Not surprised by this. In the era of cloud infrastructure and many MDM solutions macOS server has become irrelevant, I’m very curious to see how Apple grows their MDM solution with fleetsmith.
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Apple Discontinues macOS Server
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I really got peeved when this started to go down hill but the caching service came to the standard install, Time Machine service was there and then it just seemed that there really wasn't anything left as directory and so forth could be served very easily with an easily available container service.
One colleague who was macOS development focussed said that there was a feature that server offered a feature for XCode builds and I must admit I haven't looked into that but interested to know if that left a gap.
One colleague who was macOS development focussed said that there was a feature that server offered a feature for XCode builds and I must admit I haven't looked into that but interested to know if that left a gap.
Xserve was, unfortunately, a very poorly-executed server design. Apple was very half-assed in designing the thing, and went cheap on some pretty key components (consumer-grade 3.5" IDE hard drives and Promise IDE controllers, for example). IIRC the original Xserve didn't even have a redundant power supply.
This is a common use of a shared folder: You have a shared Mac and you want to create a folder where multiple users have full access to add, modify and delete files, whether they are multiple users logging in to the same Mac or connecting through File Sharing. Currently on MacOS, this happens:
1. User1 saves a file in the shared folder and logs out.
2. User2 logs in and can read the file that User1 created, but can’t save changes.
3. You open Get Info on the shared folder, configure the permissions and click “Apply permissions to enclosed items”.
4. The next time one user creates a new file, other users are still unable to modify it because the “Apply to enclosed items” button only applies to items that exist at the time it was clicked.
On MacOS Server, the file sharing interface has a checkbox to inherit permissions on folders. Desktop versions of Windows also support configuring permission inheritance on folders. MacOS has none of this. if everything in MacOS Server was available in MacOS, then MacOS should have a user interface for configuring permission inheritance on folders. I am not interested in command line trickery. If saying “use Terminal” is a valid excuse, then MacOS Server should never have existed at all.
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No, it much better to migrate to linux and get real server support. Why do you think all of Apple's servers are linux?
I still use server for things like shared and private address books and shared family diaries, both between different users and different personal devices. The reason? Using icloud is convenient but it also happens to be against the law in Europe/UK for confidential client information- my wife is a physician and she definitely could not legally put her patient diary or her work address book in icloud as it is currently configured. No end to end ecryption in transit and at rest. (Apple has the keys in any case). Yes, server is buggy and now quite clunky after years of end of life non-support- we run a much earlier version on an old macmini. On the other hand, we know where the data is and it's not outside the building. Remember that not only is icloud's standard of security minimal, but the degree of legal protection to non American users is hugely less than that offered to Americans.
Apple made a show of listing alternatives to replace individual features but most of them were just half finished and long abandoned projects, or were expensive and complex. Not Apple's finest moment.
Apple made a show of listing alternatives to replace individual features but most of them were just half finished and long abandoned projects, or were expensive and complex. Not Apple's finest moment.
Still no built in support for iSCSI in MacOS, unlike Windows and Linux? Most NAS devices support iSCSI. 10 Gb ethernet is available on certain Macs. Apple no longer makes Fibre Channel storage systems, so they have no good reason to withhold support for iSCSI in MacOS.
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Remember when Apple came out with the Workgroup Server in 1993, and promised they wouldn't discontinue it? And then they did. Then, in true fool-me-twice-shame-on-me fashion, they came out with the Xserve in 2002, again promising businesses they wouldn't discontinue it. And then they did.
Apple lies. A LOT.
We made exactly this switch at the beginning of the year. We had a mini running Server 5.1 at MacStadium and I was getting increasingly nervous about the age of the server components and macOS being a security problem.
We split off mail and web services to Dreamhost. Seems solid so far. MacOS Server web service was sort of a pain ever since Apple surprised with with their move to a reverse proxy setup.
We put contacts, calendar, and file services on a Synology DS920+. Those work OK, except no push service for Synology calendar. The migration process was much more of a PITA than it should have been.
For example, Synology contacts apparently has some kind of conflict with the macOS Contacts app where Contacts.app doesn't show groups, even though they are there in Synology Contacts. We ended up having to buy BusyContacts to get around this. Synology gave a big shrug when I complained and shrugged even more when I said their documentation could have mentioned this. They blamed it on third-party software and said they had no responsibility to mention it.
OS X Server used to have a web server, FTP server, mail server, chat server, wiki server, software update server...all sorts of stuff. But it didn't make as much money as an iPhone! Waaaahh...we better cancel it and stab our customers in the back for like the tenth time...
macOS Server was never irrelevant. Cloud services go down. They get hacked. Run your own infrastructure and those problems aren't such a problem. Also, setting up many of those services is significantly more difficult than setting them up in macOS Server was.
True to some extent but Apple could have built it out to target enterprise. But when they gave up on the Xserve, they gave up on the server OS. Profile Manager was garbage. It didn't work well at all. It choked & corrupted all the time.
I'm going to receive my Mac Studio with M1 Ultra in June and it's going to replace my Windows Server desktop tower. I tested out macOS Server (I can download it for free via developer account) and the macOS Server app was pretty useless. I remember testing it a few years ago and it had tons of additional features, from what I understand it got basically 90% of its features removed at some point and now you have pretty much all the same features directly in macOS. All the app did on my M1 Mac mini was to provide a dedicated app/GUI for enabling what are basically built-in features for me. All it was going I could have done myself without using the app. I suppose it was much better previously before it got gimped. No real reason to keep it around in its current state as it doesn't really offer much of anything anyways.
I had been hoping they might make a new Apple Silicon Xserve but thinking about it, server services are trending into the cloud so most small offices don't even need file servers any more.
Apple could have targeted their server OS to the enterprise, but they'd need to go way beyond the basic functionality they shipped. Enterprises don't choose Windows Server for the OS... They choose it, because it has Active Directory, HyperV, etc. Now Microsoft is targeting hybrid services hosted between Windows Server and Azure. That's way outside of Apple's wheelhouse; as historically they targeted managing workgroups and small offices (remember AppleTalk?).
As for Profile Manager, I don't think it was ever meant to be a real competitor in the market - at least not after Jamf came around. It always felt like more of a "proof-of-concept" - something to show the industry the management capabilities of their devices.
Not surprising at all. For some years now this has been limited to being a small business tool intended to provide basic IT infrastructure without the need for a dedicated IT staff. That need has largely gone away with cloud services such as Office365. For those who want to keep things local - the NAS market (Synology/QNAP etc.) fits the bill.
I actually bought it a couple of times to tinker with and found it to be a strange product. It was annoyingly complex for a non-IT pro, but lacked a lot of basic functionality for things that I actually wanted to do.
I actually bought it a couple of times to tinker with and found it to be a strange product. It was annoyingly complex for a non-IT pro, but lacked a lot of basic functionality for things that I actually wanted to do.
It was good in the beginning but when they discontinued the Xserve the writing was on the wall. I've since moved all my customers over the Synology units and they're very happy
Yep. The majority of MacOS Server was basically a User Interface that was pretty good at manipulating the various config files and preferences of various third party Unix apps you can still easily get using Homebrew - coordinated with the Apple user/permissions system. It was pretty slick, but if you knew the underlying systems, you can still manually do everything it did and more - Apple didn't always open up the full power of those applications.
This is such huge letdown from Apple. What a waste... They should t least open source it so the community can truly unleash its full potential (although this is more wishful thinking, Apple would never do that...).
I feel Apple missed the boat on this one in big way. I knew if they didn't change what the server actually does, its days would be numbered.
They could have done so many things with it, that could have satisfied both the Enterprise market or the Prosumer one.
I always thought that Apple would reinvent what macOS Server could do, the moment everything turned into Cloud Environments.
They should have rebranded the whole thing to macOS Server Essentials and made it a platform for small business (or families) with up to 10 Devices to help them manage and update their systems. They could have offered a basic version of "VPP" that only channeled free software.
Another feature they could have done is make it easy to connect to NAS and manage the storage pools, or offer caching services for FinalCut Pro or macOS Updates, or for Apple TV local content, to do something like Plex but locally.
Yes a ton of this things professionally are easy to deal with tools like Homebrew, but there are places or families that dont have all that technobabble expertise that they could have benefitted from something like this, or small businesses that just are "small" and dont haver 20+ computers.
Smooth move TimApple.
I feel Apple missed the boat on this one in big way. I knew if they didn't change what the server actually does, its days would be numbered.
They could have done so many things with it, that could have satisfied both the Enterprise market or the Prosumer one.
I always thought that Apple would reinvent what macOS Server could do, the moment everything turned into Cloud Environments.
They should have rebranded the whole thing to macOS Server Essentials and made it a platform for small business (or families) with up to 10 Devices to help them manage and update their systems. They could have offered a basic version of "VPP" that only channeled free software.
Another feature they could have done is make it easy to connect to NAS and manage the storage pools, or offer caching services for FinalCut Pro or macOS Updates, or for Apple TV local content, to do something like Plex but locally.
Yes a ton of this things professionally are easy to deal with tools like Homebrew, but there are places or families that dont have all that technobabble expertise that they could have benefitted from something like this, or small businesses that just are "small" and dont haver 20+ computers.
Smooth move TimApple.
On-prem servers go down and get hacked all the time, too. They just aren't always the high-profile news item that you hear about when a cloud service does so. Running your own infrastructure only mitigates those problems if you have the expertise to manage it properly - you may have that expertise, but most people don't.
Truth is, the entire Apple software division is a mess of poor quality control. It leaves me befuddled how the hardware division is killing it lately, but software has been left to so blatantly drag the chain for so long without a clean out.
I sure do hope you put everything in an encrypted container, and upload it to some sort of cloud backup! If everything is inside the building, and the building burns down....
Inevitabile, they can’t even get a wifi connection to be stable or iCloud to sync lately, imagine running a server with macOS..
Exactly. It seemed like Apple wanted it but they didn't want it bad enough. Apple's Open LDAP integration was finicky sometimes & not as robust as Active Directory already was. Apple was late to the game with ACLs. The AFP file sharing was proprietary & by the time Apple deprecated it to switch full time to SMB, it was too late.
Enterprise chose Windows server because it helped them manage their identity needs PLUS group policy with Windows desktops. HyperV came way later & that product at first was sort of a ripoff of what VMware was already well known for doing.
Yes, Profile manager was a proof of concept — but not at first. It was marketed as your MDM solution. After word spread that it wasn't robust enough, well, the cavalcade of MDM offerings started really springing up. Casper was already in the game but was transitioning over to the new MDM paradigm.