North Carolina: home of BBQ, beaches, and Apple's gi-freaking-normous data center. It's where iCloud lives, and maybe Siri! And now the company is putting the finishing touches on a new center. Why? Nobody really knows. So Wired checked it out.
From above, Wired was able to spot some interesting physical details of the 20,000 square foot "tactical data center":
This 11-room facility seems to have a few extra security measures. It includes "man traps," meaning that visitors will have to walk through two sets of security doors to get inside, and it's bordered by its own 8-foot chain-link fence.
Man traps! Tactical data! Surely there's a term for that which doesn't make Apple sound like it's building a Bond villain doomsday lair, right? Whatever it is, it surely involves, "information" and "the Internet," and things that eventually find their way to your iPhone and iPad. Wired quotes one networking wiz who speculates that the giant box is a way for other companies to securely plug into Apple's online goods without touching its internal network—so this could just be one huge concrete exercise in paranoia. Keep your mitts off Siri. [Wired]