Neil Hughes
Apple this week posted a new job listing for the position of "Cloud Systems Software Engineer." Discovered by AppleInsider, the full-time role at the company's Cupertino, Calif., campus will join a "small team" that is said to be building "the future of cloud services at Apple."
That small team writes "software which forms the foundation" for some of Apple's "most exciting new products and services," the job listing reads. In keeping with Apple's legendary secrecy, the listing does not reveal what services the company's cloud-driven future will include.
The iPhone maker is looking to hire an engineer with experiencing in scalable and extensible systems. The ideal candidate will collaborate with other engineering teams at Apple to build the platform frameworks and systems that will power Apple's next-generation Web services.
Apple has offered cloud-based services for some time with its $99-per-year MobileMe service. But according to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is expected to unveil an enhanced version of MobileMe this year, featuring a digital "locker" that would store personal files such as photos, music and videos. That content could be streamed to Internet-connected devices like iPhones, eliminating the need for a large amount of local memory on devices.
In particular, Apple is believed to be working on a cloud-based music service that would allow users to stream their music from anywhere. Such a product could be powered by Apple's new massive data center in North Carolina, expected to go online this spring.
This week's latest job listing from Apple comes only months after the company sought to add software engineers to its iOS development team with an emphasis on remote storage for data access. Cloud support is rumored to be a major component of iOS 5, the next major version of Apple's mobile operating system for the iPhone and iPad. One report from March said Apple plans to release iOS 5 this fall.
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33 Comments
My bet is that cloud will be an integral part of the O/S and Apple will lead that.
It will start with your music,video, pictures. Than your ios+local apps (with preferences and save files). And then Computer setup (remember your OS setup). Thats why Apple is easy with offering SSD harddisks in their top tier products.(form my HN post)
It might start with a simple service but some time in future the possibilities of cloud will change OS landscape in a disruptive way.
Cloud services - is that the new name for web services? If so it won't be a very interesting job: on the back end lots of database queries, xml generating/parsing, and HTTP transactions. On the client side lots of HTML/CSS/Javascript. Nothing really rocket-sciency except when you go to scale.
The guy who gets this job will think it's his dream come true, finally getting to work for the big A, and then it will be lots of tedious boilerplate code.
I would like it if cloud could mean 'personal cloud', in order to enable at the content and application level the ecosystem that Apple have created in hardware.
This would mean that I could point to my own Macs as hosts, such as a mini or mac pro sitting at home. For other content I may well point at Apple ( say email ).
Then I can choose where the ownership of my data lies, while still having mobility.
My personal cloud could then be set up to sync the content where i want it to be proactively, but allow me to catch the bits I miss by direct access. Plus do logic so I have the right number of backups of each file regardless of the number of copies in my cloud.
Perhaps something along the lines of Smart Everything, with the cloud using the definitions to sync the content.
So my Macbook Air would have only Smart folders, Smart playlists, Smart mailboxes, etc. But still have full versions of the apps.
I love all this cloud talk, but won't internet availability still be a bottleneck?
3G has decent coverage but it's not fast enough.
"4G" is fast enough but it doesn't have enough coverage.
I don't want my music in the cloud if I won't always have it exactly when I want it.
I don't want my movies in the cloud if I'm on the road in the backseat going in and out of service.
I don't want my photos in the cloud if I have to make somebody wait while I try to show them that one picture.
Let's just hope technology catches up to Steve's aspirations...
I love all this cloud talk, but won't internet availability still be a bottleneck?
3G has decent coverage but it's not fast enough.
"4G" is fast enough but it doesn't have enough coverage.
I don't want my music in the cloud if I won't always have it exactly when I want it.
I don't want my movies in the cloud if I'm on the road in the backseat going in and out of service.
I don't want my photos in the cloud if I have to make somebody wait while I try to show them that one picture.
Let's just hope technology catches up to Steve's aspirations...
Why do you assume that offering internet-based services means you?ll have no local access to your own data?