Hints of new 'Castle' codenamed iCloud service found in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
Strong evidence of Apple's upcoming iCloud service has been found in the form of a feature hidden within in a developer build of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion that allows a MobileMe account to be migrated to a codenamed "Castle" service.
After Apple released a third build of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview 2 on Friday, Consomac.fr (via Google Translate) discovered references to a service codenamed "Castle" in a new Find My Mac feature.
"Castle" most likely refers to the iCloud service that Apple has been developing. Reliable sources told AppleInsider earlier this week that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been using the service internally and plans to use it for more than just streaming music.
Last week, a report cited sources claiming that the Swedish company Xcerion had sold Apple the iCloud.com domain for $4.5 million. The iCloud moniker was later independently confirmed by John Paczkowski of Digital Daily, though he was unable to confirm the selling price.
Apple has reportedly completed work on a music streaming service that would allow users to store music on a remote server and access them from Internet-connected devices.
Apple confirmed earlier this year that a 500,000 square-foot data center set to go online this spring will support iTunes and MobileMe services. Given that the $1 billion facility is five times larger than the the company's current data center in Newark, Calif., Apple appears to be planning a big push into cloud computing.
In February, reports emerged that Apple is planning a significant revamp of its MobileMe service that would build out its cloud-based features, including a 'locker' for personal memorabilia such as photos, music and videos.
For in-depth information on new features in Mac OS X Lion, see AppleInsider's ongoing series: Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Recent features include:
Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Developer Preview 3 dials down animated tabs
Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: iTunes screen saver controls music playback
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion to add Office file viewing, new text and signature annotation
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: new multitouch gestures, Dock integration for Exposé, Launchpad, Mission Control
Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: New dictionaries, multiple word views, multitouch lookups
After Apple released a third build of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview 2 on Friday, Consomac.fr (via Google Translate) discovered references to a service codenamed "Castle" in a new Find My Mac feature.
"Castle" most likely refers to the iCloud service that Apple has been developing. Reliable sources told AppleInsider earlier this week that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been using the service internally and plans to use it for more than just streaming music.
Last week, a report cited sources claiming that the Swedish company Xcerion had sold Apple the iCloud.com domain for $4.5 million. The iCloud moniker was later independently confirmed by John Paczkowski of Digital Daily, though he was unable to confirm the selling price.
Apple has reportedly completed work on a music streaming service that would allow users to store music on a remote server and access them from Internet-connected devices.
Apple confirmed earlier this year that a 500,000 square-foot data center set to go online this spring will support iTunes and MobileMe services. Given that the $1 billion facility is five times larger than the the company's current data center in Newark, Calif., Apple appears to be planning a big push into cloud computing.
In February, reports emerged that Apple is planning a significant revamp of its MobileMe service that would build out its cloud-based features, including a 'locker' for personal memorabilia such as photos, music and videos.
For in-depth information on new features in Mac OS X Lion, see AppleInsider's ongoing series: Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Recent features include:
Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Developer Preview 3 dials down animated tabs
Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: iTunes screen saver controls music playback
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion to add Office file viewing, new text and signature annotation
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: new multitouch gestures, Dock integration for Exposé, Launchpad, Mission Control
Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: New dictionaries, multiple word views, multitouch lookups
Comments
To Castle is a stock move in chess as well where you consolidate and protect your King's position, maybe using iCloud is to consolidate and protect your stuff.
If we?re going through the looking glass then I say it?s a hidden message that the King and Rook (rhymes with Cook) will be switching places on the board.
So now they're buidling castles in the sky...
Those hippies are building white castles in the sky:
I seriously think they are letting their kids name these things. First Mission Control, now Castles. If an iPony comes along at any time, we'll know for sure.
Castle seems like an odd codename to pick for a cloud service but I guess they don't want to let any clues out about what it is.
If we’re going through the looking glass then I say it’s a hidden message that the King and Rook (rhymes with Cook) will be switching places on the board.
No way Tim's a Rook - he's second in command, but switching the king and queen is an illegal move in chess. He'd have to switch with Scott or Randy.
Those hippies are building white castles in the sky:
image: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JEDr8Ridnv...isney_logo.jpg
I seriously think they are letting their kids name these things. First Mission Control, now Castles. If an iPony comes along at any time, we'll know for sure.
Castle seems like an odd codename to pick for a cloud service but I guess they don't want to let any clues out about what it is.
We already do the iPony-up-money-when-Apple-releases-a-new product. Might as well call it iPony for short.
I think it’s an apropos codename. If the data center is in the cloud that would surely be a castle or some other awe inspiring structure from Apple’s PoV.
PS: Thanks to Dunks fore removing that 600KB image.
They are in a way a victim of their own success... at the moment they simply have too many users and a growth rate that is too rapid to support the kind of cloud service users are going to expect.
I originally thought this meant they would keep the relatively high price tag on their Mobile Me service so they could reduce numbers and have a guaranteed level of service... but I'm not so sure.
I've seen a few ideas floating around... like users hosting their own content which can optionality be sync'd to the cloud (the iHub/iCenter/iHome/iCentral/iMesh idea myself and other have been kicking around for the last 6 months), or perhaps an invite system or a multiple tiered premium/free iCloud (I still don't like the name
I'll be interested to see what they decide on.
Obviously it's your castle in the sky (the clouds).
A man's home (dir) is his castle?
Rumors have been saying that Mobileme would be free
so it could be
but the Castle will certainely have a fee
with more options
or vice-versa
Just an idea !
...is that Apple don't have the infrastructure in place to support an everything/anytime/any device, kind of service.
Isn't that what the $1B data center is for? Seems like they've been doing allot of work to set up an infrastructure. I'm not sure it'll be completely free either. Especially if they are migrating MM users to the new service. What they will pitch is that it's built into the OS, but you'll still have to pay for the service most likely. Maybe some services will be free, but not all. This is Apple we're talking about. Insurance and convenience is what the cloud is about. I don't see why it needs to be mandatory and free. It'll be a paid option IMO.
I hope that soon when you have a file on your iDisk, you can just copy a file's URL to the clipboard and paste it anywhere in order to share it, like You can from Dropbox' public folder.
So I'll be looking for signs that they are finally learning and can rebuild my trust in them and my data, as I love the hardware and the audio-visual side of what they do.
I hope that soon when you have a file on your iDisk, you can just copy a file's URL to the clipboard and paste it anywhere in order to share it, like You can from Dropbox' public folder.
I just shared a file on my idisk with a copied url, so I'm going to say you can do that. What am I missing or misunderstanding?
I hope that Apple have started learning from their past mistakes in handling data, rather than trying to justify them. Perhaps its their long isolation from the business world, but they just don't have the attitude and approach to data processing that would stop them from mangling people's data so often. It's really poor.
So I'll be looking for signs that they are finally learning and can rebuild my trust in them and my data, as I love the hardware and the audio-visual side of what they do.
I understand that there have been a number of fiascos surrounding the various iterations of iDisk, but overall I've had a great experience and the few times I hadn't, I can easily attribute to a lack of bandwidth on my end and poor advice from supposed Apple support. (god those guys can be so weak). I guess I'm asking why do they need to rebuild your trust? Did you really rely on MM as your only place for your data? I always took it as an experimental convenience. Even nowadays it's sketchy. Sony has major problems with security. Amazon's cloud crashed recently etc. The cloud in general is just entering puberty. I wouldn't trust it at all yet. Part of the problem is definitely user bandwidth. At least that's been my experience, but I haven't had "tons" of files corrupted by my iDisk and when they do I don't care because it's infrequent and I'm not inclined to use it as the only place my files reside.
Did you see this article on ars by any chance?
I seriously think they are letting their kids name these things. First Mission Control, now Castles. If an iPony comes along at any time, we'll know for sure.
You have to admit though, Castle is a WAY better name than iCloud.
Isn't that what the $1B data center is for? Seems like they've been doing allot of work to set up an infrastructure.
You have to put Apple's NC datacenter into perspective. Yes it's big, but it's not that big.
Microsoft already run at least 4 data centers of a similar size and have a major presence in 3rd party data centers around the world. It's speculated that Google run even more than that.
Plus it's only one datacenter. You don't host the precious photos, videos and data from 100+ million dedicated users in a single North American datacenter.
There is speculation that Apple are expanding the NC datacenter to double its size... which is going to get closer to handling the capacity they need but still has the problem of the entire service being run from a single datacenter.
Building a single massive datacenter is something I would expect Apple to do if they were going to create a North American cable TV competitor, not host the data for millions of users around the world.
Then again... Google, Microsoft and Amazon already do a lot of these cloud services, and Microsoft at least will be baking them directly into the next version of Windows (due before end of 2012) so for Apple to be "first" they need to rush this in. Maybe they have decided to risk the capacity and single failure point issues in order to claim the first mover advantage.
If Apple wants to put Google in check, it has to go after its revenue makers. Gmail is a huge data mining resource for Google. If MobileMe went free, a lot of people would switch. Mobile Me is better except for the cost part.
To Castle is a stock move in chess as well where you consolidate and protect your King's position using a Castle/Rook piece by switching the position of the two pieces relative to each other in a single move, maybe using iCloud is to consolidate and protect your stuff by switching its position.