Previewed at WWDC, launching in the fall.
Apple's Services Teams to Start Working Together to Improve Siri, Maps, iCloud, and iTunes
Apple plans to unify its cloud services teams, including Siri, Apple Maps, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple News, and parts of iTunes and Apple Music, at its existing Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, California, according to Bloomberg.
Moving the teams into a single campus should streamline growth of Apple services, as the current structure of having teams spread out throughout various office buildings in Cupertino and Sunnyvale contributed to software bugs and slowed product development, the report claims.
The cloud services teams could be on the move again in the near future as Apple completes work on its new Campus 2 headquarters, where well over 13,000 employees are expected to work. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company will begin moving employees to the new campus in 2017.
The report adds that Apple is also planning to shift its services to a single, Apple-made backend system, codenamed Pie. The infrastructure change will reportedly give Apple "more control" and "may speed up load times."
Apple experienced its first-ever iPhone sales decline earlier this year, but its services category continues to grow. In its most recent quarter, Apple reported nearly $6 billion in revenue tied to services like the App Store, Apple Music, AppleCare, Apple Pay, iCloud, and the iTunes Store, up 19% compared to the year-ago period.
Moving the teams into a single campus should streamline growth of Apple services, as the current structure of having teams spread out throughout various office buildings in Cupertino and Sunnyvale contributed to software bugs and slowed product development, the report claims.
The cloud services teams could be on the move again in the near future as Apple completes work on its new Campus 2 headquarters, where well over 13,000 employees are expected to work. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company will begin moving employees to the new campus in 2017.
The report adds that Apple is also planning to shift its services to a single, Apple-made backend system, codenamed Pie. The infrastructure change will reportedly give Apple "more control" and "may speed up load times."
Apple has begun moving over parts of Siri, the iTunes Store, and Apple News to the new platform, one of the people said. Apple plans to move other services, including Maps, to its new system over the next few years. Apple has also developed an internal photo storage system dubbed McQueen to gradually end its reliance on Google and Amazon servers, the people said.In March, it was reported that Apple is working on an in-house cloud storage system called "McQueen" to reduce its dependence on services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, with today's report specifying it will be an internal photo storage system.
Apple experienced its first-ever iPhone sales decline earlier this year, but its services category continues to grow. In its most recent quarter, Apple reported nearly $6 billion in revenue tied to services like the App Store, Apple Music, AppleCare, Apple Pay, iCloud, and the iTunes Store, up 19% compared to the year-ago period.
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24 months ago
interesting. I would have imagined that they would already be collaborating more heavily.
24 months ago
It's mind blowing that they have not been working together from the start.
Exactly, and what's more mind blowing is that we have to wait till 2017 for it to happen.
24 months ago
It's mind blowing that they have not been working together from the start.
That's the actual news here, they didn't work together from the start.
24 months ago
About time they started improving these because they're seriously behind everyone. My experience with these services so far:
* The photos from my iPhone take hours or days to sync to my Mac, and about half of them never make it across with no progress bar, no error message, no explanation at all.
* Because of iCloud, there is a duplicate of every single photo I take stored on my iPhone which already hardly has any free storage. Each photo takes up double the storage space for no reason at all.
* If you ever have issues with iCloud, God help you. There are no settings or anything you can fix.
* If you ever turn iCloud off, you will lose all your contacts and all your calendar events. You can't even really restore them from Time Machine, because doing that will turn iCloud back on.
* Maps just can't figure out addresses, simple as that. While Google Maps can solve almost any badly written, incomplete, misspelt address you throw at it, Maps can't even figure out the simplest ones where you made sure everything is correct. Since I can't find most addresses I search for, the whole thing is totally useless.
* Notes take ages to sync, doesn't sync, or creates numerous duplicates across Mac and iPhone.
* Siri is great when it works. But often it takes more time to respond than just doing it manually.]
* The new iTunes is a horror in UI design. Brings back memories from when Skype was redesigned a few years ago.
I can watch photos sync to both iCloud and my Macbook almost instantly after taking a shot with my iPhone. There is no duplication of photos on your iPhone if you choose the option to let the iPhone manage storage. Turning off iCloud does not delete your data in iCloud. It will ask if you want to delete if from the device but you have the option to NOT delete the data.
Ok, that is enough. Sounds to me like you have no clue how to use your devices. Apple offers some instructions on their site. I suggest instead of posting incorrect info here that you use your time to learn how things really work.
24 months ago
About time they started improving these because they're seriously behind everyone. My experience with these services so far:
* The photos from my iPhone take hours or days to sync to my Mac, and about half of them never make it across with no progress bar, no error message, no explanation at all.
* Because of iCloud, there is a duplicate of every single photo I take stored on my iPhone which already hardly has any free storage. Each photo takes up double the storage space for no reason at all.
* If you ever have issues with iCloud, God help you. There are no settings or anything you can fix.
* If you ever turn iCloud off, you will lose all your contacts and all your calendar events. You can't even really restore them from Time Machine, because doing that will turn iCloud back on.
* Maps just can't figure out addresses, simple as that. While Google Maps can solve almost any badly written, incomplete, misspelt address you throw at it, Maps can't even figure out the simplest ones where you made sure everything is correct. Since I can't find most addresses I search for, the whole thing is totally useless.
* Notes take ages to sync, doesn't sync, or creates numerous duplicates across Mac and iPhone.
* Siri is great when it works. But often it takes more time to respond than just doing it manually.]
* The new iTunes is a horror in UI design. Brings back memories from when Skype was redesigned a few years ago.
24 months ago
This is one part of the business I would rather see Apple rely on AWS/GCE/Azure. Why? They're behind, and I don't see them them catching up anytime soon. They're going to be reinventing the wheel the next few years, trying to replicate designs that those other companies perfected years ago.
I'll believe they've caught up when they're publishing papers on data center/server design innovation, and it's on the mark with with the Big 3 are doing.
Also, Swift has been an open source success, but if Apple is serious about backend architecture, they should also be open sourcing part of their work there as well. This (infrastructure) is where Google is quite a bit ahead.
I'll believe they've caught up when they're publishing papers on data center/server design innovation, and it's on the mark with with the Big 3 are doing.
Also, Swift has been an open source success, but if Apple is serious about backend architecture, they should also be open sourcing part of their work there as well. This (infrastructure) is where Google is quite a bit ahead.
24 months ago
I was hoping that with Google recently announced of Pixel includes unlimited cloud storage. That Apple will offer the same thing with iPhone 8, photos and videos will be unlimited for iCloud. Just hoping!
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