If the bricks of Apple’s business are its hardware and software products—iPhones, iPads, Macs, and the software that runs them—then the mortar that holds them together is composed of the company’s services, the chief ingredient of which is iCloud.
That mortar, however, has been eroding for some time, which is one reason you don’t typically hold bricks together with clouds; there are serious structural concerns. While the company has tried to up the value proposition of the service in recent years by introducing new
