Following up on its aerial tour of Apple's North Carolina data center earlier this year, Wired has again taken to the skies to get a glimpse of Apple's data center site in Prineville, Oregon.
While construction on the first of two 338,000 square-foot buildings planned for the site is just getting started, Apple's initial "tactical data center" is already in place.
Apple finished this building earlier this year, but just south of it, you can see what will be the site of its much larger 338,000-square-foot data center. Apple wants to eventually build two of these monster data centers on the 160-acre site, but right now, there’s no sign of the second facility.
Apple's tactical data center in Prineville
The photos also show the close proximity of Apple's project to Facebook's twin data centers. Facebook's first 330,000 square-foot data center opened last year, and the second one is nearing completion.
Apple has been working quickly to expand its data center capacity, opening its North Carolina data center last year and earlier this year announcing both the Oregon project and another one in Nevada as it seeks to support the rapidly growing needs of its digital stores and iCloud.
Friday September 18, 2026 4:27 pm PDT by Juli Clover
The iPhone 18 Pro Max has a battery capacity over 20 watt-hours, which means there are additional shipping requirements. If an iPhone 18 Pro Max needs to be shipped somewhere, its maximum battery capacity has to be limited through firmware.
According to Apple, the iPhone 18 Pro Max uses an "innovative battery-firmware solution" that limits battery capacity to below 20Wh between when the...
Thursday September 17, 2026 4:17 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
In iOS 27, available now, CarPlay gets its biggest update in years, but some features depend on what type of car you have rather than your iPhone model. Some of the biggest additions won't do anything in the vast majority of vehicles on the road today. Here's how the new features pan out.
Works in Any CarPlay Vehicle
Custom widgets: In iOS 27, CarPlay is no longer limited to Apple's handful ...
Friday September 18, 2026 10:07 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Last month, Apple announced new Mac mini and Mac Studio models, and the computers are finally set to launch this coming Tuesday, September 22.
The new Mac mini is available with M6 and M5 Pro chip options, while the new Mac Studio can be configured with M5 Max or M5 Ultra chips.
To learn more, read our coverage:Apple Announces New Mac Mini With M6 and M5 Pro Chips and More
Apple Unveils ...
It's a temporary/popup datacenter. If you look at the closeup of it, you'll notice you've got one main (Rather temporary looking) building, and shipping containers along the side of it. Each of those shipping containers is kitted out a a mini datacenter.
The trailer parked up behind those, will likely be the backup generator for the temporary server farm.
They are fairly common now, however really shouldnt be used for something as important/mission critical as iCloud IMO. I've seen a few providers resort to using these only to have it all go tits up when anything happened weather wise.
I guess it's all down to how well built they are. Quite a few companies make and use these now. HP, IBM, Sun, Google, Cisco, Toshiba to name a few.
Sun provide a bunch of great videos showing their 'Project Blackbox' datacenter in a shipping container: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=svLdboZdfQ0
seriously, who cares. just make the damn things work and provide an excellent user experience.
This is part of the strategy to 'make the damn things work'. If the structure of how they are doing that does not interest you that's cool. I am a longstanding geek who is very interested in how they plan on providing the services they promise. I also grew up in Oregon so this is doubly of interest to me.
Apple's first foldable iPhone, with a book-style design featuring a 5.4-inch outer display and a 7.6-inch inner display with a minimal crease down the middle.
