain, the only true cloud computing environment that really solves 90% of any companies needs is AWS. Somehow Amazon understands what the developer community needs. I'm really perplexed by Google not getting this right.
Apple doesn't and I don't believe Microsoft does either.
I don't think this is about technical chops. It's something else that I can't put my finger on.
Similar to how I don't understand how Amazon crushed Best Buy so quickly.
Windows Azure is a big enough deal, and working well enough, that Brent Simmons of Black Pixel (and well known indie Mac developer) has been recruited to do tutorials on the Mobile Data Services component for iOS.
My hope is that now that one person (Jonathan Ive) has been put in charge of product development, things might get better.