Apple to unite internet teams under one roof at 1 Infinite Loop - report
Apple is planning to unite many of the teams working on its disparate internet services, relocating them to its Cupertino headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop, a report said on Thursday.
At the moment, those teams are scattered across office parks in other parts of Cupertino and in the nearby town of Sunnyvale, Bloomberg said. Sources for the publication explained that teams for Siri, Maps, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple News, and parts of iTunes and Apple Music will be a part of the unification effort.
The company is also said to be shifting its cloud infrastructure onto a single Apple-made platform codenamed "Pie," giving it more control and potentially some speed boosts. Parts of Siri, Apple News, and the iTunes Store are already being moved over, and the company has developed a photo storage system -- "McQueen" -- meant to reduce dependence on Amazon and Google servers. A full transition to Pie could take several years.
Meanwhile, the current workforce situation is said to be responsible for bugs and slower product development. Apple is allegedly interested in improving the growth of its cloud services, and better competing with Amazon and Google.
The plan is said to be contingent on the transition of other people at 1 Infinite Loop to Campus 2, Apple's much larger ring-shaped headquarters still under construction. The first move-ins there aren't scheduled until sometime in 2017.
One source noted that a committee of Apple managers recently decided that Campus 2 will see thousands more workers located there than the 13,000 it originally intended, forcing them to reallocate office space in the new building. To get a formal office, people will now have to be at the VP level or higher, rather than just a senior director.
Two sources commented that for average employees, much of the workspace will make use of bench seating, long tables, and open cubicles.
At the moment, those teams are scattered across office parks in other parts of Cupertino and in the nearby town of Sunnyvale, Bloomberg said. Sources for the publication explained that teams for Siri, Maps, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple News, and parts of iTunes and Apple Music will be a part of the unification effort.
The company is also said to be shifting its cloud infrastructure onto a single Apple-made platform codenamed "Pie," giving it more control and potentially some speed boosts. Parts of Siri, Apple News, and the iTunes Store are already being moved over, and the company has developed a photo storage system -- "McQueen" -- meant to reduce dependence on Amazon and Google servers. A full transition to Pie could take several years.
Meanwhile, the current workforce situation is said to be responsible for bugs and slower product development. Apple is allegedly interested in improving the growth of its cloud services, and better competing with Amazon and Google.
The plan is said to be contingent on the transition of other people at 1 Infinite Loop to Campus 2, Apple's much larger ring-shaped headquarters still under construction. The first move-ins there aren't scheduled until sometime in 2017.
One source noted that a committee of Apple managers recently decided that Campus 2 will see thousands more workers located there than the 13,000 it originally intended, forcing them to reallocate office space in the new building. To get a formal office, people will now have to be at the VP level or higher, rather than just a senior director.
Two sources commented that for average employees, much of the workspace will make use of bench seating, long tables, and open cubicles.
Comments
Eddie is not going to run the Siri team, or the Maps team, etc. What he's going to do is make sure that whatever they develop and produce, it can be served to Apple's users (accessed by their devices) with as little issues as possible.
Putting all of Apple's cloud services under one organization makes a lot of sense when it comes to making sure the infrastructure and technology is there for delivering those services to a billion+ devices around the world.
However, I can see how perhaps in the near future there will be a hardware platform that is rather different from the traditional hardware platform and requires a rather different OS, and that rather different OS could be a descendent (at least in spirit) of SIRI. For example, suppose that there is a computer in the future that is built on silicon that more closely resembles IBM's TrueNorth than Intel's Core (or Apple's Hurricane). A descendant of SIRI could be the OS for that computer.
I think Apple already had a vision for future computer when Steve Jobs said in the future instead of you learning how to use computer, The computer itself will learn about you to serve you.
The vision was clear. I just don't think the man who's overseeing SIRI has as big a dream, or ever has a dream. Got this from twitter
Don't think Cue will know "what's wrong with this picture?".
PS: I don't blame Cue.
I suspect that Apple Pay, parts of iTunes and Apple Music involve payment processing and the superior transaction processing capabilities of FoundationDB. I suspect that Apple acquired FoundationDB specifically for this purpose -- but I wish they would make it available to developers, and offer it as a Cloud Service (doesn't necessarily need to be part of iCloud).
The Big 4 providers of Cloud services are: Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google. Reportedly, MS told Apple that they could not handle the projected Apple capacity. Apple could certainly expand its use if IBM Cloud services -- at least until it fleshes out its own world-wide cloud capacity.
There are real advantages to this:
• the breadth and depth of IBM services to enterprise
• currently over 2,000 IBM Cloud packages
• the availability of cognitive services such as Watson
• the current MobileFirst partnership
• IBM providing/promoting the use of Macs, iDevices to enterprise
• IBM Internet Cloud Tools for Swift -- allowing local development and testing of both client and server on a Mac, before deployment of the server to the Cloud
• the commitment to Swift by both IBM and Apple
Apple and IBM could even offer ApplePay and FoundationDB services through the IBM Cloud.
That leaves Amazon and Google -- both competitors to Apple -- frenemies, atbest. Apple would bulk up its own cloud services (iCloud and IBM Partner) -- rather than paying Amazon and Google to bulk up theirs -- and sell the capability to Apple at a higher cost.
And, no -- I don't think Apple should Acquire IBM... yet!
I don't think financing is the issue. I worked for IBM (1964-1980) and with Apple (1978-1989) and the cultures were quite different.
Today's Apple culture appears to be much the same. It appears that IBM's culture is moving towards Apple's -- though, not there yet!
Also, each company has its own markets and areas of expertise -- there's a synergy -- why encumber one's with the other's.
I suspect that the current Apple/IBM partnership is very successful, and will be expanded into different areas. At some time, in the next few years, opportunities will present themselves -- that will best be addressed by combining the two companies.
Also, there are anti-trust considerations.
That is not to say Apple 's DC are inefficient, but I dont think they are anywhere near OVH or Google. Apple's solution is, instead of spending time designing it to perfection, much like their other products or Campus. They throw huge money into it. By building huge solar panel and getting those energy very cheap, reselling those excess energy.