Google and all storage providers are dropping prices because they know in the near future they will have the biggest leap in Storage capacity in recent memory. 8TB are already selling in bulks to them, 20TB coming before 2020.
Apple is still behinds in DC capacity. And they just didn't plan well enough. I guess they wanted to rely more on third party cloud while technology like memory, connection and HDD advance so they could have less DC.
And Apple has a habit of doing so, taking less risk and wait until the signal is clear ( or extremely clear ) before making a move. Many times i think they are too conservative. For Example Apple should have had they own CDN long time ago, instead they relied on Akamai.
Why don't they just lease cloud space from Amazon or Microsoft for now? Its not like running a cloud server is rocket science.
Apple does. One file I downloaded off the iCloud Drive webapp shows the hostname as s3-us-ore-115-prod.digitalhub.com. Guess.
The problem is it's expensive, cause Amazon and Microsoft both take their cut for the storage, the CPU and for the network. If you compare Amazon's rates, Apple isn't making a profit on iCloud subscriptions, while Amazon's web services is basically their highest margin operation.
It's also a bit disingenuous Apple showing off their "green" datacenters when most of the work is done on Amazon and Microsoft.
Google and all storage providers are dropping prices because they know in the near future they will have the biggest leap in Storage capacity in recent memory. 8TB are already selling in bulks to them, 20TB coming before 2020.
Apple is still behinds in DC capacity. And they just didn't plan well enough. I guess they wanted to rely more on third party cloud while technology like memory, connection and HDD advance so they could have less DC.
And Apple has a habit of doing so, taking less risk and wait until the signal is clear ( or extremely clear ) before making a move. Many times i think they are too conservative. For Example Apple should have had they own CDN long time ago, instead they relied on Akamai.
Maybe they should have started a few years before they did, say like after the iPhone came out and showed itself to have more than 1% market penetration potential, right? Nope.
I would imagine that planning for the North Carolina center started in 2010 or 11. By then, Apple was realizing they had a tiger by its tail, as Steve Jobs said. Mobile computing was going to replace the PC.
So we are asking them to be not only risk takers, but clairvoyant as well. That isn't Apple. They're basically cautious, like you say.
I think they're now building or actively doing groundwork on at least three data centers simultaneously, by the way. Once they prove the concept, they seem to get moving on it, like with the retail stores.
Edit: I was way off on this chronology. This article
says that Apple was scouting data center locations along the East Coast as early as 2007. The Maiden NC center was underway by 2010 and the first phase finished in 2011. Now we know they were planning to build a solar farm to power it, plus double the capacity by building a twin center adjacent. Meanwhile, as data needs grew, particularly with the advent of iCloud (2011?), Apple was buying space from Microsoft and Amazon.
The cause of Apple's lag in cloud capacity, if any, is their conservative pace in building. Maiden was their prototype, perhaps, Afterwards, Pineville and Reno being built almost at the same time reflect growing competence. Now they have two centers underway in Europe, one which will send waste heat into a nearby town for house heating. They also make things difficult for themselves by covering their power needs with renewables.
Maybe they will, but it doesn't seem very Apple-like to be leasing space, entrusting their customers' data, to competitors. Microsoft and IBM are maybe least objectionable.
Anyway, it looks like each data center takes about three years from the planning stage. But what do I know about any of this? I'd like to see some informed commenting here. I do know that foot-stamping without considering material causes looks very bad and just spreads more entitlement tantrums.
I stated in a post on the Google Photo thread the same: only Apple knows how many 1000's of Petabytes worth of storage they've sold in iOS devices. The number is probably scary huge, plus add to the fact that it has to be double the sold capacity for redundancy.
I also asked for more info, and if anyone knew if Apple was making use of other server providers. I distinctly remember a while back that Microsoft was providing Azure services for something.
I stated in a post on the Google Photo thread the same: only Apple knows how many 1000's of Petabytes worth of storage they've sold in iOS devices. The number is probably scary huge, plus add to the fact that it has to be double the sold capacity for redundancy.
I also asked for more info, and if anyone knew if Apple was making use of other server providers. I distinctly remember a while back that Microsoft was providing Azure services for something.
Yes, I remember you did. I would think this would be a story for DED, who has been following the data center construction he can get close to. Right now there's a lot of presumption going on and mythbusting needed (probably), all of which are right now reflecting badly on Apple's competence. What is possible for them technically should be part of the discussion. It's disgraceful to leave it out.
Yes, I remember you did. I would think this would be a story for DED, who has been following the data center construction he can get close to. Right now there's a lot of presumption going on and mythbusting needed (probably), all of which are right now reflecting badly on Apple's competence. What is possible for them technically should be part of the discussion. It's disgraceful to leave it out.
Maybe they should have started a few years before they did, say like after the iPhone came out and showed itself to have more than 1% market penetration potential, right? Nope.
I would imagine that planning for the North Carolina center started in 2010 or 11. By then, Apple was realizing they had a tiger by its tail, as Steve Jobs said. Mobile computing was going to replace the PC.
So we are asking them to be not only risk takers, but clairvoyant as well. That isn't Apple. They're basically cautious, like you say.
I think they're now building or actively doing groundwork on at least three data centers simultaneously, by the way. Once they prove the concept, they seem to get moving on it, like with the retail stores.
Edit: I was way off on this chronology. This article
says that Apple was scouting data center locations along the East Coast as early as 2007. The Maiden NC center was underway by 2010 and the first phase finished in 2011. Now we know they were planning to build a solar farm to power it, plus double the capacity by building a twin center adjacent. Meanwhile, as data needs grew, particularly with the advent of iCloud (2011?), Apple was buying space from Microsoft and Amazon.
The cause of Apple's lag in cloud capacity, if any, is their conservative pace in building. Maiden was their prototype, perhaps, Afterwards, Pineville and Reno being built almost at the same time reflect growing competence. Now they have two centers underway in Europe, one which will send waste heat into a nearby town for house heating. They also make things difficult for themselves by covering their power needs with renewables.
This is with comparison to Google, might be because they are a web company, managed to plan well ahead for their DC needs, and finish building DC and have them online in time. And as of today Apple stills rely on Amazon and Micosoft Cloud.
Yes, I hope those experience they gain will help them move at much faster pace when needed, and their Cloud offering, while might not be as value attractive, could at least be much faster and stable.
The other way of thinking about it is that Apple is already doing very well, but Google has set the bar so high they we perceive as normal.
Comments
Google and all storage providers are dropping prices because they know in the near future they will have the biggest leap in Storage capacity in recent memory. 8TB are already selling in bulks to them, 20TB coming before 2020.
Apple is still behinds in DC capacity. And they just didn't plan well enough. I guess they wanted to rely more on third party cloud while technology like memory, connection and HDD advance so they could have less DC.
And Apple has a habit of doing so, taking less risk and wait until the signal is clear ( or extremely clear ) before making a move. Many times i think they are too conservative. For Example Apple should have had they own CDN long time ago, instead they relied on Akamai.
Why don't they just lease cloud space from Amazon or Microsoft for now? Its not like running a cloud server is rocket science.
Apple does. One file I downloaded off the iCloud Drive webapp shows the hostname as s3-us-ore-115-prod.digitalhub.com. Guess.
The problem is it's expensive, cause Amazon and Microsoft both take their cut for the storage, the CPU and for the network. If you compare Amazon's rates, Apple isn't making a profit on iCloud subscriptions, while Amazon's web services is basically their highest margin operation.
It's also a bit disingenuous Apple showing off their "green" datacenters when most of the work is done on Amazon and Microsoft.
Maybe they should have started a few years before they did, say like after the iPhone came out and showed itself to have more than 1% market penetration potential, right? Nope.
I would imagine that planning for the North Carolina center started in 2010 or 11. By then, Apple was realizing they had a tiger by its tail, as Steve Jobs said. Mobile computing was going to replace the PC.
So we are asking them to be not only risk takers, but clairvoyant as well. That isn't Apple. They're basically cautious, like you say.
I think they're now building or actively doing groundwork on at least three data centers simultaneously, by the way. Once they prove the concept, they seem to get moving on it, like with the retail stores.
Edit: I was way off on this chronology. This article
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-apple-data-center-faq/
says that Apple was scouting data center locations along the East Coast as early as 2007. The Maiden NC center was underway by 2010 and the first phase finished in 2011. Now we know they were planning to build a solar farm to power it, plus double the capacity by building a twin center adjacent. Meanwhile, as data needs grew, particularly with the advent of iCloud (2011?), Apple was buying space from Microsoft and Amazon.
The cause of Apple's lag in cloud capacity, if any, is their conservative pace in building. Maiden was their prototype, perhaps, Afterwards, Pineville and Reno being built almost at the same time reflect growing competence. Now they have two centers underway in Europe, one which will send waste heat into a nearby town for house heating. They also make things difficult for themselves by covering their power needs with renewables.
I stated in a post on the Google Photo thread the same: only Apple knows how many 1000's of Petabytes worth of storage they've sold in iOS devices. The number is probably scary huge, plus add to the fact that it has to be double the sold capacity for redundancy.
I also asked for more info, and if anyone knew if Apple was making use of other server providers. I distinctly remember a while back that Microsoft was providing Azure services for something.
Yes, I remember you did. I would think this would be a story for DED, who has been following the data center construction he can get close to. Right now there's a lot of presumption going on and mythbusting needed (probably), all of which are right now reflecting badly on Apple's competence. What is possible for them technically should be part of the discussion. It's disgraceful to leave it out.
^^^ 100% agree!
Maybe they should have started a few years before they did, say like after the iPhone came out and showed itself to have more than 1% market penetration potential, right? Nope.
I would imagine that planning for the North Carolina center started in 2010 or 11. By then, Apple was realizing they had a tiger by its tail, as Steve Jobs said. Mobile computing was going to replace the PC.
So we are asking them to be not only risk takers, but clairvoyant as well. That isn't Apple. They're basically cautious, like you say.
I think they're now building or actively doing groundwork on at least three data centers simultaneously, by the way. Once they prove the concept, they seem to get moving on it, like with the retail stores.
Edit: I was way off on this chronology. This article
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-apple-data-center-faq/
says that Apple was scouting data center locations along the East Coast as early as 2007. The Maiden NC center was underway by 2010 and the first phase finished in 2011. Now we know they were planning to build a solar farm to power it, plus double the capacity by building a twin center adjacent. Meanwhile, as data needs grew, particularly with the advent of iCloud (2011?), Apple was buying space from Microsoft and Amazon.
The cause of Apple's lag in cloud capacity, if any, is their conservative pace in building. Maiden was their prototype, perhaps, Afterwards, Pineville and Reno being built almost at the same time reflect growing competence. Now they have two centers underway in Europe, one which will send waste heat into a nearby town for house heating. They also make things difficult for themselves by covering their power needs with renewables.
This is with comparison to Google, might be because they are a web company, managed to plan well ahead for their DC needs, and finish building DC and have them online in time. And as of today Apple stills rely on Amazon and Micosoft Cloud.
Yes, I hope those experience they gain will help them move at much faster pace when needed, and their Cloud offering, while might not be as value attractive, could at least be much faster and stable.
The other way of thinking about it is that Apple is already doing very well, but Google has set the bar so high they we perceive as normal.