iCloud sync is still way too slow

I recently switched my calendars, contacts, notes, and to-do list back to iCloud.

My original set up was:
Calendars: Google
Contacts: Google
Notes: Simplenote
To-do list: Wunderlist

After the switch it looked like this:

Calendars: iCloud
Contacts: iCloud
Notes: iCloud
To-do list: iCloud

After about a week of this, I’ve made the following observations:

• I’m much happier with my calendaring and contacts on iCloud. This is especially true when I’m using a shared calendar with my wife. It just feels like a better user experience.
• iCloud sync is still horribly slow. This is the major killer. It’s slow! This lag causes conflicts and information loss. It’s less of an issue on contacts and calendars since I can wait for those to sync, but on note taking apps and to-do lists, that’s unforgivable. I’m pretty close to switching back to Simplenote and Wunderlist for my notes and to-do lists respectively. The sync on those two services is almost instantaneous, and works seamlessly. In 2014, there is basically no excuse for such a core service such as iCloud to be syncing at the speed it currently is. The added fact that Wunderlist 3 was just launched a few days ago with Real-time Sync just makes me want to switch back even more.

I’m doing my best to continue with this experiment of staying within Apple’s ecosystem, but I suspect I’ll be back on Simplenote and Wunderlist before the month is out, which would be a disappointing result. I’m going to sacrifice some battery life to enable push-syncing of my iCloud services to see if it helps, but I really shouldn’t have to, and I doubt it’ll help much.

Apple really needs to buck up on its web services.