Apple iCloud
Apple Web and Mobile (integration of Photos, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc.)
My role: individual contributor, creative director, and hiring manager, Apple iCloud
During my 10 year tenure at Apple, I had not only the opportunity to head design teams working on the leading edge of desktop applications, but also head up both Apple’s Web and mobile applications.
In 2006, I joined MobileMe (the former .Mac team) as their head of design during a very important transition period as the group’s design lead. MobileMe eventually was transformed into iCloud, which today is built into every Apple device. That means all your stuff — photos, files, notes, and more — is safe, up-to-date, and available wherever you are. And it works automatically, so all you have to do is keep doing what you love. Everyone gets 5GB of free iCloud storage to start, and designed to make it easy to add more at any time.
“Think of MobileMe as Exchange for the rest of us,”
— Steve Jobs (at the launch of MobileMe
Push Email, Push Contacts, and Push Calendar for iPhone, iPod touch, Macs, and PCs. was a brand-new Internet service that delivered push email, push contacts and push calendars from the cloud to native applications on the iPhone and Mac. We created a suite of elegant, ad-free web applications that delivered a desktop-like experience through any browser. The available applications included Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, as well as the Gallery for viewing and sharing photos and iDisk for storing and exchanging documents online.
Apple has been always known as a company that empowers people.
At the core is an end-to-end experience and that’s iCloud
The making of iCloud
A lot of the work done at iCloud was related to what I did for Apple iPhone and Apple Aperture (photos) because it was important for Apple to provide a seamless end-to-end user experience and allow users not only to take photos but share them, too.
At Apple, we worked very hard and tirelessly to make all that functionality which on the surface seems simple and which we today take for granted, happen, and it took even Apple many iterations. At the time when we prepared to shut down MobileMe, we focused on both the brand (the transition from MobileMe to iCloud) and the public photo and video gallery feature. Photos and videos could be uploaded in the web browser at me.com, synced by iPhoto or Aperture on OS X, or uploaded from the iPhone and iPod Touch. Users could also upload movies from within applications available on the Mac, including iPhoto and iMovie.
Although I was the head of product design for iCloud, I was able to have an impact on the brand, too, because when I suggested to the VP of the department at the time that we use a friendly, ‘fat’ cumulus cloud as the service’s identity — a harbinger of good weather to come, and, of course, cloud-based services, he agreed that that was a better idea than what had been suggested by the marketing department. Hence it has been the identity of iCloud ever since, not only because of its visual identity but also because its name stuck — iCloud, cloud-based services, were at the time still a novelty in the industry.
iCloud has come a long way since it introduced iTools between 2000 and 2002, it was renamed .Mac until 2008: today iCloud enables users to store data such as documents, photos, and music on remote servers for download to iOS, macOS or Windows devices, to share and send data to other users, and to manage their Apple devices if lost or stolen.
Further reading
Apple Photos
Learn more about my work for Apple Photos (Aperture and iPhoto) which were which were part of the Apple ecosystem and created the foundation for the world’s most beloved and friendly creative ecosystem.
Design Principles
Learn about how we created ProKit, and design principles behind most of Apple’s products.