Apple Exits Server Market
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 5th Nov 2010 13:10 UTC
Apple 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.
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Apple Sucks at Enterprise Anyway
by jrash on Fri 5th Nov 2010 13:24 UTC
jrash
Member since:
2008-10-28

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.

Reply Score: 2

Laurence Member since:
2007-03-26

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.

Reply Parent Score: 4

Bill Shooter of Bul Member since:
2006-07-14

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.

Reply Parent Score: 6

telns Member since:
2009-06-18

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

Reply Parent Score: 1

seanpk Member since:
2009-11-17

Microsoft don't dominate the enterprise market, they dominate the desktop market.


Microsoft does dominate the enterprise desktop market.
They are also very strong on servers in the SMB segment.

Reply Parent Score: 3

Tony Swash Member since:
2009-08-22

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.



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.

Reply Parent Score: 2

MattPie Member since:
2006-04-18

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.

Reply Parent Score: 2

jrash Member since:
2008-10-28

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.

Reply Parent Score: 2

dsmogor Member since:
2005-09-01

He was talking about new Harware not being supported by N-1 OSes what is a problem in enterprises.

Reply Parent Score: 2

vocivus Member since:
2010-03-13

He means: try and buy a new 'Pro today and tell me how much success you have installing 10.5 on it.

Reply Parent Score: 1

sirspudd Member since:
2010-10-13

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.

Reply Parent Score: 1

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Jondice Member since:
2006-09-20

agreed, i liked apple before I actually had to manage a cluster of xserves several years ago.

Reply Parent Score: 2

kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

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.


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.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Thom_Holwerda Member since:
2005-06-29

Don't act coy. Apple has a history of deprecating low-level stuff without any form of prior notice.

Reply Parent Score: 2

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