There’s no doubt that Apple makes great hardware, but the iPhone maker continues to drop the ball in the software department.
Microsoft’s new spate of Office apps for iOS and Android are impressive. They’re versatile, universally used applications that work great on just about any device. I was trying to think of even one such instance where people on other platforms might actually want Apple applications.
I couldn’t think of one. In fact, most iPhone users I know throw all of the iPhone’s native Apple apps in a single folder and leave them there to rot. There are simply too many better performing alternatives.
This point really hit home when I recently downloaded Microsoft’s Outlook app, which allows me to tie in not only my Exchange account but also my Dropbox and OneDrive storage for easy sharing of files stored on the cloud. I might soon be throwing Apple’s native email app, which only allows me to attach files from iCloud, into that folder of disuse as well.
I won’t even go into the Apple Maps fiasco or the fact that much of Apple’s iCloud is stuck in perpetual Beta and light years behind similar offerings from Google and Microsoft.
To some degree I want to blame all these bad apps on Apple’s walled garden and its inability to identify and accept its weaknesses. That said, maybe the App Store, which generated over $10 billion in app sales in 2014, is Apple’s reason for accepting its place in the world of substandard native software. I mean, when everyone, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all build beautiful apps for iOS, does Apple even need to maintain or improve on its own dull offerings?
What do you think? Does Apple get how bad its native apps really are? Does it care? Does it need to care?