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Well this is a very unusual announcement.

From what I know Apple is a big user of Cassandra and Teradata for iCloud, iTunes etc. Both of which are very solid databases that have been proven to scale.

I am not doubting FoundationDB's credentials but it's pretty extraordinary if they are having scalability issues with either.

My guess is that Apple plans to create an equivalent to Facebook's Parse. Either that or this is an acquihire.



It could be a compliment for Swift but seems like an acquihire. Distributed db startups are maturing, market is getting crowded. Yes, Apple is a heavy user of Cassandra last time I checked.

Still a success for the team and should be celebrated appropriately. :) Startups are hard.


Why antagonize the community by pulling repos if they only wanted the brains?


Apple has a 1984-like policy about acquisitions where they erase any trace of the acquired company, and they follow this policy to a fault.


The irony s thick considering that landmark 1984 ad they published during the Superbowl...

Apple used to claim to fight against Big Brother, today they are largely seen as Big Brother.

Thank god for Android for keeping them honest.


Isn't following a policy like that at all a fault?


Yes, if putting "Apple" and "1984-like" in the same sentence wasn't obvious enough :)


Two good reasons:

1. Why waste resources in maintaining something you don't intend to continue to support.

2. Given the litigious nature of the US, Apple probably doesn't want to deal with a codebase that could include all kinds of potential legal issues that are now suddenly Apples problem.


Apple released CloudKit last year. It's not web and multiplatform like Parse, but it's similar to Parse's initial offering.




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