Excited for Monday’s iCloud announcement? If you’re so excited that you just can’t sleep, Google Earth might help keep your mind occupied with a view of Apple’s new North Carolina data center -- where iCloud is presumably hosted -- from outer space.
CNNMoney’s Apple 2.0 is reporting that Apple’s new 500,000 square foot server farm in Maiden, North Carolina has finally made an appearance on Google Earth, almost right on cue since Cupertino finally ‘fessed up to iCloud in a rare press release on Tuesday. CEO Steve Jobs will be on hand for the WWDC 2011 keynote on Monday to introduce iCloud, as well as preview iOS 5 and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
Photos and video of Apple’s data center have been circulating for a while, including “a couple of video flybys” that just so happened to wind up on YouTube. But entering the intersection of U.S. Route 321 and Startown Road (where the server farm is located) into Google Earth or even Google Maps appeared to stop “a few yards short of the construction site.”
CNNMoney’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt decided to give it another go after Apple’s rare iCloud admission on Tuesday. “Lo and behold, there it was: A huge, white, nondescript building with a road leading in, a road leading out, and almost no employee parking,” Elmer-Dewitt notes.
Of course, the mystery of how Apple might have kept Google from disclosing the site via satellite imagery in the first place might be more interesting than the fact we can actually see it now.
WWDC 2011 kicks off Monday, June 6 at 10am PST with a keynote that promises to reveal Apple’s next-generation software.
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(Image courtesy of CNNMoney)
