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Apple Discontinues macOS Server
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Off topic, but a big reason is over-reliance on contractors. The contractors have no motivation for QA. They focus on getting projects completed to minimum requirements as quickly as possible. For the bean counters at Apple this is a great way to save money.
This is the reason it was discontinued right here. Apple unofficially discontinued it a long time ago and though I don’t have the link I seem to remember an Apple support document mentioning that fact as why it’s stagnating. In the late 2000s it made total sense, but doesn’t anymore. Anyone who wanted to run a mail server, for example, was crazy to consider Apple Server to do it. It was just a front end to old versions of utilities that were far better supported under Linux.
When you set this up, be sure you do "Share over SMB" ONLY.
When they changed changed to macOS server to a glorified MDM in 2018, I moved about 50 or so customers from macOS Server to Synology NAS and, for the most part, never regretted it. Almost everything that macOS Server does, Synology does better (IMO) and it does a _lot_ of other stuff. From memory, the only think the Synology didn't replicate out of the box was MDM (but I wouldn't have used the macOS Server one anyway) and netboot/netinstall. Other than that, there's a huge list of extra services that that Synology has (and that's before you start looking at Docker and virtualisation).
That's mainly because they removed all the useful stuff in 2018 - so it's probably true of the current version (have only given the current one a cursory look since 2018). A lot of the really useful stuff that was removed isn't in the current macOS and, if you need it, you'd have to add through third party solutions which gets messy and expensive. Personally, I don't miss macOS Server now, it was great 10 years ago but the services and versions always seemed way behind the current standards/versions and now Synology and Qnap do a better job of it with their NAS products any way (although the M1 Mini with 10Gbe and Thunderbolt array would make a great platform if they've had the software)
Either contractors or summer interns who have never used MacOS before. That would explain the kinds of issues that arise when Apple decides to make major changes to MacOS components.
1. Starting in MacOS Sierra, the Console application is no longer useful for system administration. Unlike previous MacOS versions, the Console main log view only shows items from the time Console is opened and nothing before. This is ridiculous considering that you don't know ahead of time when you will experience an issue and want to check the log.
Welcome to macOS Sierra’s new Console: it’s buried in Terminal
So how do you check your logs to see if backups have been made correctly? Forget Console – you’ve got to use Terminal.
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2. New Displays Preferences in MacOS Catalina and Monterey makes it more confusing to configure multiple identical monitors of the same model. The new interface resembles Windows more than MacOS.
3. It is also apparent that when a team of Apple contractors or interns work on the same project, they don't talk to each other.
In Preview, when you select a single image and click File > Export:
The dialog shows the file options visible.
When selecting JPEG format, the file is saved with a .jpg extension.
When you select multiple images and then click File > Export:
The dialog shows the file options hidden and you have to click the Options button.
When selecting JPEG format, the files are saved with a .jpeg extension.
Dude, put some of those server apps on Apple TV already. It’s always on and would be perfect for a caching server (accept we’d need a connected eSSD).
Seems a complete no-brainer to make it part of a wider HomeKit.
Seems a complete no-brainer to make it part of a wider HomeKit.
I agree it is a woeful disaster. Just curious about the contractor/intern claim.Either contractors or summer interns who have never used MacOS before. That would explain the kinds of issues that arise when Apple decides to make major changes to MacOS components.
1. Starting in MacOS Sierra, the Console application is no longer useful for system administration. Unlike previous MacOS versions, the Console main log view only shows items from the time Console is opened and nothing before. This is ridiculous considering that you don't know ahead of time when you will experience an issue and want to check the log.
Welcome to macOS Sierra’s new Console: it’s buried in Terminal
So how do you check your logs to see if backups have been made correctly? Forget Console – you’ve got to use Terminal.
2. New Displays Preferences in MacOS Catalina and Monterey makes it more confusing to configure multiple identical monitors of the same model. The new interface resembles Windows more than MacOS.
3. It is also apparent that when a team of Apple contractors or interns work on the same project, they don't talk to each other.
In Preview, when you select a single image and click File > Export:
The dialog shows the file options visible.
When selecting JPEG format, the file is saved with a .jpg extension.
When you select multiple images and then click File > Export:
The dialog shows the file options hidden and you have to click the Options button.
When selecting JPEG format, the files are saved with a .jpeg extension.
Regardless, there should still be a test team that hunt out all this mess, and most of that should be automated. It clearly doesn't exist, certainly not as it should.
I really can't understand why Craig Federighi still has his job. Either of you or myself could obviously do a much much better job. The only possibilities I can think of, are that either Craig has a photo of Tim and that goat; or Tim doesn't actually even use Apple products.
This has been a trend among mega corporations for quite a while.
The company itself is not full of software contractors. They outsource a lot of the work to other firms. Some of these companies are based in nations where skilled IT labour is abundant and affordable. This is meant to cut costs but Apple ends up paying for it in other ways, such as the abyssmal decline in quality assurance seen in recent years.
If Apple still developed and maintained a dedicated server app we would probably witness the same decline in quality seen in other Apple software products.
When Apple killed off the Xserve, and cool technologies like Xgrid. The writing was on the wall for Apple ditching serious computing, to becoming a luxury computer fashion brand.
Really odd takes in this thread.
The MacOS server app was pretty useful back in the day, but it was VERY buggy, and Apple as a company never gave it the attention it deserved.
Servers in 2022 rely heavily on virtualization, micro services / containers, remote access, automated deployment and updates, and most importantly — open source software licenses.
MacOS today on Apple silicon doesn’t really tick any of those boxes.
Though I don’t expect it to happen, it would be REALLY nice if Apple got involved with the Ashahi Linux people, helped them with drivers and such, and perhaps even sponsored the project / assigned some Apple employees to help.
Will never happen, but it’s nice to dream.
The MacOS server app was pretty useful back in the day, but it was VERY buggy, and Apple as a company never gave it the attention it deserved.
Servers in 2022 rely heavily on virtualization, micro services / containers, remote access, automated deployment and updates, and most importantly — open source software licenses.
MacOS today on Apple silicon doesn’t really tick any of those boxes.
Though I don’t expect it to happen, it would be REALLY nice if Apple got involved with the Ashahi Linux people, helped them with drivers and such, and perhaps even sponsored the project / assigned some Apple employees to help.
Will never happen, but it’s nice to dream.
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Exactly. We will never have macOS containers for Docker or rkt.
On the other hand macOS is the Swiss Army Knife of software development. Build your software on Macs, target almost any other OS or hardware. With its Unix roots it also dovetails quite well with Linux out of the box.
If a developer is comfortable with the macOS console then it’s very easy to adopt Linux as the server OS of choice. Also we have frameworks like Vapor that use Swift for creating server apps that can run on Linux.
Yes, I know it's a trend amongst corporations. But is it actually happening at Apple?
Apple contracts software devs to work on internal tooling such as Radar. I don’t believe they do so for public-facing apps.
I think a lot of Apple’s enthusiasm relies on IT departments perceived willingness to embrace those products and make Apple leaders believe this isn’t a waste of resources.
I believe with all of these anti-trust legislation swirling around and threatening their business model, Apple is reposition itself towards an Apple first model. If They can’t profit on their own platform then they will no longer support it and the complaints about fairness will be resolved as there’s no market to compete on. They seem to be consolidating resources for a new direction.
Google and Microsoft have the souls of the leaders of IT departments in their clutches. I believe it stems from job security. When I was in business school at LSU it puzzled me that I had to take 3 courses related to Microsoft office and only focused on Windows versions. It was odd because most of us were forced to do homework in the computer labs because 90 percent of us owned MacBooks and had no access to a windows machine without Parallels etc.
It dawned on me that Microsoft makes office unnecessarily complicated so they can justify expensive certification classes that these guys need to get hired. Difficulty = Job Security = Loyalty to Microsoft and now Google.
If Apple wants to win here they are going to have to find a way to ethically compensate IT guys for all the investments in time and money they spent on Microsoft etc
Hard to keep Apple focused on things that are "just useful" when they are obsessed with shiny balls of "services" and "fashion bands for watches"..
The worst thing Apple did to Mac Server was the removal of VPN Server.
It seems that Mac OS Server is actually NOT available. At Apple's own page, you see this:
When you click that link, it redirects to the App Store app on my MBP. I then get this:
So I'm not sure if it truly is a regional thing (I live in Nebraska) or if something is wrong...or it simply just IS NOT available.
When you click that link, it redirects to the App Store app on my MBP. I then get this:
So I'm not sure if it truly is a regional thing (I live in Nebraska) or if something is wrong...or it simply just IS NOT available.
FWIW though? I don't think Apple ever really envisioned the Xserve as a true "Enterprise grade" server solution? I think it was more of a modern re-imagining of the "departmental server" like they once sold in the old days of Motorola CPUs and MacOS 7.x and 8.x?
It seemed to me like Apple thought it would be of interest in scientific fields or publishing houses, where one group might want their own workgroup server to share content around and runs their hosted application(s) from?
I’d have to agree with this. The majority of my Xserve installs were department focused and were independent of the main IT infrastructure. They usually served a fairly niche purpose like AFP, XSAN, or XGrid services. I had a few that were used as the organizations primary server but that was for under 30 seats.
Another area where Xserves were used was in education.