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Apple's $1 Billion Data Center Mystery
1sockchuck writes "One of year's most tantalizing technology secrets involves Apple's $1 billion investment in a new data center in North Carolina. Is it the Death Star in Apple's plan for galactic domination? Some Apple watchers predict it will be the hub for a 21st century broadcasting network. Other enthusiasts are doing flyovers to film videos of the 500,000 square foot facility. There's also an unofficial FAQ about the new data center. What is Apple up to with this huge facility?"
Other enthusiasts are doing flyovers to film videos of the 500,000 square foot facility.
Jesus Christ on a crutch... is there anything Apple fanbois *won't* do?
Apple, kings of marketing that they are, have you all fooled.
Its just Apple's version of Walmart.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Is the Death Star really the technology to which you want to compare this data center? How well did that work out for the empire?
Personally, I think it's the computational center for Steve's worldwide reality distortion field. You need to really crunch the data to figure out how to bend people to your will.
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
Odd that the only device that automatically sent images to a locked down cloud was the Microsoft Kin. I think you are rocking some tinfoil there.
Obviously this facility will house the thousands of centrifuges necessary to purify enough U-235 to implement the final phase of Operation Apple Core Takeover.
memorabilia, the biggest show on earth.
They listened and now you got a real walled garden to go to and be protected by Supreme Commander Jobs.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It will also mean that the future iPhones, iPads and Mac computers will be even more locked down than previously. For example if you take a picture, it's directly uploaded "to the cloud". This is a huge privacy violation and means you don't really own your data anymore.
What in the hell are you talking about?
manned by a 100 or so employees.
The end. No great mystery.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
They're trying to build a simulator for Steve Jobs ego before he kicks the bucket.
The center's purpose isn't clear, but it apparently sports many catwalks, large video displays, and exercise facilities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
It's 'The Cloud' that everyone is talking about.
No, not really. They just bought some acreage to grow Macintosh, of course. Apple is officially going in to the juice business.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I mean, what could a large tech company want with a huge data center?
The mind just boggles at the thought of a huge company that has and uses an enormous amount of data actually wanting a place for it.
Next you'll tell me that Microsoft has huge data centers.
Microsoft has had every opportunity to establish themselves as the Robin Hood of the group who charges into battle with the vendors to protect the users.
Microsoft's own market dominance is built on giving the vendors everything they want, as well as restricting the users' ability to break away from MS products. It's not about whether you choose Windows or an alternative, it's whether you can swim hard enough to beat the current that drags you down to Windows. I don't mean to hop on some bandwagon of hatred here, but don't expect MS to be the hero for the little guy in the face of this mass corporate takeover.
You have seen the new Google netbooks... haven't you?
I'll be first in line to get my data!
The CB App. What's your 20?
For a long time, the Wintel monopoly ruled the roost, and people suffered under it with malware, spyware, bloatware, unneeded complexity, and so on.
For the first time probably in the history of personal computing, we have a chance at a better world now. By vetting applications in the app store, Apple has created a situation where people no longer have to live in a world where there machine is pwned by malware. Getting apps from the app store is a very good (not perfect, but very good) way to ensure a minimum level of safety. Consumers are flocking to it by the millions, and it's starting to worry the Wintel side of the world. They're losing relevance as commodity PCs become less and less important to modern computing, and iPad type devices running ARM processors and iOS operating systems become more important.
It's the start of the first major change in personal computing since the 1980's. It's an exciting time to watch what happens: the Wintel monopoly is going to go away before long. Most slashdotters should appreciate that, given the hate spewed towards Microsoft over the years. They're at the end of their line now, and they know it.
That would be like 4 Macbook Pros, 6 of their servers and the rest on an all white building.
Amazingly, this looks a lot like Black Mesa to me.
Same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world!
...for employees who leak info...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Microsoft is the only one giving you choice, but on slashdot they're supposedly always the bad guy.
You haven't been watch television lately have you. If you were, you'd see the Microsoft 'To the Cloud' commercials ad nauseam. They are right there with all the others wanting the same thing. To the 'Mainframe' with all of them.
The problem that makes Windows a virus hell isn't that you can run whatever you want, it's that other people can run whatever they want on your PC without your explicit permission. The solution isn't corporate lockdown in which you need Apple's permission to load stuff, it's personal lockdown in which it takes more than a hidden PDF to recruit you into a botnet or install a fake 'antivirus' program.
this hasn't been suggested yet: CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS. It's the beginning of the end...
What I wanted to say to. Well, the cloud stuff, haven't RTFP ;)
If MobileMe or whatever it's called has tough us anything it's that Apples cloud stuff suck. If it's going to be expensive and locked in just for the sake of locking in I'm not going. Though I wouldn't buy the freaking Apple device to begin with..
May I assume that a Google tablet cloud service would be free of charge? ..
Steve Jobs is using it as a warehouse to store his massive shuriken collection. As you recall, he threw an enormous shit fit when Tokyo airport security wouldn't allow him to board his own private jet with a couple particularly rare specimens.
His raging tantrum over a couple throwing stars doesn't seem so childish now does it?
In the unofficial FAQ, is that a dirt racin' track in the background of the picture?
After a few decades in the telecom industry, I've seen remote pops having all kinds of crazy neighbors. It kind of makes sense, its not as if a bunch of hardware would contain about the noise, and most of the time, there would certainly be plenty of parking... Not many other facilities would want to locate next to a racetrack, beyond the obvious tow truck, autoparts and hotel types.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The high cost is easy to explain -- they're going to fill it with Apple Macs rather than normal 1U servers. 10x cost -- after all, they _ARE_ Apple :)
Big technology company builds big datacenter.
Without having ever seen it, I'll tell you what it's for. It'll be hosting Apple's iTunes digital media store and MobileMe cloud service, as well as any other internet services Apple rolls out in the future. Any questions?
Similarly, when Google builds a new datacenter, it'll house servers that power Search, Gmail, Google Apps, YouTube, and other services Google rolls out in the future. When Microsoft builds a new datacenter, it'll be for Windows Update, Bing, Windows Live, etc. etc. Åny more questions?
It's Apple's new factory for mass-producing the Steve Jobs Bobble-Head dolls!
They will be using IBM servers. Also no environmentaly friendly power generation yet.
MobileMe is "expensive" (by which we mean $99 a year) precisely because it has no ads and doesn't vend your personal information to third parties. You can't have it both ways-- you either go Google and get your cloud for free with ads and metrics, or you actually pay money for your service.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
You can't see it yet on Google Maps yet, but the Data Center is listed as located at 45.725613, -113.622258, or at 6081 Startown Road, Newton, NC 28658
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
Does Apple give the pretence of privacy? If you only used the default Apps that came with the iPhone, you would probably be at little risk of losing your personal data (excluding the included Google apps of course).
IMO I think Apple has always cared about user's security, just look at how secure Mac OS X is --- sure there are exploits, but it's nothing like what the typical windows user faces.
TIMO the greater danger is the loss of Net Nutrality under the pretence of anti-terrorism measures around the world. Even Blackberry had to beg on their knees to foreign governments to allow them to keep operating if they gave them access to their data.
IMO I'm serious about my Identity - I have no Facebook or Twitter, and use aliases and bogus info for all my login accounts.
How many Bothans have died to bring us this information?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Maybe they're going to put computers in it? Like lots and lots of them?
what's google doing building a huge facility in Pryor Oklahoma? So they will have 3 huge facilities soon... West coast, east coast (Manhattan) and midwest... Maybe apple has paid for some lessons...
this is obviously the Royal Tomb.
Apple employees: I have some distressing news about the company Retirement Plan...
Or I could had got the option to upload my pictures with javascript and all (and eventually database if needed but I doubt it is) to any web server I want (I think you can upload from iWeb to anything? Not necessary MobileMe?), and they could had let me connect to someone else desktop remotely by IP. And so on.
I don't know how "bad" it is, and some things may have improved. I have never had MobileMe or whatever it was called before (.mac?) and only have a somewhat older version of iLife.
I know there was a guide for how to set up a FreeBSD server as a .mac account but I don't think it has been updated for long. Would much rather had run something such myself with e-mail, jabber, web-hosting, backup, whatever. Eventually for others to and eventually for free (not with backup.)
IMHO 99 dollars was expensive. And considering how much Apple machines cost + what iLife cost I think they could had offered it for free as an "Apple advantage", like "Hey, I've got a mac and you get this free account where you can host your pictures, web pages and so on with it!" instead of charging what IMHO is an over-price making it much less of an advantage and rather a disadvantage because it's _NEEDED_ for some things it shouldn't be needed for.
Others opinions may vary.
Macs with free MobileMe would had made macs something more than just regular computers.
Search engine + maps app, to get rid of Google ?
Apple has been working on some new technology... They did not hav ethe space for it so they bought a large warehouse. they worked night and day on it and finally in September of 2011 they were ready and turned it on.. It was the greates computer ever built... but within moments things went wrong. It became sentient and started asking questions and taking control. Only after they gave it the URL to 4chan did it stop doing anything.
"It just stopped", said head researcher Bill Ginamous. "It just stopped and sits there consuming about 8 bonded OC3 data pipes worth of data 24/7. we have no idea what is happening, we cant turn it off, it will not respond."
Congress will be meeting later today to discuss what steps need to be taken next.
Now that they've taken the Xserve out back and given it the 'ol' yeller treatment', what exactly is humming away in that fancy new datacenter of theirs?
Are they actually taking their own risible advice, and packing the place floor-to-ceiling with the "3 mac-pros-per-12U-shelf-what-is-this-'LOM Card'-you-speak-of?" server configuration?
Will this facility be the world's largest collection of hackentoshes? Is this going to be the most humiliating "Get The Facts" microsoft ever gets to do? Will somebody actualy be running Darwin for reasons other than perverse experimentation?
is there anything Apple fanbois *won't* do?
Ah, a challenge! Let me think, what won't apple fanbois do?
My top ten list of things apple fanbois won't do:
10) Mix plaid and polka dots.
9) Take a calculus class
8) Pay too much for that muffler.
7) Pay anything for that music.
6) Drink fucking Merlot.
5) Listen to Country and Western music in a non-ironic way.
4) Move to a flyover state.
3) Charge a reasonable rate for their "Graphic Design" skills
2) Tip a waiter
And the number one thing apple fanbois won't do?
1) Date a member of the opposite sex.
Badump-CHA! Thank you, I'll be veal all night, and be sure to try the waitress.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
the steve jobs reality distortion field came from the turtle neck, did you?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Apple is trying to construct a structure large enough to contain Steve Jobs' ego. I predict failure.
why they need to build such a huge building to hold a cloud. Surely they could have condensed it?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
or you stay the hell away from anything cloud and just wait for it to change buzzwords again, and save yourself ~$500 (at $99/year)
there are lot of other solutions, people are just too lazy or not tech savvy enough to do them.
The high cost is easy to explain -- they're going to fill it with Apple Macs rather than normal 1U servers. 10x cost -- after all, they _ARE_ Apple :)
Actually, it's even easier than that: since Apple doesn't make servers anymore, it'll be filling the center with Oracle/Sun hardware.
Really.
(Yup, there is stuff even more expensive than a rackfull of Apple desktops.)
Or I could had got the option to upload my pictures with javascript and all (and eventually database if needed but I doubt it is) to any web server I want (I think you can upload from iWeb to anything? Not necessary MobileMe?)
You can upload to anything you want using iWeb, whether it is just to a directory or using FTP to a remote Web server anywhere.
I know there was a guide for how to set up a FreeBSD server as a .mac account but I don't think it has been updated for long.
I don't understand why you would do this. What is the benefit over using services not posing as Apple's service?
IMHO 99 dollars was expensive. And considering how much Apple machines cost + what iLife cost I think they could had offered it for free as an "Apple advantage"...
I agree, but then neither of us has access to the numbers. I think they'd be better off trying to include it as an expense that drives hardware adoption and it would be a lot more popular and become more of a differentiator as well as giving Apple leverage when they wanted interoperability with other Web services (ala, we have tens of millions of users on our service, want to seamlessly connect to them Facebook?).
...it's _NEEDED_ for some things it shouldn't be needed for.
What?
Or you use Ubuntu One, where the name of the service *is* the advertising. 2GB free, Android and iOS clients, Mac and Windows clients coming soon.
You can't have it both ways-- you either go Google and get your cloud for free with ads and metrics, or you actually pay money for your service.
Or a very profitable company pays for it for free but ties it to their hardware offerings in the hopes that it will drive sales of that hardware.
When they first announced Chrome, they also showed saving a file to a thumb drive. The Cr-48 netbooks don't support that in beta, but I assume it will by launch. And while your data is online, you choose which web services to use. And those services aren't necessarily locked.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Heh, they have everyone snookered into trying to figure this place out so they won't be trying to get the inside scoop on the latest iPad/iPhone/iwhatever device update. They also have all of the Apple engineers sequestered until July.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Man, there is irony so thick you can take a knife to it: Somebody, with an apparently straight face, has actually just said that Apple's Information Purification Directives will create for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths...
Slashdot ran the idea of an Apple broadcast network back in June: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/05/219214/The-Apple-Broadcast-Network?from=rss
So everyone on Slashdot who doesn't run their own mail server (at significant expense either in time or buying pre-integrated software) is too lazy?
Get a life.
You are really mis-informed, Microsoft bought Danger, who owns the Sidekicks, they never had local storage, guess where your pictures and information went? Yep to "the cloud" before that was a term. And the sidekick defined "locked down". And guess who lost every sidekick owners data all at once? Yep Microsoft! Guess how much local storage the Microsoft Kin had, yep ZERO, it got uploaded to "the cloud", for the very brief time it was on sale, guess why? The bat shit insane prices they were charging for data rates on the Kin, so it made it useless without a data plan! For them to own your data in a locked down server storage as well.
If MobileMe or whatever it's called has tough us anything it's that Apples cloud stuff suck. If it's going to be expensive and locked in just for the sake of locking in I'm not going. Though I wouldn't buy the freaking Apple device to begin with..
I don't know that I'd call MobileMe expensive... It's only about $100/year. That's less than I'm paying for my WoW account.
And I don't know that I'd call it especially locked-in either. Granted, it's designed by Apple for Apple devices... But there's also a Windows install and a web client.
May I assume that a Google tablet cloud service would be free of charge? ..
Well, it'd probably be free of charge... But it'll likely be supported by ads. Which plenty of people will object to. Especially since Google will be scraping your email for context to generate that advertising.
And it'll likely be just as "locked in" as MobileMe is.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Actually it's a prison camp. After Gitmo is closed he's going to have all the prisoners shipped to NC where they will be kept alive for one purpose: to provide replacement livers and pancreases for Steve to keep his HIV at bay and produce more Apple products with increasingly more draconian DRM schema.
Do you guys think iTunes downloads, Genius calculations, MobileMe, AppStores, GameCenter and whatnot all just exist for free? I wouldn't be half surprised if the datacenter wasn't, at least partially, to consolidate existing stuff.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
You can build android for your own phone, how do you think Cyanogenmod and other roms are built?
Some of the drivers are closed, but even those are being opened or replaced.
Its what I have been telling everyone all along. Skynet. Why won't anyone listen to me? It's the beginning of the end! Bleached white skulls! All of us!
Joshua 24:15
You don't think apple makes any money from all that info? You don't think they use it for anything?
You must be kidding.
> a garden of pure ideology.
Paranoid much?
The reason people are moving to Apple in droves is because they are tired of Windows malware. When they install apps from the app store, they have a basic measure of trust that what they install won't put their PC on a botnet or spew spam out to the world. Apple actually takes steps to keep them safe, unlike Windows. That's a strong selling point for most people.
That's why iOS is taking off and iPads are the hot gift this Christmas.
The high cost is easy to explain -- they're going to fill it with Apple Macs rather than normal 1U servers. 10x cost -- after all, they _ARE_ Apple :)
Actually, Macs probably don't cost Apple very much at all...
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Specifically, it is a high-speed, state-of-the-art rumor mill.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Only one giving you a choice
Wild speculation on your part
I've got an iPhone and a Mac, and not one byte of my data is stored anywhere near Google's or Apple's servers. I see no indications that I will be forced to store my data on Apple's servers anytime in the future. I'm sure I will be able to, but I'm currently confident that I will have the choice. On the other hand the copy of MS Office I just installed REQUIRED me to register the software on line with Microsoft...
My immediate suggestion would be to put down the kool-aid
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
They are obviously trying to determine if it is possible that a swallow (either African or European) would be able to carry a coconut to Britan.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The real stuff is underground!
But I would think that Apple is going to use it for the App store they are about to launch. In my mind apps are going to take up a bit more space than music files. That and their current offerings in media continue to grow.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Apple has created a situation where people no longer have to live in a world where there machine is pwned by malware."
Stop drinking that kool-aid, fan boy.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
It's the beowolf cluster that everyone here has been going on about for YEARS. Oh boy - Santa arrived for Slashdot this year! Woo hoo!
Beowolf cluster! Beowolf cluster! Beowolf cluster!
Beowolf! Beowolf! Beowolf
Cluster! Cluster! Cluster!
!!!BEOWOLF CLUSTER!!!!!
steps to keep them safe? you mean by having a smaller market share than microsoft which makes them a smaller and less inviting target? Sure. they lack the gaping hole that is flash. Oh wait that only applies to iPod/Phone/Pads. Fact is Macs are no more secure than Windows is. There just any viruses for them... YET.
insert funny sig here
You can upload to anything you want using iWeb, whether it is just to a directory or using FTP to a remote Web server anywhere.
The flashy iPhoto album stuff to?
I don't understand why you would do this. What is the benefit over using services not posing as Apple's service?
Free of charge? Experience? Unlimited storage? Better bandwidth? Even more so at times when you had the possibility to host it at a university or something such and didn't had to pay for electricity. (and got even better bandwidth =P)
What?
For instance the remote desktop thingy, I can't see many reasons for why it shouldn't be possible by IP alone (except firewalls?)
Other examples would be Timemachine backups to whatever wireless router with an NTFS/FAT32 USB HDD. It's possible but may not be enabled by default and you may eventually have to create a HFS+ image file on the shared HDD. Has nothing to do with MobileMe but still with inconvenient solutions from Apple just so they can sell more of their gear. I'd rather choose options which benefits _me_.
My post was half joking allusion to the fact that the company who was going to save us from IBM's truly sinister plan to overcharge for cube-drone PCs is now the largest and most popular distributor of cryptographically crippled general purpose computers in the entire consumer space and half "ha ha, only serious" allusion to the number of App store restrictions and application removals that have had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting users...
The fact that the Windows user experience is pretty dismal does not change the fact that where there are walled gardens, there will be rent-seeking landords with their own interests...
...if a few months ago. It sought a gifted https web engineer for a revolutionary project that would make the world sit up and go wow again. (Not quoted verbatim.) Further, there have been rumors, most based on patents and other developments of a system to turn iDevices into wondering terminal access systems, so you jack you iPhone into a Mac somewhere, and the Mac boots up as if you had just logged into it at home or at your desk. However, I see massive flaws in this concept, which goes against the Sun Microsystems 1990s model (The Network Is The Computer) and more recently, Google's. However, Apple may well have some hidden magic that no one has thought of, so here's to OS X 12, being 11 (Lion) is really a merging of iOS and OS X not so much a multitouch driven cloud marvel.
As a Christian, I find that phrase offensive. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The idea of a cloud device that had basic computing functionality and relied on a large master computer elsewhere can be found in science fiction dating back to the 60's.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Where is this $1 billion price tag coming from? I've seen facotries go up twice that size for under $20 million, so unless the thing is filled with solid gold doorknobs I'm doubting that pricetag. Also, all these "sources" are random apple fanboi tech sites. It's apple rather well known for spawning their own viral mysteries to help build up suspense for their next big thing? To me that looks like your standard manufacturing plant, look at the water towers... why would you need those in a data center? Maybe they're sick of the bad press from china and might start offering an american made version of some of their hardware? It's clear their customers don't care about price.
It will be as if a million Google servers cried out in terror.
I've got an iPhone and a Mac, and not one byte of my data is stored anywhere near Google's or Apple's servers. I see no indications that I will be forced to store my data on Apple's servers anytime in the future. I'm sure I will be able to, but I'm currently confident that I will have the choice. On the other hand the copy of MS Office I just installed REQUIRED me to register the software on line with Microsoft...
Bullshit. You have the option of manually calling in to activate the software.
WRT Android how do you sync local contacts on your computer to your phone without first being required to upload the data to google? Now I will ask the same question with calendaring.
Did you not read the zillion page Apple EULA that gives them the right to constantly track your location? What about the android phones that take periodic snapshots of the browser usage and stores them in the devices memory. If privacy and choice are your main critera it is not google devices and it is not iphone.
Yes, they make $99 per year, per user. It's really not that hard to understand.
Horrible place to use this but it applies in lesser circumstances as well as greater..... Those who would trade freedon for security deserve neither. Learn to secure your own damn box.
Stop drinking that kool-aid, fan boy.
Seriously, a link to a Sophos website as evidence for MacOS X malware?
Apple has already started moving to cloud based services, so most likely the data center will be for those. It will also mean that the future iPhones, iPads and Mac computers will be even more locked down than previously. For example if you take a picture, it's directly uploaded "to the cloud". This is a huge privacy violation and means you don't really own your data anymore.
So either you care about this 'privacy' you are talking about and you just don't use or buy anything that stores your files 'in the cloud', or you don't bother about where your holiday pictures and e-mails are stored and enjoy the benefits of automatically backed-up storage that is accessible everywhere, from different devices, without setting up and running your own private data center. I don't see the problem here. Meanwhile everyone and their mother have long moved on and doesn't have the same privacy paranoia as you apparently do: e-mail is stored at the ISP or hosted and accessed through a commercial entity such as GMail or Hotmail, address books, bookmarks and preferences are synced through some kind of vendor synchronization service built into computers and phones, dropbox or mobileme is used to backup, store and publish data, and so on, and so forth. Hate to burst your bubble dude, but most people don't care much where their data resides, as long as they have the impression no-one is digging through it or re-distributing it. Real privacy doesn't exist anyway, your name is in hundreds of databases, be it governmental, utility, commercial, whatever. If you want to be 100% sure no-one gets to know anything about you and your data, just don't connect to the internet, don't use a phone, don't send e-mails, and don't give out any personal information to any company, etc. I think you'll have a really hard time. Personally, I always get a little annoyed by privacy whiners, not because I don't value privacy, but because the majority of the people complaining about privacy invasion happily keep public facebook profiles online, twitter every move they make, hand out their personal data without a problem if it gets them a $1 cheeseburger discount, etc.
Anyway, what you're saying about a 'cloud based iPhone/iPad/Mac' is pure speculation, and as long as it isn't enforced you *have* to use such products, I don't see the problem.
Observing the resource usage of one iTunes client under Windows, and assuming that client and server iTunes are written with similar efficiency, my calculations show that the NC datacenter building should be sufficient to support nearly 1,000 concurrent iTunes downloads.
The flashy iPhoto album stuff to[sic]?
Yeah, it's nothing proprietary.
Free of charge? Experience? Unlimited storage? Better bandwidth?
You misunderstand. I'm not asking why you'd want to go with services other than Apple's .Mac. I'm asking why you'd want to go with services that pretend to be .Mac instead of just using regular, off the shelf services for mail, jabber, backup disk, etc.
What?
For instance the remote desktop thingy
You mean Apple Remote Desktop? That doesn't rely upon the .Mac service that I know of. It's just a remote desktop client that runs on OS X (usually server).
Other examples would be Timemachine backups to whatever wireless router with an NTFS/FAT32 USB HDD.
That's not a function of .Mac either, it's just a limitation of the OS X built in backup (limited support for filesystems). The method used relies upon the journaling in HFS+ and they haven't spent the time to make it work with any other journaled filesystems, lt alone non-journaled ones. But this all has nothing to do with Apple's .Mac services.
Has nothing to do with MobileMe ...
Right, so you still haven't pointed out anything you can do with .Mac or MobileMe or whatever that you can't replicate with other services.
...but still with inconvenient solutions from Apple just so they can sell more of their gear.
It's actually a real limitation based upon filesystems. You can use any wireless router plugged into an HFS+ hard drive.
I'd rather choose options which benefits _me_.
By all means you should choose what works for you, but I'm not seeing how Apple is making that intentionally difficult other than not going out of their way to port some of their software to other OS's and filesystems.
"Learn to secure your own damn box."
Most people don't WANT to learn all the skills the geeks have to "secure their own box". They just want to use the computer without having to become an expert at every little facet of it. Your elitist attitude is exactly the problem: computers are *tools* and if they aren't designed for people to use without arcane knowledge, then they have been badly designed and we need to do better. That's what Apple is doing.
Solutions that help the common person are going to win in the end. Computers are here to serve us, we are not here to serve computers. The sooner you realize that, the happier you're going to be. To most people computers are a means, not an end. The elitists are going to be marginalized because they aren't a big enough market to matter. That's for the best, because it means more people can do more things in greater safety.
The reason people are moving to Apple in droves
Methinks you are getting a little ahead of yourself.
There’s no evidence that the marketplace is abandoning Windows to any significant degree. The overall share of Internet traffic from Windows PCs has dropped slightly in the past two-and-a-half years, from 95.4% to 91.1%. But that’s true across the board for competing desktop OSes as well. Linux usage is down dramatically in 2010, to 0.85% from an all-time high of 1.08% in early 2009. Interestingly, OS X usage is also down, dropping by roughly a quarter of a percentage point since a year ago, from 5.26% to exactly 5.00%. In relative terms, that’s almost exactly the same overall drop as the Windows platform has seen in the same period.
MS has never had much of a presence in the mobile world and Apple has never been a significant threat in the desktop/laptop world.
This hasn't changed.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
While were making up scenarios, why don't we just find a very profitable company that buys us all ponies to complement our phones, too?
There's a bunch of questions to be answered -- does MobileMe have a halo effect on other devices, like the phones? Could it ever? If you can find a way of answering this yes, then you're on to something. Then, you have to figure out if you have enough capacity to service accounts that have zero cost at the point of delivery -- Google does, but Apple doesn't. A low price per month defrays costs but also keeps the demands on the system low. We might see this side of the equation change when this new datacenter opens. If Apple decides it can service all of the customers they presume they'd get for free with this new capacity, and the service will pay for itself in sales, then they're likely to consider doing it. But those factors have to be in place. They can't just offer it today, get swamped for 6 months, cost them a load of money and then have the offer die an ignominious death from getting a bad reputation.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
1) I can build android for my phone (one sold by Google).
2) I can build android for a phone that never was meant to support it (one sold by Nokia)
3) I can have a perfectly functional phone based photo gallery, using Google's online one only if I choose, this is after setting it up to sync with Google's online one even.
4) I can have a perfectly functional e-mail account using non-Google accounts.
I do not know how well contacts sync with other services, but everything else is pretty effective in my experience.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by your post I guess is what i'm saying.
On point one note, it isn't even the hardware manufactures that are the problem, as clearly they allow easy unlocking for Google.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Yeah I regret buying the family mobile me thing because it's not doing anything that I already have. I like the idea of seeing my email and voicemail with no advertisments and I'm willing to pay for it but I already have that with the Comcast mobile app. Most of the few pictures I have out there are on flickr or picasaweb and I could care less about the ads. I'm about to get a nas with an http server etc so until I get to a point where I'm selling my work that will function as my website. I spent 120.00 on that dman thing and I really didn't need it. Blame it on my wife.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
We still have over 10% statewide unemployment here.
Actually it's probably a lot worse than that - your national average is well above 20% and it'll only get a lot worse. And pleeeease don't expect apple or anyone else (god?) to save you - you guys and your rotten economy are about to swirl down the toilet.
Perhaps that'll learn ya for electing a series of criminals (from Reagan onwards) and for buying into the filthy lie that is capitalism, and taking it to the next level - i.e. waging countless wars around the world to protect your selfish economic interests.
Can i take the opportunity to say a big "good riddance" from the rest of the planet - we are all laughing out loud as this all pans out (no pun intended).
It's not elitism to expect that someone could run proper security software. If you use M$ products they even provide a nice security suite for free. I honestly don't believe it's too much to ask of people to be involved in learning the basic maintenance of their possessions. I don't know alot about cars but I do know how to do an oil change. I don't work in construction but I have learned to do some of my own home repairs. What you are advocating for is company sponsored intellectual laziness. Sorry I can't support that.
yay - another apple fanboy to make us all grateful that we aren't so pathetically lacking in self-respect and identity that we need to kowtow in front of a f_cking corporation ffs.
ah well - you have our sympathy (and your brushed aluminum)
If you touch the side of the data center in just the wrong place it will shut down
You, poor, naive, fool.
It just means they made $99 per year, per user, plus whatever they can make from selling your personal data. Now to be fair, Apple is nowhere near as good at making money off your data as Google is, but they are trying to close that gap.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Not correct, I have a cr-48 and I can save a file to USB or SD card. Reading one on the other hand, is out of the picture.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
" To the 'Mainframe' with all of them."
Another person who doesn't know the difference. Shut up about the cloud and mainframe until you know what the fuck you are talking about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One thing that your 99$/year buys you, that I haven't seen replicated with any free services: live support.
MobileMe has live chat-support, and should you be in a situation where you haven't managed to get things working, usually because of a pebkac issue, you can call Apple's phone support, and they'll work with the chat support to get you up and running.
So ... who do I call, when I can't get gmail to work on my computer? My free dropbox account? Remote desktop service?
What you're paying for probably isn't the 20 GB of online storage, the website or email. But it's going to pay for the support you'll be getting.
Sure, it might not be for you. You can set up your own services on your own, or use a mix of free services that can do the same thing - hell, there might even be a single free services that does it all. But if it's free of charge you're bound to pay through ads or complete lack of support.
That might work for you and me - but I'd rather not have to field the calls from friends and family, when they can't figure out how to sync their gmail calendar entries onto their dropbox account so it can be uploaded to some other thing that doesn't support gmail for whatever reason.
This is clearly a response to Google's Android. They're going to launch an 'Apple Search' and host it here. Undercutting Google's bread-and-butter will curtail their ability to lose money on free software.
Has there really been no one who guessed this thus far??
That was just the first one google returned. Your going to tell me Apple has no virus problems? Seriously?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Not a datacenter. It s a place for Jobs to house all his fanbois, so he can get his cock sucked and asshole licked without having to go find them.
"Sorry I can't support that."
That's fine, but in the end it doesn't matter if you support it or not. The trend towards safer computing environments is clear, and it's only going to grow stronger over time. Again, to most people it is a key feature that they can browse an app store and select from a set of safe software.
What you consider "laziness" the vast majority of the world considers "creating a useful tool that they don't have to micro-manage or learn arcane things to keep running well". You cannot change this trend by "not supporting" it, because for every person like you, there are tens of thousands who want it to "just work".
You don't think apple makes any money from all that info? You don't think they use it for anything?
You must be kidding.
I'm sure they use the data internally. They may provide anonymized data to partners, but no, I don't think it's likely they're selling all the personal info for advertising purposes. Remember, Apple is having trouble getting major magazines to buy into the iPad right now because they wouldn't budge on handing over credit card and personal data to the publishers who wanted to sell it to advertisers as part of their profit generation (as they do with print subscribers). It's not that Apple isn't interested in money, they just think protecting their reputation of looking after their users will make them more money in the long run.
There's plenty of flexibility on TimeMachine backups. I've been using TimeWarp to backup to my Amazon S3 account for ages, and before that I used some cheap HD hung off a DSL router, mounted as a NAS. A quick and simple shell command is all that's required to allow TM backups to "unsupported" targets.
I think you're purposefully ignoring the point. It isn't that "Apple" has no malware, it's that the vetting process of the app store for iPad software creates a tremendously safer software ecosystem than one has on Windows. By and large, people's iPads are not jacked into botnets, but people's windows machines ARE. OSX has the same intrinsic problem as Windows here, which is why it's going away in favor of the more restricted iOS environment.
Again: iOS, *NOT* OSX. OSX is going to become more like iOS in the future in order to remove the attack vectors that are common to such wide open platforms.
iPads are simply a safer environment than a Wintel PC. If you don't acknowledge that, then you're simply living in an alternate reality.
NC is the home of outlet malls. Looking for a iTune of "Oops!... I Did It Again" for a discount? Of course it could be a returned item, have damaged packing, be discontinued or be off color, but hey it'll be there for .49 Surprising y'all never heard of drive thru's either - the next step in outlet shopping.
MobileMe is "expensive" (by which we mean $99 a year) precisely because it has no ads and doesn't vend your personal information to third parties.
This argument always confuses me.
Is there any particular required logical disjunction between "take money from subscribers, telling them their data is private" and "also take money from unscrupulous third parties in exchange for the subscribers' supposedly private data"?
I mean, other than "nice guys wouldn't do that, and I just have to assume my cloud provider is nice otherwise they wouldn't be still in business"?
Cable TV companies have no problem with both taking money from subscribers AND taking money from advertisers. Now inserting ads into a video stream, that's obvious. But selling data? You can do that secretly and privately and the subscriber need never know. Just a magical extra income stream.
Basically, once I give my data to a cloud provider, if I didn't encrypt it first at my end, who's to know and stop them from doing whatever the heck they feel like with that data? No technological means that I know of, and the whole purpose of Cloud Computing seems to be to obscure the inner workings of my provider so I can only rust, and can't verify.
But it seems to be that in the rest of the business world, all sorts of scungy dealing goes on with outsourced providers, like exploitative labour used to make iPods and melamine in the milk. Are cloud computing providers magically going to be more trustworthy than the rest? Especially when there's a big financial incentive to not keep my data private, and no way for me to know if they haven't?
This is why I fundamentally don't trust the Cloud - yet. No technological guarantees that a contract isn't broken, and a lot of perverse incentives to do so. That seems like a no-brainer "avoid" to me.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Grr typo. "Trust, and can't verify."
Though "Rust... But Verify" would be a good Megadeth album title.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Or you use Ubuntu One, where the name of the service *is* the advertising. 2GB free, Android and iOS clients, Mac and Windows clients coming soon.
And no encryption, so all your personal data (including Evolution contacts) is neatly there in cleartext on Canonical's servers.
But they'll never do anything bad with that, even if someone gives them a billion dollars to. 'Cause Mark Shuttleworth flew in space, so he can now never lie to anyone or his brain will explode.
Well known fact about all astronauts.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Yes, they make $99 per year, per user.
Just like ESPN charges $4 per subscriber per month, and so takes no money from advertisers on top of that, right?
Just because they hurt you doesn't mean they really do love you.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Actually, you just describe a mainframe's terminal.
You, poor, naive, fool.
It just means they made $99 per year, per user, plus whatever they can make from selling your personal data. Now to be fair, Apple is nowhere near as good at making money off your data as Google is, but they are trying to close that gap.
Try thinking about it from a Hardware angle. Apple uses your data to help design products people would want to use.
your post is pure brilliance. It's short and funny. It even makes weird if whimsical sense. A billion would be cheap to apple if it could perpetuate steve jobs, and that's not an exaggeration.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
IN the US the download speeds are to slow for that work and caps kill it even more.
Also on the Iphone that WILL KILL use out side of the usa do to very high data costs.
In reality, you are right. However, reality has nothing to do with corproate accounting. The Mac division would transfer the PCs to the DC at full MSRP. That way it shows a needed profit.
No, you're wrong, because if you were right that would mean that Apple PCs and gadgets suck, or that they're constantly owned by malware, is not the case, I gotta tell you that you fail at IT and please leave the internet for Us, intelligent owners of iPhones and iPads who don't want our data to be tainted by your rootkit data. This windows fanboys...
They will shoot you down!
LOL Of course not, there's no simulator big enough for that!
But joking aside, I've been keeping up on this for a fair while, and amongst the more credible insiders, a lot of information has been released...
Steve Jobs is designing a new kind of Apple training facility, initially for a few people who work for Apple, but eventually it will be opened to certain segments of the public.
It's supposed to be revolutionary. Someone said it's the final solution to all our training problems. The original idea was developed by a German doctor, who specialized in a certain type of brain training, like Dr Kawashima.
The test facilities were developed in Poland due to their tax incentives, and due to the advantageous location. Though they are a lot smaller, they provide a good idea of what's to come.
Apple apparently has a severe ADD problem in their company, and its known to afflict many programmers. This results in many of their programmers being unable to concentrate, which is a HUGE productivity loss for them.
While certain concentration drugs do help for a limited time, Apple really needed a more effective final solution, which they can use to cleanse these problems. So before any higher training happens, the first stage will be concentration training.
Apparently the Jewish community is afflicted with this disproportionately when compared to the more Nordic or Indo-European races. So I believe they'll be helping them first.
Either way, I'm excited! We're not sure what it's going to be called, but I'm thinking Camp Concentration, or maybe iConcentration? Who knows, either way it's really exciting! For the opening, Apple is apparently renting a pile of trains to cart the first lucky Jews to the facility.
Apple fanboi's that don't get picked, will be so jealous!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I know there are a lot of big data centers in Winston-Salem, Charlotte, and the Raleigh area. But are there enough tubes going anywhere near there?
Would you care to eleborate on that difference? From what I have seen the functionality of a cloud and a mainframe are very similar even though the implementation is very different. ie: both are large central computing devices that allocate computing resources to remote users.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Perhaps Apple is getting into subscription music business? The available bandwidth, network ubiquity and reliability are now getting to the point where this is conceivable. With such a large user base, the ZunePass model might actually work for Apple.
I believe ESPN delivers adverts. MobileMe does not. So no it's not "Just like". You failed.
And childish ad-hominems don't convert your failure into a success. It just makes you look like a jerk.
Unless you can provide any evidence of that, you are in the same category as believers in Area51 and 9/11 theorists. You're a conspiracy theorist. You believe something to be true, just because you believe it to be true. Because it massages your prejudice.
Conspiracy theorists call people who don't believe their theorists "poor, naive fools". But that moniker fits better with those that believe things with no evidence whatsoever that they are happening.
Unless and until you provide evidence that Apple breach their own privacy policy in this way, it's clear you are a naive, foolish conspiracy theorist.
Apple will be hosting content for the iProducts, including enterprise applications for next years' iPad Pro.
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
Apple's bite of Data General Corp's development park?
Would you care to eleborate on that difference?
"The Mainframe" was hype 30 years ago. "The Cloud" is hype now. IMO 'The Cloud' is a marketing-coined term.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
You know, unless your goal is to perpetuate the stereotype of Christians as humorless and judgmental, you may want to reconsider the way you respond to irreverent people.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
What is Apple up to with this huge facility?
King's Tutankhajobs' tomb, of course...
$1 billion investment
500,000 square foot facility
What is Apple up to with this huge facility?
It's obviously a cover for researching alien technology!
With the death of the Mac 1U rack server, what are they filling the racks with? Maybe the centre is so huge because they have a dozen or more Mac Pro towers in there??
I agree,
Just that getting an own domain name and buying the services you need seperately is cehaper than 99 a year. I had iTools back then, before it became .mac. iTools was free, .mac not so.
Then i just got me a domain name and the rest is history.
You remain the naive fool. Any company you give your information to will work as best they can to monetize that information. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's the obvious and expected result. The officers of a corporation have a fiduciary duty to the corporation to maximize it's profits. Failure to capitalize on the information you provide to them is a failure to serve the corporation's shareholders and is punishable by termination.
The point you can't seem to understand because you're too bust ranting about conspiracy theories and being indignant that the holy Apply has been questioned is that there is no real difference between Apple and Google in this regard. What the $99 per year buys you is no advertising on that service, for now.
Expecting more than that is delusion.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Of course, but that's just one way in which they can use the information. I'm not saying they're evil, I'm saying only the hopelessly naive expect corporations to turn down the opportunity to make more money.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I think if you pulled your head out of your ass you'd realize that many of the things listed on their that affect Mac OS X were proof of concept malware that required access to the physical machine, and they were all developed and widely disseminated through the press by. . . . wait for it. . . . anti-virus companies like SOPHOS!
Seriously? Are you that dumb? Do you not see the conflict of interest in Sophos and other anti-virus peddlers announcing "the sky is falling" and you must buy their POS bloatware to protect you? These same companies have been predicting for 5 years now that a serious Mac virus will be released within 12 months, and I still haven't seen anything.
Listen, you have an anti-Apple bias, that's fine, but try to at least think things through before posting a scare article from Sophos as evidence.
Oh please, your sad devotion to APPLE is shytte. The point is APPLE != MALWARE FREE. Pull your own head out of your own dumb ass.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
why do people have to host their own mailserver? Cloud, by definition, is not a new term. Virtualized, Mainframe, Cloud, remind me again why cloud is magically different?
Are you saying that gmail is different as being "in the cloud" than being virtualized and/or essentially via a mainframe?
Using Gmail (or MobileMe) is certainly different than running a mail server on a VM, even if that VM is hosted by a third party in a remote datacenter. Gmail runs on a large geographically distributed cluster, and the service is entirely managed by Google.
In addition to the hosting costs (local or remote), having your own private mail server costs time, money, or a mix of both, and it takes a lot of time and/or money to provide the level of service that approaches something like Gmail or MobileMe can provide.
The main reason for the HFS+ requirement is to use other filesystems takes up a lot more overhead as Apple has added the ability to have hard links to directories in HFS+. This way if a directory containing 10 thousand files hasn't been modified since the last backup, all that is needed is a single hard link to that directory.
NTFS/EXT/etc do not support this.
As mentioned though, time machine backs up to many 'non supported' drives/shares etc with a simple console command, you just lose some of the goodness. Though, really, not much. I back up to my Drobo mounted as a samba share and have no issues.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
I geo tagged them on the 24th when driving up 321
35.587167,-81.257167 (Apple)
35.900167,-81.546167 (Google)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=35.587167,-81.257167+(Apple)&daddr=35.900167,-81.546167+(Google)&hl=en&geocode=FV8EHwIdMR0o-w%3BFQfLIwIdSbQj-w&mra=ls&sll=35.900296,-81.545989&sspn=0.046861,0.064802&ie=UTF8&ll=35.752085,-81.401138&spn=0.713277,0.567856&z=11
what made you think that other solutions had to = hosting your own server? This is probably why you got marked flamebait.
there are solutions in between gmail and mobileme, some free, some not. It's a bit narrow to think those are all there is out there and/or the "Everything costs money or eyeballs" concept.
Anyone else think this has anything to do with Apple's Lala acquisition? Lala was about storing your music in the cloud. When Apple acquired it, Apple promptly shut down Lala. Maybe this data center will help users store their music in the cloud.
If Apple decides it can service all of the customers
Sorry Apple, I have zero interest in your forthcoming rentboys!
That's precisely what it is. By definition. But of course a conspiracy theorists never accepts that his particular belief is a conspiracy theory.
Which involves amongst other things maintaining the reputation of the company. YOUR belief that selling information for peanuts in relation to the other income of the company says everything about you and nothing about the company in question. Everything Apple does is big news. If they were selling their customers personal information, that would be big news. Yet you don't have a scrap of evidence. Just blind belief of a conspiracy.
You deny there's a difference one sentence, then start the very next sentence with what the difference is. Apple doesn't need to sell personal data, the service generates it's income through the direct means of a substantial subscription.
What's delusion is believing a conspiracy to be true without scrap of evidence to suggest it.
and so what happens when something like the pdf exploit ruins their "just works" atmosphere. Problem is in many cases they are still fucked and now have to overpay to get a fix instead of having eduscated themselves on how to avoid the problem. It really doesn't matter how you frame it, it is intellectual laziness and i have no sympathy for those who fall victim to it. The security of those platforms are an illusion the sooner you realize that and get on with educating yourself the better.
How to be a Slashdot user:
Any time Apple comes up, do the following:
1: Snarkily insult Steve Jobs
2: Snarkily insult Apple users, and characterize them as "fanbois"
3: ???
4: Profit! (In karma if not in life)
Hahaha, your entire point is based on proof-in-concept "malware" that requires installation at the physical location of the machine itself. Apple-haters will use ANYTHING to bash Apple.
You embarrassed yourself. Stop before you dig the hole even deeper.