It’s the end of the line for Apple’s line of servers, the Xserve. The Cupertino giant has just announced that the Xserve line (no more future models, either) will no longer be sold after January 31, 2011, and advises people interested in Mac OS X Server to buy either a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro with Snow Leopard Server installed.
Support-wise, Apple will obviously fulfil all its duties. “Apple will continue to take orders for current Xserve models through January 31, 2011,” Apple writes, “These systems will have Apple’s full standard one-year warranty. The AppleCare Premium Service and Support program for Xserve is available as an option at time of order to extend complimentary technical support and hardware service coverage to three years from the Xserve date of purchase.”
There will be no replacement for the Xserve; instead, Apple advises interested customers to buy Snow Leopard-equipped Mac Minis or Mac Pros. I think that when Lion arrives, there will be no more separate server release – it’ll be a single release, so you can just buy any device you want and turn it into a server.
Did the Xserve ever sell well? I’ve only ever encountered Xserves once – my local Mac dealership, which has a nation-wide network of stores these days (they started with just one) runs everything on Xserves, but that’s hardly surprising. Anyone else ever encountered these things in the wild?
back when they dropped java.
*gloat gloat I am so smart s m r t*
Thom,
what makes you think that Lion will not have a server edition?
If this is the case, then this means no java on MacOSX server either.
When will people learn?
* Only buy Apple-DRMed ACC.
* Only watch iTunes store movie content.
* Only use online video formats approved by Apple.
* Only download your applications from Apple.
Stupid consumers, stop bitching, pay more.
And funny enough they were one of the first to offered DRM-free music world wide – where is the ability for me to purchase DRM-free music in New Zealand? Amazon tells me to piss off if I try to purchase something off them, same goes for Real and any other US based music reseller.
Who said you had to do that? I watch my DVD’s quite nicely and they aren’t blocked by Apple.
Based on what evidence? where have they blocked other formats from running on Mac OS X?
And where have they done that? show me exactly where I’m forced to only download applications off Apple for Mac OS X.
Stupid post commenting on matters he knows nothing about.
Edited 2010-11-05 23:57 UTC
I know they have DRM-free music now. And it may or may not have been their idea in the first place. The format most likely was since it’s not compatible with anything else. It’s an Apple exclusive DRM format.
Doesn’t matter, I don’t buy songs anyway.
Just bitching about all the vendor and format lock-in in place. Whatever it’s reasonable or possible to stay out of it with any other products I don’t know. I for sure don’t want it none the less
Wasn’t there some crap there the AppleTV or whatever it’s called had it’s HDD removed and only let you watch their online content? I don’t know if I can be an USB host but if it does I still assume it only plays some video formats included from Apple in the first place, such as the old AppleTV did. I’m sure you can hack that and force peridan or something such upon it. But it’s not like it was designed for it or with that in mind. I assume. AppleTV being an Apple product and all.
Regarding online formats I mean HTML video where Apple AFAIK only use H.264, (some of) the other players included WebM and then we got the Theora format but it seems like that’s somewhat out of the question now? Though now when I’m typing it I wonder if Apple didn’t used whatever Quicktime played through Safari and in that case shame on me because then it will most likely play close to anything, which imho it should. Even though Firefox and Opera may not agree.
You aren’t forced to only download your applications from Apple, but you for sure will be encouraged to once Lion is out. Even though they may not say something like “omg this is the only safe way to install applications on your mac” people will use it, and Apple will get their share.
Also I don’t see how old issues aren’t issues longer.
I mean, forced Atrac conversion when MiniDisk finally become NetMD enabled? On MP.. uhm, flashmemorybasedmusicplayers? MemoryStick only? UMD? DRM and rootkits on CDs?
It’s not like we would give Sony a break for fucking up in historical times just because they may have shaped up in some areas by now (mostly by being forced to since their own formats and implementation didn’t survived because they where shit in the first place)?
So why should Apple go free? Apple is the most vendor locked-in vendor/series of hardware and software I know.
Want to use remote desktop on your mac? Get a MobileMe account.
(Not entirely Apples fault but still disturbing:) Want to use a webcam with a friend? They better use iChat or AOL IM.
Want to have a video conversion on your phone? These are not the standardized 3G video solutions you’re looking for.
Rather obvious but iPhoto and Aperture photo management will most likely enforce the Apple platform upon you (as would using Logic I assume …), while Lightroom and things like Reason probably keep your options open.
I think I read how the H.264 acceleration only worked with some videos encoded in some Quicktime way, probably got something with some weird options to do in some other variants, still annoying if the cards would had been able to play them accelerated (of that I have no idea.)
H.264 acceleration for others than Quicktime was damn slow implemented and is still poorly implemented because it’s only done for the very last computers.
Earlier, don’t know about current versions, I’ve read that Apple OpenGL support was way behind as well.
Those two last are not vendor lock-ins, but it still suck.
Graphic cards are vendor locked-in. You could argue that’s because they use EFI and it’s not because Apple are bitches, but anyone with a hack can use a normal graphic card so ..
But paying more for Apple branded items are fun. For my Macbook Pro I could choose from some TwinMos ValueRAM or whatever or some TwinMos made-for-Apple-RAM. Picked the first assuming they where all within the standard and the Apple using regular Intel components (with some stupid OCZ or something such memory modules maybe not.) Worked, saved cash.
remote desktop ? – tons VNC or MS Remote Desktop stuff, mostly free
“Want to use a webcam with a friend?” – everybody uses Skype and there is Skype for mac so what ?
“think I read how the H.264 acceleration only worked with some videos encoded in some Quicktime” – you read wrong or beter do not think, because it is not true
“I’ve read that Apple OpenGL support was way behind as well” – not true, simple example – Steam based games are running just fine and in some games they perform even better than on MS Win
OSX is not locked at all, same freedom as MS Windows and better stability than Linux and MS stuff.
o_O
My favorite thing they do is when a new OS comes out they drop the earlier version immediately and refuse to port it to the new machines. This makes it a massive headache to buy new machines when you have vendor software that will not run on the new OS, and to top that the earlier version will run, but is missing a driver or to, and the only response from Apple is “Not Supported” I mean come on we are talking about a new OS that is months old, and you are telling me that the earlier version wont run? WTF? And we wonder why Microsoft dominates.
Except they don’t. Microsoft don’t dominate the enterprise market, they dominate the desktop market.
Well, they do dominate the enterprise desktop market. As well as the enterprise desktop management/support market. You know exchange/active directory and share point.
Most figures I’ve read have a significant, and leading, MS market share in the enterprise server market. That really started with NT4, but it has grown ever since.
Linux is on a lot of boxes, no doubt about it, but MS has a very hefty server presence.
The whole thing is incredibly hard to count though. No Linux or Windows server I’ve ever encountered in that kind of environment was actually sold with an OS. X86 servers are almost always sold bare, even down at the SMB-level, much less enterprise. That really complicates getting a proper accounting. So much so, I imagine that an accurate count is plain impossible.
Edited 2010-11-05 15:11 UTC
Microsoft does dominate the enterprise desktop market.
They are also very strong on servers in the SMB segment.
That sounds like a load of gooble gook to me.
I have no idea what “port to the new machines” means?!?
Have you ever used a MacOSX system? I have a MacPro sitting under my desk right now that started of with Tiger and then went to Leopard and now runs Snow Leopard and soon will run Lion.
I really honestly could not work out what the hell you were talking about but it seemed to come from some weird parallel universe where macs worked like Windows PCs.
I have no idea what “port to the new machines” means?!?
He means that once OS X, say snow leopard, came out and they released new server hardware, they never updated, say, tiger drivers for the new hardware. So you couldn’t maintain a standard baseline of running Tiger on all your servers. Kinda like how some Vista-era desktops/laptops just did not have XP drivers. If you wanted to standardize your desktop image on XP you couldn’t. Or that’s how I read it, I don’t have direct experience.
That being said, I’ve only seen one Xserve at work. Bought to support iPhone development since you can’t f-ing use anything other than OS X for that.
It means that you buy a new machine a month after Lion is released and find out that the new OS has issues with apps you desperately need to use, and when you try to install Snow Leopard it does not work. When you call Apple they say that only Lion is supported on your new machine, and that you are suck with a $2000 dollar machine that you can’t run your apps on because Apple didn’t “Port” Snow Leopard to the new machines.
He was talking about new Harware not being supported by N-1 OSes what is a problem in enterprises.
He means: try and buy a new ‘Pro today and tell me how much success you have installing 10.5 on it.
I have a Mac Pro (1.1) which has a Dual Core Xeon explicitly indicated as being 64bit on the apple site, which is entirely incapable of being booted on a 64bit kernel and hence addressing more than 3 gigs of ram.
I also have a newer Nvidia card which I purchased in advance of getting the mac, which flatly doesnt work. I sank 3 hours on trying to make it work, and then realized I would rather sink that effort on doing real shit on Arch Linux.
I was half way to being seduced before I realized the nature of the beast and have started steering away from the rocks of power freak vendors.
I registered here to answer you with a quote:
‘In fact, the only big advantage of booting into a 64-bit kernel would be the ability to use more than 32 gigabytes of RAM.’
Also, you better learn hardware differences between PCs and Macs before buying stuff like video cards.
agreed, i liked apple before I actually had to manage a cluster of xserves several years ago.
Then maybe you should put the hard word on the software vendor you purchase from and tell them to get their shit together to provide timely updates when a new version of Mac OS X is released. 9/10 when something is broken compatibility wise it is because the software vendor has insisted (against all the advice provided by Apple) to use a low level API instead of sticking a high level one or using provide frameworks because they think they’re using something ‘teh secret’ which makes their applications magically better than using public frameworks.
Don’t act coy. Apple has a history of deprecating low-level stuff without any form of prior notice.
Such as…..?
deprecating =! removal
Edited 2010-11-06 01:01 UTC
?
Doesn’t deprecation mean ‘marked for removal’?
That is to say “stop using this because we’ll be removing it”.
Yes, but it doesn’t mean it will be removed the moment it is marked deprecated. Carbon has been pretty much informally deprecated for quite some time and yet it hangs around in Mac OS X without too many problems. The question, however, still stands for Thom to demonstrate Apple suddenly removing/deprecating something without warning – what are they supposed to do? do a pre-deprecating before deprecating? ooh! thats too quick, lets to a pre-deprecating before pre-deprecating before deprecating! see how stupid his proposition sounds when taken to the logical extreme?
The case of Java, Apple has been slowly deprecating it, first with the Cocoa bindings and informally with features such as garbage collection being added to Objective-C/C++/etc. When Apple does mark the likes of deprecated it doesn’t say anything about the future – it might not be included with Lion but no one knows whether Oracle is going to pick it up due to an arrangement with Apple. Same can be said about the the XServe, just because they’ve announced an EOL where is the evidence to show that they’ll cease supporting it in the next release of Mac OS X?
There seems to be a heck of a lot of speculation by people claiming that apparently they know what Apple has in store – I don’t claim I know the answers hence I guess but continuously state that only Apple knows what Apple is going to do.
Edited 2010-11-06 06:00 UTC
We develop enterprise Java applications on multiple platforms, and deploy them on XServe (and one ancient Mac Mini). Now, Apple is abandoning both Java and XServe. My office desktop Mac will be gone within a year, I’m guessing… and I’ll probably start winding down my home Mac usage too, most likely transitioning to Ubuntu or one of the BSD’s over the next couple of years.
It’s sad, Apple and I have had a good run… but Steve has decided he wants a shiny consumer electronics company… and is taking the company in directions that don’t suit my needs, or the needs of my organization. The walled garden, curated computing, fascist/authoritarian/pseudo-arbitrary application approval required world he’s building isn’t where I need or want to be.
Oh well. These things happen, I suppose. 🙁
same thing here. I’m java developer for a start-up, love my mac, but current politics of Apple are very different from the one, which attracted me when I became a Mac user 10 years ago. Their Think Different and my Think Different are different now.
I think the XServe lost most of it’s purpose once they switched to Intel. From an Enterprise perspective, there’s no differentiation of XServe from the big Enterprise guys (Dell, HP, IBM). Other than powering their own datacenters, there’s not much of a reason for the XServe to exist. Furthermore, the market pressure from public Cloud providers is making it difficult to justify buying new hardware for SMBs. Large companies that would buy hardware for security or Private Cloud initatives aren’t interested in running OS X because nothing they need runs on it, but will often run Linux.
The question that remains, however, is what will *Apple* do when it needs to replace its own hardware? Will it buy from the Big Guys and slap on a custom OS X? Or will it just farm it out to the likes of Amazon Web Services?
Good argument. I’d always wondered the same thing. People who bought them, said they were for managing macs. Didn’t really understand why. It just has outdated versions of open source server apps, for an exorbitant price.
I wonder what Pixar will do now, they were probably the biggest user of xserves.
Wasn’t there a post recently that Pixar is using Microsoft’s Cloud — Windows Azure?
Apparently, they do!
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/226427.asp
It was news to me. It seems to me these two news items are not unrelated.
The article says:
“Clarification: The RenderMan/Azure demo shown was a proof of concept.”
For a while I expected Apple to buy Sun…
If they did they had a strong server lineup and they did not need to redesign the hardware to match other Macs…
Of course I was totally neglecting the fact that Apple is no enterprise hardware company…
Edited 2010-11-10 17:51 UTC
What does this mean for ZFS?
Apple ditching the Xserve means OSX server can’t be far behind.
Combine that with the mass exodus of new-oracle ex-sun employees and things aren’t looking good for ZFS.
Apple dropped ZFS a little while ago.
[edit] This time last year it seems: http://www.osnews.com/story/22388/Apple_Shuts_Down_Mac_OS_X_ZFS_Pro…
Agreed that things are looking bleak for ZFS at the moment though
Edited 2010-11-05 13:56 UTC
It’s a bit hard to ship the Mac mini Server and Mac Pro Server without Mac OS X Server.
You do realize that Xserve was just one server product?
Apple is going to wind down its server products entirely. No XServe, no server OS in the future. Apple just can’t deliver the software quality and reliability that the enterprise needs; not that many enterprises adopted Apple for their backends.
I don’t expect to see Mac OS X Server go anywhere… They may not be selling to enterprise, but as Apple noted… the Mac Mini server sells like hot cakes to small businesses and education is still a large market for Apple.
It’s not about the reliability of the software, it’s the reliability of the company. A company that can’t give your company any long term roadmaps can’t be accepted in any clear thinking business environment.
I personally was in a project(that is still ongoing), that is deploying systems using Windows Server 2003, Oracle 8i and so on… Apple is a dead end in these environments…
Consumer company, ‘nuf said.
Apple probably realizes that the server market is very expensive with a low ROI, and is dominated by several manufacturers, most notably Dell, HP, IBM, Supermicro, and Oracle/Sun.
To be very honest, their server offering just didn’t have the serviceability of a Dell or HP server, or the years of built-in diagnostics and checks that you get from an IBM. There wasn’t the option for RAID 6 on the hard drives, or the ECC RAM options that HP servers have.
They also realize that a good chunk of the server market is going virtual or blade to take advantage of the economies of scale and redundancy that VMWare and other virtualization solutions offer. To stay competitive, you need to develop either blade or massive (IBM’s Nehalem-EX) solutions for virtualization. Apple has the cash to do this, but it doesn’t make the money that a new iDevice will.
You can already run Mac OS X Server in a virtual machine (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_U…).
If they release Mac OS X Lion server with VMWare support, this will actually get them more customers for OS X Server, since you won’t have to buy a Mac server to run it, and you can put it onto your existing VMWare farm. Additionally, tools like Apple Remote Desktop Server gain redundancy. If you want a physical box, you can still buy a Mac Mini or Mac Pro. Granted, you’re not going to have hardware RAID-6, ECC memory, or the ability to put in a ton of PCI Express cards, but it’s fine for SOHO, especially since a good RAID 5 enclosure is cheap.
My guess is they’re just pulling out of a market in which they didn’t belong.
Any serious admin scoffs at their server product harder than Windows Server.
FreeBSD on server, Debian on workstation. Done.
Any serious admin doesn’t hold onto security views from 2000.
Windows Server 2008 will have a better security record this year than RHEL.
A lot of serious admins had their Linux servers hacked thanks to those recent kernel exploits.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/70907.html?wlc=1288978338
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/linux-kernel-flaw-coughs-root-rig…
Scoff away.
I’m curious, how is this established? I’ve seen a lots of critical updates for Windows 2008 Server this year, here was the first link I found when googling:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/09/microsoft-patch-tuesd…
Contains 3 critical and two important patches relevant to Server 2008, which concerns Remote Code Execution, and Elevation of Privilege. And this was ONE patch tuesday update, something tells me there’s more.
those links should help a bit
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/18255/?task=statistics_2010
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/4668/?task=statistics_2010
Thanks, but from what I gather these stats don’t take in to account the severity of the vulnerability? I mean remote code execution has to be the most severe and not comparable to a vulnerability that needs to be applied locally.
Edit: also the Secunia stats lists Server 2008 as having 7% of known vulnerabilities yet unpatched, while RHEL lists none.
Edited 2010-11-05 19:48 UTC
Two remarks here:
1. RHEL is far more comprehensive when it comes to software and services shipping than Windows Server. While a Windows Server is more or less naked after installation (except for some server services), a RHEL comes with a huge amount of software available for installation and you have to keep in mind that RedHat is keeping ALL of these packages secure. So, in order to be fair, you’d have to include various software like Microsoft Office and so on in these comparison charts.
2. As opposed to Microsoft, RedHat has patched ALL of the reported vulnerabilities. And this is far more striking than having less vulnerabilities. How do I benefit from less vulnerabilities when around 15% of them remain unpatched?
Adrian
Patch tuesday stats are going to include IE and other local application vulnerabilities that would not be running on a dedicated server.
Based on remote exploits in the core system that were used to take down websites Linux will have the worst record.
Same holds true for RHEL. From Secunia’s site:
-“It should also be noted that some operating systems (e.g. certain Linux distributions) bundle together a large number of software packages, and are therefore affected by vulnerabilities, which do not affect other operating systems (e.g. Microsoft Windows) that don’t bundle together a similar amount of software packages.”
There’s no reason to think that these bundled applications would be running in a RHEL server, yet their vulnerabilities count. Again very flawed.
Were can I see that stats for this?
Overall, using Secunia’s stats as a comparison between system security seems (as they themselves state) pointless. There’s no available information on the severity of vulnerabilities, and they don’t even take into account whether or not they’ve been patched or not when counting the vulnerabilities. Having 7% of known vulnerabilities unpatched as is listed for Windows 2008 however, seems very bad.
Find a vulnerability in Server 2008 this year that was as bad as the last 3 kernel exploits. You won’t be able to.
These were actively exploited vulnerabilities. Web hosts had major headaches from them.
http://blog.iweb.com/en/2010/09/64bits-linux-important-security-vul…
Note that the BSDs and Solaris have been safer for web hosts as well. Linux + Apache is an unsafe combination compared to the alternatives.
That’s hysterical. You don’t actually work at a business, do you? While your scenario may be used in some places, I highly doubt (after being an IT consultant for years) that it’s the norm.
If Apple is smart, they’ll keep around the Mini server for small offices (great machine if you need just file sharing, authentication, chat, etc.) and for anything heavier, they’ll allow you to install OS X on ESX or XenServer. It’s ridiculous and completely artificial that it doesn’t run on ESX. I don’t want a separate XServe, however I would love to make use of it along side my Windows and Linux VM’s on the same ESX Server.
Or the future is cloud with the target customers (who bought XServe’s) would be more than happy to shunt their work loads off to an Apple data-centre for processing rather than having a massive capital investment that is under-utilised even in the best of times. I know when I was at the Azure launch in Wellington one of the case scenarios was a company that uses the Microsoft cloud for batch processing of rendering instead of having their own in house rendering farm.
I managed 3 Mac servers at my last place I was employed and lets say that Mac OS X Server wasn’t designed to be a server to handle heavy loads – as soon as you start getting up there with the number of users the server slows to a crawl. When I mean slows to a crawl, not a gradual slow down but a plummeting off a cliff kind of slow down.
The question though is what is Apple going to do when it comes to interoperability in the future – are they going to finally license SMB off Microsoft? provide a AFP server for Windows server that hooks into active directory? something has to be done regarding interoperability especially for those who use their Mac’s in a work environment.
Of all the responses, this one is the winner.
Apple could license Lion Server to run on specific models from HP / DELL / IBM, etc. This would be similar to what sun used to do with solaris sparc on fujitsu
Never heard about Xserve and I have dealt with a lot of servers (AIX, Solaris, linux, Windows, and even HPUX)
I learn about it in this article announcing its death. I guess I didn’t miss anything then. From the comments it looks like it wasn’t that great anyway.
You’d probably not even be able to boot any of those on an Xserve anyhow, due to EFI and Apple’s proprietary firmwares here and there, that lock out almost anything but Mac OS X from running on these boxes (with the exception of Linux with EFI support compiled in + a great deal of messing about with making it all boot) …
I’ve worked with Xserves since the Dual PPC G5 days and it’s been an utter joy! Efficient, beautiful and great designed (even for a 1U server). Haven’t had a failure on any of the three that I’ve worked with – and the same thing counts for the Xserve RAID that’s just as old as the oldest Xserve, but keeps humming along nicely for simple file serving needs!
The quality’s actually good, but software/OS flexibility is somewhat limited.
I guess I’ll be moving to Linux for new servers …
I ordered one for the company, when I was a sysadmin there. The price was OK and you got all software integrated and easy to administer. A nice GUI, a great design of the hardware, I liked it.
I did not like the fact that the ease of administration did come with a cost: it was hard to deviate from the default settings of GUI tools for those settings. Under the hood, they used samba, postfix, dovecot, and so on. But changing the smb.conf file would not result in the expected outcome, because the system would overwrite or ignore the customizations.
Were I the only person that were looking forward to iOS Server? Oh well…
<sarcasm>Apple stopped being a computer company a long time ago, so why should they sell servers in this day and age? It’s as if PC Magazine wrote about PCs. They stopped doing that about 6, 7 years ago.
Apple should just change its name to AT&T: Apple Telephone & Tablet.</sarcasm>
…some of this has to do with LightPeak. For many of the services being run by Mac shops a Mac Mini server would suffice. Have a lightpeak connection to diskspace and an Xserve is obsolete. Those who need more raw processing power (thinking podcast producer here) would benefit more from a MacPro than an Xserve.
The announcement is a bit of a kick in the balls for shops invested in Apple infrastructure, but if Apple is going to lead the way with LightPeak, it totally makes sense.
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/04/light-peak-coming-in-early-2011…
Sounds about right; CPU power is over rated when in many cases people just use a server as a giant dumping ground for their files and maybe hosting a mail server etc. They’re jobs that can easily be handled with a low power VIA or Intel Atom CPU without too many problems.
and moved OS X Server into the Mac Mini and Mac Pro.
What’s the problem, again? Other than a rack mount option being gone, what’s the problem?
The problem is what you’ve already stated. They’ve gotten rid of the rackmount option, thus rendering it useless for most server rooms.
Yeah, but at least it LOOKS pretty — and isn’t that all that matters to Apple designers?
They’ve also killed their Java work, just announced a feature set for Lion that trends towards ios, and just killed xserve. It seems as if Apple is changing its priority away from my own set of priorities.
Logically, for developers, it seems like the OSX app store is the way to go as Apple’s desktop/server offerings as they seem to be on the way out eventually.
It’s total BS about Java. MS doesn’t create their own Java (not the real stuff) nor do they include Java in any version of Windows.
Java came from Sun, now Oracle. Oracle is going to roll Java for Mac OS X just like it does for Windows and Linux and …
In case you don’t know, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are VERY good friends. I’m sure they talked about why Apple was making their own Java version even before it was official that Oracle was buying Sun.
Don’t worry, Java will be their for Mac OS X. Stop flinging BS/FUD, it will just come flying back into your face.
What makes you so sure that Oracle will support Java for Mac? Just because Steve and Larry are good friends??? I’m really dependent on Java and while there is no announcement for Oracle about Java support for Mac from them I have to look out for alternatives. Google and Apple were also friends, look at them now, they are suing each other. Friendship between industry leaders is much too shaky foundation, I would rely at. I really hope I’m wrong here.
Because both of them are pragmatic – they do what is in their own best interests. Lion will probably include a host of changes because from what I heard the Apple implementation/fork of Java requires the use of private API’s that may cause problems if a third party were to maintain it hence you’ll probably see some new low level API’s come out in next years WWDC2011 that co-incide with Oracle taking over maintenance. All the heavy lifting for Java on Mac OS X has already been done by Apple, it is just a matter of Oracle keeping the momentum going which would be chicken shit (cost wise) in comparison to other platforms.
My guess is that Larry Ellison likes small pieces of paper with pictures of Benjamin Franklin much more than he likes Steve Jobs. If Apple drops java, there will be no java.
Java is mainly for servers, and with no OS-X servers, there will be no java from Oracle. Not that I think that there would have been one anyway, there are just too few Mac servers out there.
Given how Apple have treated server users over time its no surprise that they didn’t sell many of them. First of all they was quite expensive, and secondly there are no such thing as long term planning at Apple. They drop and change models and software often with no apparent upgrade path. Servers lives for years, its not like an iPhone you replace every second year.
If Apple drops Java for the Mac, they will not only annoy server users, they will also annoy a lot of developers. Java is after all one of the most commonly used programming languages in the world, and without developers Apple will have a much harder time to fight things like the growth of Android.
A) Apple has already dropped Java for Mac OS X.
B) Not only server users, but Java developers that were lured into the OS X ecosystem by SJ starting from 2001.
I am one of those, I guess 1-2 Mio developers, who use macs as their main java development platform, the problem as I see it and probably many others is less that Apple is dropping their support, but that their is no clear roadmap of how java will work from now onwards on a Mac, Oracle not has stated anything yet. Lets face it Apple has done a lousy job in the recent past regarding java support, always being one year behind Sun, so it might be a good thing if they give it up, if Oracle takes over. There is one thing, Java probably very likely will survive one form or the other on OSX, since Apples entire web infrastructure runs on Java, and it is unlikely they port it back to ObjectiveC especially now that OpenJDK runs natively but with X (which is not important to apple). What we are going to see probably is the dropping of the Java support in X-Code in the long run, not that even someone outside of the WebObject community ever used it. It simply is subpar in java land to the alternatives.
As for X-Serve, it hurts to those who used it, but frankly spoken, they sold 10.000 units per quarter, I hardly think that even covered the cost of hardware and software development.
I also have to add, if the java situation stays unclear, I and many others simply will switch to Linux and phase out the Macs slowly as their day to day dev machines in favor of cheaper PCs. That is pretty much the general tone among java devs, so there is no general panic. They are not married to their platform, most of them are married to Unix however by their nature and the nature of java (but most of them are forced to use Windows in their day to day jobs and curse it every day, unless they already have shifted their work PCs to macs wherever possible)
Edited 2010-11-10 08:23 UTC
So are Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, that does not force them to sacrifice their companies’ interests for friendship.
Business is business.
I used to administer a couple of Xserves (G5 back then) with an Xserve RAID that was hosting user accounts for a university department (with matching Mac clients). A Mac Mini certainly won’t replace that.
Edited 2010-11-05 19:56 UTC
And a 12 core Mac Pro?
The Mac Pro doesn’t use rack space nearly as efficiently and it doesn’t have redundant power supplies or drive bays for hot swapping. The Mac Pro is built as a workstation, not a server.
I think you should start that by saying, “The current Mac Pro doesn’t have those things.” I am expecting one of two things to happen due to this announcement:
1. A redesign of the Mac Pro/Mac Mini “server” lines. The current Mac Pro is huge and that was mostly due to the cooling fins necessary for the G5 chips. It could easily be shrunk with enough room for redundant power and drive bays. And as I said, before, with LightPeak coming, internal storage isn’t really necessary. They could probably get a Mac Pro down to 4u mounted on its side (I know, that’s still too much space!).
or
2. Apple licenses out Mac OS X Server to one of the current server vendors.
I think 1 is more likely than 2.
Apple already said that they are a consumer company.
And why would they redesign their “beautiful” Mac Pro’s?
“Apple Exits Server Market” should read, “Apple Exits Rackmount Server Market.”
Are you folks amateurs?
Sure, and HTC is in the server market too. I mean, you can run webservers and such on HTC phones!
Slapping a server OS on a desktop machine doesn’t make you a server vendor. Simple as that.
I think Thom meant the big enterprise server market.
I cant see a big companies kitting out on it’s brand new $3000 Mac Pro servers. Imagine the budget.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/05/mac-pro-server-quietly-introduce…
They definitely still have the small to medium sized companies in mind.
That is a pretty beefy GPU in there – I hope some time in the future they take advantage of it such as using OpenCL for SSL/Encryption acceleration and other really cool stuff
Apple was never in the Big Enterprise market with XServe.
If you dont have rackmounted systems you’re not a server vendor. End of story.
These days, yes.
There was a time you could get away with gigantic stuff like the loaded V880 in my living room (not running atm, sucks power, needs 2 circuits).
Now everything needs to fit in at most 4u
Granted I don’t work around Macs much but I have never heard the word Xserve mentioned in conversation.
I assumed it mainly existed to fleece schools who write Apple one big check and don’t care about how many zeros it contains.
“Mac Pro Server quietly introduced as Xserve heads for the grave, starts at $3,000”
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/05/mac-pro-server-quietly-introduce…
Financing available
Who cares ? I don’t know one person who uses Xserve or any MacOS X version as server. Even Macs in my country (Brasil) are less popular than linux PCs
There are many free alternatives and probably better as servers that runs in Intel and PowerPC Apple machines.
Edited 2010-11-06 09:31 UTC
If Java was going to see continued support on the Mac there would have been an orderly transition. It would not have killed Apple to continue support until there was a handover to an Oracle port.
IMO it is dead as in parrot.
As a business decision this is probably a smart move. server systems was never Apple’s core product.
My problem with Apple doing away with the Xserve is that a Mac Pro won’t fit in a damn rack, and while Linux is great for most things, it won’t do AFS very well, and the underlying ext3 file system won’t support the same naming schemes as hfs+. I can name a file “apple file 11/7/2010” no problem, but that breaks any form of Linux file system. Also, hfs+ stores a more detailed meta data file that ext3 that many programs count upon. So once you can no longer get an Xserve with a fiberchanel card, and you try to switch to xnix, all of your existing file names will be invalid. (this is all from experience!!)
The macpro is rackmountable. Its just 7u.