One of Apple’s most important data centers is about to get a $1 billion expansion.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was on hand today for the groundbreaking ceremony of the expanded data center in Reno, Nevada, that the company uses to power services like FaceTime, iMessage and iCloud.
The original smartwatch maker is closing down after being acquired by Fitbit, but your Pebble watch will continue to work after all of its services are dead.
With its final update, Pebble has eliminated any reliance on online servers, ensuring your wearable will continue to function as normal when connected to your smartphone.
The fate of Apple’s proposed data center in Ireland is finally on the fast-track.
After facing an 18-month delay due to an appeal from two Irish residents, Ireland’s High Court agreed to Apple’s request to speed up the legal process. Now instead of waiting until 2018, the court has to resolve the case within six months.
Two new reports suggest that Apple is both tightening up on certain aspects of its spending in China, while also boosting its overall investment — as it pushes hard to grow its brand in the country at a time when local demand for its iPhones has “plummeted.”
Things haven’t been going all that well for HP on the PC shipment front, but it’s hoping to make up for that with its new high-tech Project Moonshot servers. In fact, HP CEO Meg Whitman is so jazzed about her company’s new servers that she’s even going around bragging that Apple might be considering HP for its iTunes services.
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Move over, Photo Stream. Facebook is horning its way into iOS’s automatic photo syncing turf. The world’s largest social network is starting to roll out a new service to users of the iOS app that will automatically squirt up to 2GB worth of their most recently taken photos to Facebook’s servers.
It didn’t take long for OS X Mountain Lion to hit the top of the Mac App Store’s paid chart following its release yesterday, which means Apple shifted a heck of a lot of copies on day one. In fact, it sold so many copies that traffic from the Cupertino company’s servers was up to six times higher than normal.
With the death of the venerable XServe blade server at the beginning of last year, Apple has essentially abandoned the market for corporate servers. If you want to run a Mac server, Apple recommends the Mac mini with Lion Server, which is only really a viable option for small businesses.
Over at MacMagazine, reader Joseph Arthur had a great idea: why not redesign the Mac Pro slightly so they are stackable?
It’s a cute idea, and I get a kick out of the visual, but two problems: the Mac Pro looks like it’ll be killed off sooner rather than later, and the Mac Pro solution leads to the same problem the Mac mini solution had, in that centers can’t fit the machines in their existing blade racks. Still, pretty ingenious.
We’re hearing loads of reports from both readers and Twitter that iCloud Mail & Notes is down. According to Apple’s iCloud System Status page, they are aware the issue is affecting “some” users and are working hard to get service restored, but between the various Siri service outages and now this, it’s clear Apple’s been having issues lately keeping their servers up against strong demand.
Is iCloud down for you? Let us know if you’re having issues in the comments. We’ll keep you updated as we know more.
Thanks, Jørn!
UPDATE: AT&T denies it has activation problems. A spokesperson just sent us the following statement:
We had our most successful iPhone launch with more than 200,000 preorders placed in the first 12 hours last week. As customers are receiving their devices – and more are buying in our stores – we’re seeing completed activations across our servers and are moving requests through as quickly as possible. We’re not seeing any widespread delays at this time, though customers may experience minor wait times as more devices are activated.
AT&T’s activation servers have melted down, according to a tip we just got from an Apple store employee.
For the past several hours, the Apple Store has been down, but unlike when we usually say that, Apple’s seemingly not doing just maintenance… instead, store.apple.com seems to have totally crashed.
Making things stranger, the Apple Online Store fell over on a Wednesday, as opposed to the traditional Tuesday maintenance period. Some users have reported in the last hour the usual ‘We’re Updating The Store” message… so could a new product be imminent?
Although it hasn’t seen an update since last year, the Mac Pro isn’t dead… it’s just been getting a little beauty rest before it debuts next month post-Lion, boosting a new 16 core configuration capable of searing the melted physiognomy to even the most cynical benchtester’s skull.
If you’re a network administrator in love with the svelte, stackable design of Apple’s Xserve line, you’d better stock up: Apple has announced that they will be discontinuing the Xserve line starting January 31st, 2011.
