Before 2014, Apple – one of the largest content generators on the web today – relied on external content delivery networks (CDNs), such as Akamai and Level 3, to deliver everything from music/video streaming to iOS updates. In 2014, Apple released their CDN as an effort to take control over the quality of their content delivery as well as creating the final puzzle piece that gives them control over the entire customer experience (hardware, online platforms, ect.). Interestingly enough, as Dan Rayburn predicted, Apple was in no hurry to convert all of their traffic to their own CDN and would still need some time before they completely stopped offloading traffic onto third-party CDNs.
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