New Video of Apple's Enormous iDataCenter 182
1sockchuck writes "A new aerial video provides a rare look at Apple's new data center in North Carolina, which is expected to begin operations as soon as this week. It reveals the scale of the facility, which at 500,000 square feet will be among the world's largest data centers. The video, shot by a North Carolina real estate agent, also shows additional site preparation work that could support rumors that Apple plans to build another huge data center at the site." This is what drone cameras are for.
What will go in it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Will they load it up with xserve?
I wonder if Apple is the biggest customer for Xserves?
Re:What will go in it?-RDF. (Score:3, Interesting)
As great as this would be, I'll believe it when I see it. I just can't imagine that an organization as big as Apple would be so forward thinking as recognizing that the cost of doing business overseas is often not realized immediately. Especially since those costs may never be realized by the people running the company -- a lot of the the price is paid by people living in that area, e.g., look what happened to Flint, Michigan after GM closed its plant, almost overnight the crime-rate skyrocketed [wikipedia.org]. GM didn't have to pay for the social costs of that, the taxpayer is. But the taxpayer is also paying the price in greater carbon emissions, lower quality of life (at least for the unemployed), and loss of tax revenue, etc.
On the other hand... some of the auto manufacturers have started putting plants in the SE U.S., and if any tech company was going to start a trend, I'd think it would be Apple. And just think of the P.R. campaign they could wage then: Apple: Made in the U.S.A. The copy practically writes itself.
You're spot on about NC and tech work, they've got the infrastructure already and the research triangle area is already sort of a hub for small-scale technology firms if I recall correctly (e.g. spin-offs from university research, etc.).
Re:Nothing to be proud of (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure Apple has noticed a problem that many other people have. If you have several devices (iPhone, iPad, iMac, lets say), and a large collection of data (documents, music, videos, etc.) keeping all this stuff in sync is a royal pain in the arse. It's also damn annoying having to choose what to put on you portable devices. As a hardware manufacturer that want to sell you a stack of devices, Apple has a huge interest in make the management of your data between these devices seamless. Apple's efforts in this direction have been a bit fumbling so far. Manual syncing's not great (Steve Jobs actually mentioned this when he was launching the new Apple TV), and MobileMe is clearly inadequate.
I suspect Apple's heading to a stream anything you have to any iDevice you have any time you have a network connection. They need to to keep their multi-device hardware business competitive. To do this, they need massive data storage and streaming capabilities.
All seems pretty obvious to me.