I hope this is not a sort of sideways confirmation of the rumor that Apple wants out of the pro app business. If they aren't going to be selling Final Cut what do they need a raid for?
Final Cut is probably safe for now due to the importance of Apple's focus on video for aTV, video rentals, iTunes, Quicktime and video iPods/iPhones. They'll want to be in the whole video content, compression and delivery workflow as it relates very closely to the consumer side of the business they seem to be banking on.
I sure don't want to go back to Avid or Premiere although I will keep them around and up to date just in case.
Coming from a storage more than an Apple background, Xserve Raid's had a great reputation for being cheap, easy and fast but not very featureful.
Presumably Apple decided the margins and competition made conitnued investment uneconomical, or plain decided to spend the moneye elsewhere - it's a busy market, and not that many players are making money. Making it harder for the low-end player like Apple is that the tech in mid-range boxes are starting to trickle down to smaller products.
An EMC CLARiiON AX4 (SAS or SATA array) runs the same software as the big ones, starts at about $9,000 and has snapshots, remote replication, and all sorts, scales to 60 drives (from 750 GB SATA to 15,000 rpm SAS), does RAID6, and is part of a line that refreshed every six months or so.
With players like EMC, LSI Logic, HDS pushing down into the Xserve Raid's space and the low end player pushing up, it's probably a good decision for Apple - it's not a market they can dominate, and margins are just getting thinner.
Final Cut is probably safe for now due to the importance of Apple's focus on video for aTV, video rentals, iTunes, Quicktime and video iPods/iPhones. They'll want to be in the whole video content, compression and delivery workflow as it relates very closely to the consumer side of the business they seem to be banking on.
I sure don't want to go back to Avid or Premiere although I will keep them around and up to date just in case.
It's kinda nerve wreaking to see Apple's Pro apps hidden under menus towards the bottom of the Store. Apple used to have a Pro Tab on their website, and now they don't! I almost forgot that Shake was an Apple product, and WebObjects has been abandoned (updated recently for compatible with Leopard), on the Apple store WO has a 1 star rating for abandonment.
It's going to be a tougher sell for this third party solution unfortunately, especially since the cost of entry is twice what the Apple solution was.
Could you explain? This seems to be in contrast to what Ars is reporting, i.e.,
Apple: Xserve RAID is dead! Long live Promise VTrak RAID!
By Chris Foresman | Published: February 19, 2008 - 12:41PM CT
"We just had a conversation with Eric Zelenka, senior product line manager of Apple's server and storage software, wherein he cleared up the case of the disappearing Xserve RAID. As everyone suspected, the reason it disappeared is because, well, it's gone.
Some wondered why Apple didn't update the Xserve RAID with SATA drives and updated Fibre Channel ports. "Promise VTrak RAID already has great performance in our testing," Zelenka told us, and delivers it at a great price: about $1 per gigabyte. According to Promise, the E-class RAID delivers "an unbeatable 26 streams of 8-bit uncompressed standard definition video and supports capacities up to 24TB per configuration, starting at just $1.12 per gigabyte." That's not the kind of price/performance ratio one would want to get caught sneezing at.?
Zelenka assured us that Xserve RAIDs will be sold while supplies last, and that current Xserve RAIDs will continue to be supported with drive modules and Xsan compatibility. But going forward, all future SAN deployments will be set up using the Promise VTrak systems. The systems are available through the Apple Store and from authorized retailers, starting at the paltry sum of just $11,999.95. Don't balk, though?that's still some $400 cheaper than the low-end Xserve RAID."
Apple certified this 3rd party RAID System and others before it quietly closed it's own product down.
What I find is typical is the gutless transition to this product line.
Apple gets accused of not supporting 3rd parties and when they do it's done behind closed doors and done by sacrificing one of their competing options to help out a 3rd party.
Here's a thought: Support the 3rd party and sell your own competing products.
If you want to encourage 3rd party hardware to run Apple software on it you can't just dip your foot into the water. You have to extend this concept with the rest of your software lineup.
That won't happen, but it will forever keep Apple sacrificing any heavy iron options while it hordes the consumer space with an end-to-end solution from Apple.
Apple certified this 3rd party RAID System and others before it quietly closed it's own product down.
What I find is typical is the gutless transition to this product line.
Apple gets accused of not supporting 3rd parties and when they do it's done behind closed doors and done by sacrificing one of their competing options to help out a 3rd party.
Here's a thought: Support the 3rd party and sell your own competing products.
If you want to encourage 3rd party hardware to run Apple software on it you can't just dip your foot into the water. You have to extend this concept with the rest of your software lineup.
That won't happen, but it will forever keep Apple sacrificing any heavy iron options while it hordes the consumer space with an end-to-end solution from Apple.
And once again, the pros are left holding the bag. Why is Apple trying so hard to drive the pros away? The minute Apple discontinues support for Xserve RAID, the clock is ticking. One dead drive means my entire $10,000 investment is history once Apple stops shipping replacement drives. Wow. Apple has to know that's $10,000 I can't spend on Apple hardware, since I have to buy a new RAID system. Apple spends all their R&D producing products that are little more than ways of accessing iTunes. They've emerged as the Tower Records of the internet, and that's great, but what about those of us that actually use our equipment for business?
as of now, apple is still selling replacement parts for the RAID, and, historically, apple has continued offering replacement parts for their products long after discontinuation.
Furthermore, the xserve RAID was very long in the tooth. ATA-100 in the days of SATA-300? right. i think when apple entered the RAID market, the xserve RAID was tremendous, but at this point, it doesnt make sense to update the hardware when they can simply continue to create the software to control it. i would rather have apple pour more resources into making Xsan *excellent* instead of *decent* and let other manufacturers supply the box full of hard drives and raid controllers.
This will seem like a dumb question, but what features are needed in a RAID that Apple didn't provide?
Not at all, it's a geeky old business storage. Going by what you get on low to mid-range EMC CLARiiONs:
RAID6 (two disks can fail, and you still don't lose data)
Additional drive shelves (An AX4 shelf is 3.5 inches high with 12 drives, and you can have five shelves in the array (up to 45 TB raw). The big ones (CX3-80's) hold up 480 drives (336 TB raw).
Bigger caches for better performance - I believe the Xserve RAID has 1 or 2 GB of cache. That's about normal for smaller arrays. CLARiiONs run from 2 Gb up to 16 Gb, the high end Symmetrix boxes can hold 512 GB of cache memory.
Snapshots - make a "point-in-time" copy of your data, without using loads of storage (it just keeps changed data and lets you roll them back, or have another server see the snapshot - this is useful for having another server back up the data for instance, you stop your database or whatever to make the disk quiet, snap it, start the database up again and the backup happens elsewhere)
Clones - Full copies of data, you can resync them quickly and/or use them on other systems
Replication - having all the data mirrored to another array on the SAN (or elsewhere, if you have more money). This can be realtime or near realtime. More modern arrays have "consistency groups" which means a set of virtual disks will all sync as one, which i important for databases that span lots of virtual disks
SAN Copy - being able to copy data across the SAN from various other arrays without any server being involved
Analyser - low level graphical analysis for troubleshooting, show throughput on different bits, seek distance of drives heads and the like.
MetaLUNs - the ability to change a virtual disk from RAID0 to RAID1, RAID5, RAID6 as you like, while the server is accessing it (takes ages mind).
Dial Home - the arrays use a modem or email to contact the vendor in the event of a failure, so if you're slack they just call you and arrange to pop round with a new disk and change it for you.
Ability to manage lots of array's from a single console
iSCSI connections (iSCSI is fibre channel over Ethernet network) at 1 Gig or 10 Gig. Cheap iSCSI arrays are also undermining the XServe RAID, although I think you still need a third party driver to use them.
Being able to use lots of disks - the CLARiiON line covers 7200, 10000, 15000 rpm drives in Fibre Channel, SAS, and SATA from 36 up to 750 Gb. The high end arrays (Symmetrix) also have 73 and 146 GB SSDs, at around £50,000 per disk.
Obviously pretty much no-one needs *all* of these features and there are other ays to do most of them, but some are useful to most people, and they tend to be part of a "solution" involving more than one site, several servers, backup systems and what have you.
Another missing feature is controller failover. In the Xserve RAID, one controller controls the left half of the unit and another controller controls the right half. The 2 sides are independent. If one controller fails, there is no redundancy like there is for the power supply or cooling module.
But instead of simply discontinuing the Xserve RAID, Apple should have replaced it with an upgraded model that addresses the concerns of customers.
But instead of simply discontinuing the Xserve RAID, Apple should have replaced it with an upgraded model that addresses the concerns of customers.
So would y'all be happy if Apple came out with a new Xserve RAID that has the same specs and price as the Promise RAID? Besides the name, what is the problem here?
So would y'all be happy if Apple came out with a new Xserve RAID that has the same specs and price as the Promise RAID? Besides the name, what is the problem here?
Single vendor to deal with (on neck to choke) and comittment to delivering solid product. Apple's actions speak loudly. They aren't interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones.
Single vendor to deal with (on neck to choke) and comittment to delivering solid product. Apple's actions speak loudly. They aren't interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones.
Obviously, you don't know what you are talking about. You want single vendor and a commitment to deliver solid products, start at http://www.apple.com/xsan/resources/. If you can't figure it out from there, you don't belong in this league.
As for parts replacement, how many of us only use our 'cars' manufacturers for replacement, service or repair. Certainly unlikely after the warranty period. And certainly not in those institutions where we have our own experienced personnel to do so.
And look at what most of us do now. Our hard drives go down or we want to increase storage size we can buy from Apple and install it ourselves, have Apple do it, have an Apple-certified service do it or your brother-in-law do it. In any case that drive is a third-party product that can be bought elsewhere. Same for batteries, mice, keyboards, etc., but the motherboard. Ask your spouse or mother how many times they called in the Maytag man.
As for the XSan 2, it would appear that Apple has well thought out how, when and where and are well committed to deliver. It is a major ticket item. It is not an iPod, and for those certainly in the know and the majority of current users of Apple products and services in this area aren't concerned as some of the same malcontents that repeat the same accusatory propaganda for everything that Apple does.
To state that Apple isn't, "interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones," is simply an unsupported malicious lie.
A word of caution, you must let the Keyboard Firmware app run fully otherwise your trackpad and laptop keyboard will stop working. That happened to me. I plugged in an external USB mouse and keyboard, ran the Keyboard Firmware app thingy again, making sure I did not interrupt it, and voila, no worries.
After updating, I have experienced weird backlighting issues. The keyboard back light flashes on and off as I type. On one second and then off the next. I'm in medium ambient light, but it never did this before the update. In fact I never had any of the problems that the update was supposed to fix either. Anyone else seeing this behavior?
After updating, I have experienced weird backlighting issues. The keyboard back light flashes on and off as I type. On one second and then off the next. I'm in medium ambient light, but it never did this before the update. In fact I never had any of the problems that the update was supposed to fix either. Anyone else seeing this behavior?
m
I just sent my macbook pro in because of the stupid keyboard COMPLETELY dying. I get it back and the keyboard backlight acted INSANE. it would pulse on and off...the keys were completely wrong and broken. they weren't working right at all. i sent it in thursday and am picking up my computer (AGAIN) today. I hope it's fixed, but I'll tell you one thing---i was on the phone with them for two hours testing this. they are either unaware of the problem or there is no fix yet available for you at home because they DID have me send it in for these backlighting issues (though maybe that's because they just replaced the keyboard who knows)
[QUOTE=WelshDog;1217808]I have 5 Xserve Raids used for our final Cut systems. Wow this is a bummer. We really liked being able to buy all the components of our systems from one vendor (excepting the Kona cards). The Xserve Raids are so good - ZERO problems over the last few years. I'm sure the Promise raids are good, but . . . .
I hope this is not a sort of sideways confirmation of the rumor that Apple wants out of the pro app business. If they aren't going to be selling Final Cut what do they need a raid for?[/QUOT
Apple also bailed on NAB this year, Medea has a competetive raid, now owned by AVID. Media composer full blown software only costs 5 grand. Looks like apple is pulling out. They tried to take on Avid but not sure how much of a dent they made. Sad to see the raid go, even sadder to think this is just the begining of the end. \
Apple also bailed on NAB this year, Medea has a competetive raid, now owned by AVID. Media composer full blown software only costs 5 grand. Looks like apple is pulling out. They tried to take on Avid but not sure how much of a dent they made. Sad to see the raid go, even sadder to think this is just the begining of the end. \
I thought Apple sold like over half a million copies of Final Cut Studio. That's a half billion right there, not counting the hardware needed to run the software. Then there are the aspirers like I once was that decided to try Apple because of their pro software. Apple gets plenty of coverage and mileage out of FCS.
Apple doesn't really need to provide the drive arrays, when they started, there weren't (m)any available for Apple machines. There are maybe six drive array makers targetting the FCP video producer, each with several different products.
Obviously, you don't know what you are talking about. You want single vendor and a commitment to deliver solid products, start at http://www.apple.com/xsan/resources/. If you can't figure it out from there, you don't belong in this league.
As for parts replacement, how many of us only use our 'cars' manufacturers for replacement, service or repair. Certainly unlikely after the warranty period. And certainly not in those institutions where we have our own experienced personnel to do so.
And look at what most of us do now. Our hard drives go down or we want to increase storage size we can buy from Apple and install it ourselves, have Apple do it, have an Apple-certified service do it or your brother-in-law do it. In any case that drive is a third-party product that can be bought elsewhere. Same for batteries, mice, keyboards, etc., but the motherboard. Ask your spouse or mother how many times they called in the Maytag man.
As for the XSan 2, it would appear that Apple has well thought out how, when and where and are well committed to deliver. It is a major ticket item. It is not an iPod, and for those certainly in the know and the majority of current users of Apple products and services in this area aren't concerned as some of the same malcontents that repeat the same accusatory propaganda for everything that Apple does.
To state that Apple isn't, "interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones," is simply an unsupported malicious lie.
Obviously, you are the person who doesn't know what he is talking about. You obviously have not run a large Storage Infrastructure. Do you find Apple servers and storage in many business? No, and this won't help their cause. Businesses don't run their companies on Apple Servers and Storage, and that is a fact.
Companies invest money on more that hardware when they make a decision in this area. I grant you that Apple was playing at the low end of the storage market, but to just drop a product and act as if nothing will impact a user, and the folks who made the decision to invest in Apple, is just bad business. You can't do that in the business world. Apple can get away with screwing an individual user, but not a business user. Apple won't even tell their own customers what their hardware roadmap is, so they can't make good decisions on how they spend their money. When I worked for a major hardware vendor, I updated my customers quarterly on the upcoming hardware, so my customers could make informed decisions to buy current product, or wait for a refresh. Apple won't do this, hence they make no headway in the corporate world. In the K12 and HiED market they basically sell notebooks, so it doesn't matter quite as much.
Apple's Xsan product isn't written by Apple. The base product is written by ADIC (now part of Quantum. The product is called StorNext.) Apple has never done the kinds of things necessary to establish themselves as a credible alternative to Linux or MS/Intel, or the many UNIX variants. The thing is, they had a chance, but you can only burn the folks who buy your stuff in this space so often.
How would you like to tell your manager that the $100K you just spent upgrading your storage is now dead money. It pushes folks to to EMC, HP, Dell, as they are seen as safe choices, while Apple is fickle, and won't do the things necessary to support the business customers.
Xsan2 isn't a major things for Apple. In revenue terms, they sell very little in comparison to their other products. It means very little to them economically. This could be killed just as easily, and it wouldn't have much effect on the bottom line. They would simple tell folks to go to Quantum for support. And if I were effected by this, I would say, if I wanted to work with Quantum, I would have bought from them, I bought from Apple believing that you were going to support me for a few years at least. Apple has the cash to stay in the business, while Quantum is struggling. Yet, Apple is bailing on the market.
This is a business decision for them, and I am ok with it, but you need to leave the market with a plan. You had a plan when you entered, and you need one, when you leave. You need to tell your users you are leaving, why, and give them a options to move forward with Promise, or move away from Apple in a manner which will allow them to get money together to replace all this dead Apple gear. Here, they just abandoned them.
I have sold hardware/software to large companies all my life. You can't do this and expect to sell Servers and Storage to businesses. Apple clearly doesn't care about the business user space. It is so sad.
Apple screwed up here. All things Apple are not perfect. Admit it, and help the company get better.
Comments
I hope this is not a sort of sideways confirmation of the rumor that Apple wants out of the pro app business. If they aren't going to be selling Final Cut what do they need a raid for?
Final Cut is probably safe for now due to the importance of Apple's focus on video for aTV, video rentals, iTunes, Quicktime and video iPods/iPhones. They'll want to be in the whole video content, compression and delivery workflow as it relates very closely to the consumer side of the business they seem to be banking on.
I sure don't want to go back to Avid or Premiere although I will keep them around and up to date just in case.
Presumably Apple decided the margins and competition made conitnued investment uneconomical, or plain decided to spend the moneye elsewhere - it's a busy market, and not that many players are making money. Making it harder for the low-end player like Apple is that the tech in mid-range boxes are starting to trickle down to smaller products.
An EMC CLARiiON AX4 (SAS or SATA array) runs the same software as the big ones, starts at about $9,000 and has snapshots, remote replication, and all sorts, scales to 60 drives (from 750 GB SATA to 15,000 rpm SAS), does RAID6, and is part of a line that refreshed every six months or so.
With players like EMC, LSI Logic, HDS pushing down into the Xserve Raid's space and the low end player pushing up, it's probably a good decision for Apple - it's not a market they can dominate, and margins are just getting thinner.
Cheers,
Martin.
Final Cut is probably safe for now due to the importance of Apple's focus on video for aTV, video rentals, iTunes, Quicktime and video iPods/iPhones. They'll want to be in the whole video content, compression and delivery workflow as it relates very closely to the consumer side of the business they seem to be banking on.
I sure don't want to go back to Avid or Premiere although I will keep them around and up to date just in case.
It's kinda nerve wreaking to see Apple's Pro apps hidden under menus towards the bottom of the Store. Apple used to have a Pro Tab on their website, and now they don't! I almost forgot that Shake was an Apple product, and WebObjects has been abandoned (updated recently for compatible with Leopard), on the Apple store WO has a 1 star rating for abandonment.
It's going to be a tougher sell for this third party solution unfortunately, especially since the cost of entry is twice what the Apple solution was.
Could you explain? This seems to be in contrast to what Ars is reporting, i.e.,
Apple: Xserve RAID is dead! Long live Promise VTrak RAID!
By Chris Foresman | Published: February 19, 2008 - 12:41PM CT
"We just had a conversation with Eric Zelenka, senior product line manager of Apple's server and storage software, wherein he cleared up the case of the disappearing Xserve RAID. As everyone suspected, the reason it disappeared is because, well, it's gone.
Some wondered why Apple didn't update the Xserve RAID with SATA drives and updated Fibre Channel ports. "Promise VTrak RAID already has great performance in our testing," Zelenka told us, and delivers it at a great price: about $1 per gigabyte. According to Promise, the E-class RAID delivers "an unbeatable 26 streams of 8-bit uncompressed standard definition video and supports capacities up to 24TB per configuration, starting at just $1.12 per gigabyte." That's not the kind of price/performance ratio one would want to get caught sneezing at.?
Zelenka assured us that Xserve RAIDs will be sold while supplies last, and that current Xserve RAIDs will continue to be supported with drive modules and Xsan compatibility. But going forward, all future SAN deployments will be set up using the Promise VTrak systems. The systems are available through the Apple Store and from authorized retailers, starting at the paltry sum of just $11,999.95. Don't balk, though?that's still some $400 cheaper than the low-end Xserve RAID."
http://arstechnica.com/journals/appl...ise-vtrak-raid
Coming from a storage more than an Apple background, Xserve Raid's had a great reputation for being cheap, easy and fast but not very featureful.
...
Cheers,
Martin.
Martin,
This will seem like a dumb question, but what features are needed in a RAID that Apple didn't provide?
What I find is typical is the gutless transition to this product line.
Apple gets accused of not supporting 3rd parties and when they do it's done behind closed doors and done by sacrificing one of their competing options to help out a 3rd party.
Here's a thought: Support the 3rd party and sell your own competing products.
If you want to encourage 3rd party hardware to run Apple software on it you can't just dip your foot into the water. You have to extend this concept with the rest of your software lineup.
That won't happen, but it will forever keep Apple sacrificing any heavy iron options while it hordes the consumer space with an end-to-end solution from Apple.
Apple certified this 3rd party RAID System and others before it quietly closed it's own product down.
What I find is typical is the gutless transition to this product line.
Apple gets accused of not supporting 3rd parties and when they do it's done behind closed doors and done by sacrificing one of their competing options to help out a 3rd party.
Here's a thought: Support the 3rd party and sell your own competing products.
If you want to encourage 3rd party hardware to run Apple software on it you can't just dip your foot into the water. You have to extend this concept with the rest of your software lineup.
That won't happen, but it will forever keep Apple sacrificing any heavy iron options while it hordes the consumer space with an end-to-end solution from Apple.
What the heck does all that mean?
And once again, the pros are left holding the bag. Why is Apple trying so hard to drive the pros away? The minute Apple discontinues support for Xserve RAID, the clock is ticking. One dead drive means my entire $10,000 investment is history once Apple stops shipping replacement drives. Wow. Apple has to know that's $10,000 I can't spend on Apple hardware, since I have to buy a new RAID system. Apple spends all their R&D producing products that are little more than ways of accessing iTunes. They've emerged as the Tower Records of the internet, and that's great, but what about those of us that actually use our equipment for business?
as of now, apple is still selling replacement parts for the RAID, and, historically, apple has continued offering replacement parts for their products long after discontinuation.
Furthermore, the xserve RAID was very long in the tooth. ATA-100 in the days of SATA-300? right. i think when apple entered the RAID market, the xserve RAID was tremendous, but at this point, it doesnt make sense to update the hardware when they can simply continue to create the software to control it. i would rather have apple pour more resources into making Xsan *excellent* instead of *decent* and let other manufacturers supply the box full of hard drives and raid controllers.
Martin,
This will seem like a dumb question, but what features are needed in a RAID that Apple didn't provide?
Not at all, it's a geeky old business storage. Going by what you get on low to mid-range EMC CLARiiONs:
RAID6 (two disks can fail, and you still don't lose data)
Additional drive shelves (An AX4 shelf is 3.5 inches high with 12 drives, and you can have five shelves in the array (up to 45 TB raw). The big ones (CX3-80's) hold up 480 drives (336 TB raw).
Bigger caches for better performance - I believe the Xserve RAID has 1 or 2 GB of cache. That's about normal for smaller arrays. CLARiiONs run from 2 Gb up to 16 Gb, the high end Symmetrix boxes can hold 512 GB of cache memory.
Snapshots - make a "point-in-time" copy of your data, without using loads of storage (it just keeps changed data and lets you roll them back, or have another server see the snapshot - this is useful for having another server back up the data for instance, you stop your database or whatever to make the disk quiet, snap it, start the database up again and the backup happens elsewhere)
Clones - Full copies of data, you can resync them quickly and/or use them on other systems
Replication - having all the data mirrored to another array on the SAN (or elsewhere, if you have more money). This can be realtime or near realtime. More modern arrays have "consistency groups" which means a set of virtual disks will all sync as one, which i important for databases that span lots of virtual disks
SAN Copy - being able to copy data across the SAN from various other arrays without any server being involved
Analyser - low level graphical analysis for troubleshooting, show throughput on different bits, seek distance of drives heads and the like.
MetaLUNs - the ability to change a virtual disk from RAID0 to RAID1, RAID5, RAID6 as you like, while the server is accessing it (takes ages mind).
Dial Home - the arrays use a modem or email to contact the vendor in the event of a failure, so if you're slack they just call you and arrange to pop round with a new disk and change it for you.
Ability to manage lots of array's from a single console
iSCSI connections (iSCSI is fibre channel over Ethernet network) at 1 Gig or 10 Gig. Cheap iSCSI arrays are also undermining the XServe RAID, although I think you still need a third party driver to use them.
Being able to use lots of disks - the CLARiiON line covers 7200, 10000, 15000 rpm drives in Fibre Channel, SAS, and SATA from 36 up to 750 Gb. The high end arrays (Symmetrix) also have 73 and 146 GB SSDs, at around £50,000 per disk.
Obviously pretty much no-one needs *all* of these features and there are other ays to do most of them, but some are useful to most people, and they tend to be part of a "solution" involving more than one site, several servers, backup systems and what have you.
Hope that all helps!
Cheers,
Martin.
But instead of simply discontinuing the Xserve RAID, Apple should have replaced it with an upgraded model that addresses the concerns of customers.
But instead of simply discontinuing the Xserve RAID, Apple should have replaced it with an upgraded model that addresses the concerns of customers.
So would y'all be happy if Apple came out with a new Xserve RAID that has the same specs and price as the Promise RAID? Besides the name, what is the problem here?
So would y'all be happy if Apple came out with a new Xserve RAID that has the same specs and price as the Promise RAID? Besides the name, what is the problem here?
Single vendor to deal with (on neck to choke) and comittment to delivering solid product. Apple's actions speak loudly. They aren't interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones.
Single vendor to deal with (on neck to choke) and comittment to delivering solid product. Apple's actions speak loudly. They aren't interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones.
Obviously, you don't know what you are talking about. You want single vendor and a commitment to deliver solid products, start at http://www.apple.com/xsan/resources/. If you can't figure it out from there, you don't belong in this league.
As for parts replacement, how many of us only use our 'cars' manufacturers for replacement, service or repair. Certainly unlikely after the warranty period. And certainly not in those institutions where we have our own experienced personnel to do so.
And look at what most of us do now. Our hard drives go down or we want to increase storage size we can buy from Apple and install it ourselves, have Apple do it, have an Apple-certified service do it or your brother-in-law do it. In any case that drive is a third-party product that can be bought elsewhere. Same for batteries, mice, keyboards, etc., but the motherboard. Ask your spouse or mother how many times they called in the Maytag man.
As for the XSan 2, it would appear that Apple has well thought out how, when and where and are well committed to deliver. It is a major ticket item. It is not an iPod, and for those certainly in the know and the majority of current users of Apple products and services in this area aren't concerned as some of the same malcontents that repeat the same accusatory propaganda for everything that Apple does.
To state that Apple isn't, "interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones," is simply an unsupported malicious lie.
m
After updating, I have experienced weird backlighting issues. The keyboard back light flashes on and off as I type. On one second and then off the next. I'm in medium ambient light, but it never did this before the update. In fact I never had any of the problems that the update was supposed to fix either. Anyone else seeing this behavior?
m
I just sent my macbook pro in because of the stupid keyboard COMPLETELY dying. I get it back and the keyboard backlight acted INSANE. it would pulse on and off...the keys were completely wrong and broken. they weren't working right at all. i sent it in thursday and am picking up my computer (AGAIN) today. I hope it's fixed, but I'll tell you one thing---i was on the phone with them for two hours testing this. they are either unaware of the problem or there is no fix yet available for you at home because they DID have me send it in for these backlighting issues (though maybe that's because they just replaced the keyboard who knows)
http://www.CalDigit.com/HDPro.asp
Thanks!
I hope this is not a sort of sideways confirmation of the rumor that Apple wants out of the pro app business. If they aren't going to be selling Final Cut what do they need a raid for?[/QUOT
Apple also bailed on NAB this year, Medea has a competetive raid, now owned by AVID. Media composer full blown software only costs 5 grand. Looks like apple is pulling out. They tried to take on Avid but not sure how much of a dent they made. Sad to see the raid go, even sadder to think this is just the begining of the end.
Apple also bailed on NAB this year, Medea has a competetive raid, now owned by AVID. Media composer full blown software only costs 5 grand. Looks like apple is pulling out. They tried to take on Avid but not sure how much of a dent they made. Sad to see the raid go, even sadder to think this is just the begining of the end.
I thought Apple sold like over half a million copies of Final Cut Studio. That's a half billion right there, not counting the hardware needed to run the software. Then there are the aspirers like I once was that decided to try Apple because of their pro software. Apple gets plenty of coverage and mileage out of FCS.
Apple doesn't really need to provide the drive arrays, when they started, there weren't (m)any available for Apple machines. There are maybe six drive array makers targetting the FCP video producer, each with several different products.
Obviously, you don't know what you are talking about. You want single vendor and a commitment to deliver solid products, start at http://www.apple.com/xsan/resources/. If you can't figure it out from there, you don't belong in this league.
As for parts replacement, how many of us only use our 'cars' manufacturers for replacement, service or repair. Certainly unlikely after the warranty period. And certainly not in those institutions where we have our own experienced personnel to do so.
And look at what most of us do now. Our hard drives go down or we want to increase storage size we can buy from Apple and install it ourselves, have Apple do it, have an Apple-certified service do it or your brother-in-law do it. In any case that drive is a third-party product that can be bought elsewhere. Same for batteries, mice, keyboards, etc., but the motherboard. Ask your spouse or mother how many times they called in the Maytag man.
As for the XSan 2, it would appear that Apple has well thought out how, when and where and are well committed to deliver. It is a major ticket item. It is not an iPod, and for those certainly in the know and the majority of current users of Apple products and services in this area aren't concerned as some of the same malcontents that repeat the same accusatory propaganda for everything that Apple does.
To state that Apple isn't, "interested in delivering solutions to business needs beyond delivering iPods and iPhones," is simply an unsupported malicious lie.
Obviously, you are the person who doesn't know what he is talking about. You obviously have not run a large Storage Infrastructure. Do you find Apple servers and storage in many business? No, and this won't help their cause. Businesses don't run their companies on Apple Servers and Storage, and that is a fact.
Companies invest money on more that hardware when they make a decision in this area. I grant you that Apple was playing at the low end of the storage market, but to just drop a product and act as if nothing will impact a user, and the folks who made the decision to invest in Apple, is just bad business. You can't do that in the business world. Apple can get away with screwing an individual user, but not a business user. Apple won't even tell their own customers what their hardware roadmap is, so they can't make good decisions on how they spend their money. When I worked for a major hardware vendor, I updated my customers quarterly on the upcoming hardware, so my customers could make informed decisions to buy current product, or wait for a refresh. Apple won't do this, hence they make no headway in the corporate world. In the K12 and HiED market they basically sell notebooks, so it doesn't matter quite as much.
Apple's Xsan product isn't written by Apple. The base product is written by ADIC (now part of Quantum. The product is called StorNext.) Apple has never done the kinds of things necessary to establish themselves as a credible alternative to Linux or MS/Intel, or the many UNIX variants. The thing is, they had a chance, but you can only burn the folks who buy your stuff in this space so often.
How would you like to tell your manager that the $100K you just spent upgrading your storage is now dead money. It pushes folks to to EMC, HP, Dell, as they are seen as safe choices, while Apple is fickle, and won't do the things necessary to support the business customers.
Xsan2 isn't a major things for Apple. In revenue terms, they sell very little in comparison to their other products. It means very little to them economically. This could be killed just as easily, and it wouldn't have much effect on the bottom line. They would simple tell folks to go to Quantum for support. And if I were effected by this, I would say, if I wanted to work with Quantum, I would have bought from them, I bought from Apple believing that you were going to support me for a few years at least. Apple has the cash to stay in the business, while Quantum is struggling. Yet, Apple is bailing on the market.
This is a business decision for them, and I am ok with it, but you need to leave the market with a plan. You had a plan when you entered, and you need one, when you leave. You need to tell your users you are leaving, why, and give them a options to move forward with Promise, or move away from Apple in a manner which will allow them to get money together to replace all this dead Apple gear. Here, they just abandoned them.
I have sold hardware/software to large companies all my life. You can't do this and expect to sell Servers and Storage to businesses. Apple clearly doesn't care about the business user space. It is so sad.
Apple screwed up here. All things Apple are not perfect. Admit it, and help the company get better.