Demand is growing so fast, in fact, that it appears that its new $1 billion dollar data center in North Carolina and its recently-acquired 12 petabytes of server space aren’t enough to support Apple’s cloud division anymore…

Oregon Live is reporting that Apple is eying 160-acres worth of land in Prineville, Oregon, a small city that sits about 150 miles southeast of Portland, to build a new data center.

“The world’s largest tech company is nearing a decision on whether to build a large data center in Prineville, a quarter mile south of the Facebook server farm that opened earlier this year, according to two people with direct knowledge of Apple’s plans.”

 

As the article points out, there aren’t many incentives for a city to host large data centers. They don’t bring about many job opportunities, and eat fairly large amounts of electricity. Apple estimates its data center would need around 31-megawatts of power, which is enough to power nearly 22,000 houses.

But the company’s land ownership and large building would mean Prineville would see a significant boost in tax collections. And the data center would provide a few hundred short-term jobs during its construction. So, there certainly are some upsides.

According to the source, Apple has until the end of the month to decide whether or not it wants to proceed and purchase the land.

[9to5Mac]

Alongside iTunes 10.5.1, Apple is finally releasing iTunes Match to the US public today after a two week delay. It’s finally here. A one-year subscription to iTunes Match costs $24.99. You can enable iTunes Match in the iTunes Store.

The new iTunes is also available on Apple’s website, and the 10.5.1 is propagating in Software Update for Mac and Windows users. iTunes 10.5.1 is required to use iTunes Match, and iOS 5 users will be able to access their tracks in the cloud once the service is enabled in iTunes.

Neither iTunes 10.5.1 nor iTunes Match seem to be available for everyone yet, as Apple is still rolling things out. If you can’t get the new iTunes in Software Update, we recommend downloading it directly from Apple’s website.

iTunes Match is still a US-only service.

More screenshots:

Now that intro may sound a little too much, but it’s quite surprising just how excited people seem to be about getting their hands on the iPhone 4S, and the one feature they all say they’re gasping to get their hands on is Siri, Apple’s new virtual voice assistant.

With that in mind, if you were lucky enough to get your hands on an iPhone 4S before anyone else, thanks to an over-zealous delivery driver, what would be the first thing you would want to take a video of, and then show to the world?

That’s right. Siri.

We have to give young Mr. applemastertouch an ‘A’ for effort, but bless him, he’s no professional unboxer, and as such, his video leaves a little to be desired.

Having said that, he does the important bits, showing off how Siri works with a few simple questions, as well as asking the virtual assistant what the square root of 32 is, which results in a Wolfram Alpha page being resented. All pretty neat stuff.

The real fun starts when our budding videographer highlights a couple of comical queries you can ask Siri, one of which we liked in particular.

Apparently, telling Siri ‘I love you’ will result in it saying ‘I hope you don’t say that to other mobile phones, Goran.‘. Very, very cool, and ten points to the Apple  software engineer who put that one in there.

Other than that, the video shows off all the usual Siri features – setting alarms, asking for map locations and the like, all with Siri doing as asked without so much as a hiccup.

Now, a rant.

If you saw this video earlier on today, it would have been accompanied by the young gentleman explaining the features, and you would be able to hear the commands and queries being spoken. If you watch the video now, all that has been replaced by a rather headache-inducing techno soundtrack. The reason, we assume, is because the masses of the internet took it upon themselves to mock his accent, and the way he pronounces words.

To those people, I say this: If you can speak a foreign language or two, well enough to be confident enough to put out a video that countless people will see, then you may, and only may, have grounds to grumble. If not, then please be a little respectful. If you can do better, I expect you’ll be showing us with your brilliance at a later date.

I look forward to it.

(via MacRumors)

Much like iOS 5, iTunes 10.5 has seen several beta releases seeded over the last couple of months for developers to play around with, and now the final release is ready for the downloading pleasure of end-users. A staggering nine beta releases in the past months, now that’s a record breaker if you’re asking us!

There are quite a few new features as you might expect in this version, with iTunes Match and iCloud being the two main focal points; and it will be of much interest to see how they both fare amongst consumers. The services promise much, but we’ve all seen in the past how sketchy the Cupertino company’s web-based projects can be. It appears that Apple has plugged the lingering issues with beta versions which have been prevalent right up until the ninth and last beta released some ten days ago.

It’s advisable that you do update to iTunes 10.5 – especially if you plan to run iOS 5 when it’s released this coming Wednesday. It’s compulsory that iOS 5 users run this latest iTunes release, so if you want to be completely prepared, download and install iTunes 10.5.

Apple gives us a full list of the updated in its changelog:

What’s new in iTunes 10.5

• iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes now stores your music and TV purchases in iCloud and makes them available on your devices anywhere, any time, at no additional cost.
  • Automatic Downloads. Purchase music from any device or computer and automatically download a copy to your PC and iOS devices.
  • Download Previous Purchases. Download your past music, TV, app, and book purchases again, at no additional cost. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer on the iTunes Store.
• Sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 5.
• Wi-Fi Syncing. Automatically sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes any time they’re both on the same Wi-Fi network.

You can download iTunes 10.5 for Windows and Mac straight from Apple’s official website by heading over to this link, or simply launch the Apple Software Update app on your PC or Mac, and there you should see an update for iTunes 10.5, hit the Install button and you’re all set!