How Apple is secretly improving iCloud Prominent new hires show that Apple is significantly expanding its cloud department By Stephan Wiesend | 21 Jan 21 Even the biggest fans of the company have not always been satisfied with the functionality and performance of Apple's iCloud services. Especially when compared to competitors such as Google, Amazon with its cloud service AWS and Microsoft with Azure, Apple always seems to fall behind - which is why we put together a list of the best alternatives to iCloud. By contrast, those companies can point to rapidly increasing sales and user numbers - Apple itself is one of the largest AWS customers and, in addition to its own servers, relies heavily on the infrastructure of Microsoft and Google too. But it looks like Apple has some big plans in this area, based on new hires and other rumours.