Apple will be unveiling iCloud next week at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). What is iCloud? Does it matter? The key point here is that Apple has struggled to be an email and online data source for its customers since way back in 1999, when they launched Mac.com and gave out email addresses. Today, many people still use @mac.com addresses; Steve Jobs has one, of course, as do many other folks in the Apple ecosystem.

But has anyone gotten themselves an @mac.com address since Gmail arrived? Anyone out there actually using MobileMe? The sad fact is that Apple, despite its profound understanding of how user interfaces should work, seems not to understand how services should work. This is fairly evident within iTunes: it's a clunky experience to buy and find things in the iTunes store, and I frequently get calls from my confused father who is wondering how to make his legitimately purchased MP3's work properly. The DRM in the iTunes music store is crippling.

Still, iTunes was the absolute best commercial offering back when Apple jumped onto the audio bandwagon. Since that time, the iTunes model has been replicated both on the iPhone and on the Mac Store. At the end of the day, the Apple online retail model is one of the best out there. But the online retail model, itself, is entirely the opposite of how compelling online services work.

For a start, good services are invisible. You don't know they're there. You interact with them through other applications, or through the Web directly. APIs are the lifeblood of hosted services, and a good API is completely devoid of any and all UI conventions. A good API doesn't change, is internally consistent, and authenticates quickly. Apple, on the other hand, is an unabashed future-chaser. APIs that don't change? Apple's changed its entire online services strategy a number of times now, casting aside Mac.com for Mobile.Me, and then for iTunes Ping. While these services remain today, Apple seems to leave them behind and start over fairly often.

But Apple obviously realises that the one piece of the puzzle they lack in the mobile phone market is the services. Buy an Android phone and drop it in a pool of lava, then fire up a second Android phone and input your user info: you're back in business with all contacts and applications. Do the same with an iPhone, and you're up a lava creek.

Thus, Google has the long game sealed up already: people will feel comfortable staying in the Android ecosystem, and indeed, they'll be compelled and locked into that ecosystem because of Google's services being tied so heavily to the device. Apple is still starting from absolute zero in the services market. Google's had six years to build all of its services infrastructure and to force penetration in the market.

So, we'll see what exactly iCloud offers. But in the end, it probably won't matter. Apple really understands consumers. Developers? Well, they're better with developers than some, but at the end of the day, Apple's first obligation is to end users. Google's first obligation is to developers. When it comes to services, it's the developers that matter.

When you get right down to it, even RIM has a better services strategy than Apple; and RIM's services strategy is 100% about extending Microsoft's reach to mobile devices.