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Apple plans to unify its cloud services teams, including Siri, Apple Maps, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple News, and parts of iTunes and Apple Music, at its existing Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, California, according to Bloomberg.

itunes-icloud-siri-apple-maps.jpg

Moving the teams into a single campus should streamline growth of Apple services, as the current structure of having teams spread out throughout various office buildings in Cupertino and Sunnyvale contributed to software bugs and slowed product development, the report claims.

The cloud services teams could be on the move again in the near future as Apple completes work on its new Campus 2 headquarters, where well over 13,000 employees are expected to work. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company will begin moving employees to the new campus in 2017.

The report adds that Apple is also planning to shift its services to a single, Apple-made backend system, codenamed Pie. The infrastructure change will reportedly give Apple "more control" and "may speed up load times."
Apple has begun moving over parts of Siri, the iTunes Store, and Apple News to the new platform, one of the people said. Apple plans to move other services, including Maps, to its new system over the next few years. Apple has also developed an internal photo storage system dubbed McQueen to gradually end its reliance on Google and Amazon servers, the people said.
In March, it was reported that Apple is working on an in-house cloud storage system called "McQueen" to reduce its dependence on services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, with today's report specifying it will be an internal photo storage system.

Apple experienced its first-ever iPhone sales decline earlier this year, but its services category continues to grow. In its most recent quarter, Apple reported nearly $6 billion in revenue tied to services like the App Store, Apple Music, AppleCare, Apple Pay, iCloud, and the iTunes Store, up 19% compared to the year-ago period.

Article Link: Apple's Services Teams to Start Working Together to Improve Siri, Maps, iCloud, and iTunes
 

mango316

macrumors regular
Sep 13, 2014
204
311
Unifying won't help them! Better off with releasing those new MacBook/MacPro refreshs this month! At least that will help Apple a bit! =]
 
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joueboy

macrumors 68000
Jul 3, 2008
1,576
1,545
I was hoping that with Google recently announced of Pixel includes unlimited cloud storage. That Apple will offer the same thing with iPhone 8, photos and videos will be unlimited for iCloud. Just hoping!
 

icanhazapple

macrumors 6502a
Feb 26, 2009
578
1,246
This is one part of the business I would rather see Apple rely on AWS/GCE/Azure. Why? They're behind, and I don't see them them catching up anytime soon. They're going to be reinventing the wheel the next few years, trying to replicate designs that those other companies perfected years ago.

I'll believe they've caught up when they're publishing papers on data center/server design innovation, and it's on the mark with with the Big 3 are doing.

Also, Swift has been an open source success, but if Apple is serious about backend architecture, they should also be open sourcing part of their work there as well. This (infrastructure) is where Google is quite a bit ahead.
 

steve62388

macrumors 68040
Apr 23, 2013
3,090
1,944
'Pie'. I get it, neat name and so many ways to slice it when you need an analogy discussing the consumption of Apple's many cloud services.
 
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Freida

Suspended
Oct 22, 2010
4,077
5,868
I hope they will. The iTunes for me was becoming more and more cluttered and complex. I still think the itunes few years back was the best. Maps are still not there, Siri is limited and icloud needs work. They have a long way ahead of them but they should really start putting some effort. And music app in the iOS 10 is still convoluted mess.
 

thefredelement

macrumors 65816
Apr 10, 2012
1,193
646
New York
Awesome! I rely on these things daily and it'll be sweet if they all interoperate more. They've come a long way over the last few years, I'm excited to see what we get around 2020, probably some awesome stuff :)
 

Porco

macrumors 68040
Mar 28, 2005
3,315
6,909
The report adds that Apple is also planning to shift its services to a single, Apple-made backend system, codenamed Pie.

/homer simpson/ Mmmmm.... Pie... /homer simpson/

Me thinks it can only get better...but then who knows...

"Things are never so bad that they can't be made worse." :D

But let's hope this move improves things.
 

PBRsg

macrumors 6502
Aug 12, 2014
347
592
I have had an iPhone, an iPad a MacBook Pro for three years. During that time, the cloud sync across all those devices has not worked for ONE DAY. I thought I would leave this here.

Edit: I should have said that the cloud sync has not COMPLETELY worked for ONE DAY (and by that I mean all services across all devices). About 60% of the services actually work.
 
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