[HN Gopher] Apple Discontinues macOS Server
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Discontinues macOS Server
Author : sharjeelsayed
Score : 381 points
Date : 2022-04-21 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.apple.com)
| tristor wrote:
| It's disappointing they're discontinuing MDM services as well.
| I've been using Profile Manager and Apple Configurator to manage
| personal devices + family devices across my extended family.
| Looks like I should investigate Jamf Now as a replacement based
| on this thread.
| alberth wrote:
| For those hoping for an M1 based _server_ , this is the
| definitive signal that will not happen.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Does that really matter? There are really good ARM processors
| right now, and biggest advantages of M1 - power efficiency -
| really matter more on the desktop than on server.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Have you ever looked into colo? The #1 cost is power.
|
| You can have a 5U server with lower power usage that is a LOT
| cheaper than 1U power hog.
|
| Obviously at AWS scale this is abstracted away, but I think
| you are still paying a lot for the power you consume.
| lazyier wrote:
| As was mentioned before.. People were using ARM servers
| before Apple had a ARM desktop.
|
| So not being able to specifically use Apple silicon isn't a
| big deal.
| scns wrote:
| It ARM instances of AWS are cheaper.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Right. Some of that is for CPU cost, but for sure a big
| chunk of that is power/heat.
| cush wrote:
| It's exactly the opposite. A reduction in power can save
| millions of dollars in energy and cooling. All of the
| constraints and challenges of building a desktop are scaled
| up. This doesn't even factor in the savings in space. Real
| estate isn't cheap.
| lostlogin wrote:
| A small, power efficient and quiet home server is something
| I'd love - extra points if the power supply is built in. I've
| tried a lot of Intel Nucs and they come close. The Nuc9
| especially so, as it fits PCI cards.
| lazyier wrote:
| I have about 5 ARM-based systems running in my house right
| now. None of them are Apple.
|
| This is what I use for my file server:
|
| https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-hc4
|
| Runs Debian (Armbian). Provides file shares over SMB,
| Syncthing, S3 (Minio). Also does some monitoring of other
| systems via Prometheus scraping of node-exporter.
| Everything except Samba runs in containers.
|
| With two mirrored 6TB HDDs it has no problem keeping up
| with the household 1GbE network. Quad A55 cores, 4GB with
| Zram and it has all the power I need.
| brimble wrote:
| After messing with some RPis and Odroids, I went the
| other way and just got a single used Lenovo workstation
| off Ebay. After a memory upgrade (with ECC) and adding an
| SSD for the system disk, it was about $200, or about the
| same as fully outfitting two higher-end RPi4s. Easily
| runs a half-dozen dockerized services, with capacity to
| spare, and takes care of a bunch of ZFS-formatted,
| mirrored, spinning rust internal hard drives (ZFS on USB
| disks is... not fun).
|
| It can't live-transcode video above about 720p without
| stuttering, but then, most of those ARM boards can't
| either, so I just have to make sure whatever client I'm
| using can handle native formats for all my media.
|
| Not sure how it is on power use, but I much prefer
| managing all that stuff on one machine.
| lazyier wrote:
| Typically I like to use my old laptops as "servers".
|
| They usually get dropped or ran over or screen hinges
| broken or something like that. Long before the actual
| hardware inside gets a chance to fizzle out.
|
| They have a lot of advantages in that they are low power,
| have built-in UPS, small, have a keyboard and display.
| The disadvantage is that you don't get a lot of storage
| options. I have some USB 3 attached storage, but I wanted
| something a little different this time.
|
| Most recently my RPI 4 8GB serving as media server got
| replaced by my girlfriend's Asus laptop. She knocked it
| off a table and the corner of the display got smashed in.
| Now it is running Linux and Kodi, among other things. Can
| barely see it sitting there under the TV.
|
| A bit better at 4K out then RPI 4, but not by a whole
| lot. Don't do any transcoding on it, though.
|
| My "Big Servers" for my home lab are 3 ancient HP 1U rack
| servers. Built a small horizontal rack so they "hang
| down" instead of sideways and they take up almost no
| room. They run some high efficiency Xeon processors so I
| can get away with running them off of one household
| outlet. I only leave one on and spin up the other two
| when I need the extra capacity for some project.
|
| Dual socket 8 cores and 72GB of RAM each.
|
| Figured out that if you go and look at Vmware hardware
| support and get a server that is _just_ one generation
| older then they are willing to support than these things
| are dirt cheap on the used market.
|
| If they can't run the latest version of Vmware then
| nobody wants them. Linux don't care, of course.
|
| I think I spent a total of 600 dollars for all 3 servers,
| but it could of been a lot less. It's been a while.
|
| I hate dealing with server-grade hardware because the
| lights out stuff is insecure (100% get one with a
| dedicated LO network port), dealing with firmware
| configuration is tedious, take forever to boot up, and
| dealing with the raid controllers is misery. But it's the
| cheapest way to get a ton of capacity. Especially if you
| have a project that wants to use IPMI and such things.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Oh wow. Thanks for this.
| eli wrote:
| A Mac Mini running regular MacOS doesn't fit the bill?
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's close and the 10gb networking makes it attractive.
|
| However it maxes out at 16gb ram (a Nuc 9 goes to 64) and
| virtualisation isn't quite there yet I don't think.
| Fusion says it supports the M1 but I don't get good
| results.
|
| I'd like esxi or Proxmox on it, but could learn to live
| with it as is I suppose.
|
| Running a GUI when headless seems a bit crazy.
| aseipp wrote:
| Operations/watt, which is a function of power efficiency
| (i.e. how many floating point tera-ops can you do in 1
| second), is the primary driving performance criteria and
| engineering metric for all modern desktop, server, and mobile
| platforms. There is almost no metric which matters _more_
| when it comes to high performance compute.
|
| That said, Apple isn't going to sell chips these to anyone
| else, period. And everyone right now is hustling to match the
| same levels of efficiency in newer designs, and they'll get
| there sooner or later. So "Apple Servers" are a completely
| moot point, but power efficiency? Yes, it literally matters
| more than ever, across every spectrum of the industry, and
| it's why the M1 was something people cared about anyway.
| AaronFriel wrote:
| It matters for targeting "Apple Silicon" (aka M1, for now)
| Macs. It's complex to build a binary that works at feature
| parity on M1.
|
| Licensing requirements for VMs and lack of server hardware
| that can be put in datacenters are both obstacles to target
| Apple Silicon. Not insurmountable, you can build enclosures
| for a rack of Mac Studios & Mac Pros and orchestrate VMs with
| Hypervisor framework, but it's a large enough obstacle that
| major cloud providers don't offer it and that pushes large
| costs onto the CI providers, which then get pushed to the
| folks trying to build tooling that works on M1 Macs. That
| includes the open source ecosystem.
|
| The alternative is cross compilation, either cross-arch or
| cross-platform or both. All of these options are brittle and
| complex.
|
| Speaking from experience here, I've had to follow issue
| trackers for: programming language teams shipping parity for
| M1, major libraries (think of foundational libraries like
| GRPC's libraries for each language) not yet shipping binaries
| for M1, and developer tools and OSS teams producing binaries.
| All of this needs to come together, and it hasn't yet.
|
| The whole ecosystem is straining under the weight of this
| complexity to target engineers' laptops.
| [deleted]
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Mac Pros can be ordered in a rack-mountable case.
| gentle wrote:
| Uh, huh. They're laughably expensive and not untradable
| or serviceable in any way.
| greedo wrote:
| I guess you don't consider AWS a major cloud provider?
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/
|
| You can choose from either x86 or M1 machines.
| david-cako wrote:
| Or a definitive signal that Apple will soon release a fully-
| managed cloud native solution. :)
| lostlogin wrote:
| When the words Apple and Cloud come together I start to
| twitch.
|
| It's done to death that their web services are of dubious
| quality, and they have got better. However you don't have to
| go very deep or use services for very long to find some very
| sharp edges.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but I get the
| impression that Apple's approach to developing products can
| lead to very good highs but pretty poor lows considering
| the amount of money they could easily invest, I would also
| be somewhat hesitant with an Apple Cloud unless they had
| something actually new to bring to the market other than
| basically rent-seeking for people who want to develop (say)
| CI pipelines for their products.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It probably won't happen, but if Apple did want to get into the
| server market, it would make a lot more sense for them to
| support linux on their hardware for server use cases than to
| make their own server software.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| gumby wrote:
| When apple sold Xserve the support was excellent. Once I
| called and they had the guy who wrote the code go into a
| server room and duplicate an unfinished problem while I was
| on the phone.
|
| If they did go into this business seriously they'd probably
| do this again. That kind of support doesn't scale for
| consumer products.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Apples xserve was crazy reliable in my limited experience and
| I know of one in production at this time. Seems unwise, but
| there you go.
| gs17 wrote:
| Yeah, I know of a company that was using a first gen xserve
| up until last year. Something broke and they couldn't get
| (or couldn't justify the price of) replacement parts, but
| nearly two decades of use is very impressive.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| > this is the definitive signal that will not happen.
|
| ...that it will not happen via an add-on "server" program.
|
| But TBH it's hard to see how servers could be much of a market
| for Apple. People use the cloud more than local
| ("departmental") servers these days and the cloud back end
| belongs to Linux, typically with a provider on top (AWS etc).
| Apple's strengths lie elsewhere.
| comboy wrote:
| Plus they don't need to bother, they can just sell server
| chips now.
| als0 wrote:
| But Apple sells solutions and experiences, not components.
| They're not going to let other OEMs build computers using
| their chips.
| mhh__ wrote:
| If they ever do, Valve need to send Tim Cook a really
| nicely worded email, Steam Deck with an Mx chip in it
| would be excellent.
| eddieroger wrote:
| It is hard to say one couldn't see this coming. Of the few
| features left in Server, the only one I remained interested in
| was Profile Manager, and that hasn't worked right for a bit now.
| I'm fine with an Apple that wants to do hardware and operating
| systems more than software, but I wish they'd make Profile
| Manager-like features more available for regular people, not just
| Education or Business users. It would be infinitely useful to
| have such features for iPhones of family members who aren't so
| good with tech and could use a heavier hand in making sure the
| device is up to date and findable when lost. But I digress. I'm
| glad it's just ending, even if it's barely a surprise.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| Check out Jamf Now, it has a free tier that you can use for
| stuff just like this.
| azinman2 wrote:
| At least for VPNs, I've used tools that autogenerate
| profiles. In fact, doesn't Apple have a separate tool to
| generate profiles IIRC? I guess you're looking for the remote
| wipe ability? What would you do for a family member that
| requires a commercial service?
| stuff4ben wrote:
| This is very interesting! I need to manage my daughters
| phones as well as my ex-MiL who I still do tech support for.
| The Verizon Smart Family stuff barely works and I'm
| continually having to "fix" it. Can Jamf Now also do Android?
| ec109685 wrote:
| You are a nice ex-SiL for your ex-MiL. I'd love to be able
| to manage my family's devices in the same way my corporate
| devices are managed. The built-in OS solutions aren't great
| (at least on iOS).
| robocat wrote:
| Anyelse confused by these acronyms? See
| https://community.babycenter.com/post/a63163060/meanings-
| for...
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| Jamf Now is iOS-only, I'm afraid.
| recuter wrote:
| They recently made a Jamf-like called Apple Business
| Essentials:
|
| https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/
| malyk wrote:
| Which might have been from the Fleetsmith acquisition.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| No "might" about it. On a related note, Apple sent out a
| notice today that they're shutting down Fleetsmith 6
| months from now.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Not surprised, we dropped them the week after apple
| acquired them and destroyed our processes and controls
| overnight.
|
| Fleetsmith pre apple was fantastic. I'm concerned that
| with Apple you're forced into only using App Store apps
| which simply doesn't work for in-house binaries and or
| third party tools you don't acquire through the App
| Store.
|
| Apple likes to do a half in half out dance without
| consulting with teams that use the tech. Hopefully this
| doesn't impact too many people.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| ABE isn't free, sadly (and iirc you need a DUNS number).
| Two month trial, but then $2.99 per device. Jamf Now is at
| least free for the first 3 devices, then $2.00 per month
| per device after that.
|
| Another idea is perhaps Mosyle Business, which gives you
| the first 30 devices for free [1].
|
| [1] https://business.mosyle.com/pricing
| samcrawford wrote:
| I'd second Mosyle Business. We pay for about 40 licences.
| It costs us very little and they provide quick support.
| vibrio wrote:
| how hard would wide implementation of the Profile Manager be?
|
| Honest question. Im a biologist not at all a software guy but
| have 'managed' low level IT at startups so I think I get the
| value prop.
| OJFord wrote:
| Except in an M1 world.. if there was ever a time? Arm on server
| is already compelling, and when it comes to Arm chips Apple
| seems to ve 'killing it'.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I worked with a school district who used Profile Manager with
| ~200 iOS devices. Their in-house tech person got a horrified
| reaction from an Apple employee at an Apple event when they
| discussed the district's use of Profile Manager at that scale.
| The Apple employee seemed surprised that it worked and made it
| sound like it wasn't really supposed to be used for more than a
| handful of devices. I thought it was reasonably slick,
| personally, and would fit the bill for small orgs who otherwise
| didn't need a subscription MDM service.
| moduspol wrote:
| Using it several years ago, to me it sure seemed like a
| reference implementation of an MDM. It just lacked the
| robustness and flexibility that'd be required pretty quickly
| once you scale beyond a dozen or two devices.
| Sirened wrote:
| haha I remember talking to one of the engineers on the
| enterprise management team at WWDC back in 2015 and he was
| surprised that anyone used it at all. It really did work well
| and it did its job.
| [deleted]
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I was really hoping they would make something out of it. Apple
| can create great products.
| haunter wrote:
| Surprised they didn't recommend Wiki.js under the Wiki section,
| imo it's the best modern Wiki software right now. Might not be as
| battle-hardened as Mediawiki but my experience it's more pleasant
| to use https://js.wiki/
| eddieroger wrote:
| There's a lot to be said for Mediawiki's battle-harened-ness.
| What makes this so much better, particularly when both could be
| spun up with just docker containers?
| kube-system wrote:
| MediaWiki is good if you have a public wiki. If you need to
| delegate permission or use an identity provider, it's a
| pretty bad choice.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this tool in particular but I'm fairly
| convinced now that wikis are often an anti-pattern.
|
| If you want a wiki as a loosely federated dump of knowledge
| then a traditional wiki is ok, but if you want it to be
| instructional material (e.g. "How to build GCC on the Apollo
| guidance computer") or a cohesive manual, then it should really
| be generated by something tracked in a proper git repository.
| avalys wrote:
| I've never worked for Apple, but I can only imagine what a
| disaster their internal IT situation must be given that they use
| their software nearly exclusively internally but spend almost no
| effort on enterprise functionality or even basic stability,
| maintenance and documentation of the limited enterprise features
| that exist.
|
| The big tech company I do work for uses plenty of Apple hardware,
| but employs the equivalent of a mid-size startup in teams
| building internal solutions for gaps in the Apple stack.
| selimnairb wrote:
| I suspect that every large company's internal IT is a disaster.
| I say this having worked for a large IT consulting firm that
| did lots of M&A. Nothing ever got fully integrated, lots of
| dangling legacy systems.
| yalogin wrote:
| This is very interesting. I never thought of the enterprise
| side of things. Can you tell me a bit more about what these
| gaps are?
| amelius wrote:
| The problems start with the AppleID that you have to share
| with colleagues ...
| easton wrote:
| You don't need to do that. Buy apps through Apple Business
| Manager, deploy via MDM. In fact, that's probably a
| violation of the license agreement, since purchased apps on
| a single Apple ID are only really supposed to be used by
| one person (or a family).
| alar44 wrote:
| Everything in the enterprise env is likely MS based. Active
| directory, Office, fileshares, etc. I don't even try to
| integrate Mac's with that stuff, they are on an island.
| Inseighn1 wrote:
| Not true. I worked for HPE for about 3 years and Apple was one
| of our largest customers. This was around 2014-2017ish and
| AFAIK, most of their internal systems were HPE hardware running
| Linux.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "they use their software nearly exclusively internally"
|
| This isn't true.
| protomyth wrote:
| Anyone who has tried to use their server products knows that
| Apple doesn't use them themselves for running the company.
| Heck, look at their opensource software and you can tell the
| teams are using Linux boxes.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| Another anecdote: I work for a BigTech cloud provider and our
| internal applications can't stand up to nearly the load that
| our external customer facing services can.
| linspace wrote:
| The solution is obvious: cloud providers should mutually
| serve each other
| scarface74 wrote:
| There were plenty of jokes internally that we should go
| "multi-cloud".
| smm11 wrote:
| I heard from someone in Apple that Siri, as least at the time,
| was on Oracle databases on Dell Blade servers.
| Macha wrote:
| In this case, I believe Apple largely uses Linux for their
| server use cases.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Was anyone actually still using this with the dearth of hardware
| for years?
| Animats wrote:
| Apple sells a rackmount server.[1] It's a repackaged Mac Pro.
| Unclear who, if anyone, buys these.
|
| If MacOS Server is being discontinued, are those being
| orphaned? Or can you run the regular OS headless?
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > Unclear who, if anyone, buys these.
|
| Native development shops running in-house build pipelines I
| imagine. But even that has completely gone to the cloud in
| the last 5 years.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| What do the clouds use?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Mac Minis
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| That's not a server. That's just a Mac pro that can be rack
| mounted.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| Well, that comes down to what you think a server is. macOS
| is definitely unix, and can run server software. You can do
| that on that rackmount mac. So what makes it _not_ a
| server?
| rogueresearch wrote:
| The fact that Server.app has been gutted and gutted for
| years now.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| Talking about the hardware here. Yep, Server.app is a
| shell of what it could be. But I mean the rackmount macs
| -- I was asking GP why they didn't consider those servers
| ;-)
| adolph wrote:
| Looking at the back, it is missing things like redundant
| hot-swapable power supplies. The processor is one
| oriented toward workstations rather than servers. Not
| certain if the OS can be configured for huge pages in
| RAM.
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack
|
| https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/
| pro...
| spogbiper wrote:
| servers generally will have out of band management,
| redundant power and networking, some kind of light you
| can flash to help find it in a rack. stuff like that. oob
| management is probably the most vital feature of a proper
| server.
| samcat116 wrote:
| New Mac Pros/Mac minis actually have OOB management
| features. However depends on having an MDM and another
| Mac on the same LAN I believe.
| magicloop wrote:
| Yes, https://support.apple.com/en-
| gb/guide/deployment/dep580cf25b... explains how to MDM
| them for OOB management. (Lights out management).
| wlesieutre wrote:
| macOS server was a GUI app that you install from the App
| Store on regular macOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-
| server/id883878097?mt=12
|
| 10.6 (Snow Leopard) was the last version where they sold a
| separate more expensive server edition of the OS.
|
| As for server hardware, I have to imagine the 3rd party 1U
| Mac Mini rack enclosures are already more popular than
| Apple's official rack mount Pro.
| https://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html
|
| Use case for datacenter Macs is basically just as build
| servers for Mac and iOS projects, anything else there's not
| much justification for the hardware cost.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I hadn't looked for these before, but for people who need
| the extra oomph there are also Mac Studio rack mounts now:
| https://www.mk1manufacturing.com/Mac-Studio-c28/
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Pixar, maybe?
| huxley wrote:
| I think it's generally used as a rack-mounted workstation not
| as a server, guys I've worked for in live video productions
| definitely seem prefer their gear to be rack-mountable for
| ease of setup and tear-down, I imagine it's not an uncommon
| request in other related fields.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Although I can feel my toy vs. necessary alarm going off
| (you can do live stuff on some truly awful hardware, you
| don't need the latest Mac even if your personality dictates
| as much), having stuff rack-mounted is a real help when it
| comes to keeping track of stuff and keeping your "builds"
| (literally) reproducible
|
| In a less segmented environment (i.e. non-professional),
| having gear in a rack can also stop people playing with it.
| protomyth wrote:
| The rackmount server is really for folks that have their
| audio / video equipment in a rackmount, not to be a
| rackmounted server. It would be horrible to use that machine
| in a server room.
| kolencherry wrote:
| Apple also discontinued the MDM product they acquired
| (Fleetsmith) today.
|
| Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213238
| andreasley wrote:
| Interesting. I suppose the strategy is to get everyone to use
| Apple Business Essentials
| (https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/), which isn't yet
| available outside of the US.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| I loved the old version before they took away all the features
| and just left profile manager.
| ksec wrote:
| 133 Comments so far.
|
| No mention of Time Machine.
|
| No mention of Caching Server
|
| No mention of File Server.
|
| Three things that happens to be what I thought important apart
| from MDM, gets no mentions and I assume no use at all? Caching
| Server used to cache iCloud content as well. Never tried it with
| iCloud Photos though so I am not sure if it is a backup solution
| if Apple ever log you out of APPLE ID.
|
| This basically ends the dreams of Apple ever selling a Time
| Capsule with iOS backup and NAS functions.
| [deleted]
| johnwheeler wrote:
| The notice says
|
| > The most popular server features--Caching Server, File
| Sharing Server, and Time Machine Server are bundled with every
| installation of macOS High Sierra and later, so that even more
| customers have access to these essential services at no extra
| cost.
| ksec wrote:
| Oh Ok. I first read it and was expecting something like "Will
| _continue_.... ".
|
| For some strange reason their sentence wasn't immediately
| obvious to me these services are staying.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's a content caching service now that doesn't require a
| server: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-
| content-cac...
|
| Not sure about iCloud, I setup for updates at a school.
|
| File servers are commodity, legacy tech, I don't see a need for
| a first party solution.
| alt227 wrote:
| What Apple need to do now is make their devices more linux-server
| friendly out of the box. I have scripts set up on all of my
| storage servers to scan for and remove .DS_Store files, as it
| essentially doubles the amount of files on a server which for
| indexing is incredibly bad. My complaints to the Mac users were
| usually met with replies such as 'Well if you ran Mac server that
| wouldnt be a problem'. Now they dont have that arguement to stand
| on.
|
| I am aware of the command to stop apple devices writing these
| files to network shares, but regularly our mac users 'forget' to
| run this command after setting up new profiles or upgrading OSs
| etc.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| LOL - for fifteen years Apple has refused to allow an ext4
| formatted volume to auto-mount on a MacOS X machine.. how hard
| is that? Apple is non-Apple hostile, and proud of it
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| As far as I know, MacOS doesn't support ext4 at all (I
| vaguely recall some read-only ext4 FUSE thing, but obviously
| that doesn't help if you need to write).
| js2 wrote:
| https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/
|
| Full ext2/3/4 read-write support. $39.95.
|
| There's also fuse-ext2 via macFUSE but its doc still say:
| "Even though write support is available, _please do not
| mount your filesystems with write support unless you have
| nothing to lose_. "
|
| https://github.com/alperakcan/fuse-ext2
| js2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by "refused to allow". It's not
| like Apple has prevented third-parties from adding support:
|
| https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/
|
| It also doesn't seem surprising to me that Apple itself
| wouldn't support ext2/3/4. It's something very few Mac users
| are going to care about. Why would Apple dedicate any
| resources to it?
|
| FWIW, I've been using Linux and Macs for over two decades and
| I can only recall maybe a single time I even wanted to mount
| an ext formatted drive onto a Mac, and vice-versa (HFS onto
| Linux). For exchanging files via floppy disks or thumb
| drives, various flavors of FAT have been near universal for
| ages. CDs/DVDs/BluRay use their own filesystem. And
| FTP/NFS/SMB/AFP/HTTP/SCP/RCP have been around forever for
| exchanging over a network. (Before ssh/scp, there was
| unencrypted rlogin/rsh/rcp... I'm dating myself.)
| lupire wrote:
| Why does Windows userbase care more about Linux drive
| interop than Mac userbase does?
| chefandy wrote:
| What I'd love is a robust, modern, relatively easy-to-
| configure, focused DAV server-- specifically one that includes
| calendaring and notes. Everything out there is either
| incomplete, fussy as all getout to set up, dogmatically simple
| and therefore requires external mitigation, only supports one
| or two clients, and/or some janky PHP amalgam.
|
| What I'd REALLY love is to be able to run _all_ of my own
| services in place of iCloud. I realize that this stuff isn 't
| free to develop and I'd happily pay for it. They've been moving
| further away from standard formats and protocols with no way
| for others to integrate in the same way and I'm curious if
| there are any legal anticompetitive actions on the table should
| they continue to do so.
|
| Before anybody says it-- I have business needs that favor using
| MacOS directly on Apple Hardware and as a result, iOS is a good
| choice. Moving from Apple would regularly cause me more grief
| than these things do. No, you don't know my use case better
| than me and I have exhaustively explored all alternatives both
| ancient and modern.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| We can't know, because you're not saying the use-case
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| I've found that Radicale works very well for DAV calendar,
| tasks, address book. I combine it with Syncthing for files,
| and use Obsidian.md as the note-taking application (using the
| synced folder for storing the notes folder). Of course when
| you have a synced folder you can use whatever note-taking
| application/system you want.
|
| I'm not sure if that will work on iOS since iOS doesn't
| really have a filesystem - there are apps available on iOS
| for Syncthing and Obsidian, but I don't know if Obsidian will
| be able to access the Syncthing synced folder. But it works
| great for me on Linux PCs + Android. Much better than
| Nextcloud which is too complex and is a pain to administer
| over time. Syncthing is super simple to set up does file sync
| very well, much better than Nextcloud does. Radicale is also
| easy to set up and just works.
| chefandy wrote:
| iOS only needs to be a client and it has standard
| CalDAV/CardDAV clients built into the OS. I've used
| Radicale-- it works OK for very basic functionality, but
| doing something as simple as making a shared calendar
| involves creating one in the GUI, logging into the server
| and sym linking them between user directories.
|
| The nice thing about the groupware functionality in Apple
| Server is that it used all of these standard protocols so
| it was entirely interoperable with other devices AND it had
| a nice smooth administration experience.
|
| At the moment, I just pay $15/mo for Cloudron which handles
| email, is decently smooth for administration though a
| little more disjointed between the apps than I'd prefer,
| and can "one click" deploy Radicale, NextCloud, Sogo, et.
| al. I used to administer servers but it's not what I do now
| and I have no interested in sinking non-work time into
| work-like tasks.
| js2 wrote:
| I believe you're confusing the .DS_Store files which are per-
| directory and used for storing Finder window metadata with the
| "._" prefixed files (so-called AppleDouble format) which are
| used to store a file's resource fork. (These also show up in
| zip files created via the Finder.)
|
| You can configure Samba to store resource forks using xattrs
| instead. See fruit:resource:
|
| https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/vfs_fruit....
|
| You can veto the .DS_Store files. The consequence to Mac users
| is that the Finder won't remember any display changes they make
| to windows that correspond to network folders.
|
| https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/smb.conf.5...
| LaputanMachine wrote:
| This is the configuration I use: veto files =
| /._*/.DS_Store/.Trashes/.TemporaryItems/ delete veto
| files = yes
|
| The second line allows vetoed files to be deleted. Otherwise,
| already existing vetoed files would be stuck on the drive.
|
| (Note that "._*" prevents HFS+/APFS extended attributes from
| being stored on the SMB drive.)
| [deleted]
| iamtedd wrote:
| > You can veto the .DS_Store files. The consequence to Mac
| users is that the Finder won't remember any display changes
| they make to windows that correspond to network folders.
|
| Good. Why would one user's view preferences have an effect on
| another user? That is what happens if .DS_Store files are
| left on the server.
| bombcar wrote:
| It makes a weird sort of sense if you consider the folder
| to be like a stockroom - when you tell someone the box they
| want is "on the right as you enter" you expect it to be in
| the same place you saw it.
| lupire wrote:
| Well, it depends on who has write permission on the .
| DS_Store file.
|
| If you have readonly access to the folders you can't
| persist a change to the layout.
| eli wrote:
| Would an endpoint management system like Jamf let you enforce
| that policy?
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| Yeah you can do this with MDM, just target the
| com.apple.desktopservices preference domain and set
| DSDontWriteNetworkStores to true.
| MBCook wrote:
| There's a command to stop that? What is it?
| thatoneguy wrote:
| defaults write com.apple.desktopservices
| DSDontWriteNetworkStores false
|
| and reboot.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| False? Did you mean true?
|
| Terrible naming on that one...
| mypalmike wrote:
| DSDontForgetNotToWriteNetworkStores = "False"
| Sidnicious wrote:
| FYI: I believe this works because it saves the string
| "false", which is truth-y. You can also use:
| defaults write com.apple.desktopservices
| DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool YES
| st3fan wrote:
| This feels like a very user-hostile attitude ...
|
| Also, these files provide a useful service to Mac users. You
| could also find a way to support them instead of fighting this.
| alt227 wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head. It provides a useful service to
| 'Mac' users. To literally every other OS user these files are
| considered bloat and slow the system down for everybody.
| Hell, linux users performing searches on these directories
| get duplicate results for every file a mac has touched.
|
| I appreciate it may come across as a bit hostile towards the
| users, but in reality in a budget constrained environment
| where we cant make it perfect for everybody, we must make
| sacrifices to make the majority of users have a better
| experience. In my opinion mac users not having metadata of
| when a file was last modified pales in comparison to the rest
| of the business searches taking twice as long on samba
| shares.
| [deleted]
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Why is it necessary to index .DS_Store files, though?
|
| Isn't that what's making searches slow, not that the files
| exist? Why do you suppose that this isn't a problem for
| Macs too?
| lilyball wrote:
| .DS_Store is one file per directory, and it's a dotfile too
| so it should be hidden by default from most *nix commands.
| alt227 wrote:
| Thankyou for correcting me. I was speaking from old
| knowledge as this was a while ago I set this up and
| couldnt quite remember exactly how the .DS_store system
| worked. I thought it was one .ds_store file per file.
|
| That being said, depending on your business and data
| structure this doesnt detract from the point. Also if you
| have a deep nested directory structure with no real files
| in it, would every level contain a .ds_store file?
| MrDOS wrote:
| The .DS_Store file contains macOS Finder's view
| preferences for the directory. Finder will only write a
| .DS_Store file to directories where a user has actively
| altered their view preferences for that directory (e.g.,
| switched from icon to list view, "cleaned up"/rearranged
| icons, etc.). Just navigating through the directory
| doesn't create a .DS_Store file.
| tjohns wrote:
| There is one .DS_Store file per directory. It contains
| information like window size, icon position, folder
| background, thumbnails, etc. Deleting/vetoing .DS_Store
| files will not hurt anything of substance - other than
| discarding user preferences.
|
| There are also AppleDouble (._) files, which are one-per-
| file. These contain the file's extended metadata and
| resource fork. Deleting these _may_ cause data loss if
| there's anything important stored in the resource fork. A
| better option is to enable vfs_streams on your Samba
| server to allow storing the additional forks natively on
| your filesystem (e.g. as xattrs).
|
| (If you're using a modern Windows file server, I believe
| the resource fork is automatically mapped to an NTFS
| alternate data stream.)
|
| See:
|
| https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-
| html/vfs_stream...
|
| https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-
| html/vfs_stream...
| amarshall wrote:
| Perhaps you were thinking of AppleDouble files.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There is also the (evidently dying) principle of _by
| default_ wanting control over my computer and filesystem.
| I know this is not compelling to most people anymore but
| I feel like if I want 25 files in a directory, I expect
| to see 25 there. Not 26 because the operating system
| really really really really wants to pollute it with one
| more file. I want 25 there. If I wanted that other file
| there, I would have explicitly commanded my computer to
| put it there.
|
| I also object to my operating system running all these
| background processes on MY computer without me commanding
| it to, and it suggesting on its own that I do this or run
| that, again in absence of any command to do so. More and
| more, operating systems and applications are treating MY
| computer as a dumping ground and science experiment: for
| things it wants to do, instead of what I want it to do.
|
| I should not have to go off and find a setting somewhere
| just to stop my operating system from doing things on its
| own I don't ask for.
| tjohns wrote:
| It's an impedance mismatch. You're moving files between a
| system that supports multiple streams per file (data fork
| + resource fork) to a system that has no concept of
| different streams (POSIX). The extra stream has to go
| somewhere, or you get data loss.
|
| It's worth noting that almost all modern file systems
| support multiple streams. NTFS has alternate data
| streams, Ext4 has xattrs. Modern SMB and NFSv4 also both
| support this at the protocol level.
|
| The problem arises when you're using Samba (without
| vfs_streams enabled), or you're writing to a legacy FAT
| filesystem, in which case you start getting the
| AppleDouble files - again, to prevent data loss.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Isn't there also the fseventsd file?
| ajcoll5 wrote:
| They also can tank SMB performance on macOS. Apple even
| suggests to disable them in large environments for
| performance.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209
| the8472 wrote:
| > These comments are also stored in the extended file
| attributes,[5] but Finder does not read those.[6]
|
| They already have a solution but they're not using it?
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Also, these files provide a useful service to Mac users._
|
| With respect to DS_Store files on shared network drives, that
| is not true. Such files provide utility to a _single_ Mac
| user, whichever uploaded the DS_Store file to that directory
| last. This file is used to store user preferences, which
| breaks as soon as there are two or more users with different
| preferences. Simply put, it does not belong on shared network
| drives at all.
| ccouzens wrote:
| When I used a Mac at work .DS_Store files on shared drives were
| annoying. It meant directories loaded with someone else's
| preferences about how it should be shown.
| [deleted]
| Matt3o12_ wrote:
| Assuming you're running a smb server, you could just veto the
| files. Windows isn't much better since it likes to create
| thumbs.db almost everywhere too (which I also veto, but vetoing
| them can increase the load and bandwidth requirements and your
| server and clients)
| alt227 wrote:
| Yeah Vetoing is an option, although without testing I do not
| know how the mac clients would react on saving a file and its
| metadata was not allowed. Would the mac throw an error?
|
| EDIT: I have had people say this to me before about windows
| and thumbs.db. But I personally have not seen this in the
| wild. Maybe its what old versions of windows did and people
| are still remembering this?
| Matt3o12_ wrote:
| I haven't seen any errors and macOS seems to handle it
| greacefully. You can also disable it on macOS clients for
| network servers individually but that seems to be a loosing
| battle (even if you control all clients). They are finder
| settings after all
|
| https://serverfault.com/a/5567
|
| Thumbs.db files are created on my windows 11 pc at least.
| They're only created for files that have metadata that
| requires reading those files. Explorer likes to display the
| metadata (sometimes) for some folders that have a lot of
| media in it (pictures, music, videos, etc). If the
| thumbs.db file is missing, windows will partially read
| every media file on the server to show thumbnails, that
| obviously creates unnecessary load but it's really a trade
| off that might not make sense for most.
| Avery3R wrote:
| thumbs.db hasn't been a thing since XP... Vista+ generates
| thumbcache_xxx.db within the user's temp folder.
| exabrial wrote:
| self hosted will come back some day after everyone realizes that
| paying $1.99/mo doesn't let you disconnect costs from growth as
| you scale.
|
| Or at least I hope.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Mobility and security concerns changed the game. "Zero trust" /
| BeyondCorp is a better architecture but requires competencies
| that are very hard to hire for. It makes it easier to justify
| the cost of outsourcing the backend to Microsoft or Google.
| PinguTS wrote:
| It's 5 bucks here and 5 bucks there per employee. Then its
| Microsoft 360, Adobe Connect, and so on.
|
| At the end of the month it sums up to a complete employee pay
| check in addition to the employee pay check.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > At the end of the month it sums up to a complete employee
| pay check in addition to the employee pay check.
|
| Sure, there are some large companies that the total cost of
| subscription services would add up to the equivalent of 1
| more employees paycheck but is that really so crazy? For what
| they get out of it in terms of not having to pay multiple IT
| people it seems like a pretty decent deal. Someone has to
| maintain/update/support/etc the tools, it's not free.
| blahyawnblah wrote:
| What hardware does apple use in their data centers?
| bragr wrote:
| I could be wrong but on the hardware front I think Apple came
| up in the drama about the supposed SuperMicro hardware
| implants.
| kube-system wrote:
| The same stuff everyone runs in their data centers. MacOS
| server was not the type of offering that could replace what
| they need to do.
| treesknees wrote:
| It appears they use at least some amount of Super Micro
| hardware, possibly in very generic or custom cases (ie, they're
| not buying Dell.) That being said, I have to wonder how much
| datacenter space Apple really has. IIRC most of their iCloud
| services are hosted on various 3rd party cloud providers.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/23/apple-ends-relationship...
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/12/super-micro-spy-chip-story/
| true_religion wrote:
| Linux apparently. Even Microsoft used Linux servers for some
| things.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The tale is that they used FreeBSD for Hotmail for like 20
| years.
| shagie wrote:
| Aug 3, 2000 : https://www.zdnet.com/article/ms-moving-
| hotmail-to-win2000-s...
|
| > It has been an ongoing sore spot for Microsoft that its
| highly trafficked Hotmail site runs atop not its own
| operating system, but the FreeBSD-Apache platform.
|
| > Since it bought Hotmail at the end of 1997, Microsoft
| repeatedly promised that it would transition Hotmail to
| Windows NT, then Windows 2000. More than anything,
| Microsoft's desire was a matter of personal pride. What
| better way to prove its own contention that NT was just as
| scalable and robust as Unix than to run its complex, free,
| Web-based email infrastructure on it. According to the
| market watchers at Netcraft -- an Internet consultancy
| based in Bath in the UK -- Microsoft finally has commenced
| the long-awaited Hotmail migration.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Love the etymology of the original name:
|
| > _The name "Hotmail" was chosen out of many
| possibilities ending in "-mail" as it included the
| letters HTML, the markup language used to create web
| pages (to emphasize this, the original type casing was
| "HoTMaiL")._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook.com#Launch_of_Hot
| mail
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| Hotmail was an acquisition so that makes sense.
| bogwog wrote:
| Well it's not like they'd be able to use Windows at that
| scale lol
| tinus_hn wrote:
| They actually wrote a really open paper about the things
| they needed to do to migrate Hotmail onto Windows
| servers.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20021021164226/http://www.sec
| uri...
| oscargrouch wrote:
| FreeBSD have a lower memory footprint and their network
| (now together with their filesystem) make it a better
| server than Linux if you want a better use of your network
| bandwidth.
|
| I love FreeBSD and would prefer to use it as my desktop
| instead of Linux, but for servers people should also
| consider FreeBSD as a great option for a better use of
| computational resources. (And all this even when Linux have
| zillions of smart people working hours and hours to
| optimized it which FreeBSD cannot afford to)
| behnamoh wrote:
| I was also looking into BSDs (FreeBSD and OpenBSD) as an
| alternative to Linux, but almost every package that I
| need is available for the top 3 OSs (Win, macOS, Linux)
| only.
|
| For example, I didn't see vscode for BSD. And I'm worried
| that maintaining a BSD would be more of a hassle than
| even Arch Linux.
| ncphil wrote:
| It used to be that if you were going to run BSD that
| meant either compiling from ports or source. Packages
| were only available for the most common components, but
| the default was ports and most admins went along with
| that because you got greater flexibility/opportunities to
| optimize. Back then source compiles of software like
| Apache were the norm for even the Solaris boxes I worked
| on. Same for most perl modules (I had a decade-long war
| with Math::Pari).
| throw0101a wrote:
| There's an emulator if you need binary support:
|
| * https://wiki.freebsd.org/Linuxulator
|
| Back in the day I used run the Linux version of _Return
| to Castle Wolfenstein_ under FreeBSD (with NVidia
| drivers), and it ran as fast or faster (per FPS counts).
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenst
| ein
| boopmaster wrote:
| and you still can:
|
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-
| us/drivers/unix/freebsd-x64-archiv...
|
| someone at Nvidia must be a FreeBSD stalwart and I'm okay
| with that
| mst wrote:
| https://www.freshports.org/editors/vscode/ has apparently
| been part of the ports tree since 2019 and was last
| updated 11 days ago.
|
| Whether it's been added to the binary package build farm
| or you'll have to build the port yourself I don't know
| though, but poudriere makes (re-)building ports a pretty
| pleasant experience.
|
| BSD often does start off feeling like a hassle, but the
| docs are excellent and once you get a feel for it then it
| doesn't honestly feel like more work than linux. Note: I
| run a mixture of FreeBSD and Debian on my personal
| systems and find them both pretty painless, but I do tend
| to value "do exactly what I told you to" when it comes to
| recreational sysadminry so bear that preference in mind
| when interpreting my thoughts.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I seem to remember the BSDs being a lot more reliable for
| production use, versus Linux, back in around 1996 when
| HoTMaiL launched.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Microsoft has their own Linux distributions, no need for past
| tense.
| blenderdt wrote:
| There are some picture on the internet with HP, Dell and IBM
| hardware, just the normal rack servers you would expect.
|
| But it is also known they moved a lot of storage to Google
| servers.
| leros wrote:
| I browsed through a few Apple data center jobs and it seems to
| indicate they use Linux as their OS. No idea about hardware.
| lostlogin wrote:
| A fleet of xserves?
|
| Those beasts were a weird one. I'd like to get ones and pull
| its guts out and make it a bit more useful. The roar, the
| heat, the size and the age make them a little home-
| unfriendly.
| mproud wrote:
| Not for at least 10 years.
| kcb wrote:
| Probably custom x86 racks with Linux.
| whydid wrote:
| I worked at a company that used the phrase "getting jamf'd" as a
| verb to describe when the management system broke things on your
| macbook.
|
| E.g., "I'll be able to test that code change in a bit, I got
| Jamf'd pretty hard this morning and now my build is broken..."
| alana314 wrote:
| Carbon black for us, kills our node development environments at
| random
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| It happened to us with Fleetsmith too, it was great then
| overnight everything stopped working, which incidentally was
| because apple acquired them. I like Jamf'd better though, it's
| going into the lexicon!
| robonerd wrote:
| Again? I could have sworn they discontinued this like 10-15 years
| ago.
| icedchai wrote:
| I think 10-15 years was discontinuing the physical server
| (Xserve ? ) Also, at one point, they had a separate server OS
| product. They eventually changed to making the "server" an add-
| on package to base OS X / macOS. At any rate, very confusing.
| 120photo wrote:
| OSX server was nice, but I saw the writing on the wall years ago
| when they killed xserver and other products. I learned long ago
| never to put long term faith in their products.
| gentle wrote:
| ...unless it's the iPhone.
| dijit wrote:
| Even then they'll change or remove connectors arbitrarily.
|
| I'm sure someone said this same thing about iPods once.
|
| I haven't seen a new iPod in years.
| mrcus wrote:
| They changed their charging port once since the release in
| 2007 and they made one other connector change (removing the
| headphone jack) during those 15 years.
| mattl wrote:
| I think this is because Rhapsody is finally ready and they don't
| want to have two conflicting pieces of software.
| [deleted]
| steviedotboston wrote:
| I heard the same thing. At last!
| runjake wrote:
| Might you mean Copland? :)
|
| Rhapsody came and gone.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)
| mattl wrote:
| Nah, Apple has been working on Rhapsody in secret for the
| last twenty years in parallel with Mac OS X client.
| smm11 wrote:
| You took the words out of my mouth.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I was trying to remember where I encountered the macOS Server app
| before, and why I once considered buying a license. Then I
| recalled:
|
| https://www.cyrusimap.org/imap/concepts/features/event-notif...
|
| It's too bad that, assuming that documentation is still up to
| date, Apple doesn't allow smaller IMAP mail providers to
| integrate with the push notification service.
| oneplane wrote:
| You can in fact get a certificate for 99 per year and use that
| to generate entitlements that Apple will happily sign CSRs for.
| It's how we use MicroMDM.
| hda111 wrote:
| This project seems to use the same API as Server.app to obtain
| the push certificate automatically and a Dovecot plugin as
| available as well.
|
| https://github.com/freswa/dovecot-xaps-daemon
|
| https://github.com/freswa/dovecot-xaps-plugin
| jasoneckert wrote:
| We purchased the Server app back in 2014 because it was an
| inexpensive and very functional MDM solution for our corporate
| Apple products. After all, it was only $20 and we could easily
| run it on a Mac Mini on our network.
|
| It worked incredibly well, but Apple really didn't evolve it much
| since then and we eventually ditched it entirely in 2017 for
| Jamf. Since then I've regarded it as a lost enterprise management
| opportunity for Apple.
| thetinguy wrote:
| Apple uses jamf internally.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Apple uses literally everything internally.
| imilk wrote:
| Everything?
| uf00lme wrote:
| Everything.
| heyoni wrote:
| But not nothing, right?
| tyiz wrote:
| Does Apple have a deal based on the 100M investment by Microsoft
| back in the 90ties that they won't do any business stuff like
| client/server?!
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| In the mid 2000s, it looked like there was good hope that Apple
| would finally make inroads into corporate IT. In addition to
| their professional software suites (Shake, Final Cut Pro, Logic
| Pro, Aperture, Motion, etc.), they had already released XServe,
| which was really good by those days' standards, as well as XSan
| -- these products solved many of the needs of small professional
| creative groups. Mac OS X server's abilities to handle small
| offices' needs seemed like a prelude to larger things.
|
| Sadly, those hopes never really panned out. Apple is historically
| reticent to entering a market they aren't confident they have a
| good chance of dominating if they execute well, and their own
| growing internal use of Linux servers (and maybe other 3rd-party
| corporate domain/directory services, like Active Directory?)
| probably persuaded them to scale back their efforts around 2010.
| greenknight wrote:
| I think a lot of people dont realise how big of a mistake Shake
| was.
|
| Apple acquired Shake from Nothing Real in 2002. by 2006, it was
| essentially dead. This was a huge problem with the visual
| effects industry as it was the standard for compositing works
| and nothing was comparable. quickly there was a scramble for
| alternatives to up their game, two major players were Fusion
| and Nuke, with Nuke evenutally winning out.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Shake itself was awesome, but Apple let it languish.
|
| To get an idea of how big it was: Shake was used to composite
| Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, King Kong, Star Wars episode
| 3, and MI:3, among others.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Apple has made huge inroads into corporate IT. How many
| corporate employees carry iPhones and iPads today? How many
| companies let employees request Mac laptops instead of Dell?
| The answer is: a lot more than in the mid-2000s! And even a lot
| more than 2010.
|
| And corporate IT changed along the way too. The idea of buying
| and running a "Mac server" makes as much sense as buying and
| running any server: not much. Corporations are migrating to
| cloud platforms and application-level authentication. And away
| from hardware servers running on a LAN.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > How many corporate employees carry iPhones and iPads today?
|
| I was referring to IT management of macOS - that was
| ambiguous in my post, apologies.
|
| iPhone only came in 2008, and its deployment in corporate
| environments is entirely dependent on iCloud (launched in
| 2011) and related services, which didn't really come into
| their own until the mid 2010s.
|
| Before the mobile revolution, it seemed (or at least some of
| us hoped) Apple was poising itself to capture the IT low-to-
| mid-market for corporate Apple desktop computers and
| potentially move upwards/outwards from there. Alas.
| closeparen wrote:
| Some of the largest and most valuable corporations in
| America (the big names in Silicon Valley) have IT issued
| and managed Macs, at least for their engineering and
| product groups.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Right, but the identity/directory/device management
| solutions being used are still 3rd-party -- things like
| Jamf, Azure AD, Mosyle, JumpCloud
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Device management is 3rd party even for PCs at my
| employer.
|
| Mac machine accounts are local, not joined the AD domain,
| but it doesn't matter because we're on MS365 so it's all
| done over the Internet anyway. We don't have network file
| shares anymore, we have One Drive and SharePoint, which
| both work fine on Macs.
| oneplane wrote:
| But that's not really a problem, is it? If it works and
| the contracts cover everything all the same, does it
| really matter which party is responsible for it? Better
| yet, if it's not the core business of the company (a Bank
| for example), would they even care at all how far removed
| from the ODM a service vendor is?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| No, it's not a problem. But Apple _could_ have covered
| those bases themselves, like Microsoft did with Windows
| (via Active Directory, Azure AD, etc.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I went into Bank of America last week to get a cashier's
| check. An employee greeted me in the lobby of the bank with
| an iPad, took me to their desk, had me tap my debit card on
| the back of the iPad, put my PIN in, typed out the cashier's
| check details on the iPad, had me review it, and then printed
| it.
|
| I was in and out in probably 3 minutes max.
|
| I am assume iPads are simply much cheaper to operate and
| troubleshoot and replace than desktops.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| They don't need to worry as much about 'locking them down'
| cause they're basically there already by default.
| oneplane wrote:
| They are essentially application kiosks, which is exactly
| what a user needs in most cases. We tend to forget that
| most computing in the world really has nothing to do with
| OS management, hardware management or installing/removing
| applications.
|
| In a way, they also have the RIM/BlackBerry "peace of
| mind" in that they can delegate some blame if something
| were to go wrong with something only the vendor controls.
| The same goes for desktop operating system, and hardware
| components, but due to the huge amount of possible
| configurations, a vendor can easily wash their hands of
| responsibility because it was always the client's fault
| for having a bad configuration.
| forty wrote:
| (I'm not an IT person) since I see a few people mentioning Jamf:
| what's a good Jamf (MDM?) for Linux Laptops?
| smm11 wrote:
| I know at least one person who put OS X Server 1.2 on a G3 266
| laptop, that was supposed to be running 8.6 for the business that
| cut the paychecks.
|
| I've still got the installer in a shoebox somewhere.
| atonse wrote:
| My guess is that they will expand business manager and related
| tools and just make it a cloud product.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| They already have: https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| I had a parallel timeline expeience reading the title.
|
| In my timeline the Server macOS died somewhere around trashcan
| Macs introduction or maybe even earlier.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| A lot of the features in macOS Server are now built into the
| default install for MacOS (caching server etc.) while others were
| discontinued long before the latest version of server came out
| (Wiki Server etc.)
| philistine wrote:
| Yeah but they say Time Machine Server is an option in sharing,
| but it has never appeared in any of my computers at any point
| in time. Apple's gonna Apple.
| Linda703 wrote:
| raggi wrote:
| So can we be allowed to cross build with the toolchain on non-mac
| hosts now please?
| floatinglotus wrote:
| After the death of Xsan, this product never made sense.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Even with Xsan it didn't really make sense.
| greedo wrote:
| Xsan was terrible when I used it. Each side of disks was
| unique and couldn't be aggregated into one volume, it was
| slow, expensive, and the software was very unreliable. I
| can't even count the number of support tickets I opened for
| this POS.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I think the death knell started with discontinuation of Xserve.
| ndespres wrote:
| It did fill a gap for a while unmet by a lot of services that
| we take for granted now. A Mac Mini with macOS Server to host
| email, calendar sharing, file sharing, and Time Machine backups
| went a long way towards meeting a small office's IT needs. It's
| mostly supplanted by things like Google Workspace, Office 365,
| Dropbox, and proper MDM solutions these days, but wasn't a bad
| choice up through maybe 2014 depending on the situation.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Even as early as 2008, it didn't make sense for a small
| company to host their own e-mail servers. Hosted Outlook was
| a much better choice.
| ndespres wrote:
| My memory of the hosted Outlook/Exchange landscape of that
| time is much more negative. It was expensive, had
| inconsistent or costly support for ActiveSync devices, had
| no integration or federation with existing on-premise
| Active Directory solutions, management consoles of
| shared/hosted Exchange providers were difficult to
| administer. Broadband was much more limited, so remotely-
| hosted mailboxes were a hassle.
| scarface74 wrote:
| By 2009 at least, iPhones supported hosted ActiveSync. I
| was writing field service software ("sending people
| places to do things") for ruggedized Windows Mobile
| devices. I do seem to remember some of our customers
| using ActiveSync from hosted Outlook for emails alongside
| our software.
| bombcar wrote:
| Hosted exchange was kinda expensive and slow until
| Microsoft started competing directly from my experience.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| This product never really made sense anyway. About time.
|
| Shame that they killed Profile Manager though. Not that it
| matters too much.
| gentle wrote:
| I'm not going to be at all surprised when Apple sells off their
| laptop division and kills their few remaining desktops. It's
| obvious they have no interest in anything outside of the iPhone.
| Even the iPad is treated like a second class citizen.
| pram wrote:
| Uh huh, completely new laptop and desktop lineup on a
| completely new architecture = no interest.
| sytelus wrote:
| "Server OS" has been traditionally a scam with hardly a few
| differences, mainly in config, and purely targeted to milk
| "enterprise customers". It's good to see this fad going away now
| that these are obsolete anyway with Linux.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-21 23:00 UTC)