I'm not an IT guy, but I'm bummed that Apple seems to be abandoning the enterprise market. IF Apple is trying to make itself into a "consumer electronics" company, I think that's a terrible idea.
Since when was Apple NOT a consumer electronics company. It has never had any appreciable penetration into any IT shops that weren't just focused on a Mac front end (creative studios, etc.) and maybe some schools and labs.
As has been rightly said - there is no room for high priced servers in a world where that market has been fully commoditized.
You may have a dream but it makes little sense for Apple to pursue it when its strategy is so clearly on the consumer market which has driven 99% of Apple's growth in the last decade. Its stock price expects incremental year on year growth in the $20Bn range - seriously - they are expected to make $20Bn more this year than last. If they don't the market will punish the stock price so why spend any bandwidth on maintaining a slow selling, tiny revenue piece of kit like the XServe?
Since when was Apple NOT a consumer electronics company. It has never had any appreciable penetration into any IT shops that weren't just focused on a Mac front end (creative studios, etc.) and maybe some schools and labs.
I know several people who use them for the QuickTime streaming server. Of course you can use the Free Darwin version for i386 on Windows if you wanted to.
I sent an email to Jobs as well and I got the same exact response, word for word. Seems strange he would send the same response or maybe he just keeps responding this way to everyone.
Apple pulled the XServes years ago from MacWorld leaving us with just consumer gear and little reason for professionals to attend.
Apple never displayed them in a retail store that I ever saw.
Apple spent little on advertising them.
When's the last time you saw an HP rack-mount server in Best Buy? IT staff are aware of the products offered by vendors. This is a product your customers seek out if they need them.
So when you BTO your servers, you select "Sh*t" from the drop down menu?
Sounds like the same place you derived your logic from. Small business can get buy quite easily using Mac minis as their server infrastructure. Nobody's suggesting Amazon run their store from Mac minis. Your post reminds me of the people who insisted people use Oracle in places where FileMaker Pro could handle easily.
Does anyone remember OpenDoc (as it really was not as is described now by the powers that want the concept to remain dead).
OpenDoc was dead because it had a failed UI metaphor and had poor support from third party vendors. OpenDoc only made sense from a desktop publishing point of view where you had different elements on a page. But in the end, it wasn't really that difficult to edit a picture in photoshop and import it in PageMaker or Word. It wasn't necessary to have the tools available within the main document, a la AppleWorks. Apple's abandoned Publish and Subscribe system (copied by MS in the form of OLE) was more useful than OpenDoc.
If I recall, Cyberdog was the only shipping product that supported OpenDoc. And it was a poor example. I mean, do you really need your email, web, USENET reader all on a single page?
One reason IT people were not that interested in Xserve is because it is a completely foreign OS for them. I would speculate that almost every Xserve was maintained by the person who bought it and installed it. If that person goes away, nobody knows how to work on it. Unlike Windows and Linux where there are millions of regular techs that can jump in and manage it at a moments notice.
A foreign OS? For Linux guys, Windows will be more foreign that Mac OS X. A more difficult to maintain and secure.
I haven't seen a Linux guy using Redhat's GUI for anything. It's CLI (command line) and the Xserve with Mac OS X server is so similar that they should be able to administer an Xserve in minutes.
After all, OS X server added a collection of open source server software that is used in Linux just the same.
Since when was Apple NOT a consumer electronics company. It has never had any appreciable penetration into any IT shops that weren't just focused on a Mac front end (creative studios, etc.) and maybe some schools and labs.
Of course, they've always been a "consumer electronics company" in the sense that they made their products not only easy to use, but pretty to look at as well; attributes that aren't that meaningful to IT personnel, engineers and computer geeks. I simply meant that when they were "Apple Computer, Inc.", they were primarily a computer company, but now that they've dropped the "Computer" from their name, they're telling the world that they've shifting their focus from computers to consumer electronics.
What's to keep people from building Hackintosh servers if they need rack mount? Pick up a 4U case, throw in a decent PS, mobo, Core i7, lots of RAM, a Silicon Image RAID controller and four hard drives. Install OS X Server and you should be good to go for less than $1000. Any motherboard that supports Snow Leopard well, like Gigbabyte's P55 series, should run SL server. Better yet, all the little problems that might afflict a Hackintosh system wouldn't matter as much where a server is concerned, if at all. No Quartz Extreme? Who cares? No audio? Who needs it? Can't sleep the system? Nobody puts servers to sleep anyway.
I can't believe what I am reading. Servers are the backbone of any company that is big enough to care about their data.
And those servers have to be redundant, reliable and backed by support that maintains the software and hardware.
Wether those are rackmount servers in house, offsite in a data center or in the cloud, virtualized or not, it's all running on similar machines.
Not mainframes, not Mac minis, not garage sale hackintoshes, the majority are 2U, 1U rackmount servers and blades.
One reason IT people were not that interested in Xserve is because it is a completely foreign OS for them. I would speculate that almost every Xserve was maintained by the person who bought it and installed it. If that person goes away, nobody knows how to work on it. Unlike Windows and Linux where there are millions of regular techs that can jump in and manage it at a moments notice.
Mac OS X Server is basically Unix with a candy coating, so there's no reason that anyone familiar with Unix/Linux wouldn't be able to work comfortably in an OS X environment. If they don't like the GUI, they can always open up a terminal and do everything via command line.
Of course, they've always been a "consumer electronics company" in the sense that they made their products not only easy to use, but pretty to look at as well; attributes that aren't that meaningful to IT personnel, engineers and computer geeks. I simply meant that when they were "Apple Computer, Inc.", they were primarily a computer company, but now that they've dropped the "Computer" from their name, they're telling the world that they've shifting their focus from computers to consumer electronics.
I think you have the right idea but are stating the wrong message.
When Apple removed ?Computer? from their name they well a long way from "shifting their focus from computers to consumer electronics? The iPod was already a huge part of their company and had been for years.
On top of that, ?PC?s are consumer products and are, obviously, electronic. We may not define them as ?CE? but if we go back to the original Apple computer that is exactly what Apple was founded on. They brought the computer to the consumer. The Mac with its GUI was the evolution of that, and everything since then has made it easier for the average consumer to use these once-complex devices.
We can split hairs over whether ?CE? are computers that one personally uses, if Macs are ?PCs? and so forth, but at the end of the day Apple did not stop making Macs simply because they dropped the now pointless Computer from their name.
The xServers are not on the VMware hardware compatbility list and MOST datacenter installations of more than a few servers are using VMware now days, because you can run dozens of virtual servers on one physical piece of hardware and save tons on money on space/power/hardware.
Look at Cisco, their new server line is 100% geared towards virtualization. Dell/IBM/HP are all pushing VMware/Hyper-V/Xen server compatiblity with all of their new hardware.
If Apple wants to play in the server market they need to get on board with VMware so that their servers can be a virtual server host, of course VMware would probably want them to license OSX server so that it can be virtualized in VMware which I dont see Apple being willing to do.
Its a shame that they wont come up with an OSX license to allow it to run in a virtualized environement.
A foreign OS? For Linux guys, Windows will be more foreign that Mac OS X. A more difficult to maintain and secure.
I haven't seen a Linux guy using Redhat's GUI for anything. It's CLI (command line) and the Xserve with Mac OS X server is so similar that they should be able to administer an Xserve in minutes.
After all, OS X server added a collection of open source server software that is used in Linux just the same.
You would think so but nothing is in the same place as Linux
You won't find /etc/init.d or /var/www or /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
It is an easter egg hunt.
With Apple you are expected to use the server admin app.
Sounds like the same place you derived your logic from. Small business can get buy quite easily using Mac minis as their server infrastructure. Nobody's suggesting Amazon run their store from Mac minis. Your post reminds me of the people who insisted people use Oracle in places where FileMaker Pro could handle easily.
Small businesses using Mac minis as their server infrastructure? Maybe connect it to a $50 Linksys router?
I agree with SoHo, but supporting 50-100 people? For what? Email, File serving, Calendaring?
While I like a Mac mini, they are good to serve a small work group, no more than that.
I can see Mac Pro's; their form factor/size is just not great. At least they have fast IO, expandability for fibre storage and increased network speed and can be swapped reasonably quick if a failure occurs due to their drive sleds.
The Xserve was not underpowered or overpriced and Virginia Tech has proven.
As for hinting that Apple abandoning the enterprise market, is FUD. The primary reason Apple is perceived as not-enterprise friendly comes from the comparatively relative lack of interest from third-party independent professional consultants.
Not that there is not interest, it is just a simple fact that there is less need of their expertise to use a Mac, and internal IT personnel has always had a history to shun the Mac for fear of losing their jobs. Keep in mind, that most internal server systems are running in most part on legacy systems which are gradually modified or updated on a needs basis. And most of the needs fulfillment is based on having the necessary monies to do so.
As some have demonstrated, e.g., Virginia Tech, the casinos in Vegas, etc., the Mac makes a pretty damn good and cost-effective server using Mac Minis and Mac Pros, with or without Xserve. A strategy that is building significantly around the world.
that was the G5 days
today HP Proliants are so amazingly powerful and scale a lot better compared to the xserve.
the xserve is still only 3 internal drives and 32GB of RAM. HP 1U servers can take 8 drives internally and 192GB RAM
And now we have to wonder what will become of the server software itself.
Although Apple is not selling a lot of XServes, it does not mean Apple is not selling a lot of servers.
Apple said its most popular server has been the Mac mini server.
These are primarily sold to small businesses and schools where mere mortals have to administer the server. Apple still has the best product for this market and it isn't going anywhere. If anything, Apple may put more resources into making the Mac mini and Mac Pro better Server hardware.
Comments
I'm not an IT guy, but I'm bummed that Apple seems to be abandoning the enterprise market. IF Apple is trying to make itself into a "consumer electronics" company, I think that's a terrible idea.
Since when was Apple NOT a consumer electronics company. It has never had any appreciable penetration into any IT shops that weren't just focused on a Mac front end (creative studios, etc.) and maybe some schools and labs.
As has been rightly said - there is no room for high priced servers in a world where that market has been fully commoditized.
You may have a dream but it makes little sense for Apple to pursue it when its strategy is so clearly on the consumer market which has driven 99% of Apple's growth in the last decade. Its stock price expects incremental year on year growth in the $20Bn range - seriously - they are expected to make $20Bn more this year than last. If they don't the market will punish the stock price so why spend any bandwidth on maintaining a slow selling, tiny revenue piece of kit like the XServe?
Since when was Apple NOT a consumer electronics company. It has never had any appreciable penetration into any IT shops that weren't just focused on a Mac front end (creative studios, etc.) and maybe some schools and labs.
I know several people who use them for the QuickTime streaming server. Of course you can use the Free Darwin version for i386 on Windows if you wanted to.
I am sure that for those that committed to this product this announcement is a real pain.
Neal
It is their own stupid fault for backing the wrong horse.
It is their own stupid fault for backing the wrong horse.
And now we have to wonder what will become of the server software itself.
I sent an email to Jobs as well and I got the same exact response, word for word. Seems strange he would send the same response or maybe he just keeps responding this way to everyone.
Apple pulled the XServes years ago from MacWorld leaving us with just consumer gear and little reason for professionals to attend.
Apple never displayed them in a retail store that I ever saw.
Apple spent little on advertising them.
When's the last time you saw an HP rack-mount server in Best Buy? IT staff are aware of the products offered by vendors. This is a product your customers seek out if they need them.
So when you BTO your servers, you select "Sh*t" from the drop down menu?
Sounds like the same place you derived your logic from. Small business can get buy quite easily using Mac minis as their server infrastructure. Nobody's suggesting Amazon run their store from Mac minis. Your post reminds me of the people who insisted people use Oracle in places where FileMaker Pro could handle easily.
Does anyone remember OpenDoc (as it really was not as is described now by the powers that want the concept to remain dead).
OpenDoc was dead because it had a failed UI metaphor and had poor support from third party vendors. OpenDoc only made sense from a desktop publishing point of view where you had different elements on a page. But in the end, it wasn't really that difficult to edit a picture in photoshop and import it in PageMaker or Word. It wasn't necessary to have the tools available within the main document, a la AppleWorks. Apple's abandoned Publish and Subscribe system (copied by MS in the form of OLE) was more useful than OpenDoc.
If I recall, Cyberdog was the only shipping product that supported OpenDoc. And it was a poor example. I mean, do you really need your email, web, USENET reader all on a single page?
It is their own stupid fault for backing the wrong horse.
Yup, should'a bought Windows...
One reason IT people were not that interested in Xserve is because it is a completely foreign OS for them. I would speculate that almost every Xserve was maintained by the person who bought it and installed it. If that person goes away, nobody knows how to work on it. Unlike Windows and Linux where there are millions of regular techs that can jump in and manage it at a moments notice.
A foreign OS? For Linux guys, Windows will be more foreign that Mac OS X. A more difficult to maintain and secure.
I haven't seen a Linux guy using Redhat's GUI for anything. It's CLI (command line) and the Xserve with Mac OS X server is so similar that they should be able to administer an Xserve in minutes.
After all, OS X server added a collection of open source server software that is used in Linux just the same.
Since when was Apple NOT a consumer electronics company. It has never had any appreciable penetration into any IT shops that weren't just focused on a Mac front end (creative studios, etc.) and maybe some schools and labs.
Of course, they've always been a "consumer electronics company" in the sense that they made their products not only easy to use, but pretty to look at as well; attributes that aren't that meaningful to IT personnel, engineers and computer geeks. I simply meant that when they were "Apple Computer, Inc.", they were primarily a computer company, but now that they've dropped the "Computer" from their name, they're telling the world that they've shifting their focus from computers to consumer electronics.
What's to keep people from building Hackintosh servers if they need rack mount? Pick up a 4U case, throw in a decent PS, mobo, Core i7, lots of RAM, a Silicon Image RAID controller and four hard drives. Install OS X Server and you should be good to go for less than $1000. Any motherboard that supports Snow Leopard well, like Gigbabyte's P55 series, should run SL server. Better yet, all the little problems that might afflict a Hackintosh system wouldn't matter as much where a server is concerned, if at all. No Quartz Extreme? Who cares? No audio? Who needs it? Can't sleep the system? Nobody puts servers to sleep anyway.
I can't believe what I am reading. Servers are the backbone of any company that is big enough to care about their data.
And those servers have to be redundant, reliable and backed by support that maintains the software and hardware.
Wether those are rackmount servers in house, offsite in a data center or in the cloud, virtualized or not, it's all running on similar machines.
Not mainframes, not Mac minis, not garage sale hackintoshes, the majority are 2U, 1U rackmount servers and blades.
One reason IT people were not that interested in Xserve is because it is a completely foreign OS for them. I would speculate that almost every Xserve was maintained by the person who bought it and installed it. If that person goes away, nobody knows how to work on it. Unlike Windows and Linux where there are millions of regular techs that can jump in and manage it at a moments notice.
Mac OS X Server is basically Unix with a candy coating, so there's no reason that anyone familiar with Unix/Linux wouldn't be able to work comfortably in an OS X environment. If they don't like the GUI, they can always open up a terminal and do everything via command line.
Of course, they've always been a "consumer electronics company" in the sense that they made their products not only easy to use, but pretty to look at as well; attributes that aren't that meaningful to IT personnel, engineers and computer geeks. I simply meant that when they were "Apple Computer, Inc.", they were primarily a computer company, but now that they've dropped the "Computer" from their name, they're telling the world that they've shifting their focus from computers to consumer electronics.
I think you have the right idea but are stating the wrong message.
When Apple removed ?Computer? from their name they well a long way from "shifting their focus from computers to consumer electronics? The iPod was already a huge part of their company and had been for years.
On top of that, ?PC?s are consumer products and are, obviously, electronic. We may not define them as ?CE? but if we go back to the original Apple computer that is exactly what Apple was founded on. They brought the computer to the consumer. The Mac with its GUI was the evolution of that, and everything since then has made it easier for the average consumer to use these once-complex devices.
We can split hairs over whether ?CE? are computers that one personally uses, if Macs are ?PCs? and so forth, but at the end of the day Apple did not stop making Macs simply because they dropped the now pointless Computer from their name.
Look at Cisco, their new server line is 100% geared towards virtualization. Dell/IBM/HP are all pushing VMware/Hyper-V/Xen server compatiblity with all of their new hardware.
If Apple wants to play in the server market they need to get on board with VMware so that their servers can be a virtual server host, of course VMware would probably want them to license OSX server so that it can be virtualized in VMware which I dont see Apple being willing to do.
Its a shame that they wont come up with an OSX license to allow it to run in a virtualized environement.
A foreign OS? For Linux guys, Windows will be more foreign that Mac OS X. A more difficult to maintain and secure.
I haven't seen a Linux guy using Redhat's GUI for anything. It's CLI (command line) and the Xserve with Mac OS X server is so similar that they should be able to administer an Xserve in minutes.
After all, OS X server added a collection of open source server software that is used in Linux just the same.
You would think so but nothing is in the same place as Linux
You won't find /etc/init.d or /var/www or /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
It is an easter egg hunt.
With Apple you are expected to use the server admin app.
Sounds like the same place you derived your logic from. Small business can get buy quite easily using Mac minis as their server infrastructure. Nobody's suggesting Amazon run their store from Mac minis. Your post reminds me of the people who insisted people use Oracle in places where FileMaker Pro could handle easily.
Small businesses using Mac minis as their server infrastructure? Maybe connect it to a $50 Linksys router?
I agree with SoHo, but supporting 50-100 people? For what? Email, File serving, Calendaring?
While I like a Mac mini, they are good to serve a small work group, no more than that.
I can see Mac Pro's; their form factor/size is just not great. At least they have fast IO, expandability for fibre storage and increased network speed and can be swapped reasonably quick if a failure occurs due to their drive sleds.
Mac minis have none of that.
The Xserve was not underpowered or overpriced and Virginia Tech has proven.
As for hinting that Apple abandoning the enterprise market, is FUD. The primary reason Apple is perceived as not-enterprise friendly comes from the comparatively relative lack of interest from third-party independent professional consultants.
Not that there is not interest, it is just a simple fact that there is less need of their expertise to use a Mac, and internal IT personnel has always had a history to shun the Mac for fear of losing their jobs. Keep in mind, that most internal server systems are running in most part on legacy systems which are gradually modified or updated on a needs basis. And most of the needs fulfillment is based on having the necessary monies to do so.
As some have demonstrated, e.g., Virginia Tech, the casinos in Vegas, etc., the Mac makes a pretty damn good and cost-effective server using Mac Minis and Mac Pros, with or without Xserve. A strategy that is building significantly around the world.
that was the G5 days
today HP Proliants are so amazingly powerful and scale a lot better compared to the xserve.
the xserve is still only 3 internal drives and 32GB of RAM. HP 1U servers can take 8 drives internally and 192GB RAM
And now we have to wonder what will become of the server software itself.
Although Apple is not selling a lot of XServes, it does not mean Apple is not selling a lot of servers.
Apple said its most popular server has been the Mac mini server.
These are primarily sold to small businesses and schools where mere mortals have to administer the server. Apple still has the best product for this market and it isn't going anywhere. If anything, Apple may put more resources into making the Mac mini and Mac Pro better Server hardware.