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Steve Jobs: Xserve Axed Over Poor Sales

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Apr 12, 2001
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French site MacGeneration reports [Google translation] that one of its readers emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs to inquire about the reasons behind last Friday's announcement that the company will discontinue the Xserve rackmount server. Jobs reportedly responded to the email, unsurprisingly noting that poor sales were the reason for the discontinuation.
Hardly anyone was buying them.

Sent from my iPhone
Click to expand...
While Apple has not routinely revealed sales figures for the Xserve, the report points to data from research firm Gartner published several years ago showing that Apple was selling on the order of 10,000 units per quarter, a tiny fraction of the company's overall computer sales.

With the discontinuation of the Xserve, Apple has suggested that potential customers consider either the Mac mini, which gained a server option in late 2009, or the Mac Pro, which saw Apple release a server-specific standard configuration on Friday.

Article Link: Steve Jobs: Xserve Axed Over Poor Sales
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/08/steve-jobs-xserve-axed-over-poor-sales/
Let's hope those buying those 10,000 or so Xserves per quarter weren't also using these to manage large deployments of Mac clients. This could have a bigger impact than just those 10,000 units per quarter.

A very bad way to do business in the entreprise.
 
For the price of one low-end Xserve, you could afford three Mac mini servers, and you would save space while doing so.
 
Not surprised at all there. I figured the thing never really did sell well.
 
This is obvious. If they were selling well and were a big money earner for Apple, they would still be being sold.
 
People don't take Apple seriously in the server market. Most companies that want a UNIX-based server environment opt for various flavors of Linux.
 
KnightWRX said:
Let's hope those buying those 10,000 or so Xserves per quarter weren't also using these to manage large deployments of Mac clients. This could have a bigger impact than just those 10,000 units per quarter.

A very bad way to do business in the entreprise.
Click to expand...

Well, it's a good way to axe products that don't sell.
 
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If Apple would buy Netlist and put the Hypercloud Memory Module into the Xserve, the sales would be through the roof as the primary bottleneck would be removed.
 
Hardly anybody buying them?...

Was anyone at Apple hardly selling them?

I can recall the inundation of ads on the tele for iPod, MacBookAir, iPod touch, iPhone, etc., but never for their higher end MacPro, MBP, or X-Serve. Could that little fact have added to the cause that nobody is buying them Steve? No one knew they were there! :rolleyes:
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Is anyone really surprised?

Clearly Mac isn't doing very well in the business world, in terms of workers (windows and office dominate) and in terms of servers (windows and Linux dominate).

Moreover, clearly Apple are focusing on the personal market, and to a certain extent very small businesses.
 
Mac Pro Server

This person, and many mad people, need to realize that the new Mac Pro server that is replacing the Xserve is the same price, but has a better processor (2.8 instead of 2.2) and has MUCH more storage (160gb vs 2TB). I'm going with the Mac Pro on this one.
 
iBug2 said:
Well, it's a good way to axe products that don't sell.
Click to expand...

No, a good way is to announce EOL with at least 12 months of notice and to provide a migration path (be it a 3rd party hardware vendor for OS X server or a partnership with VMWare to run OS X Server off their ESXi or vSphere products).

This was not well executed at all.

KerdX said:
This person, and many mad people, need to realize that the new Mac Pro server that is replacing the Xserve is the same price, but has a better processor (2.8 instead of 2.2) and has MUCH more storage (160gb vs 2TB). I'm going with the Mac Pro on this one.
Click to expand...

Read the other threads, a Mac Pro doesn't replace a Xserve.
 
hmmm

jonnysods said:
It's rough for enterprise users, but it's not like they killed off anything running OS X Server. It's just a different shaped machine now....
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Apple did kill off something....the mini and PRO configured as a server may give you everything software wise. But it is missing the redundant power supply and hot-swappable drives....2 BIG/MAIN things required of a SERVER.

I also agree with the poster who said that this could cause sales of mac client computers to also go down if these servers were used to maintain/manage them....
 
Rot'nApple said:
Was anyone at Apple hardly selling them?

I can recall the inundation of ads on the tele for iPod, MacBookAir, iPod touch, iPhone, etc., but never for their higher end MacPro, MBP, or X-Serve. Could that little fact have added to the cause that nobody is buying them Steve? No one knew they were there! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Um, you don't usually run huge ads for something like rack-mounted servers. Xserves (and Mac pro's) are aimed at professional market, and professionals usually know about them without the need to run ads. It's not like people rush out to buy Xserves (or other rack-servers) after they see ads for them in magazines or television.

And I have seen plenty of ads for MBP's.
 
jonnysods said:
It's rough for enterprise users, but it's not like they killed off anything running OS X Server. It's just a different shaped machine now....
Click to expand...

You mean it's gone back to the old stand-by and only option available... a MacPro with OS X Server inside... just like the early days.

This is the only product that has gone from heavy, bulky, blah, to sleek, slim, elegant, back to heavy, bulky, blah in a short lifetime.

Never would such a thing (increasing size and bulkiness) happen to the iPod or iPhone! They always seem to slim down a bit from one product release to the next. :eek:
 
What should happen is that once the Xserve is gone they should allow you to buy an OSX Server license and run it under VMware vSphere on any hardware you want. Everyone wins. This also makes migrating to OSX Server much easier as companies already have infrastructure and bringing in a new OS and a new platform is tough.
 
KerdX said:
This person, and many mad people, need to realize that the new Mac Pro server that is replacing the Xserve is the same price, but has a better processor (2.8 instead of 2.2) and has MUCH more storage (160gb vs 2TB). I'm going with the Mac Pro on this one.
Click to expand...

Except that a Mac pro is not a viable replacement for anyone who needed an Xserve. No drive access, no redundant power supplies, 12u takes too much space, no LOM, etc. A Mac pro is only a viable server for someone who is serving very few users.
 
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