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Apple Rumored to Build High-Speed Network for Faster Cloud Services
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Google "wants you" to put your photo library in the cloud so they can harvest it for data and sell it.
Apple is giving you the option to put your photo library in the cloud. You can pay to enjoy this feature or you can choose not to use it.
The choice is yours. I don't see how that's a smack in the face.
Im sure there will be some comment about Photos in WWDC, lets hope they increase the free offering.
For all we know, HP is providing Apple with servers for very good (=low) prices just for the fact that they would be such a secure and large customer whom is going to expand a lot over the next couple of years.
More capacity is only part of the problem. As much as I'm willing to pay and happily pay for cloud storage on Dropbox and iCloud to avoid anti-privacy companies like Google, many people aren't willing to pay and will simply go with whatever is free. Google also happens to be very fast and robust and is best-in-class with services, which for many people makes it an obvious choice. Apple can't just rely on being pro-privacy with an average cloud offering, despite that fact that I personally believe that is very important. They also need to be the best services provider—or at least close enough to best that the privacy benefit negates any frills competing platforms may offer. They need to get basic things right. The fact that iMessages and Mail doesn't always sync the number of messages or read status across various products made by the same company is just one small but important example. They need to get the basics right and build from there. They need to get the software right and the underlying structure. They need to start putting their billions to work and buy up talent in that area. I hope they are doing that in addition to throwing money at the server problem.
Return of the Xserve?
YES! A touch screen Xserve, which comes in gold, silver and bronze and is only 2.7mm thick, err I mean thin!
That would be nice but I doubt that.Return of the Xserve?
I even doubt these servers would run OSX.
Apple wants you to use the cloud. Apple designs a server for running their cloudservices. Apple sells these servers so you can put them in your server room to eliminate your need for cloudservices. Won't make sense huh?
It's not a smack in the face at all. It's more than likely specifically designed so that you'll fork over money if you want to use the iCloud Photos solution. These guys aren't stupid!
One of the reasons why I have not gone "all in" on Apples cloud services yet, but this announcement looks promising.
The advantage dropbox has, is that it's on AWS, Google Drive on their own cloud compute infrastructure, and so both are easily scalable.
I don't think Apple's iCloud infrastructure is built that way, and so the reason for the announcement of bigger servers and bandwidth.
Should be free, that was his point. 5GB is used up by doing the minimum on any apple device.
And Apple makes money off hardware. I wish people would stop giving Apple a pass and demand comparable services.
It is still completely unclear for me how Apple can mess up this cloud approach. First they screwed up MobileME. One would imagine a company like that would at least get the 2nd attempt right.
Allas they didn't.
Let's hope the CDN overhaul (announced quite a while back) in combination with the network expansion and those custom servers will allow them to get iCloud 2.0 right.
Designing a product so that you'll want to buy it isn't exactly a new concept or a stroke of genius. It's how commerce works.
Companies like Google have confused this for a lot of people because the cost of using their products is hidden. You're still paying for them, but it's hard to tell so it looks like its free. Now people expect everything to be "free" when in reality nothing is.
Return of the Xserve?
If it came with decent specs, that would be great! However, Apple has really dumbed down the features of its Server software, though. It's good for home/small office settings, not good for data centers nor large companies.
As for the faster network connections, that would be nice. Yet I think Apple should focus more on the reliability of its network than speed. How many times has Apple's services gone down in the last year? What ever happened to the five 9s mantra (being up & working for 99.999% of the time)?
They certainly need to upgrade their cloud speed. I uploaded my photo library to icloud. As expected it took a long time to upload my 30.000+ pictures, but what I didn't expect is that syncing the photos across my devices is also very slow. sometimes it takes days for a picture taken with my iphone to show up in icloud.com or on my Mac. It seems like they put the cart before the horse on this one!
True, although personally I haven't invested tens of thousands of dollars over the years into Google hardware and software, whereas I have with Apple.
Please stop it. You're embarrassing yourself. Lack of knowledge about Goolge's processes is no excuse for just making up stuff.
I agree, though I do like that Apple at least implies that they don't mine your icloud data to sell to advertisers. Still, 5GB fills up too quick and leaves the users with a negative experience when it does.
I think the tiers should be:
20GB - Free
200GB - $12/year
1TB - $50/year
I know. I assumed that they had dedicated trunks between the data centers. Getting FDDI or other Fiber technology should not be hard these days. Maybe they already have it and this is just about taking it to a new level. I too am a bit confused.
I think it would be hard for Apple alone to replace the infrastructure that AT&T / Verizon / other established wireless providers have. With that said, I think if Apple, Google and Microsoft got together and formed some joint-venture 3rd party wireless company tailored to the needs of today's smart devices that could be doable. I'd think this network would be data only... all calls basically going over VOIP. just my thoughts.
Like Tim said, if something is free, it's generally because your data is being sold.
I'd rather pay for a service and know it's secure, than get something for free and know I'm being ripped off.
But each to their own.
They have the chip experts in house, they need to spin a custom Ax processor that is more of a networking ASIC than a traditional cpu. Something with built in routing capability and network packet translation. Something hardware optimized for being in a server environment.
Hopefully we'll see Apple announce a greater amount of free iCloud space instead of their measly 5GB offering. Google Photos has so far been excellent for me.
Speed is the least of my concerns.
With a many 'cloud' options out there - tho none as automatically integrated into the Apple ecosystem as iCloud - it's shocking what apple charges for membership. At the rates they are currently charging, they really need to step up (at the very least) their storage offerings.
With a many 'cloud' options out there - tho none as automatically integrated into the Apple ecosystem as iCloud - it's shocking what apple charges for membership. At the rates they are currently charging, they really need to step up (at the very least) their storage offerings.