So there was Public Cloud, Government Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, but Apple had to come up with something new, the Private Cloud Compute. Like we need to reinforce that whatever happens in the cloud is just happening in someone’s else computer – in this case in some datacentre around the world. Saying it’s private, is a cute little marketing term, as usual from Apple. And now about this…
Apple recently launched for their new iOS and Apple Intelligence capability, a thing called PPC – Private Cloud Compute. Which, for them, is a mix of privacy, security and in cloud, just to make sure your data and what you do can be processed in the cloud for the new Apple Intelligence, or GenAI capability, in the cloud. Basically, because your phone and device can’t do all that processing for GenAI or AI, it needs to use cloud computing resources to do it and then get back to you. And if you have a very decent laptop with a powerful GPU, it might struggle to do all that processing. It’s the nature of Large Language Models, they’re large, heavy and consume a lot of processing to get the answer back to you.
So far nothing new, right? We all knew that moving to a new world of GenAI, we would need to rely on the cloud computing resources to making it work. But Microsoft forget to mention that when they started selling their brand new and shiny Copliot PC’s. You would need to reach out to a cloud environment to processes some of the stuff you want to do with AI – it’s not just local, on device.
Now the difference is that this is expensive, your data needs to move out of your device, to the cloud, be processed by a LLM, returns back to your device to show you want you want. For normal operations with a device, a small-Large Language Model is more than enough. Even Apple will use the one from Microsoft to do standard, in device, operations. But then will reach out to partners (like OpenAI and possibly others) to process information. What Apple decided then to do with Private Cloud Compute is setting up a couple of premises, and I’m not sure if we’re going to like all of them. Firstly, it says that security and privacy is their concern, so everything goes encrypted, nothing will be enriched from our data, we have privacy and control. They even go explicit on who can access our data in this private cloud compute environment, with special hardware in their own datacentres, called Secure Enclave with Verifiable Security – for audit purposes.
Whilst I’m ok with all of that, the reasoning and security, I’m concern about the terms; compute. Feels like it will soon be a way to charge consumers for something in the cloud. “here’s your new device with X amount of computing cycles in our cloud”… “for your AI” service. Or you would imagine that all this GenAI, Apple Intelligence, Microsoft Copilot PC’s would be free to run? If it’s not local, in device, it will cost you money, data or privacy, now pick two.
Bottom line: Apple’s new Private Cloud Compute is their latest attempt to redefine cloud privacy and security for AI processing. While the concept of a ‘private’ cloud might sound like just another marketing ploy, it aims to tackle real challenges in AI by ensuring computations are handled securely in the cloud. However unlike in device, PCC means your data has to travel to and from Apple’s cloud, potentially raising costs and privacy concerns. Essentially, it feels like a clever way to tie users into their ecosystem while introducing new charges under the guise of enhanced security and privacy.
