How is it the desktop iCloud website is such a slow, clunky mess still in 2020?

[CheesePuff]

Every time I need to head to iCloud.com on any of my Macs, it is by far the slowly loading, poorly performing website I ever have to visit. Sometimes it just stalls out on loading the landing screen and I have to refresh the page. It causes the fans on my 2017 15" MBP to spin up just sitting on a page doing nothing.

How is it that Apple can have such a disaster of a site still in use, and for so long? It's been like this for years.

By comparison you load up Office 365 Web and everything is clean, smooth and quick loading.

 

[Eisselmann]

Because it‘s Apple.
As soon as services are up and running they don‘t invest a dime anymore.
Look at iTunes Match. Same ****.

 

[Easttime]

Funny, I’ve had the opposite experience. Finding iCloud very smooth.

 

[smirking]

I don't use iCloud much. I thought I'd give it a try. I have a small 50GB account. It ran fine. The culprit could be your network path to the iCloud servers vs the ones you'd be taking to the Microsoft Office servers.

 

[Expos of 1969]

Every time I need to head to iCloud.com on any of my Macs, it is by far the slowly loading, poorly performing website I ever have to visit. Sometimes it just stalls out on loading the landing screen and I have to refresh the page. It causes the fans on my 2017 15" MBP to spin up just sitting on a page doing nothing.

How is it that Apple can have such a disaster of a site still in use, and for so long? It's been like this for years.

By comparison you load up Office 365 Web and everything is clean, smooth and quick loading.

It really is quite bad. I fully agree.

 

[CheesePuff]

I don't use iCloud much. I thought I'd give it a try. I have a small 50GB account. It ran fine. The culprit could be your network path to the iCloud servers vs the ones you'd be taking to the Microsoft Office servers.

It's been this way for 5+ years, living in three different cities in different regions of the US, on different machines with different ISPs.

 

[tekfranz]

To be specific the site normally loads fine, but when you go to create a new Pages Document or view your Photos there is a much longer loading time than say a similar site like Google Docs or Google Photos or Dropbox.

My guess Apple has to many users stacked together on their servers or the iCloud.com apps need some serious code optimization.

 

[CheesePuff]

To be specific the site normally loads fine, but when you go to create a new Pages Document or view your Photos there is a much longer loading time than say a similar site like Google Docs or Google Photos or Dropbox.

My guess Apple has to many users stacked together on their servers or the iCloud.com apps need some serious code optimization.

For me many times the main landing page will take much longer then it should to load, especially if I had been signed out and its trying to sign in via Apple ID.. just tried it in private browser mode on a MBP 15" 2017 (2.9 GHz i7, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB Flash) on a 500 mbps FiOS connection, took 11 seconds to load before the sign in prompt was shown

 

[jeyf]

i use it to edit delete my photos

it is really rough
just not the 90's anymore

 

[Razeus]

Because the way Apple makes their services is that they do just enough to get it working then development just stops.

Look at iCloud for Windows. That software straight up does not work and Apple refuses to dedicate resources to it. The same for the website.

This behavior is why I stopped subscribing to Apple Music. It works, but it does weird stuff: If I had an album from my personal collection it uploads just fine. However, when I go to my phone, I'll find 2-3 songs downloaded to my devices - when I specifically didn't tell it to download. When this happens over multiple albums, that crap is annoying.

Don't even get me started on the "matching" service. Some tracks from the same album match, the other uploads. WTF?

Then it changes my album art. I'll never use Apple Music or iTunes Match again. This has been going on for several years now and it's the same crap.

 

[tekfranz]

Apple will probably need to bring a brand new Cloud service online to accomplish a Google Docs or OneDrive/ Office 365 Online or DropBox like experience.
I expect they would run a new service along side their existing iCloud Service for several years. That way phones and things could keep backing up, but users could slowly begin using the new cloud system as features were migrated and added to it.

Think how Photo Stream was merged in iCloud Photos. The two services have run side by side for many years.

P.S. I wish Dropbox would have sold to them when Apple tried to acquire them.