One more thing
Forget about Dre: the Beats Audio acquisition might not be the biggest Apple story around
Gary Marshall talks Content Delivery Networks
The biggest headlines don’t always reflect the biggest news, and that may be the case with Beats Audio. While the world was busy talking about Dr Dre’s headphones and whether Tim Cook was going gangsta, another story suggested Apple was up to something much more interesting. Streaming media analyst Dan Rayburn says Apple is doing what Microsoft, Google, Facebook and co have done. It’s building its own CDN.
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network, and it’s a way of ensuring data gets to you as fast as it possibly can. Apple is spending a fortune on internet infrastructure, and it will pay ISPs big chunks of money to ensure its content doesn’t suffer from congestion – something advocates of net neutrality, who believe all data should be treated equally whether it’s an iTunes download or an email from your gran, will be horrified by.
If you’ve been wondering why Apple has been so quiet over the net neutrality debate and didn’t sign the open letter from the tech industry to US regulator the FCC, that’s why – and if you’re looking for an explanation, all you need to do is remember what Steve Jobs said ten years ago: “I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.”
That’s why Apple buys semiconductor firms, throws money at sapphire manufacturing, invests heavily in crucial component suppliers and purchases everything from Siri to streaming. And it’s why Apple is apparently making its own CDN rather than piggy-backing on other companies’ networks.
You can see the logic. Apple controls almost every part of the experience: marketing, retailing, hardware, software, the App Store and the content that’s available to you. It doesn’t control the internet pipes, though, and when we’re all downloading Mavericks updates or streaming music or accessing iCloud.com, the experience might not be as good as it could be.
The more Apple services move to the cloud, the more crucial a CDN becomes. Nobody’s going to sign up for streaming music that doesn’t stream, HD movie rentals that take an age to download, document hosting that doesn’t deliver or updates that take hours.
Apple clearly believes those issues are too important to leave to third parties, and it has both the determination and the money to do something about it. Net neutrality aims to protect the little guys, but Apple hasn’t been one of the little guys for a very long time.