Apple's N.C. Data Center Intended for iTunes, MobileMe

Apple’s finally getting ready to light up its North Carolina data center. Asked about the facility during the company’s shareholder meeting today, COO Tim Cook said it’s on track to open this spring, according to reports. And it’s intended to support MobileMe and iTunes, though it’s unclear in what capacity. Certainly that long-rumored cloud-based version of iTunes is one possibility. As I wrote last fall:

Were Apple to create the cloud-based version of iTunes that’s long been rumored–one from which users’ entire iTunes libraries could be streamed–and were it to bolster MobileMe’s iDisk and Gallery services with more robust storage, even the 64GB Air might seem an attractive option to the high-end user. And Apple’s new N.C. data center, which is nearly five times the size of the one it operates in Newark, Calif., may well make both those things possible.

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http://twitter.com/alandanziger Alan Danziger

The problem with the cloud is that its limitation is on your bandwidth (speed, and cost). Things like AT&T’s data cap, Comcast outages, etc. would add to these problems.

Think about it – the most likely time to want fast, reliable access to local data is explicitly when your network connection to the cloud is gone!
Anonymous

Alan, I expect they will work around moving the data over paid pipes like 3G or CDMA. Most people have free wifi access some of the time, and many have it most of the time. They could implement a wireless sync that shuffled music while you are on wifi, etc… This way, the value of more memory/disk will not diminish.
Anonymous

Oh wow, Should be interesting to see how that turns out.

privacy-resources.at.tc
Anonymous

You can put your music and movies on iDisk today and stream them to Mac or iOS, and nobody wants to do it.

I think they will do iTunes in the cloud, but it will still sync with your device, and it will be for iPad only users primarily. So you have iTunes for Mac users, iTunes for PC users, and iTunes for cloud users. Your iPad will sync and your music and movies are backed up, you still play them locally. There are Wi-Fi iPads, there are places where your monthly data is 500 MB, and a streaming movie costs more to download than to buy.

Bandwidth is getting smaller and more expensive as we go more mobile, same as audio quality went down with iPod.
Anonymous

No, Wi-Fi is not free most of the time. Most of the time it is hooked to a $50 per month cable or DSL modem with a data cap and overage fees. People are discovering the data cap after they put in an AppleTV and/or sign up for Netflix. And the data caps are going down, not up.
Anonymous

Isn’t there a way to ban this spammer?
http://blog.macb.net macbeach

Hasn’t this taken an unusually long time to get going?

I’d still love to know if it is stocked with Apple servers, and if so, what they will replace them with when they break.
http://blog.macb.net macbeach

I have to admit it feels pretty dm to have my computer spend two days uploading my own MP3 files to a server only to turn around again and stream them to a player in the same room.

It all makes a bit more sense if you never download them in the first place.

Apple's N.C. Data Center Intended for iTunes, MobileMe

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