G4 Cases Holding Back Clustering Acceptance?

Mr. Quick writes: "An article at Wired talks about how Mac hardware is well-suited for clustering, but is being held back by the sexy cases. This follows closely on the heels of Apple releasing an optimized version of BLAST. Producing rack-mount *blades* is not in Steve's vision of world domination, but the opportunity exists. I, for one, hope that apple seriously considers developing a rack mounted dual-G4. Quad G4 maybe?"

Comments

Re:Practical Macs?

[TheAJofOZ]

I would have to disagree - Apple will never go back to beige on the desktop, because beige on the desktop almost killed them. They need to plan it carefully and it will have to wait until OS X is firmly seated into the Mac world but they can maintain a dual appearance - colour for the consumers and small-form for the servers.

Apple is currently building up their main business plan but rest assured they will spread into a range of areas once they have that plan running smoothly. Timing is of the essence.

After-market conversions

[trollbot]

Of course, it is possible to refit a Mac in a new, rackmount-friendly case.

However, it would be possible to have a decent-looking (ie non-wacko), slimline design differentiated from Apple's normal consumer kit. This might be a niche market, but that is usually where Apple thrives.

Already available

[dair]

3rd party rack-mounted cases are already out there - from Marathon or GVS. Given how important style is to Apple at the moment, I doubt they're going to branch out into purely functional cases anytime soon...

-dair

Re:Already available

[navywife]

3rd party rack-mounted cases are already out there...

Good call--The GVS systems put dual 1GHz in a 2U case, which would give UC-SC the (theoretical) 160 processors per rack frame they wanted, all running OS X. I hope Apple/GVS's salesmen are calling the people mentioned in the Wired article for a big sale...

I doubt they're going to branch out into purely functional cases anytime soon...

Apple shouldn't be spending time on 2U or 1U Macs when others already are. They've worked hard to make the Apple brand mean "stylish" and 2U clustering boxes will just mix that up. Let the 3rd party developers put them out there under another name...Because these are actual Power Macs w/ Macintosh ROM, Apple is making some coin from them regardless.

And if the day ever comes when it makes more sense to have that business inside Apple, Apple buys them out. What Apple should be doing is promoting the bejeezus out of these things to their scientific/visualization customers...

They are half way there already..

[mallie_mcg]

A bold statement i know, but if you go to the apple store you can see that they have a "Server" section, which is basically a PowerMac with OS X Server. How hard would it be for apple to add a tick box for rack mount kit, perhaps even allow downgrading to OS X as the OS.

Personally I think that apple SHOULD change the look of the systems that they are trying to sell as servers, have a look at the Sun E250 or E450, they are not butt ugly, but rather well engineered cases (and not too bad machines, albeit old now). If apple took an approach like that, simply making a machine they sell to be a server look like one, and havit it available as rackmount, they would have it made.

A.S.O Serves No Purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

So far there have been 9 stories posted in Apple.Slashdot.Org. Of those 9 stories, 6 have been covered at MacSlash before they were seen here. They were on M/ at least a day before they were seen here, but in one case, M/ beat A.S.O to the punch by a month. And the signal to noise ratio and comment quality generally seems to be higher there, too.

Repackaging news from another mac web site and then insulting Apple users by ending each department name with "for dummies" is not an impressive start for this new section.

Re:A.S.O Serves No Purpose

[Doktor Memory]

Repackaging news from another mac web site and then insulting Apple users by ending each department name with "for dummies" is not an impressive start for this new section.

Remember, a.s.o is from the same drooling morons who have ended each and every story in the last three years about new Apple hardware announcements with the exact same lame gag about one-button mice. That malda still thinks this is funny pretty much says everything you need to know about him as a person (ie: monomaniac, idiot) and the intended purpose of this section of slashdot (ie: "get those damn stories about a company succeeding with unix on the desktop off the front page, we need more space for linux kernal point revision announcments and Sun press releases!").

Re:A.S.O Serves No Purpose

[Lars T.]

How is that different from Plain.Slashdot.Org? Almost all articles there have been posted somewhere else already.

Re:Practical Macs?

[foobar104]

Apple will never go back to generic looking cases.

Apple doesn't have to go back to generic-looking cases. A one- or two-rack-unit case doesn't leave a ton of room to be creative, but it's still possible to make 'em distinctive.

Look at the SGI Origin 300 and Origin 3000* for an example of a rackmount system that's distinctive and cool.

* Underneath the rack skins, the bricks in an Origin 3000 are 19-inch rackmount components, between one and four units high. SGI racks come with extra hardware in the back for managing all the cables the system requires, but other than that they're not special.

Re:there will be an Apple rack-mount soon

[acaben]

Apple generally builds up demand to a feverish pitch and then releases the product to the world and because of the heavy demand the product usually is snapped up in droves.

Hmm...I think I'd have to disagree with that. Take the iMac, for example. Before the first iMac was introduced, no one knew they wanted one. In fact, when it was first released, the media was fond of saying that no one would ever buy one.

The iPod is another example. It wasn't expected at all, and generally downplayed and dissed by a lot of the media (including my site), because we didn't think it would be successful. Apple proved us wrong.

Both of those cases are examples of Apple doing something unexpected, as opposed to building demand for something expected.

Uncool!

[fm6]

If Steve Jobs ever authorized a product that didn't have a high Cool Factor, he'd remove the one thing that distinguishes him from the great mass of technology moguls.

Does this sound like trollish sarcasm? Perhaps, but I'm deadly serious. Apple's design innovations are all supposed to be about making computers more usable. But they're the darlings of those who thing form is everything and function is nothing. When the new iMac came out, NPR intereviewed a prominent design consultant. Here's a relevent excerpt

BLOCK: I guess some of this boils down to that old question of, you know, `Does form follow function?' You do see, in the Apple publicity, they're talking about the Pentium-crushing power PC G4 processor. And at the same time there are lots of pictures of how great this thing looks. What do you think is motivating consumers here, or will motivate buyers?

Mr. DZIERSK: Well, listen, I'm on a soapbox here. I mean, this is- -none of that matters. None of that matters at all. The only thing that matters is design right now: how big it is, how fast it runs, how much power it goes isn't useful to 90 percent of us, maybe even 95 percent of us. You know, in the '70s it used to be marketing. In the '80s it was all this financial merger stuff. The '90s, distribution; the Wal-Marts happened, the Kmarts happened, Targets happened, you know, the Internet happened. But now all that's leveled out. If things work relatively the same and they cost about the same, design is the only reason to buy a product. And that happens when products reach commodity. And computers, in many ways, have reached commodity status. Think about a running shoe. It's only about design. Or even a toothbrush.

BLOCK: What about, say, the PT Cruiser, when that came out?

Mr. DZIERSK: Oh, it's fantastic. I mean, risk-taking, interesting and a huge success. And, you know, this is what I'm so angry about is why--how does it take so long to get it, you know? We have folks we know who bought their daughter a new Beetle, and the only reason the car is parked in the garage is because the door to her bedroom isn't big enough to drive it in. See? Design's about love. It's about falling in love with your product. And all these business types are about metrics, you know. These designs are universal in that everybody can use them. They have better designs and the elevate the level of dialogue and you don't go back.