iCloud and Siri Teams at Odds as Apple Seeks to Move Cloud Services In-House

[MacRumors]

Apple's efforts to move its cloud infrastructure in-house for its web services are being slowed by "political infighting" between the company's iCloud and Siri engineering teams, according to The Information.

The paywalled report claims that the fighting is holding back Apple from fixing "technical problems that have plagued iCloud and iTunes," while at least one key engineering manager is said to have departed the company over the ongoing conflict.

Steve D’Aurora, an engineering manager in a team led by Patrick Gates, resigned last week. That’s raised the possibility that Mr. D’Aurora’s superior, Darren Haas, a “head of cloud engineering,” would leave as well. Both Mr. D’Aurora and Mr. Haas joined Apple through its 2010 acquisition of Siri, the voice-activated assistant on the iPhone.

Multiple sources claim that Apple is working on building its own internal cloud infrastructure, known as "Project McQueen" internally, to reduce its dependence on services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Apple spends an estimated $1 billion or more on cloud services each year.

Apple reportedly inked a $400 to $600 million deal with Google last year to "significantly" cut down on its reliance on Amazon Web Services, but its reliance on third-party providers should decrease as it builds or expands new data centers in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Ireland, and Denmark.

The new infrastructure is meant to help improve the reliability of iCloud and Apple’s other apps. The infrastructure work has taken on added significance this year. Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly played up the company’s intention to generate more Internet-services revenue from existing iPhone owners, including from the App Store and things like Apple Music.

In June 2015, it was reported that Apple is building a high-speed content delivery network and planning to upgrade its data centers with more of its own equipment. The foundation of the high-speed data network was reported to be long-haul pipes connecting Apple data centers in California, Nevada, North Carolina, and Oregon.

Apple may be enlisting Chinese server vendor Inspur to help migrate its cloud services in house. Inspur already has employees and facilities close to Apple's headquarters in California, including an R&D team and production center, and it has previously agreed to partnerships with Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and other technology companies.

Article Link: iCloud and Siri Teams at Odds as Apple Seeks to Move Cloud Services In-House

 

[spiderman0616]

Stories like this should ALWAYS be taken with many gigantic grains of salt.

 

[dk001]

So we are looking at years for both to become stable highly usable well rounded items.
Wow.

 

[the8thark]

Stories like this should ALWAYS be taken with many gigantic grains of salt.

You might as well rename this website MacSalt. As everything read here rumour wise should be taken with lots of heart destroying salt.

 

[indychris]

Stories like this should ALWAYS be taken with many gigantic grains of salt.

No doubt true, but nonetheless not unlikely either. Steve may have been harsh in some ways, but his driven nature kept things moving and streamlined, and at least seemingly focused on core issues. I've feared for some time that under current leadership, Apple may become a burgeoning bureaucracy plagued by indecisiveness and conflict in lower levels.

 

[Crosscreek]

No Steve Jobs their to lead with his iron fist. lol

 

[Nalmond92]

With such an emphasis on cloud, I'm surprised that Cook hasn't made someone VP of Cloud Services

 

[LordQ]

But why is that iCloud icon using the same border radius as pre-iOS 7 icons? And why would the teams fight if in the end it means everything is in-house? Am I missing something?

 

[dwaltwhit]

but do the teams have their own rival flags?

 

[The Phazer]

There are engineering teams for iCloud and Siri???

 

[thekeyring]

With such an emphasis on cloud, I'm surprised that Cook hasn't made someone VP of Cloud Services

I guess because that's Eddy Cue's job.

 

[cmChimera]

Wait, why are they fighting though?

 

[thekeyring]

But why is that iCloud icon using the same border radius as pre-iOS 7 icons? And why would the teams fight if in the end it means everything is in-house? Am I missing something?

...and why doesn't Tim Cook out his foot down and say 'were doing it this way'?

 

[Narked Diver]

Does the Apple community now split down the middle into Team Siri and Team iCloud ?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

This story has an incredible amount of text not directly related to the story.

One guy apparently left, but other than that, there is no information that wasnt in t he headline.

 

[spiderman0616]

No doubt true, but nonetheless not unlikely either. Steve may have been harsh in some ways, but his driven nature kept things moving and streamlined, and at least seemingly focused on core issues. I've feared for some time that under current leadership, Apple may become a burgeoning bureaucracy plagued by indecisiveness and conflict in lower levels.

There was plenty of turmoil under Jobs too. In some ways he fostered it, and in others he didn't.

 

[Rogifan]

Stories like this should ALWAYS be taken with many gigantic grains of salt.

You mean like everything else taken with a gigantic grain of salt here? /s

Anyway Benedict Evans on Twitter had some good insights:

https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans

From outside, it can appear Apple sees cloud as a procurement problem to optimise, not a core strategic asset. Rather like the supply chain.

John Browett seemingly made the mistake of seeing Apple Retail as something to optimise rather than cherish. Wrong. Same for cloud.

Apple needs to think about cloud like PA Semi and chip design: a crucial strategic lever that should be invisible to the user.

But why is that iCloud icon using the same border radius as pre-iOS 7 icons? And why would the teams fight if in the end it means everything is in-house? Am I missing something?

Sounds like it's infighting about control and power not ideas.

 

[thekeyring]

Does the Apple community now split down the middle into Team Siri and Team iCloud ?

I'm more and more confused as to what is iCloud, what is iTunes, what is Apple Music, and what is Siri. Are all of Apple's cloud services iCloud?

 

[yaxomoxay]

You might as well rename this website MacSalt.

SaltRumors. culinary news and rumors you care about.

 

[ike1707]

I wonder if this relates at all to why Siri won't play random albums and artists recently. Two weeks ago it didn't know who Merle Haggard was. Yesterday it wouldn't acknowledge Sturgill Simpson, but it played his newest album upon request.

This is some really bothersome hoopla for someone that listens to a lot of music.

 

[acegreen]

Stories like this should ALWAYS be taken with many gigantic grains of salt.

Size doesn't matter in this case. If you are going to use a phrase like this, its important to understand where it comes from

The phrase comes from the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison. In the antidote, one of the ingredients was a grain of salt. Threats involving the poison were thus to be taken "with a grain of salt" and so less seriously.

So really its the addition of salt that matters, hence the modern day variant 'a pinch of salt'.

 

[yaxomoxay]

Size doesn't matter in this case. If you are going to use a phrase like this, its important to understand where it comes from

The phrase comes from the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison. In the antidote, one of the ingredients was a grain of salt. Threats involving the poison were thus to be taken "with a grain of salt" and so less seriously.

So really its the addition of salt that matters, hence the modern day variant 'a pinch of salt'

I am not sure if I should find the story quite interesting and astounding, or if I should believe that you're being a jerk.
Either way, you win!

 

[derek4484]

I still cannot believe Apple is going to use Chinese firm Inspur to help design and provide servers for their in-house cloud infrastructure. BAD decision. I'll trust them much less than I do now. You simply cannot trust chinese electronics. Especially something on this grand of a scale, its an intelligence windfall that is too big to ignore.

 

[TMRJIJ]

This is kinda interesting. I'm remembering last years article talked about organizational issues that caused Photos for Mac to be delayed. Hopefully whatever they are working on now aren't getting pushed passed the next OS releases.

 

[Tech198]

Can't be more better than it currently is...

More back to Akami Apple, u were better off. That's the only time i ever said "you had fast service" Since u wanted money for yourself and tried your own Content Delivery Network, the dominions infrastructure is topping over.


If Apple doesn't wanna use high speed network, at least use use torrent to faster delivery and steaming to customers, although i think the content creators would have allot to say about that one.