Alleged Steve Jobs e-mail says 'hardly anyone' was buying Apple's Xserves

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  • Reply 81 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kolchak View Post


    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.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    Yep. Another route is VirtualBox. Although not approved by Oracle or Apple, it works.





    you two, just stop with the nonsense. no professional IT shop is going to do something this stupid.
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  • Reply 82 of 134
    ericblrericblr Posts: 172member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MyopiaRocks View Post


    I suppose an apple forum is the wrong place to ask this question, but:

    - How many of you have rack-mounted servers at your company?

    - For those of you who do, what OS?



    We have Exchange servers for email/calendaring, and UNIX servers (I have no idea what flavor; it's not my specialty) for everything else.



    Call me stupid ("okay, stupid") but I think the only people who care what flavor the rackmount is are the IT people working on it. Everyone else just cares if it works. Unix works great as a server platform with or without the mac veneer on top, and end users are none the wiser. IT geeks should know their way around a unix terminal without needing some shiny veneer. Hence, no need for a mac rack-mount server.



    For the less-intelligent folk (again, me) there is a need for mac veneers, but our needs run to things like mac mini servers and mac pro servers. Once we get into rack-mounting things we know we're unqualified.



    I work for a printing company that runs off of xserves. All of our desktop computers, save for one, are macs.
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  • Reply 83 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ktappe View Post


    . Ever since Apple started offering certifications, students have been warned (at least by the better ACT's) that "command line is never the answer on the exam, even if it is in real life." \



    Good. The sooner we steer from this command line crap the better. Whenever I have to delve in to server technologies I can't help but think to myself: I wish I had all the time in the world as I could build a kick ass UI for this convoluted nonsense.
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  • Reply 84 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nobodyy View Post


    Actually a Mac Mini Server would make an excellent server, actually. The specs of a mac mini are about the same as the specs we use to build our servers... I don't see where you would think that Mac Minis would make a poor server infrastructure.



    Let's start with no-hot-swap-anything. Not for power supply, not for drives, nada. That's why a mini is a poor server infrastructure.



    Oh, and it's not 1U either
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  • Reply 85 of 134
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    you two, just stop with the nonsense. no professional IT shop is going to do something this stupid.



    Not to mention the fact that no professional IT shop is going to give a rat's ass about OS-X server either.
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  • Reply 86 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nobodyy View Post


    Actually a Mac Mini Server would make an excellent server, actually. The specs of a mac mini are about the same as the specs we use to build our servers... I don't see where you would think that Mac Minis would make a poor server infrastructure.



    Other than the horrendous disk access speed, no hardware raid, no redundant power supplies, single NIC, and no admin port -- other than that -- yeah, they're just like the servers we use.
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  • Reply 87 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by monstrosity View Post


    Good. The sooner we steer from this command line crap the better. Whenever I have to delve in to server technologies I can't help but think to myself: I wish I had all the time in the world as I could build a kick ass UI for this convoluted nonsense.



    Too funny. I can edit a config file in vi faster than you could locate it in your GUI. Folks who make their coin administering heavy iron understand that CL trumps GUI all day, every day. Your assertion that you could build a GUI to supplant the CL shows your lack of experience administering servers, friend.
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  • Reply 88 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    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.



    Not true. You just have to get used to file locations. All the mechanics are the same and the tool set at your disposal make administering a OS X box *much* like Linux or other UN*X flavors.



    What drove me nuts about Apple was their complete lack of support for OS X in the datacenter. They just didn't get supporting the enterprise. Mac OS X was up to the task; XServe was up to the task. Apple as a company was not.



    I always felt like OS X Server was Apple's original hobby. And the datacenter isn't a place for that.
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  • Reply 89 of 134
    ajmasajmas Posts: 604member
    Truth is for most stuff, Linux based servers will rank number 1. If you need a Mac based server then if you can get passed the form factor, then the Mac mini is probably a good choice. What matters is what the hardware can do. You could probably put six Mac minis side by side (if placed on their side) and fit a 4U rack.



    I believe that if you could get the right load balancing server with the ability to wake and sleep specific nodes, then the mini-ITX form factor would probably provide the best use of space and power management. I put the Mac Mini in the mini-ITX category.
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  • Reply 90 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by godrifle View Post


    Too funny. I can edit a config file in vi faster than you could locate it in your GUI. Folks who make their coin administering heavy iron understand that CL trumps GUI all day, every day. Your assertion that you could build a GUI to supplant the CL shows your lack of experience administering servers, friend.



    Listen 'friend', you are showing your lack of experience (or blind disdain) for the GUI. You are the last of a breed. We can find a nice little home for you in a museum somewhere if you like.



    There's a whole new era of computer interaction techniques on the horizon, if you think that they nailed the 'perfect' interaction method for server technologies back in the seventies you are very mistaken and very foolish.



    Your current method of interaction is simply what you and others of your ilk are used to. You most probably fear change, and feel a sense of superiority for knowing all those stone age commands.
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  • Reply 91 of 134
    charlitunacharlituna Posts: 7,217member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ghostface147 View Post


    I guess he makes some sense, but you can't rackmount a Mac Pro.



    There is no law that says that a server must be rack mounted.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MyopiaRocks View Post


    Call me stupid ("okay, stupid") but I think the only people who care what flavor the rackmount is are the IT people working on it. Everyone else just cares if it works.




    Change rackmount to server and you are even closer to the truth.



    Quote:

    Unix works great as a server platform with or without the mac veneer on top, and end users are none the wiser.



    yep.



    I believe I read somewhere that Pixar, Weta and Lucasfilms all use Unix based render farms for processing the input they do on their Mac and Windows systems





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Futuristic View Post


    I'm not an IT guy, but I'm bummed that Apple seems to be abandoning the enterprise market.



    It's hard to say that they are abandoning the whole market but it is clear that they are abandoning a product that was only sellable to a very small group. Many, if not most, small to mid sized companies will do just find with a Pro or Mini based server or two.



    Quote:

    Someone in another forum speculated that perhaps they're planing a "one more thing" event to spring a new Mac Pro design on the world, one that would have the versatility to work as a desktop machine or a robust server.



    they updated the site with a Mac Pro Server config the same day or the one after they made the xserve announcement



    Quote:

    The nightmare scenario is that Apple completely abandons the enterprise/IT market, the fallout being a return to the early/mid 90s, where the Mac was seen as novelty, but not a serious computer.



    Wow, that is some serious FUD.



    Quote:

    I think in addition to a total lack of marketing, the Xserve was doomed because it was underpowered and overpriced, reinforcing the notion that Apple products are "luxury" items, but not to be taken seriously. Hopefully Apple is realizing this, and will build a better machine.



    Or Apple has realized that they can't make THE product that everyone wants at the price they want and is conceding this one to the better companies.
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  • Reply 92 of 134
    How about an ultra-dense rack full of A4 processors running at 1GHz? That would be incredibly cool. Don't say it couldn't happen...
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  • Reply 93 of 134
    desuserigndesuserign Posts: 1,316member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by emacs72 View Post


    twenty quad core CPUs in an enclosure that's not even 10cm high?!



    Blue sky, yes. But why not?

    Seems very possible if one designed optimized low power SoCs. Using optimized SoCs would mean far smaller size, heat load, and power supply requirements.
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  • Reply 94 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by charlituna View Post




    Or Apple has realized that they can't make THE product that everyone wants at the price they want and is conceding this one to the better companies.




    I think Apple realized that a long time ago. Yes, the server market has become commoditized and there's no going back now to Sun's heydays of 50% gross margins during the dot com boom era of the late-90's. The server hardware is a commodity with razor thin margins and the only way the large enterprise players like IBM and HP make real money in the enterprise market is through software and services.



    Again, like in the PC desktop/laptop market, Microsoft and Intel make the lion share of the profits while the hardware vendors fight over the scraps. UNIX is the only real high-end with IBM/AIX (besides their "i" mainframe OS) and HP-UX while Sun/Oracle seems to be in a free fall to oblivion although I think Sun's hardware business will survive as a small niche. Even Sun is offering Windows and Linux servers now. And, of course, Dell moves a ton of cheap Windows and Linux servers to make their net 2.5% margins.



    This is basically what the server market is looking like now.



    http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/...ver-roost/6424



    Let's look at the hardware server offerings of the major enterprise backend server vendors and see how Apple stacks up next to these guys (if you can call it that):



    Dell

    http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise...s&s=biz&cs=555



    HP

    http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/...v/servers.html



    IBM Blade Servers

    http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladec...ers/index.html



    IBM Power Servers - Apple uses some of these with AIX

    http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/



    IBM Enterprise Class Mainframe Servers - Apple uses some z-class servers with AIX/Linux

    http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/index.html



    Oracle/Sun - Apple uses a lot of Sun servers with Solaris

    http://www.oracle.com/us/products/se...ers/index.html



    http://www.oracle.com/us/products/se...ise/index.html



    http://www.oracle.com/us/products/se...des/index.html



    http://www.oracle.com/us/products/se...x86/index.html



    That's a pretty bewildering array of servers from these enterprise backend suppliers. Again, I ask why would Apple want to compete in this field against these guys in any what way or form?
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  • Reply 95 of 134
    desuserigndesuserign Posts: 1,316member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by monstrosity View Post


    Listen 'friend', you are showing your lack of experience (or blind disdain) for the GUI. You are the last of a breed. We can find a nice little home for you in a museum somewhere if you like.



    There's a whole new era of computer interaction techniques on the horizon, if you think that they nailed the 'perfect' interaction method for server technologies back in the seventies you are very mistaken and very foolish.



    Your current method of interaction is simply what you and others of your ilk are used to. You most probably fear change, and feel a sense of superiority for knowing all those stone age commands.



    LOL Of course you kid.

    Obviously a CLI is superior for many things (especially the ones that are impossible from a GUI.) And just as obviously the reverse is true.

    Nitty gritty server admin from a GUI is as silly as doing page layout from a CLI.
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  • Reply 96 of 134
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by monstrosity View Post


    Listen 'friend', you are showing your lack of experience (or blind disdain) for the GUI. You are the last of a breed. We can find a nice little home for you in a museum somewhere if you like.



    There's a whole new era of computer interaction techniques on the horizon, if you think that they nailed the 'perfect' interaction method for server technologies back in the seventies you are very mistaken and very foolish.



    Your current method of interaction is simply what you and others of your ilk are used to. You most probably fear change, and feel a sense of superiority for knowing all those stone age commands.



    I would have loved for server admin to do everything. While quite nice and super simple, it simply can't, partially because Apple, like others (example: Redhat for Linux) update their software distributions very slowly and thus are always out of date. PHP is a perfect example.



    To stay up to date, all admins for Linux and for Mac OS X server I know update their own, typically via command line. The GUI simply isn't supporting it.



    But it's pretty foolish to coin people using command line old school and behind the times.



    The reality is that the shiny new cloud everyone loves to talk about, Apple's new data center and and many large virtual machine clusters are administered exactly that way
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  • Reply 97 of 134
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Steve to French guy: "You're rackmounting it wrong".
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  • Reply 98 of 134
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    How about an ultra-dense rack full of A4 processors running at 1GHz? That would be incredibly cool. Don't say it couldn't happen...



    Yeah I was thinking of ARM while reading this but scared to voice it out for fear of being laughed at. Does anyone else think that the AppleTV with a dual-core 1.5ghz ARM and ATI 5770 could beat a PS3 in AAA-game title graphics? (OpenGL on ARM etc adjusted accordingly)
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  • Reply 99 of 134
    brucepbrucep Posts: 2,823member
    sorry mac mini replaced the cray set up .



    9
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  • Reply 100 of 134
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dyler View Post


    Hey,



    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.



    Hey,



    I sent an email to Jobs as well and he said he would send me free iPhones and iPads for life.





    (Sorry, couldn't resist)
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