Slashdot Mirror

I could see it as being something that's not only long-term fiscally advantageous but also something that enables them to push the envelope and thus give their products a lead. Part of the picture I have in my head means that they'd be selling the chips themselves instead of limiting them to their own devices. That sort of goes against business practices seen by Apple in the past but I guess it's possible, however unlikely. As a long-term strategy, it might be worthwhile.

I did mention one of the larger drawbacks in my earlier reply. It puts them at a place of a single point of failure - unless another company *also* has the tech and can spin up the fab style/tech quickly in case of a crisis. I'm thinking that's really antithetical to typical corporate behavior with regards to Apple.

But as I said before, fab lines are assininely-expensive, have to be continuously updated, and pretty-much have to be run 24/7/365 to make ends meet. Apple has wisely stayed out of that game, IMHO.

That said, if Apple made server hardware that was not a fashion accessory and had the longevity, durability, and build quality associated with the consumer lines then I'd absolutely consider purchasing it for my home use.

Apple has had many, many forays into the Server market throughout the years, including at least one home-grown variant of Unix, plus Dedicated (non-Mac) Server machines that ran IBM's AIX, and a short-lived Port of NEXTSTEP in 1999, branded as "OS X Server 1.0", and all of this long before the XServes. And I would hardly call any of them a "fashion accessory". That is a blatant slap-in-the-face to the hundreds of software and hardware engineers that worked long and hard to bring those very serious products to market.

I don't refresh nearly as often, as a home user, so it's okay for me to buy a server and expect to get five to seven years out of it. Quality isn't so valuable a metric (but is still a metric - just not as valuable) when you're going to refresh in 2-3 years already and have already factored in the MTBF with your purchase.

As a home user, that metric becomes more heavily weighted, at least it does in my choices, and I'd give Apple a serious consideration at that point. I'd SERIOUSLY want to be able to have some alternatives. I'd really rather a different operating system on the bare metal. It is BSD and is Unix-like so I could live with it but it is not my preferences. So long as it had a decent VNC server and I could get VMWare up and running then I'd almost certainly opt for it - if it were an option and I was in the market for one.

Well, Macs can run VMWare, and VNC is the built-in "Screen Sharing" feature of OS X, so...

Now the question remains: What do you really need from a home-server, and will you accept something that isn't in a 19" rackmount package as a "real server" (keeping in mind that HP and Dell sell many boxen they call "Servers" that are simply glorified tower designs).

I'm sure there's a VNC server application package that exists or could be converted easily enough. I want something better than SSH. RDP is nice but I prefer VNC. I'm not sure but I bet there's an RDP app for OS X so that's an option.

You can have all of that and more with OS X. Oh, and Apple has a spectacular Remote Admin package based on VNC, called "Apple Remote Desktop". It can also be used to admi

Actually, I haven't heard anything about the Apple / Sun merger recently...the origonal deal fell through, but it always comes up from time to time...

.. the Apple Network Server which ran AIX (!).

Usefullness

Historical/Collectible value

Coolness factor (one of the coolest enclosures Apple has built

Hardware compliment

I have 5 36 gig 15K RPM SCSI HDs, 1 gig of interleaved RAM, the processor upgrade, a slot load DVD drive, and a CD Burner, + 4 multiport PCI ethernet cards and one I/O card on my ANS.

Linux PPC and Mac On Linux saved this beast from eBay.

*for what's it's worth the ANS at the time it shipped could only run AIX until Linux PPC was able to come out with hacks to make it disregard the boot kernel.

Boohoo, my PowerBook 3400, PowerPC 7200, 7100, etc aren't supported. Yeah, well I have an ANS running champion server 1.1 and that's "not supported". Grow a pair, put on some black socks with white sneakers and make it fit!

About 15 years ago Apple made their own version of "real UNIX" called A/UX. It featured X as well as a Mac application layer. (Gee, sounds a lot like Mac OS X...). This had *nothing* to do with AIX and it only ran on a few 680x0-based Macs.

Fast forward to the PowerPC era. Apple made a series of nifty (for their time) Apple Network Servers running IBM's AIX (UNIX) OS.

Did you even try Google?

Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers