Apple signs Xserve death warrant
Serve from a Mac instead, says Mac maker
Apple is canning its Xserve family of rack servers.
In a terse note posted on the Mac maker's website, the company that the platform will no longer be available to buy after 31 January 2011.
The move doesn't pave the way for a revamped product just after that date. "Apple will not be developing a future versions of Xserve," the company warned.
No reason was given for the death sentence.
Instead, it hopes folk wanting to run Mac OS X Server will adopt either its Mac Pro or Mac Mini desktops, both of which are available in server configurations with extra hard drives and no optical units.
Apple pledged to continue supporting the Xserve platform, and will still sell you an Xserve up until the end of next January.
It offers two models: one with a single 2.26GHz, quad-core Intel Xeon and another with two of the chips on board. Both come with 3GB of memory and in get-you-started 160GB 7200rpm Sata drive. The two machines cost £2451 and £2941, respectively. ®
COMMENTS
Perhaps because...
... nobody in their right mind would pay £2451 for a single CPU server with 3GB RAM and a single hard drive... I'd be laughed out of the office if I suggested that. It doesn't even come with redundant power or out-of-band management as standard if the website is correct!
The "Apple-style" counts for jack when it's in a rack down the datacentre!
And what apps only run on OS-X server? Is there anything you can't just run on Linux?
Admission
This would seem to be an admission that nobody runs OSX for serious server applications.
Oh wonderful
That is just brilliant. After years of effort at getting a sane OSX infrastructure in place in order to provide students with a reasonable architecture to use Final Cut Pro, Avid, Sibelius etc. I get a kick in the teeth from Apple rather than my own management. There is no way I am putting Mac Minis or Mac Pros in a data centre.
On reflection
Since relevance correlates with newsworthiness, I think there's good evidence to raise a presumption that Apple are relevant on the desktop.
It'd be extraordinarily difficult to argue that they're relevant in the server space. Given the number of iPod socks they've sold, they're probably more relevant in clothing.
Businesses don't fit in with the master plan
Java, XServe... As education/business/enterprise leave Apple because they can't be guaranteed a stable platform it'll be Mac Pros and Mac OS X Server on the chopping block next. The Mac's going to turn into a highly polished platform for iLife and fart apps.
