Apple may double the size of its North Carolina data center

This is Area 52.

I reckon its a manufacturing plant for all things Apple.
Apple can then do away with foxconn and it others external manufacturers.

Why do we need to speculate about imaginary new services for the new datacenter? Apple is already running:

- an online music store and app store for iPhone / iPad / (soon) Mac
- a multiplayer game connection service (GameCenter)
- an online sync service (MobileMe)
- a major international ecommerce site (store.apple.com)
- a connection service for video calls (Facetime)
- a social networking site (Ping)

If any one of these is growing at all (and they probably all are) Apple needs to expand whatever existing data centers they have. I don't see the mystery here.

Oh,come on, with the recent announcement of the App Store, it is obvious Apple has had it planned for years.

Apple has, since Steve's return, been working on future product plans, and it is as plain as the nose on your face that the App Store was planned for the data center from the beginning. One doesn't plan a billion dollar-plus data center (in two stages) and change one's mind about what it is for in the middle of construction!

Apple announced the data center would open this quarter, and then announce the opening of the App Store within 90 days.

What could be more obvious?

Rumor has it that the whole data centre thing is a ruse, it's actually Apple's first in house manufacturing facility. It's the last piece of the NeXT story where Steve fully experimented with robotic assembly lines for the NeXT Cube.

You can also see from the design, stuff goes in one side and out the other, small amount of parking for specialized staff. Basically this thing will produce all the iDevices for the American market.

I wouldn't be surprised if the construction wasn't for a Microsoft or Google data center right next door. They tend to copy everything Apple does.

My understanding was that Phase One ( the part coming online now ) was to hold and operate Steve Job's downloaded brain.
Phase Two is slated to hold Jony Ive's brain.

The whole thing is something the stockholders demanded and it has the added benefit that Steve can resource his online-self to answer the gazillion emails he gets and spend more time running Apple ( or not ).

Everybody wins.

The mind boggles when you consider what the facility will be eventually used for!!! Wireless syncing of all iDevices, imagine being able to stream all content for all of your devices to a MobileMe cloud which would remove the need for storage HHD's for desktops, mobile devices, everything...now the new MacBook Air looks like a fantastic idea. Super fast and 128GB of flash built in, but another 2TB stored in the cloud. Access it anywhere. Where do I sign up?

Why worry about streaming music, I think it would be much better used un-tying the iPads dependence on a computer for backup, Apple could sell so many mor iPads if they could just be backed up and managed to the cloud!
So why worry about steaming music this is more important.

I believe in 2 years Apple will enroll the search engine factory.