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Apple Inks Deal to Use Google Cloud Platform for Some iCloud Services
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You shouldn't take his words out of contest:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/12/6...ple-could-have-made-a-bigger-iphone-years-ago
- Cook views Google as Apple's top competition. When pressed why it wasn't Samsung, Cook notes that it's Google that supplies Android to Samsung, and others.
Apple have confirmed and documented their use of Azure and S3: https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf
Quote - Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys, and the le’s metadata, are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as Amazon S3 and Windows Azure.
I know that, and that's basically what I said to the OP, who was implying that the fact that Apple had inked this deal was somehow going to make peoples' heads explode with confusion and angst. I was replying to the OP's comment that those of us who don't want to use Google's products because of a distrust of their business model are somehow Google haters. I don't hate Google, and I think they have some genius innovation.
Basically this.
Apple have lots of data centres (and they're building more), but cloud computing provisioning is more complex than that. They could build a new data centre, but then what they're basically doing is building capacity for peak times and paying to run it 24/7, even during off-peak times.
That was the whole idea behind AWS in the first place: Amazon had ridiculous server capacity, it wasn't always being used, so they rented out their off-peak server time. Apple is in a reverse situation: they need some server capacity of their own, but their total capacity will be a mix of their own data centres and provisioned servers. It just makes sense - or alternatively, it wouldn't make sense for every big tech company to spend billions building their own independent worldwide networks of data centres.
Now, lots of folks who don't understand how server software works these days will look at this and think Google is the King of the Cloud, and that Apple is paying them to fix iCloud for them or somesuch nonsense, in the same way they thought Samsung "invented" the iPhone because Apple bought components from their Semiconductor division. The reality is much more mundane.
It is still iCloud, no matter what it runs on.
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All cloud server providers use commodity hardware. It's cheaper than "building your own" if you are a corporation and actually have to pay for labor. The differentiation is in the server software. Even then, a good deal of the server software is open source.
This is exactly what you shouldn't understand from this news article. This isn't outsourcing. If you want to think of it as such, then Google is also outsourcing by not mining, refining and processing the silicon which goes in the chips in their servers.
Google obviously spend a lot of money building and maintaining their data centres, making sure that all of their customers have very fast access, etc. It doesn't make sense for Apple to duplicate all of that work when Google is renting it out at a competitive rate.
Companies, even tech companies, are not mortal enemies. They compete in some areas, but they also co-operate in lots of areas. It's not binary. It's like people - I have friends who I have, for example, political disagreements with (I even disagree with my girlfriend on several issues), but it doesn't mean we never co-operate or enjoy spending time with each other.
You rent services until you yourself surpass any projected capacity moving in a five year time line. As those new facilities come on line, Google and AWS will continue to see reduced contracts with Apple.
Sure about that? It's pretty well documented the big dogs design custom hardware (for manufacture by companies like Foxconn) for their datacenters. They absolutely build their own. Most then opensource their designs so, if you wanted to, you could manufacture one for yourself.
http://www.informationweek.com/clou...zure-server-design-open-source/d/d-id/1113617
http://arstechnica.com/information-...ell-facebook-now-designs-all-its-own-servers/
I wonder how encrypted the servers are at Google with our data? I'm sure it is, but Google love data mining stuff. Interesting to see how relations have played out with these guys over the years, but they still need each other.
Really? I thought Apple users only live in the US. Thanks for the amazing enlightenment.
FYI, Apple is building $2Billion worth of new data centres in Ireland and Denmark.
Besides, the internet reaches all around the world.
Or do you think this: http://appleinsider.com/articles/15...ding-its-icloud-data-centers-in-nevada-oregon
is just for US users ?
My gist is, iCloud services usage expansion isn't keeping up with Apple's data centre expansions.
Hence, the (temporary?) addition of 3rd party resources.
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Of course it is. What part of my statement made you think Apple was going Google ?
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Splitting hairs over terminology. Slow work day ?
Outsourcing, sub-contracting, colocation, whatever you wanna call it.
My point wasn't about that.
It's about the wrong perception and how some commenters here would misinterpret Apple's intentions / plans.
I guess I didn't expand on the educational aspect of how server software works. Silly me.
At times that seems to be the case.
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You have a lot of negative things to say about Google, Samsung, MicRosoft, OLED and anything non Apple, yet when someone makes a comment or asks you about it it is provocation? Why is that? Yet you feel free to spew your opinion as fact and everyone else who says something different is wrong. Please.
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This is why I'm not a big proponent of cloud storage. You just can't keep sensitive information in "the cloud".
Hardly
I know it hurts but yes, I have a lot of negative things to say about Google and Samsung (Microsoft not so much tbh)...
And again YES, since I speak about companies mine isn't a provocation, while his (and your) post ABOUT ME is a direct provocation.
It reaches "all round the world" yes at significantly worse pings speed per extra mile added. You *can* access data from a server in China on the other side of the world but the speed is horrendous - so yes the Nevada data centre will be just for US visitors mainly those on on the west side of the US too! They might also use it for redundancy and archival purposes but not for people on the other side of the world to directly access.
Then again the speed of Apple's web services I do feel like i'm accessing a server on the other side of the world sometimes.
By your logic you saying "I know it hurts but yes", is a provocation. So you consider someone commenting on what you posted to be provoking, simply because they have a different point of view? Try a sense of humor once in a while, it works wonders.
Wrong!
Electrons travel at the speed of light. For light to travel all around the world at the equator would take approximately 140ms.
Between Europe and US it's approximately 40ms.
The overhead added by physical distance is relatively small, given the average response time of most web services in the range of 2-6 seconds (uncached).
Distance is typically less than 5% impact. I would not call that "significantly worse".
Then there is multi-layer caching, synchronous & async mirroring and a range of disaster recovery mechanisms in any corporate data center architecture.
Therefore, there is non-US user data in Apple's US based data centres and vice versa.
Nope. Saying "I know it hurts" I'm pointing out facts.
I don't care about people having different point of view. That's normal.
In this case no one commented about what I posted. Some one posted about me in a thread I've had yet to visit. And that IS a provocation.
This is where it's at. Don't use a microscope to understand events, use a wide lens.
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The data would be encrypted before it got to the cloud. So if google stores thousands of terabytes of meaningless blobs of encrypted data, it shouldn't matter.
Hahahaah I can tell you've never setup geo located servers before - nor accessed files on a Chinese based server or worked with AWS or Cloudflare or any CDN network. You've tried some pseudo science there that has no relation to real world servers what so ever. You can add 10-40ms per hop between server connections for a start off, of which there can be 10-30 or more between the US and the UK alone. There's more than 40ms ping between me and server in Birmingham which is less than 90 minutes drive away. If I ping an Australian site (www.latrobe.edu.au for instance) i'm getting 400ms. And thats for a simple ping...now multiple that by all the static assets it has to request one by one. It makes websites on the other side of the world very very slow and sluggish to load, even the very well made ones. This is exactly why geo-caching, and global CDN networks (like Cloudflare) exist. Otherwise everyone would just have on big data centre close to their office and a fibre pipe.
You're confusing distance or medium latency with that introduced by servers.
Your previous argument was based on distance. Speed of light is "pseudo science" ? Ridiculous statement.
You're more interested in insults and surmising what I have or have not done, I will simply add you to my ignore list.