Apple has constructed a very large data center in the western part of North Carolina that is set to come online sometime this summer and a local TV station produced a story on it that got me to pondering how a cloud based service from the company might work. Netflix is clearly one of the largest providers of a streaming based service with their video delivery service and Amazon has been providing a streaming video service of its own for a few years now. Throw in Hulu and various network TV and movie studios streaming their content it's obvious that streaming content is going big, and soon.
Out of the streaming services that are out there right now my two favorites (in order) are Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand. Netfilx is a monthly subscription service while Amazon offers two options for those who purchase videos from them and for their Amazon Prime subscribers. The thing that draws me to Netfilx is their rather large selection of titles, especially their growing list of TV show content as well as their apps for the iPhone and iPad. On the other hand I like the fact that videos I purchased from Amazon over four years ago are still stored in the cloud ready for me to stream to any computer or compatible stream-to-TV device such as the Roku box in my living room. In fact it was my previously purchased Amazon content that prompted me to choose the Roku over an Apple TV. Amazon is now offering a "Sky Locker" where music you purchase from them is automatically saved to the cloud along with allowing you to upload all your DRM free music which can then be streamed to many platforms.
So, where does an Apple cloud based service fit in? Could it succeed in a rapidly crowding market space?
First off I think it could succeed very rapidly if it were to offer to customers who already have purchased content from iTunes to have those purchases already stored in the cloud without having to re-upload it all. For my iTunes collection uploading it myself could take a couple of weeks at best and would probably discourage me a bit from it despite the fact I've gone all Apple in my tech hardware. However, if Apple was to say they have the records handy of all my previous purchases and have already stored them for me I'd be on board, even if there were monthly or annual fees involved and I'm sure I'm not alone. It would be a customer service coup for Apple and provide me yet another off site back up of my purchases. Of course they could go the way of Amazon and just say all future purchases would be stored in the cloud and I would have to manually upload the rest. That last option would have to be free for me to use considering how much time, bandwidth, and computer run time would be involved.
Where such a service fits in to the grand scheme of things is harder to peg. Would they offer an all-you-can stream option for a monthly fee like Netflix or continue to push the rental model they have been pushing hard since the last Apple TV revision? I'm not a big fan of renting streaming content. I've rented exactly one thing from iTunes and that was a freebie Apple gave out earlier this year to many of their customers and then I ended up purchasing the movie after liking it so much (Hot Tub Time Machine if you want to know).
Based on the size of the data center in North Carolina and the amount of land that Apple owns around that center it's clear it's targeting any such services at something more than just music and video streaming is the only thing I can think of for building a data center that large.
Speaking of music will Apple follow the steps of Microsoft and others in offering an unlimited streaming/download of music plan for a monthly fee? If so I can see how that would be big and I'd probably be on board with something like that. The Zune model is nice where you pay $15 per month for unlimited music downloads that are limited to playing as long as you keep your subscription up to date and throwing in a few free music downloads that are DRM free per month.
The only problem I foresee in any streaming cloud service for content consumption is the data caps being implemented by cellular carriers. Sprint and Verizon are currently offering unlimited data for smart devices but not for tablet devices. AT&T has had hard caps in place for some time now. The argument that Wi-Fi hotspots are "everywhere" doesn't carry water to me. What about daily commutes? A hot spot is fine for someone in a store or restaurant but not so much for those on the go. And lately home internet providers have started making noise about data caps as well so one has to keep that in mind as well. I won't even bother to get into licensing arrangement with record labels and studios as that would be a whole separate blog entry.
We'll all be finding out sooner rather than later as that center is set to go online this spring/summer. Keep an eye out for announcements at the annual World Wide Developer Conference that Apple is hosting in early June!
Sunday, November 20, 2011 at 7:37AM 
