“OS X 10.3 Server is not an essential purchase for every Mac user. It is essentially Mac OS X with additional network muscle, so network administrators and Web developers alike will find it more accessible and flexible than ever.” Read the review here.
Mac OS X 10.3 Server Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This is not an in-depth review, but it does touch on a number of interesting points: that an detailed hardcopy manual is now included with the software, that software not useful on a server is not included (this was not always the case), and that the included Server Admin tool is comprehensive enough for most tasks. These are the kinds of important aspects that cannot normally be examined without having used the product. With this review – and others prior to it – being at worst “positive overall”, perhaps Mac OS X 10.3 server can get some more midrange exposure; where appropriate, of course.
“that an detailed hardcopy manual is now included with the software…”
In the article it says. “The printed documentation provided with OS X Server 10.3 is much better than that shipped with 10.1 and 10.2; a 140-page book as opposed to a fold-out reference card.”
“…that software not useful on a server is not included…”
From teh article, “the lack of pre-installed tools such as iTunes, iPhoto and so on. There’s also no File Vault utility provided, although iChat, Mail and Safari are installed. Rather than client-oriented applications, the focus is on industrial-strength, industry-standard tools and services.”
Damn man! and I was only skimming!
I totally misread your comment…
The lack of quality reviews is not a problem OSNews is creating on their own, its a widespread issue in general. I’d still like to find some benchmarks comparing Solaris 8 to 9, but I hadn’t found any. OSNews is merely reporting what there is to report, the quality of the review is /not/ their fault.
I forgive you =)
I’m currently using FreeBSD 4.9 as a file server for a mixed network of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux workstations. With the exception of some minor problems with OS X 10.3 (at first, they seem to have cleared up), it works great.
Unless I had a specific need for an OS X server, I’m afraid I’d have to stick with FreeBSD/Linux servers.
Many European and Asian reviews go far more in depth than the fluff that gets posted on OSNews. You get a much better picture of the reality of something.
Eugenia’s own reviews tend to be somewhere in the middle — not total fluff (except her Apple sales advertisements) but not into the depths either. She does offer some great perspectives, similar to the European reviews.
Many of the posted reviews on OSNews are total fluff, ramblings of people who do not even make the effort to run a spell checker or grammar checker on their writing. Why the editor doesn’t do this and reject/fix/EDIT poorly written articles, that is another question.
For the case of the posted review of 10.3 Server, there is no mention of the real environment that a small or medium business/department is dealing with. Did the reviewer simulate a hard drive crash? Did the server keep on working? How fast was SAMBA on the Mac compared to on a P4 box? ET CETERA (x100).
In various companies I’ve used a lot of FreeBSD that has been rock solid. And this is on all sorts of cheap equipment. There just wasn’t budget to run out and buy Mac OS X Server and a Mac OS machine to run it on. That same money would purchase 2-5 PC machines.
On some PC machines I’ve added a hardware RAID controller and a pair of IDE drives and picked up data reliability for very little capital expenditure. On Mac, there are few choices for RAID and it is typically not seen much.
One notes the limited expansion capabilities of the G5 and wonders why Apple limited the machine to two drives, especially considering the giant size of the case.
I will note that a person could pick up a G4 still and have space for four drives, a big improvement.
The Xserve is too much money for many departments and doesn’t support hardware RAID. For the Xserve, Apple charges $1750 for drives that would cost ~$600 in the PC world, including hot-swap.
Overall, one has to wonder what sort of “review” makes such bold claims and offers no context, no objective tests or measures, etc. Did Apple pay the reviewer for a fluffy-happy review? Or maybe the reviewer would lose their cult membership if they said anything than “happy happy good good”…
Eugeina’s reviews are hardly “Apple sales advertisements” considering how harsh she can be, much more critical then Macworld mag or any such would ever be. She likes Mac OS X, is that a crime? Concerning the rest, I won’t defend Apple’s server offerings as I simply do not know enough about them – but a G5 XServe may change things a bit.
As someone before me said that there wasn’t any testing that would prove OSX’s usefulness in the server department, I’d like to also point out that there wasn’t any testing at all. The author only stated that this new wonder OS will make your life easier (moreover, it will make you an administrator) with ease. Why? Because it has GUI controls for most common server applications (Apache, SAMBA, etc.) How about cost vs. performance comparison, how about OSX performance vs. some-other-os performance? No? Well, I guess I should shut up and buy this new wonder OS since my life will be complete if I do so… NOT.
“For many low cost applications, it would seem awfully dumb to purchase an Apple server when much better and cheaper hardware is available in the PC world.”
Cheaper hardware yes…better hardware no.
There are many inexpensive PC technology servers that are superior to Apple’s non-existent offerings. You can get RAID on all of Dell’s “value” servers for instance.
If you look at the facts, Apple itself does not offer RAID on any of their servers or towers. Only the Xserve RAID offers RAID reliability and that is at a price that is unaffordable by the very departments and businesses that would be a good match for OS X Server.
Apple seems to have an identity problem. Their server hardware is priced for the enterprise but doesn’t support enterprise features. Apple’s server software is priced reasonably, but there is no affordable hardware to run it on. And the server software’s main value is the open source apps that run on it, so why not go for the real thing for a better price on more affordable hardware?
As a Mac and Lindows (NON root) user. I can easily disagree with you. I’ve felt quite a few times in the last year that she was biased against Apple as a serious computer. That she felt it was more of a toy or novelty of great styling but not enough substance.
As I support Windows NT, 2000, and XP boxes for a living (the group I work with supports over 400 NT, 600, 2,300 XP boxes) I can only say that we pay FAR too much for Windows due to its lack of security and reliability. The 350 Macs that we support require lots less support. I have W2K, XP, and Mac OS X (10.3) and am using the Mac more often than not to get stuff done. It’s just a more pleasant experience and only cost $75 more than the XP box on my desk. Easily worth that price.
“It’s just a more pleasant experience and only cost $75 more than the XP box on my desk. Easily worth that price.”
Where did you buy this awsome $500 Mac ?
Well frumin he got it from the same place that all the OSNews readers by their “big iron” for their misssion critical services – bestbuy sales and newegg.com. Duh!
C’mon do a little shopping there, download the lastest unstable ISOs of fedora and you’ve got yourself a server that IBM, SUN, Apple, and Aunt Jemima’s @ss combined couldn’t beat in price/performance comparisons.
“C’mon do a little shopping there, download the lastest unstable ISOs of fedora and you’ve got yourself a server that IBM, SUN, Apple, and Aunt Jemima’s @ss combined couldn’t beat in price/performance comparisons.”
Oooo! Unstable ISOs! Now thats what I want to run my servers on! And you can’t beat that support!
C’mon do a little shopping there, download the lastest unstable ISOs of fedora and you’ve got yourself a server that IBM, SUN, Apple, and Aunt Jemima’s @ss combined couldn’t beat in price/performance comparisons.
This is just stupid. Fedora is clearly aimed at the desktop. The last thing I want on my servers is a whole bunch of extra crap waiting to go wrong. For general purpose Linux servers, you are essentially limited to Debian (stable), Slackware, and Redhat Enterprise (for applications that are only supported under Linux when running on Redhat servers).
Why? Because nothing else has the required anal-retentive attitude towards security and stablity above all else.
As for hardware, I haven’t had a chance to play with an Xserve, but I do know that by the time you put together decent hardware on x86 for a server, you are starting to look at similar prices to the Xserve.
Yes, I think he was being sarcastic
Using Linux as a server can definitely be a good idea, but buying quality hardware and using stable software is the key. Some people expect their $500 PC with any old linux distro to perform like a professional-grade machine. This is just not true; you get what you pay for!
apple can enjoy better penetration if it rewrites os x server to amd64. they can make it proprietary or they can allow it to run on any amd64 server
Why?
After years of constant frustration I have given up doing any serious audio on MS Windows. I’ve used both Win98 and 2K. My first alternative was BeOS, which ceased being a choice when it died last year. My current alternatives are Linux and Mac. I’ve used Linux for a couple of years for stuff other than audio so I have a bit of familiarity with it. I have no experience with OSX.
I currently run a home network using SCO OpenServer on the server (this dates to the days when SCO was Santa Cruz Organization, not the current scumbags). This box is aging and I’m going to be replacing it sometime in the next few months. I also want to replace my current client pc’s, two running windoze and one running RHL 7.3, with diskless workstations running XWin clients, with all processing and file storage on the new server. I know I can accomplish this using Linux, the distro I’m currently looking at seriously is Suse9, running on an AMD64 box.
The problem I have with going to Linux is that the audio is not really there yet, although Suse 9 makes some claims to working with audio. I know about the various Linux audio projects currently underway, but I don’t think they’re to the point yet of making audio on Linux a satisfying creative experience. If anyone has new info that contradicts my info, I would appreciate some links to investigate.
I know that MacOSX workstation is a dream machine for audio, I’ve seen it in action. But what about the server? Does anyone know if I can run audio apps on OSX Server and use diskless workstations with XWin clients? I haven’t been able to find any info about this, even from my local Mac audio store, who are a pretty big outfit catering to professional musicians and recording engineers. Apparently, they all use the workstation, not the server.
With the years of frustration behind me, I’d be willing to pay the Mac premium to get audio that works painlessly so I can create my music without wondering if the box is going to crash if add another affect to a track. But I need to be able to do this in the network environment I describe above.
Michael
You support just about TEN TIMES as many Windows machines as you do Mac machines. I would really hope they take less work. That the vast difference in numbers of machines didn’t register with you tells me that those 350 Macs cause way more problems than one might expect.
Having worked in mixed Mac/Windows/UNIX environments and having written cross-platform code for all three major flavors of platform, all I can say is that Mac is its own universe, even this latest “UNIX” Mac. It is damn headache in every environment. Apple always has to do something their way instead of the usual way.
Mac’s TCO figures that are widely quoted turned out to be falsified information, paid for by Apple of Australia. There is no substantive independently verified data that shows any TCO advantage for Mac.
We all know Apple’s initial cost of ownership is amongst the highest in the industry.
And we all know Apple software is no great bargain compared to Linux.
The “server” functionality of OS X comes almost entirely from the open source Linux/FreeBSD/etc world. Except… Apple slapped a 100% TOTALLY PROPRIETARY GUI on top of it! Wow, what an improvement! Now I have to learn more admin tools!
This is why Apple sits all alone in the “low value for your money” quadrant, all dressed up in shiny white plastic and brushed metal, waiting for some rich IT manager to take her to the enterprise prom. Too bad the IT people all talk to each other and know what a headache this Apple really is.
In nature, shiny white equals poison. And when it comes to the enterprise, Apple is DOA.
Not sure what you are trying for ..but the new Cubase products have the ability to use different computers tied to the one running Cubase, the VST system link..
So you can have your other machines playing those cpu intensive software synths while your main machine is humming along w/the tracks.
OS X server is the same as OS X as far as core audio, midi, etc.
All audio apps run fine on Server.
Dude,
Troll 101 states that your argument ends when the “We all know” statement is used.
Thanks for playing.
“Yes, I think he was being sarcastic
”
I was being sarcastic, but I promise you that 90% of the linux zealots around actually believe this to be ture. Hence why half the posts here comprise of retardo-brilliance on the level of “Apple’s are too expensive! I can build a better server from Dell for $275.” Then you figure out they’re talking about a Dell 2ghz Celeron w/ 128mb of non-ecc ram, a 40gh HD and no OS.
“And we all know Apple software is no great bargain compared to Linux.”
Eh? No bargain… oh you mean you have to acutally pay for it as opposed to leeching freshmeat? What you didn’t mention was support. Apple’s support contracts are actually cheaper than those for RedHat Enterprise which also factors into the “cost of software”. Unless your one of those “Best Buy + FreeISOs and a Newsgroup = Total Solution” type of people.
Or if you mean 3rd Party Apple software is no bargain… I don’t OO.o costing more an Apple than for linux. I don’t see MS Office being more expensive for Apple than for Windows, nor Macromedia Studio, or any of Adobe’s Software. If you even want to bring the Gimp into it costs the same for Apple as for Linux too – ie. Nada.
So where is this bargain stuff your talking about?
apple can enjoy better penetration if it rewrites os x server to amd64. they can make it proprietary or they can allow it to run on any amd64 server
Exactly what is ‘proprietary’ in this case? The kernel? Apache? Samba? The hardware?
At it’s heart, the Xserve runs standard software, on a well understood architechture (PPC). The fact that it’s not x86 doesn’t make it proprietary. That the interface is proprietary is irelvevant.
“retardo-brilliance on the level of “Apple’s are too expensive! I can build a better server from Dell for $275.” Then you figure out they’re talking about a Dell 2ghz Celeron w/ 128mb of non-ecc ram, a 40gh HD and no OS.”
– until you backup your claim with some network file system throughput benchmarks, I’ll take six $275 samba-3.0 linux servers, thank you.
Linux is good except for the interface. You have to PICO or VI your way to the promissed land. Having a real GUI makes it faster and easier to use. Don’t hate it because it is easier to use. That is the point in paying for a commercial product! Any commercial company that can make a good product while having MS breathing down their neck should be applauded.
Apple finally gets it.
This is a b e t t e r m o u s t r a p.
“even this latest “UNIX” Mac. It is damn headache in every environment.
Apple always has to do something their way instead of the usual way. ”
You make yourself out to be a pro but your either a greenhorn or just full of it. I’d like to ask my fellow unix admins to pipe up with the “usual” way of administering unix. Too often newbies who have never touched anything other than Windows and Linux equate the way things are done in Linux with the “unix (usual)” way.
“…with the regular client release of OS X 10.3 being easier than Windows XP to set up on Windows networks.”
Errm, nope. I am really not a fan of MS Windows, I am a Linux user. I do use two Macs at work G4s wit a bunch of other windows computers and there is no way that it can be easier to set up “windows networking” on the mac. This one you got to give it up to MS. Many have been the times when I’ve had to open a terminal and edit manually the /etc/smb.conf file to actually get things working the way I want.
That is just a very “fanatic” statement made by Keith Martin in my opinion.