Steve Jobs chucks Apple server biz from pram

The X Serve was doomed the moment Apple went Intel

This was a long time coming.

The PPC G4 and later G5 Apple used in the early Xserve systems can stand its ground in the SMB server racket even today. PPC may lag on raw power versus their modern Intel counterparts. However, its task switching, IO and from there overall system latency is way lower compared to Intel.

From the moment Apple went Intel it was only a matter of time until it kills XServe. The competitive edge was not there anymore. The only way for Apple to stay competitive in the server racket was to stay on PPC which was not an option for a multitude of reasons. Development costs, "special relationship" with Intel, you name it.

Nearly all shops using XServe started making contingency arrangements as far back as then. So this will not really hurt any one of them. Most of them have a plan B by now.

13000 units per quarter?

That's it? THAT is what all this fuss is about? 52000 units per year. It's been eight years since the XServe was launched, but let's be generous and assume those figures have held up for the full eight years. We're still talking *total* sales of *less than half a million worldwide*. And I'm being *very* generous with that guesstimate. Presumably there were quite a few upgrades and replacements in those figures over the years, so the actual number of units still in service is likely to be smaller still.

Now... Apple are selling *millions* of high-margin products each quarter. So why the blazes would they give a toss about such a tiny, tiny niche of a market that's contributing mere pennies to their bottom line?

Apple is a *business*, not a fucking charity. If you've made the classical business blunder of placing all your eggs in one basket, that's your own damned problem, not Apple's.

Did you miss the part where Jobs mentioned they'd been running builds of OS X on Intel CPUs *long* before they made the switch? THAT is how you do long-term planning, for Codd's sake! Learn. Please!

Apple are still selling OS X Server. They're still making Mac Pros and Mac Minis, both with server configurations, and both of which are selling in rather larger numbers, so economies of scale can be applied on Apple's part. A Mac Mini will run a small business or production house's email and FTP just fine. A couple of Mac Pros can handle fibre-channel connections and SANs for you if you desire—or you could just buy the kit off the shelf. Final Cut Pro won't give a damn what OS the server's running. It won't even care if it's in a VM.

Yes, you'll need to make some changes to your IT infrastructure. No, it's not the end of the fucking world. Stop acting like you've made a career out of being a victim and grow up. It's not Apple's job to ensure your success. It's *yours*. And nobody else's.

ipod touch server farm

Apple are getting ready to migrate to A4 (ARM) blade servers with flash memory.

I'm actually being (a bit) serious... cheep, low power and low heat output.

Letting children run the store

Sorry, we only stock the candy I LIKE

To coin a phrase

Change your servers. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my jesusPhone

kneecapping

Apple sold "hardly any" XServes according to Lord Steve J.

Not upgrading the XServes on an even semi-regular basis might have something to do with that.

Failing to properly market the product wouldn't have helped.

Pricing XServes above competing products from other vendors didn't help either.

Regardless of the small sales numbers, even if the two above points had been reasonably addressed by Apple, it was worth keeping that arrow in their quiver in case something really interesting happened further down the road. They've got money coming out of their arse so it's not like it would put a dent in their savings.

The decision seems very half baked and makes people question Apple's commitment to ANYTHING it does.

Anyway Steve, you could have kept the XServe as a - how do you put it? - ah yes, a HOBBY.

Who cares about tin these days

"Parallels and VMware even have virtual machine hypervisors that can even be used on servers to host Snow Leopard Server instances and run them side-by-side with Linux or Windows instances"

And there it is. With the datacentres turning more and more to virtual tin running on who-the-hell-cares underneath, why would Apple stay in the server/tin game? I've already got Snow Leopard Server running virtualised. It's never even seen an Xserve.

My assumption is that Apple have seen the writing on the wall for the hardware/server industry, namely that nobody cares what's running, as long as it runs a decent hypervisor. They certainly don't anticipate anyone spending over the odds for a pretty Apple rack.

If you really really must run OS-X server, run it in a virtual machine like all your other servers should be running in by now, and save yourself a fortune by running generic hardware, specced to your own tastes, not just what Apple's configurators say you should run.

A or B

Step 1: Assume Apple is hairy.

Step 2: Rip the bandaid off fast.

Step 3: Move on.

Ahhhaha, awesome first sentence...

..."Like any other billionaire — or three-year-old — Steve Jobs does exactly what he wants to do, and stops doing it when he's no longer interested."

AWESOME.

Racks

OK, so your nicely organised racks aren't going to look half as good with two enormous 12U towers in them... but for the love of God why aren't Apple making Mac Pro's with dual-PSUs? That's most likely the single biggest kick in the balls to come out of all of this.

Are you being XServed?

Getting Georgia Tech into the Top 500 wasn't as shiny as I had hoped. Until Frank Gehry starts designing data centers, nobody will show off their server rooms anyway. And that means no more being XServed for you!

Sent from my iHole.

New server range

The secret is out: Apple have a new rackmount server range planned: the iRaq.

Dropped the ball

I never thought there was much point in the Xserves. Unless you had a specific reason to use them then it always seemed that using off the shelf x86 servers with some flavour of Linux was always going to be just as good and considerably less expensive.

However, now that apple are investing so much into ARM products, it seems that they were in a perfect position to transition their few existing Xserve customers over to low power, high density blade servers based on their own A4 processors.

Having such a product out there would have been another market leading move from Apple and would have likely attracted attention of a lot of new server buyers who are interested in power savings in the server room and are not currently well served in that regard by intel. Somebody would quickly port a linux distro to such a platform and if apple were smart they could have picked up a lot of sales from the freetards as well.

What they should have done is refresh the existing products to take the 5600 xeons as suggested in the article. This would have bought them some time and not pissed off their existing customers as well as avoid reinforcing the "apple is not serious about servers" attitude that already existed in the market.

If they ever want to reentering the server market it will be a lot harder.

Short sighted in the long term

Basically this pulls apple completely out of the serious server business, and if apple decide to return in the future then they are going to have a hard job to be taken seriously as this will always be at the back of people's mind when buying new infrastructure.

Yes they are selling iphone, ipod and ipads by the bucket-load but eventually the market will become saturated with people just replacing old devices every once in a while ticking along no real growth. And this always assumes that someone doesn't come up with a new killer product in these sectors. Many like the apple devices but there are only a small percentage of true fanboys who would automatically pick apple whatever.

As for laptop/desktop space are apple growing there? I see some people buying macs but not huge numbers of people and the price puts off most people.

So where is the next growth area for apple? Whilst the server business isnt making much money for apple its still making a profit. In future apple could decide to try and innovate in the business IT market this just makes it harder for them to break back into it as I know if I was in charge of purchasing services or equipment if apple came back into the market I would sit back for a long time before even considering a switch to apple as why risk at a future date having to migrate back to linux or windows?

iGadget has a name you know!

chasing the wider consumer market and the vast profits it can extract from glossy-eyed people trying to up their cool quotient by having the latest Apple iPhad.

ha ha

I can only laugh. Saw this one coming about 6 years ago. That's what happens when you let a designer chose the server.

It is a smart business decision

Like it or not, if it makes more money.

Long term: if Apple's plan worked as Steve wished (there is a chance), he doesn't need to worry about server market now. There are still big consumer market Apple does not control yet. Once they own everything general public use in "normal day life", they already have total control, then business/server/everything else will fall into Apple's control.

It is all about marketing and control. Like it or not, there is no one better at marketing than Apple. I can think very limited number of organizations can do better at control, but Apple is not far behind really.

nobody

Ever needed an Apple Server. NT4.0 was superior. Come think of if people were using Novell Netware long after it made sense.

Nowadays I don't think anyone needs a Microsoft server. Exchange has always been crazy stuff. It and WSUS are the last to reasons to run MS.

Now I'll get loads of down votes because I dared to suggest an Apple product that is now dead was always only for Fanbois and pointless.

The whole point to Mac OS and Mac OS X is the GUI and desktop user experience.

X-serve....

...A comms cab full off them look so much better than HP/Dell ugly beasts.