Apple Building Unified Cloud Platform for iCloud, iTunes, Siri and More

icloud_icon_blueApple is moving forward with plans to build a unified platform for cloud-based web services such as iCloud, iTunes and Siri over the next few years, according to The Information.

The new platform is based on Siri, which itself is powered by open source infrastructure software called Mesos on the backend, according to the report.

The system will be what’s called an “orchestrated infrastructure” that has the ability, among other things, to run Internet applications inside “containers,” which make it easier to scale the apps and make changes to them on the fly, one of these people says.

Apple is reportedly placing more emphasis on open source software in an attempt to attract open source engineers that can help improve its web services, but it remains to be seen how far the company shifts away from its deep culture of secrecy.

Apple sometimes requires engineers submitting code to open-source products to do so through a third party rather than let Apple be affiliated with the code. One person who’s been through the process says they felt that submitting code to an open-source project like Mesos or Hadoop is generally “frowned upon” by managers at Apple. But the process has gotten easier over time, people who have participated in the process say.

The paywalled report explains how Apple is slowly embracing the open source community and becoming more transparent about its open source projects. It also lists some of the open source technologies that Apple uses, including Hadoop, HBase, Elasticsearch, Reak, Kafka, Azkaban and Voldemort.

Bloomberg reported in June that Apple is building a high-speed content delivery network and planning upgrades to its data centers with more in-house equipment to better compete with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other cloud service providers. The improved infrastructure will allow for faster web services and more efficient delivery of cloud-based content such as streaming music.

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 18.4 With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music, New Emoji and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:03 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates that came out last year. iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 come two months after Apple released iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to...
iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
iOS 19 Mock WWDC25 Feature

iOS 19 Expected to Run on These iPhones

Monday March 31, 2025 5:28 pm PDT by
iOS 19 will not be available on the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, or the iPhone XS Max, according a private account on social media site X that has accurately provided information on device compatibility in the past. The iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max all have an A12 Bionic chip, so it looks like iOS 19 will discontinue support for that chip. All other iPhones that run iOS 18 are expected...
top stories 2025 03 29

Top Stories: WWDC 2025 Announced, iPhone 17 Pro and iOS 19 Rumors, and More

Saturday March 29, 2025 6:00 am PDT by
Apple's big developer event is a little over two months away, and rumors about what we can expect to see in Apple's next major operating system updates are becoming increasingly frequent. A public release of iOS 18.4 is also imminent with a number of updates and improvements, although we won't be getting the major Apple Intelligence Siri upgrades that had reportedly been planned for this...
Magic Mouse Green

What to Expect From the Magic Mouse 3

Saturday March 29, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple is reportedly working on a new Magic Mouse. Below, we recap what to expect. The two key rumors for the Magic Mouse 3 so far include a relocated charging port, along with a more ergonomic design. It was briefly rumored that the Magic Mouse 3 would also feature voice control, but that was misinterpreted information. Relocated Charging Port While the Magic Mouse switched from...
iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Expected Next Week - Here Are the Release Notes

Friday March 28, 2025 2:01 pm PDT by
With the second release candidate of iOS 18.4 that Apple seeded out today, the company finally provided us with release notes that give a full rundown on what to expect. There's an Apple Vision Pro app, new Apple Intelligence features for notifications and additional language support, plus an Apple News Food feature for Apple News+ subscribers, and several updates that should improve the...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature Homescreen

Six Things to Know About Apple's Upcoming Foldable iPhone

Friday March 28, 2025 3:54 pm PDT by
We've been hearing rumors about a foldable iPhone for almost a decade now, but it looks like we might finally see the device come to fruition in 2026. We're going to be waiting many more months for the foldable iPhone, but so far we're hearing good things. Apple wants to make it creaseless. It's taken Apple multiple years to design a foldable iPhone that it's satisfied with because Apple ...
iOS 19 visionOS UI Elements

Apple Codename Provides Clue About iOS 19's Rumored New Design

Sunday March 30, 2025 6:40 am PDT by
Multiple sources have claimed that iOS 19 will introduce a new design with more translucent buttons, menus, notification banners, and more, and there is now another clue that points towards this glass-like appearance. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today said the new design project is codenamed "Solarium" internally. A solarium is a room with glass walls that allow in plenty of sunlight, so this...

Top Rated Comments

MacVault Avatar
125 months ago
Headline should read: Apple STILL Trying to Figure Out the Cloud... Might Have an Update for us in a Few Years ... When Cloud is Replaced by 'Spirit Computing' HAAAAAA LOL :D:D:D
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
JaySoul Avatar
125 months ago
ThunderBolt.
Lightning Cable.
iCloud.

How about some bloody Sunshine once in a while?
Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jayducharme Avatar
125 months ago
Apple's paltry 5 GB of free storage per account makes Google look positively generous. The least Apple could do is make it 5 GB per device. That might be a small incentive to purchase more Apple products. As it is now, the more devices you buy, the less storage you end up with. Given how unstable iCloud has been, I'm not willing to pay Apple's current prices for their extra storage.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TWSS37 Avatar
125 months ago
No WAY this is going to be anything less than flawless ;)
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
naeS1Sean Avatar
125 months ago
Azkaban and Voldemort?? Hell Yeah!
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
boston04and07 Avatar
125 months ago
One thing that I hope they address soon is the fact that we can't merge or permanently link Apple IDs. I'm in a situation that I know a lot of others here are too. I was an early adopter of .mac, back in the days when it wasn't free. I got my iTunes store account after that, but didn't want to use my .Mac email in case I ever needed or wanted to stop paying for .Mac. Then, a few years later, when iCloud went free, I tried switching my iTunes store email address to my new iCloud address, but was told that I couldn't, because iCloud already *was* its own independent Apple ID and you can't merge them. So now, I have two Apple IDs - one tied to my ever-growing iTunes account, and the other is my daily iCloud account, which handles mail, calendars, syncing, etc.

The worst part is that this means I can't use the family sharing in Apple Music, since the iCloud account I'm signed into on all my devices is different than the one I actually use for iTunes. Super annoying...I hope they address this at some point.

The main problem is content that's from somewhere that isn't Apple. iBooks and iTunes Music live in the cloud, but the eBooks I bought elsewhere (like Harry Potter, which isn't on the iBookstore) and non-iTunes music cannot go to iCloud.
This! It's so annoying. They've made iBooks the main built in way to view and store PDFs on iOS, but they don't back them up to the cloud or sync them to other devices. I lost a bunch of stuff that way when I had to restore from a backup and didn't realize that none of my PDFs were in that backup or living in the cloud already
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)