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Apple Considering Discontinuing More Server-Focused Products?

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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30,845



150322-xserve_box.jpg


Apple's early November announcement that it will discontinue its Xserve line of rackmountable servers at the end of this month has caused turmoil among the product's fans, while Steve Jobs has suggested that poor sales were the reason for the decision. But in a follow-up report today, Hardmac claims that the Xserve discontinuation may only be the beginning of a move by Apple to pare down its storage- and server-focused offerings.
According to our sources, the discontinuation of the Xserve by Apple would be only the beginning of an overhaul, which would lead to the disappearance of some professional-orented activities.

Xsan and Final Cut server could be among the programs being discontinued, as Apple's management would be wondering whether to continue to develop and support them in the future.
Click to expand...
Looking even further down the line, the report claims that Apple could opt to do away with its Mac OS X Server releases entirely, although the company is still expected to release a server version of Mac OS X Lion later this year.

Article Link: Apple Considering Discontinuing More Server-Focused Products?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/17/apple-considering-discontinuing-more-server-focused-products/
Grimace

Grimace

macrumors 68040
Feb 17, 2003
3,568
226
with Hamburglar.
OSX Server is a brilliant platform -- it would be such a shame to lose it. I can see scaling down dedicated hardware, but I don't think it makes as much sense to discontinue the software side of things, as that is scaleable to the rest of the OS, and fairly profitable.
 
Yebubbleman

Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
May 20, 2010
5,789
2,379
Los Angeles, CA
For some reason, I am extremely doubtful of this. At worst, I could see them discontinuing all Server hardware and making Mac OS X Server open to run on any x86 hardware while client remains locked as they seem to suck at marketing to the server hardware market. Though, I could also see them not doing that as it'd open up a huge can of worms as far as their effort against the Hackintosh community is concerned.
 
roadbloc

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
Who even shells out the cash for an Apple server when Linux distros do just a good a job?
 
N

nick9191

macrumors 68040
Feb 17, 2008
3,365
189
Britain
Release OS X Server to run on non Apple hardware. Or discontinue it. Right now it has no purpose for being.
 
ppc_michael

ppc_michael

Guest
Apr 26, 2005
1,498
2
Los Angeles, CA
This is so concerning.

I'm especially worried about the possible loss of Final Cut Server. It seems to fall in line with other rumors of FCS dumbing down. I know a lot of people who are only really on Mac OS X at all because they need Final Cut. This would have a huge reverse-halo effect I think.
 
S

sterno74

macrumors member
Oct 26, 2006
34
1
The Cloud

Honestly I'm kind of surprised it took this long. When they first conceived of an Apple server it made some sense, but as Cloud computing becomes more dominant, the justification for servers like this is dwindling. Where the real growth is in the market is the ability to make very low cost very low energy consumption servers in large quantities. There's no growth in this market for the kind of hardware Apple was selling.

So while I'm sure Apple's servers were high quality, the reality is they weren't in very high demand and there was no reason to think that would change anytime soon. So a smart choice.
 
A

alt

macrumors regular
Feb 12, 2008
142
0
Bend, Oregon
I can't stand OSX server. I also can't stand windows server but prefer it over OSX server.

Ive just had too many unexplainable problems with it. Just sayin'
 
W

wovel

macrumors 68000
Mar 15, 2010
1,839
161
America(s)!
Funny, the summary here is longer than the article used as the basis for the headline..

According to our sources, the discontinuation of the Xserve by Apple would be only the beginning of an overhaul, which would lead to the disappearance of some professional-orented activities.
Click to expand...

They give no indication at all who their sources are. They do not even claim they work for apple. Their source could be the Janitor at McDonalds who answered yes to a leading question...

This does not even qualify as a rumor...


roadbloc said:
Who even shells out the cash for an Apple server when Linux distros do just a good a job?
Click to expand...


Why do people buy Redhat? Why do people by Windows server 2008?
 
DakotaGuy

DakotaGuy

macrumors 601
Jan 14, 2002
4,226
3,791
South Dakota, USA
Apple makes 99% of their profit on their consumer products (especially the iDevices). I don't see why they would want to mess with putting time and effort into these niche product areas when the profit margin is so much better on things like the iPhone, iPad, iPod and to a lesser extent the Mac.
 
KnightWRX

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
sterno74 said:
Honestly I'm kind of surprised it took this long. When they first conceived of an Apple server it made some sense, but as Cloud computing becomes more dominant, the justification for servers like this is dwindling. Where the real growth is in the market is the ability to make very low cost very low energy consumption servers in large quantities. There's no growth in this market for the kind of hardware Apple was selling.
Click to expand...

The "Cloud" doesn't run on low energy, low cost servers I'm sorry to say. Big hardware for consolidation boxes is required. If anything, the Xserve was to low cost to support the kind of infrastructures we have in IT these days.
 
M

Merthyrboy

macrumors 6502
Jul 21, 2008
490
3
I hope they don't discontinue the pro apps. I love using Logic 9 and thats one of the main reasons why I switched to mac and I know that a lot has been done with final Cut Pro so hopefully they won't discontinue them.
 
B

bergert

macrumors 6502
Jun 24, 2008
263
149
Cloud yes - but not for Pro

The cloud is a great solution for users - not everyone needs an Xserve at home. Once you have 20Mbit FIOS, the cloud makes a lot of sense.

Pro users are different. The number of servers in my datacenter continues to grow - not shrink. Apple dumping the server and SAN hardware makes perfect sense- so they can run on any x86 hardware (there are many vendors). If they stop making a server OS, this would spell the end of OSX in the enterprise.

In the long run (10 years?) OSX will give way to iOS; but until then we will all need a server OS.

just my 10 cents ...
 
Griffter

Griffter

macrumors member
May 28, 2008
62
0
Exeter, UK
This will seriously disappoint all those TV outlets who have spent thousands implementing FC server! As long as they keep putting out FC studio I'll be happy!
 
Small White Car

Small White Car

macrumors G4
Aug 29, 2006
10,966
1,463
Washington DC
Honestly I'm not really sure Apple needs to worry about this stuff.

We run 5 Mac Pros with Final cut in our offices but we link them all through an Avid Unity machine running Windows. Even though we love using our Macs that seemed like the smarter choice for us in the back room.

So why not let the other companies have that kind of business? As long as people are putting Macs on the desktops I think Apple will be just fine with that outcome.
 
S

spiffers

Suspended
Apr 12, 2009
104
88
I hope they give the Apple specific services to the Open Source Community. Im thinking of iChat Server, Podcast Producer 2 and so on. If any distro could run this, there would be no need for OS X Server.
 
A

aindik

macrumors newbie
Jan 17, 2011
23
0
I hope they come out with some product aimed at the home server market. Something to feed our Macbook pros and AppleTVs with all the stuff we want to store but won't fit in a laptop hard drive. They need iTunes server, iPhoto server, etc. And we need to be able to sync our iDevices to the libraries on the server.
 
lostngone

lostngone

macrumors 65816
Aug 11, 2003
1,431
3,804
Anchorage
Possible...

With Apple moving forward it only makes sense to push users in that direction. Howerver those 2 products are not the two I would think would be best if true.
 
E

Eric-PTEK

macrumors 6502
Mar 3, 2009
450
2
I run Win2K8R2 in the office because I won't spend the huge cash on Xserve's.

Now if the licensed it for virtualization I'd run it.

And yes they really do need a home server product. Windows Home Server is a fantastic product.

Either come out with a dedicated home server product or let iTunes run as a service on Windows Home Server.
 
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