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Apple Discontinues Xserve, Only Available Until January 31st

GEllenburg said:
To be fair to everyone else, the fact that Apple has no penetration into the enterprise space is entirely Apple's choosing.

My company (a Fortune 100) and I know a LOT of others, WANT to embrace Apple and Mac OS X, but I was flat-out told by our Apple rep that Apple has zero interest in the enterprise.

So I'm not entirely sure RIP is even in order. Sounds like patricide to me.
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And it makes perfect sense. The enterprise does not fit into Apple's business model. They are not interested in a high volume, low margin strategy. That's what the enterprise is. Also, Apple doesn't come close to having the infrastructure or programs to support enterprise customers.
 
Cloud

Is it not possible they will offer server based services using there huge server farms they are building. Open directory (active directory) any where in the world and scalable to what ever you need.
 
From a business standpoint it really does make sense. There are other companies which have more advantages in that area. Why should apple waste time and energy in a market where the volume and profits are not high enough and where it's hard to grab a large chunk of the market?

It makes sense to me. Who knows, maybe they'll come up with something innovative where they can quickly attract a large amount of customers and get into the Enterprise market from a totally different direction.
 
Well Apple is seriously trying to kill itself, isn't it?

I would sell AAPL as fast as humanly possible, Steve thinks they are going to be a consumer device company and has 0 loyalty to the people that helped Apple get here.

Where I work we have probably spent well north of $1 million on Apple stuff, and this is the final straw, we are moving everything to Windows. Apple will not see another penny from us.

And since I no longer will be using a mac to do my work, I see no need to continue to use a mac for other stuff either. I see no reason to keep my iPad when there are plenty of good Android tablets coming, I see no reason to continue to use an iPhone if there are good android devices out there. I don't need to integrate with any Apple products anymore because Apple said they aren't interested in the "pro" market.

Just a warning though Apple, not too long ago there was this company called Sony that was like you are now, the absolute dominant player in the portable entertainment market. But now look at them, they are a shadow of their former selves. However, Sony had a lot of other businesses to fall back on when times got tough, the rate you are going you are going to turn your back on those same industries. However consumers are a fickle bunch and they will eventually turn their back on you and you, unlike Sony, will have nothing to fall back on.

Farewell, I look forward to hearing your bankruptcy proceedings in a few years.
 
4D4M said:
WHAT?? Were you asleep during the MacBook Air keynote the other day?
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Are you kidding?
The air is not a serious computer. It is a glorified ipad and useless for running anything more than consumer level programs.
 
dogsbody said:
The end of an era - this made me feel quite sad. The X-Serve was an awesome bit of hardware and although it made a lot of noise it meant that Apple at least had a toe-hold in hte enterprise space. :(
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There are FAR more Mac minis alone in use as servers, than there ever was Xserves.
 
A friend of mine has a Mac mini server and it is pretty good a little server... impressive. With Mac pro e Mac mini server option i can understand the choice even it xServe was a good product.
Good to hear Apple will support all customers who bought the product in the past.
 
cvjvs said:
Is it not possible they will offer server based services using there huge server farms they are building. Open directory (active directory) any where in the world and scalable to what ever you need.
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Like many companies would entrust their entire data to Apple.

1984
 
Maybe Apple is abandoning the Xserves because 10.7 Server will run on non-Apple servers? Virtual servers seem to be the thing these days and being able to add an OS X server as a VM would go farther than having to get all the necessary approval to purchase a server from a company that is probably not on an approved list of hardware vendors.
 
I presume that's not where the money is for them. They used to be a niche-product company. The successes of the iPod and iPhone have made them the dominant player is certain markets. They've used that to get into hugely profitable "soft" businesses such as media sales -- where they get a chunk of every copy sold. They're becoming less of a "computer" company, and more of a media company. Sure, the media industry is built on top of server computers, but I think Apple is wise to decide not to bother developing those products. It just plays a supporting role to the massive media business.
 
foidulus said:
Well Apple is seriously trying to kill itself, isn't it?

I would sell AAPL as fast as humanly possible, Steve thinks they are going to be a consumer device company and has 0 loyalty to the people that helped Apple get here.

Where I work we have probably spent well north of $1 million on Apple stuff, and this is the final straw, we are moving everything to Windows. Apple will not see another penny from us.

And since I no longer will be using a mac to do my work, I see no need to continue to use a mac for other stuff either. I see no reason to keep my iPad when there are plenty of good Android tablets coming, I see no reason to continue to use an iPhone if there are good android devices out there. I don't need to integrate with any Apple products anymore because Apple said they aren't interested in the "pro" market.

Just a warning though Apple, not too long ago there was this company called Sony that was like you are now, the absolute dominant player in the portable entertainment market. But now look at them, they are a shadow of their former selves. However, Sony had a lot of other businesses to fall back on when times got tough, the rate you are going you are going to turn your back on those same industries. However consumers are a fickle bunch and they will eventually turn their back on you and you, unlike Sony, will have nothing to fall back on.

Farewell, I look forward to hearing your bankruptcy proceedings in a few years.
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:D some people are really funny.
 
Anyone ever consider Apple axed the XServe b/c cost to continue developing and selling wasn't worth the benefit made in profit? XServe is a pinpoint on Apple's P&L statement. No need to read tea leaves here. XServe was killed because it's not a money maker.
 
Mord said:
I imagine they've paid attention to how much better the mac mini server sells. 1u servers are dead it's all about small low power machines used en-masse.

I half wonder if they'll produce a more specialised version of the mini server to take it's place, maybe an xNode?
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We'd need to see what else is in Lion, add lightpeak and the node idea would be a better fit with the "Apple way" than the current xServe range. They have already gotten right out of storage. but with a fat enough pipe to connect to the storage then they don't need to make the storage.

Apple wants bang for the power buck what better way than lots of low power nodes working in a big cluster it's the way everything else has been going nodes would power up and down by demand.

Apples biggest customers where research clusters with some mac design houses the node system would suit just fine.
 
Well this is unfortunate. Expensive, unpopular, whatever their problem was, they still had their uses in niche markets.
Unfortunately that niche market is my entire market, so this has me considerably worried.
 
foidulus said:
Well Apple is seriously trying to kill itself, isn't it?

I would sell AAPL as fast as humanly possible, Steve thinks they are going to be a consumer device company and has 0 loyalty to the people that helped Apple get here.

Where I work we have probably spent well north of $1 million on Apple stuff, and this is the final straw, we are moving everything to Windows. Apple will not see another penny from us.

And since I no longer will be using a mac to do my work, I see no need to continue to use a mac for other stuff either. I see no reason to keep my iPad when there are plenty of good Android tablets coming, I see no reason to continue to use an iPhone if there are good android devices out there. I don't need to integrate with any Apple products anymore because Apple said they aren't interested in the "pro" market.

Just a warning though Apple, not too long ago there was this company called Sony that was like you are now, the absolute dominant player in the portable entertainment market. But now look at them, they are a shadow of their former selves. However, Sony had a lot of other businesses to fall back on when times got tough, the rate you are going you are going to turn your back on those same industries. However consumers are a fickle bunch and they will eventually turn their back on you and you, unlike Sony, will have nothing to fall back on.

Farewell, I look forward to hearing your bankruptcy proceedings in a few years.
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This is so childish. Do you really think Apple would be leaving this market if it was profitable and viable? You really need to stop taking these decisions by Apple personally. Get real.

Bankruptcy? LOLz. In case you haven't noticed, the Mac platform is alive and well and setting sales records virtually every quarter.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Anyone ever consider Apple axed the XServe b/c cost to continue developing and selling wasn't worth the benefit made in profit? XServe is a pinpoint on Apple's P&L statement. No need to read tea leaves here. XServe was killed because it's not a money maker.
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Very important pinpoint though, the one which kept many other, much larger points bound together.
 
Maybe I'm grabbing the wrong end of the stick, but Apple just announced that they are discontinuing the Xserve. They've not announced that they're not creating another product to replace it (although hopefully not iServe).

Maybe I'm trying to be too optimistic here... I'm not convinced they're giving up on the enterprise markets either. All the Mac and iDevices come with exchange support right out of the box, something I'm not entirely certain that MS users get for free.

Maybe there will be something else, maybe not. They've announced they're discontinuing a product, they haven't announced they've given up on enterprise... yet.
 
Fraaaa said:
What if the MacPro will have LightPeak? Will this suit you or will still not manageble?
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I worked on an upgrade rack mounted server several years ago. Our customers told us their number 1 issue was: Do not increase the thermal output. We had customers with over ten thousand of these things and large computer rooms are expensive.

The cost of design of a new xserve for apple would be minimal. Four engineers at the most. It would be a rip down of the Mac Pro to fit in a 1U and meet their customers thermal issues.
 
hey guys

you know I'm not in some kinda panic but it does concern me, I really love using OS X (in it's current incarnation) and I love my iOS devices (gadgets),

I have a 2010 MacBook Pro (high end spec) a 24inch Cinema Display, an iPhone 4 and a new Time Capsule, I love how they all work together, I develop iPhone apps as a hobby aswell, I really enjoy the ecosphere that's created by Apple and the interoperability between say my iPhone and iTunes is seamless and very nice to use. I love my cinema display even though it only works with my macbook pro and not my girlfriends laptop,

I am willing to put up with the inconvenience of this resonably closed system (ie display only working with macbooks and mac pros, and iphone only working with itunes) for the benefit of seamless integration of the Apple products I own and how slickly the likes of Apples remote app works with iTunes everything feels like it works together perfectly rather than hobbled together like standard PC's,

However as a developer and a bit of a tech nerd I love the fact that under this glossy GUI/exterior I have access to FULL UNIX, I love the fact that I can crack open the Terminal app for example and have the power of full unrestricted UNIX, so if I need to for development or whatever I can leave the beauty of OS X's GUI behind and get my hands dirty and change and access any part of the system or filesytem under the hood. I love being able to go in as root and be a full administrator on my UNIX/OSX machine because I know what I'm doing.

I don't mind not being able to do this on my iPhone because it is a handy gadget not a workstation.

It would ruin the Mac experience for me if they gimped the OS and removed this ability to muck around say in terminal because for me the beautiful GUI is a plus and the ability to have a full UNIX terminal access is an essential.

I have invested alot of money in Apple at this stage and I feel somewhat concerned about what's down the tracks. I know you can say don't upgrade but for me upgrading to new OS's in essential.

I know no one here can predict the future but could a few of the old timers maybe give me their opinion on this, I don't mind Lion or the next OS being more consumer focused infact I enjoy it, I even like the lauchpad thing, but do you think on this Desktop OS they will always at least keep the ability to access things like the terminal?? and if required be able to leave the gloss behind and get your hands dirty, or do you think they are trying to move OSX to become a Gadget like OS akin nearly to XBOX OS or iOS,


Long rant I know, but I just want to get some opinions, I've been ignoring signs so far but this dropping of the Server hardware worrys me,

Regards,
John
 
Just a thought,

MAYBE, it has something to do with the fact that the mac mini has been their server product for 5 years?

MAYBE thats because it's 1/3 of the price?

MAYBE it's because server farms all over the world have space dedicated to Mac mini servers (one of the most popular server machines, ever).

MAYBE it's because no one buys this old overpriced hunk? (why would you? See Mac Mini)
 
xlii said:
I worked on an upgrade rack mounted server several years ago. Our customers told us their number 1 issue was: Do not increase the thermal output. We had customers with over ten thousand of these things and large computer rooms are expensive.

The cost of design of a new xserve for apple would be minimal. Four engineers at the most. It would be a rip down of the Mac Pro to fit in a 1U and meet their customers thermal issues.
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Read my post above. It would seem that there's a new 1U rack mount out there for Mac Minis.
 
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