[besson3c]

Interesting article, and somewhat comforting too for those that intend to really dependent heavily on iCloud:

Apple's iCloud runs on Microsoft and Amazon services • The Register

[TETENAL]

I don't believe this is true. At least Apple publicly sates something else.

Apple - Press Info - Apple Introduces iCloud

Apple is ready to ramp iCloud in its three data centers, including the third recently completed in Maiden, NC. Apple has invested over $500 million in its Maiden data center to support the expected customer demand for the free iCloud services.

[besson3c]

Well, first of all, Apple will still need their data centers to respond to iCloud requests (and I didn't realize that they had three of them in use with iCloud, thanks for this info), so it is an absolute given that Apple is hosting iCloud.

However, this doesn't mean that the disk storage part of iCloud is being handled in-house. Whatever the case, Apple will need/want some sort of offsite redundancy which could mean sharing data between each of their three data centers, but it might also be cheaper and more effective for Apple to use a service like Amazon or MS Azure which specializes in providing fast access to disk on a highly redundant network that might consist of more nodes than those three data centers. iCloud would farm out requests to these providers, reducing its internal load in the process, and just focus on hosting the iCloud software.

From a business strategy while Apple acknowledges that they have "more to learn", relying on partners for this part of their service seems like a smart move. I don't know anything about MS Azure, but Amazon kicks ass at this stuff.

[besson3c]

Looking at the iCloud.com source code for the calendar, it looks like there is a ton of lazy loading going on, and the main Javascript file is inaccessible in a browser. I was trying to look to see if there was any mention in there of network requests outside of Apple's domain.

I bet there are Firefox extensions that will monitor all network requests, maybe some day I'll look into this.

[OreoCookie]

This is a long-standing rumor and I suspect it's true. I think the new Apple wants things that work well rather than insisting on 100 % home grown solutions. That's fine with me, I couldn't care less what iCloud uses on the backend.

On the other hand, I'm still having problems connecting to the imap server … 

[-Q-]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I bet there are Firefox extensions that will monitor all network requests, maybe some day I'll look into this.

Not a Firefox extension (there are a few, I just can't recall the names at the moment), but I use Charles when I need a tool to do that.