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Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

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Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#71

Post by mechanical_fish »

mrich wrote: post #67

I find it funny how everybody here tries to spin this to portray Apple in a positive light, even putting the blame on Microsoft somehow. Face it, this would be a big deal for any other large company. When a tech giant builds his latest project on out-of-house infrastructure, how can this be good? At best, it is a waste of development resources (when it is temporary), At worst, it is a business risk/reliability nightm…

You are aware that Apple doesn't own its own chip fabs? That its hardware is manufactured for it by third parties? That the building space for most Apple Stores are leased from malls and landlords?

Every enterprise builds on infrastructure owned by others. That is what contracts are for. What matters is the degree of lock-in and who controls the roadmap. And the whole point of modern "cloud" infrastructure is that you don't own the hardware, you don't have the capital costs of the datacenters, you have a nice temporary lease that you can nonrenew or perhaps even break if needed, and your internal architecture is probably generic enough to be ported to another cloud if needed.

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#72

Post by Angostura »

cageface wrote: post #39
karl11 wrote: post #5

Wouldn't this make a successful iCloud even more embarrassing for Microsoft? They have the technology, but can't market it or make it easy for consumers to use?

It makes sense for Apple to outsource this but I wonder if this is going to limit them down the road. I think Google has a tremendous advantage with their in-house expertise and infrastructure here. My instinct is that it's harder to get that right in the long run than it is to build acceptably user-friendly interfaces. The real connaisseur may continue to prefer Apple UI but Google's good enough for the rest and I w…

I wonder whether this is just a function of the beta while they are waiting for the paint to dry on their new data centre.

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#73

Post by tjogin »

statictype wrote: post #30
karl11 wrote: post #5

Wouldn't this make a successful iCloud even more embarrassing for Microsoft? They have the technology, but can't market it or make it easy for consumers to use?

Of course not. It's akin to saying any successful Rails app is an embarrassment to 37signals because they had the technology to create it but didn't.

I think there is a difference. Microsoft has tried to build and market various synchronization/collaboration/cloud solutions for over a decade, without any success to show for.

If Apple succeeds with iCloud, and that's a big if given their own track record in the internet space, it'd ought to be pretty awkward for Microsoft.

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#74

Post by scythe »

tjogin wrote: post #73
statictype wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not. It's akin to saying any successful Rails app is an embarrassment to 37signals because they had the technology to create it but didn't.

I think there is a difference. Microsoft has tried to build and market various synchronization/collaboration/cloud solutions for over a decade, without any success to show for. If Apple succeeds with iCloud, and that's a big if given their own track record in the internet space, it'd ought to be pretty awkward for Microsoft.

Microsoft mostly marketed those to businesses, though -- Apple is marketing towards their base, viz. recreational computer users.

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#75

Post by tjogin »

scythe wrote: post #74
tjogin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference. Microsoft has tried to build and market various synchronization/collaboration/cloud solutions for over a decade, without any success to show for. If Apple succeeds with iCloud, and that's a big if given their own track record in the internet space, it'd ought to be pretty awkward for Microsoft.

Microsoft mostly marketed those to businesses, though -- Apple is marketing towards their base, viz. recreational computer users.

I'm not sure if Windows Live Mesh is their latest cloud offering or the one before that, or whatever, but Windows Live Mesh certainly is marketed towards regular consumers:

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#76

Post by Aqua_Geek »

felipemnoa wrote: post #57
skidooer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When bugs are discovered in the old version most likely they will not be fixed because everybody has already moved on. Is this a real problem? If you encounter a bug in an older version of Rails, why not just fix it and carry on as usual? Fixing bugs is part of the job of being a developer. If you are afraid to fix bugs, your application isn't going to last long no matter what language, framework, or platform you c…

I'm talking about bugs in the Rails framework. I think very few people would like to be having to maintain an outdated framework. And for the ones that actually do decide to maintain a framework that they did not develop themselves it will cost them a lot of money.

> I'm talking about bugs in the Rails framework.

I think skidooer was as well.

> I think very few people would like to be having to maintain an outdated framework. And for the ones that actually do decide to maintain a framework that they did not develop themselves [...]

How is maintaining an open-source framework that somebody else made different from maintaining a framework built in-house? At the end of the day, bugs will still be found and need to be fixed. Yes, your devs might be more familiar with your framework than with a third-party one, but I think that is only the case if you can keep your team small and prevent churn and specialization. Regardless of which direction you go, devs need to understand what is happening inside the framework - it can't be a magical black box.

> [...] it will cost them a lot of money.

More than writing something from scratch?

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#77

Post by speleding »

felipemnoa wrote: post #58
varikin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was non-trivial to go from Java 1.4 to 1.5.

With all due respect, I don't know what you are talking about. Programs in 1.4 run fine in 1.5. Every time there is a new version of Java I install it in my machine and just continue working as usual. I would be really upset if I had to spend time trying to make everything work again with every new version. They deprecate methods and functionality but they do not remove it. Java is not that much older than Ruby/Rails…

> Java is not that much older than Ruby/Rails

According to wikipedia: Java = 1995, Ruby on Rails = 2004

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#78

Post by skidooer »

felipemnoa wrote: post #57
skidooer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When bugs are discovered in the old version most likely they will not be fixed because everybody has already moved on. Is this a real problem? If you encounter a bug in an older version of Rails, why not just fix it and carry on as usual? Fixing bugs is part of the job of being a developer. If you are afraid to fix bugs, your application isn't going to last long no matter what language, framework, or platform you c…

I'm talking about bugs in the Rails framework. I think very few people would like to be having to maintain an outdated framework. And for the ones that actually do decide to maintain a framework that they did not develop themselves it will cost them a lot of money.

I too was talking about the Rails framework. It's actually a really nice read. I've fixed a couple of bugs in it myself.

The thing to remember is that each major release of Rails is fairly well tested. The number of actual bugs you are going to encounter are low. The investment in fixing them is therefore going to be low, should you actually encounter any to begin with.

The Rails codebase is simply an extension of your own codebase. While it is not fun to fix bugs in any capacity, there is no reason to fear fixing bugs in third party code. It is no worse than fixing your own, which also costs a lot of money.

I've been using Rails since around the 0.8 release timeframe. I have seen many major changes along the way. They have all been positive improvements to my workflow and the theoretical issues you describe have never been real issues. I still have one app chugging away on Rails 1.1 and it works just fine. The only problem it has is that it is not nearly as fun to maintain because it doesn't have all the newer major improvements. It would be a sad day if we had to go back to, or were still using, the 1.0 API. The Rails people are doing the right thing.

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#79

Post by varikin »

felipemnoa wrote: post #58
varikin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was non-trivial to go from Java 1.4 to 1.5.

With all due respect, I don't know what you are talking about. Programs in 1.4 run fine in 1.5. Every time there is a new version of Java I install it in my machine and just continue working as usual. I would be really upset if I had to spend time trying to make everything work again with every new version. They deprecate methods and functionality but they do not remove it. Java is not that much older than Ruby/Rails…

1.5 did introduce at least one major backwards incompatible change. A new keyword which meant any variables named enum now broke the app.

Installing a new Java version on your desktop to run some app is different than rolling out a new major version of JVM/language for an enterprise application. There is a lot that went into ensuring everything still worked, including all dependencies, and that performance was acceptable. Maybe heap options needed to be changed because of how GC changed.

Re: Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data

#80

Post by cpeterso »

statictype wrote: post #30
karl11 wrote: post #5

Wouldn't this make a successful iCloud even more embarrassing for Microsoft? They have the technology, but can't market it or make it easy for consumers to use?

Of course not. It's akin to saying any successful Rails app is an embarrassment to 37signals because they had the technology to create it but didn't.

I think a better analogy would be if Barnes & Noble built a more successful online bookstore than Amazon using Amazon's own AWS cloud.
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