Apple’s $1 billion million data center in Maiden, North Carolina is where iTunes in the cloud will live. And the Mac App Store. And MobileMe. And whatever Apple has in mind for its cloud-based features.
According to a report by DataCenterKnowledge, the data center “is expected to begin operations any day now”. Which means it’s ready, and as Apple promised in July it’ll be up and running before the end of the year.
(left: the data center as seen in February 2010. right: latest October 2010 aerial footage)
New aerial footage of the facility has surfaced as well.
As we also heard last week, it appears that Apple is already working on expanding the data center to 1 million square feet:
Local realtor Bill Wagenseller, who posted the world’s first look at the Apple facility in an aerial video, took to the air again to investigate. “Though there has been no official announcement, I discovered that site work is being performed and it clearly appears that there may be some truth to the speculation,” Wagenseller writes in his video description.
Apple hasn’t confirmed yet what the plans for the massive facility are. We all hope it’s the cloud future of iTunes, anyway. [via MacRumors]
