Apple Goes on Cloud Computing Hiring Spree

[Mr. Dee]

So they are basically hired to create an Apple, proprietary version of what they have created in the past at different companies. It’s amazing how money can easily persuade. I’m sure it’s not the challenge for these guys since it’s not re-inventing the wheel here.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Cloud Xcode development? Some folks have mentioned this as a way to bring Xcode to the iPad, perhaps the back ends for all their pro efforts? (No more Apple hardware required)

 

[Constable Odo]

Apple will have a long, long way to catch up to the highly praised cloud services of Amazon and Microsoft. Why did Apple have to give away such a cash cow business to its rivals without a fight? The way Wall Street sees it, the cloud is some sort of unlimited revenue and profit business that has nothing but low-hanging fruit for the taking. Obviously, the cloud business is what's putting Microsoft's value well ahead of Apple's overall value. It's a darn shame Apple didn't have at least some halfway decent cloud business to compete with Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet. I remember when Apple was supposed to be building a bunch of data centers all over the world and I don't have a clue what Apple was doing with them. Nothing much, I'm sure, because Apple never got any praise for having a cloud business. Maybe we'll start to see something useful in a couple of years if Apple decides to stick with improving its cloud business. Anyway, it's nice to hear Apple might be doing something to improve iCloud.

 

[GeoStructural]

I would be pleasantly surprised if Apple is going to try to compete with AWS, GCP, and Azure. Their cloud solutions for anything outside of Apple have been nothing short of mediocrity so far.

Agreed. iCloud is the least feature-rich of all cloud services in existence. I cannot believe the ability to share a folder was only added a couple of weeks ago, seriously Apple?... I also remember when drag and drop was impossible.
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How could iCloud ‘annoy’ you? I guess I don’t understand your stance. It’s convoluted and It needs to be reformatted, I would say that’s the biggest complaint that I read about it.

I actually don't think it is convoluted at all, is the lack of features that bothers me, even the basic ones. I tried using it for some time, I payed for the higher storage tier... it was impossible to do serious collaborative work, we switched to Google Drive and then landed on OneDrive, there is a world of difference, so much better, feature-rich and Office suite is included.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Kubernites...wonder what containers they want to scale up? Could be interesting if we could have dynamic load...I've said too much.

This is where it gets fascinating. Maybe Apple is finally getting serious about Swift on Linux (through Docker containers in the case of Kubernetes).

 

[Yojimbo007]

If true... This is AWESOME news!!!

 

[kylesm]

I doubt Apple is looking to build a public cloud to compete with existing players. A fair chunk of their services are or were running on Apache Mesos in recent years. Mesos is certainly not getting the development attention it once did so I would not be surprised if Apple is reworking their infrastructure to use Kubernetes.

I should also point out that they had a large server-side Java footprint as well, and given Arun Gupta's experience with Java/Sun/Oracle (he was a product manager for GlassFish) and open source prior to AWS that's not entirely surprising either.

 

[satchmo]

Ahm, ok. So Apple has absolutely no vision where they want to go or what they want to do with "the cloud", so they hire a bunch of people that have worked on different projects that had something to do with technologies that either work in "the cloud" or that are sometimes used to create "a cloud".

"The cloud" can be an unbelievable amount of completely different things. For most people, it's just "someone else's computer". This is what AWS is at its core.

Then there are all those streaming and file sharing services and applications running as subscription services somewhere else.

Azure can also do what AWS offers, and it hosts a bunch of application services as well. But on top of that, Microsoft is migrating a lot of compute (and AI) tasks away from the client side into Azure -- and those services can also be "consumed" by software developers that write software using Microsoft development tools. That kind of "cloud" is an entirely different beast - and this is where it gets really interesting and where everybody else is playing catch-up with Microsoft. The vision is to turn Azure into "the computer of the world", and their entire product strategy has been evolving around this vision for years already.

So... What's Apple trying to achieve here? Is there a vision involved or are they just panicking because that's another party they've missed?

You seem to know a lot about cloud services. Maybe you should apply and share your vision. 😃

 

[I7guy]

Apple will have a long, long way to catch up to the highly praised cloud services of Amazon and Microsoft. Why did Apple have to give away such a cash cow business to its rivals without a fight? The way Wall Street sees it, the cloud is some sort of unlimited revenue and profit business that has nothing but low-hanging fruit for the taking. Obviously, the cloud business is what's putting Microsoft's value well ahead of Apple's overall value. It's a darn shame Apple didn't have at least some halfway decent cloud business to compete with Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet. I remember when Apple was supposed to be building a bunch of data centers all over the world and I don't have a clue what Apple was doing with them. Nothing much, I'm sure, because Apple never got any praise for having a cloud business. Maybe we'll start to see something useful in a couple of years if Apple decides to stick with improving its cloud business. Anyway, it's nice to hear Apple might be doing something to improve iCloud.

I don't see what is highly praised from Amazon, Microsoft or Google. I'm also not sure what Apple gave away, as Apple wouldn't develop a for profit cloud business, like AWS or Azure. (maybe I'm wrong, but that doesn't seem anything Apple would do, unless Apple got it in its' head to allow development of the ecosystem by independent parties hosted on Apples' cloud)

 

[EmotionalSnow]

How could iCloud ‘annoy’ you? I guess I don’t understand your stance. It’s convoluted and It needs to be reformatted, I would say that’s the biggest complaint that I read about it.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ‘headhunting‘ prospect employees, but I just hope whatever changes they make, it is more user intuitive than it is now.

It's annoying when the files don't get synced correctly on my MBP. Or that the files / notes in the web version take incredibly long to load, and if you switch the folder you'll have to wait again ...

I don't get why but Apple seems to ignore HTML5, on the web version of Notes right click on the content of a note and you can save it as an image. Why are they rendering the note as an image?! Who tf does that?!

Also UX is generally not great and the features provided are a joke. And don't get me started on Apple Music Web, which isn't a beta anymore (officially atleast) but still has some serious bugs and deficits.

 

[axboi87]

Having the ability to offload as much of the Mac OS and iOS compute to the cloud would be nice. Imagine being able to get updates for much longer at the expense of offline functionality as your device gets older, allowing it to slowly turn more and more into a sort of “thin-client” where at the extreme, you’re basically just using a virtual device in the cloud. Virtual Hardware upgrades could be achieved by paying more per month. You could have a MacBook Air that more or less functions like a Mac Pro (possibly on demand?). I’m seeing gigabit and higher fiber in more and more suburbs, and this combined with even some existing LTE speeds but of course with 5G will become more and more feasible.

 

[Neepman]

Gee. Maybe they hire some people who could do a app based icloud portal so your apple mail wouldn't have to puke all over your ipad or phone like, oh I don't know... gmail, earthlink etc, etc.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

From what I've read, Apple's backend infrastructure could definitely use some work. Especially iCloud, which has been duct-taped together from parts of AppleID, MobileMe, .Mac and iTools over the past 20 years. Kind of like Microsoft Windows, Apple's cloud services have become a cobbled-together hodgepodge that generally works on the surface...

Agreed. One of the disadvantages of being one of the first companies to do anything in the cloud space since the early 2000s. Hopefully Apple can do a complete overhaul of their cloud offerings.

but underneath it's a band-aid job. Like the water tables underneath New York and San Francisco, it's...

Coincidentally (and ironically), New York and San Francisco are the new system fonts released by Apple in recent years.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Good. iCould could use some love. It's terrible and annoying.

i think it’s pretty good; albeit slow UI on the web can be heavily refined.

I’m worried about the new acquisitions and team expertise regarding containerization.

sure this could lead to better software deployment however it could mean OS and user space is virtualized. Does this mean macOS will be virtualized with certain apps like Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro Being hosted on server and accessed from iPad Pro / iPadOS devices isn’t eh future? Hmmm

 

[nt5672]

Don't know if this is good or bad, but Apple really needs help as iCould is just barely a "D" when it comes to quality, ease of use, reliability, and thought out features.

 

[PsykX]

Let's hope it fixes all the bugs...
I've been having such a hard time with iCloud, since day 1, and on about 10 devices through the years.

I've even called Apple for the first time in my life last October, and they couldn't understand why I just couldn't log in anymore on my Mac, and yes I had the good password because it was working everywhere else.

Reinstalled Catalina as per their recommendations, which didn't fix it. Bug 10.15.3 which came out two weeks after, fixed the major part of it.

 

[SAIRUS]

Maybe Tim wants to build a cloud based OSX that they can charge monthly for...

 

[planteater]

I would be pleasantly surprised if Apple is going to try to compete with AWS, GCP, and Azure. Their cloud solutions for anything outside of Apple have been nothing short of mediocrity so far.

I wouldn’t mind that as well, but I see it as more inline with building internal cloud for Apple business operations as well as Apple device and app cloud hosted services. That would give them independence from external cloud suppliers.

Building a cloud and maketing it as completion to AWS, GCP, and such is a B2B strategy that Apple has historically not pursued.

 

[EmotionalSnow]

I wouldn’t mind that as well, but I see it as more inline with building internal cloud for Apple business operations as well as Apple device and app cloud hosted services. That would give them independence from external cloud suppliers.

Building a cloud and maketing it as completion to AWS, GCP, and such is a B2B strategy that Apple has historically not pursued.

But it would fit with the current diversification of their portfolio and expansion of their service segment.

 

[trusso]

It'd be great if Apple would design and re-haul their cloud services with the enterprise in mind. Microsoft, Google and Amazon all have huge enterprise offerings, and yet the average consumer reaps the windfall of their well-supported and reliable services. So long as Apple is designing for the lowest common denominator (hardware, software, or cloud services) they're handicapping their users and shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[falainber]

I remember time when Apple was hiring auto specialists like crazy... Where are those? Also, remember all the noise about Apple building server farms? What happened to those?

 

[Sharewaredemon]

MobileMe 2.0!

MobileMemoji

or

MobileWe

 

[Shirasaki]

Wait, does that mean Xcode on the cloud? I don’t think Final Cut Pro can be migrated to the cloud right now though.

 

[djgamble]

Apple has hired multiple well-known software engineers with cloud computing expertise in recent months, according to a report from

Household names in cloud computing engineering. Just saying... doubt your average person could name a famous cloud computing engineer.

 

[alexandr]

oh, maybe they will increase icloud storage... right.