Kai Staats of Terra Soft Chats About Rackable Macs

iMacRobert writes "Mac Help Radio, Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern, will be talking live with Kai Staats, co-founder and CEO of Terra Soft Solutions, who will be talking about his company's new 2U Macs, the power of the PowerPC, and Yellow Dog Linux. Following Kai will be Anita Holmgren from Tenon Intersystems on Post.Office and iTools 6.5 for Mac OS X, which make running web-based services easier for the average webmaster."

Comments

Maybe...

[TALlama]

When this gets re-posted tonight at 9pm-- after the event has occurred-- we can chat about what they said.
Right now, this has been a test of the emergency broadcast system.

Should be interesting to listen to

[rgraham]

I hope someone brings up the issue of cost. It's too bad that such a premium needs to paid to get a Mac in rack form. Maybe since Apple doesn't seem inclined to produce their own rack Mac's they could grant a very limited license to some company to only produce said Mac's. This company could then just purchase the parts they need from Apple (motherboard, processor, ?) and therefore could keep costs/prices down since they wouldn't have to buy entire G4's and then throw half of the thing away.

Re:Should be interesting to listen to

[raytoler]

I can attest to the need for less expensive rack-form Macintoshes. My day-job employer decided to pass on creating a massive Mac-based Linux cluster (1000+ machines), despite having one of the best cost to power ratios among all systems tested. One of the primary reasons was the form factor. We could cram way more processors into a rack using small ATX, (and later 1u black boxes) than with the beautiful but rack-hostile tupper-mac form factor. (We even toyed with building a wall of cubes, but they were just way too expensive!)

I can think of three major areas that cry out for an inexpensive rack-mac solution right off the bat:

Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
Bio-scientists have a long history with the Mac, but it's getting squeezed out in many companies because of management's perceived cost-benefit of PC boxes. As we start needing to process larger and larger amounts of genetic information, the need for a small form-factor mac increases.

Graphics/Video Production
Rack-Macs are needed in this industry, especially when using a render farm for 3d graphics!

Music Production / Performance
Anyone using a Mac to run a keyboard rig or show has long wanted a Rack Mac. Powerbooks are now powerful enough to do much of what is needed, but I'd love to have a 1 or 2 space Mac that didn't suffer CD/DVD speed problems from being mounted sideways. I'd also love to be able to put the Mac in the studio machine room rack and not lose use of the CD/DVD.

These are just a few examples, and yes, workarounds exist, but an out-of-the-box rack Mac solution (that didn't cost a premium) would be a great improvement!

Re:Should be interesting to listen to

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in the hope (as an Apple stockholder) that that deal isn't quite dead, I remind you of gvs. They've been mentioned before here on Apple's little ghetto on Slashdot, but it seems to fit the bill. What's your take on why these machines are no good? Rather have them 1U rather than two? Too expensive?

Re:Should be interesting to listen to

[Suppafly]

apple does make rack mountable g4's they take up about 4 u's and you have to buy a little adapter to make them work in standard racks.. check out the g4 case lying on its side sometime.

Re:I once tried to hit on an iMac user

[Anonymous Coward]

were you sporting a ti-book at the time? that could help, maybe.

Re:what's the point of a rackable mac?

[raytoler]

See my reply in the post above for a more detailed discussion of what a rack-mounted mac would be good for.

Also, don't forget that you don't have to run Mac OS on a Macintosh. The PowerPC chips rock with Linux... an inexpensive "component" Macintosh could lead to some serious profit for Apple (e.g. sell a Rack-Mac with no OS for sub-$1000 price point).

I don't ever see that happening, however, as Steve Jobs' entire philosophy is the full user experience. There are lots of companies, though, who don't need the Mac OS but would love Apple quality and PowerPC performance.

Re:what's the point of a rackable mac?

[jasonwileymac.com]

Uhh...moron... The Mac runs this neat new OS called 'X' that uses the same 'braindead file sharing protocols' as all those UNIXes you mentioned. Really. I have 3 of them. ;-)

Low Profile Mac OSX Server in the works

[TwitchCHNO]

Apple Relizes that this is a share of the market place that it is missing - and I believe Apple is making it there - slowly.

3D - Market: Maya ported to Mac OS X
and with Pixar's Render Man already available for Linux I do not believe that Darwin will be far behind.
RenderMan
With the combination of Maya - Render Man - & Clusterable Darwin/ OS X machines (especially if thier low profile this puts Mac at the fore front of 3D rendering. I'm sure that Steve Jobs recognizes the demand for a setup such as this - as he is the CEO of PIXAR.

For the scientific field Apple has released Genentech BLAST and there a slew of other programs being ported from unix to OSX.

After observing Steve Jobs fro many years - you must realize that Jobs will not release a product until it is the most svelte & elegant thing in the market place.

When Apple does release low profile - Rack CPU's they will be *insane*. IT organizations & Science reasearch labs will drool all overthemselves.

But Jobs does not work on a normal time table:
Recognize market - develop product for market - release.

Jobs works more like this:
Recognize market.
Target specific areas in Market where the Mac can dominate, Think about that for several years.
Add ram & 50Mhz increase to iMac line.
Release software developing lust & desire for product line.
Begin engineering new product.
Take a nap.
Add ram & 50Mhz increase to iMac line
Scrap new product start over - with same deadline.
Release new product at Apple Dev WORLD Expo with the famous line "Oh, & one more thing...."

Re:Low Profile Mac OSX Server in the works

[tyrione]

PIXAR Renderman was natively standard within NeXTSTEP and Openstep. The latest versions of course withstanding solely based upon Steve's licensing issues- he owned both companies afterall.

Does the stuff work within MacOS X? YES. Is it available for public purchase? NO.

Business case need is the delay, not the technology.

Re:Low Profile Mac OSX Server in the works

[hcdejong]

Apple Relizes that this is a share of the market place that it is missing - and I believe Apple is making it there - slowly.

I think you're right. Rumors on "Thing 2" (a rackmountable server) have been floating around for a while now.

If I were Apple, I'd combine a 1U rack unit with a variation of Microsoft's Mira: a wireless display that can connect to any Mac in the vicinity. Add USB to the display (for keyboard and mouse) and you've got the coolest KVM switch ever.

Oh, and there's a petition underway, too.

Re:Low Profile Mac OSX Server in the works

[tomdarch]

:especially if thier low profile this puts Mac at the fore front of 3D rendering. I'm sure that Steve Jobs recognizes the demand for a setup such as this - as he is the CEO of PIXAR.

Hmmm. I think that there is a chance that because Steve has experience with PIXAR, he may have looked at what a rackmount Mac could be and said, "well, PIXAR wouldn't buy them, so why release them?"

It is possible that Apple hasn't figured out how to make rackmounts compelling.

What on God's earth is going to happen ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard the show. I know yellow dog,fink and gnu-darwin etc..I see the battle we are headed for. Even Richard Stallman warned about this kinda stuff it is called the "I wish I had my name in lights" mentality.Hey yellow dog, it is gnu-linux remember ? One day it may have the HURD as a kernel. Also on a side note watch the unix-porting-request@lists.apple.com (stay tuned) the unix daemons are building an inferno. Hopefully we can just all get along. P.S. Send checks to /dev/null :)

Re:what's the point of a rackable mac?

[jchristopher]

(e.g. sell a Rack-Mac with no OS for sub-$1000 price point).

Clearly, Apple could sell a Mac at that price - they already have several small form factor motherboards. However, doing so would almost certainly mean that Apple would sell large quantities of Macs.

Thus, based on Apple's past marketing decisions, we can safely assume that they would price such a system at $3500, thus safely ensuring they never gain any marketshare.

Re:what's the point of a rackable mac?

[Binky The Oracle]

That or they'll come up with something incredibly cool, price it very affordably, and end up with it backordered for six months because they underestimated demand and couldn't get production ramped up quickly enough!

cheap "everyman" rackmounts

[tomdarch]

What about the idea of a stripped down, super cheap rack box?

Personally, I would use/buy several really cheap networked processor boxes for distributed rendering (3d, After Effects, FCP, etc.). It seems that it would work to make a box with a basic mobo, processor, tons of RAM and a nic (maybe a HD or firewire if necessary) - it would boot off the network and be remotely administered (both Apple strengths). If Apple can sell a G4 iMac for us$1300 with a screen and extra bells and whistles, they should be able to sell a box like I'm describing for us$800.

If they were simple enough that you could plug one into your network and have After Effects or FCP recognize it immediately, then I think that there would be a market for people who need more rendering power NOW! Imagine that on Tuesday they realize that in order to finish a project by Friday, they could justify us$1600 for two extra rendering units and have them FedExed for the final rendering run starting Wednesday night.

Maybe I'm wierd, but I would buy these 'processor boxes' just to be able to have work move along faster. (while my work doesn't justify the situation I outlined above, I would pop us$800 for an extra G4 processor for distributed rendering).

Re:cheap "everyman" rackmounts

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been brought to Apple's attention, rather, the attention of the folks at the last Apple Executive Briefing I attended. We asked about cheap, sub $1500 1U rack-mount macs. We pointed out that the server crowd would not likely buy a 16-processor Apple, but would buy 16 1-processor rack-mount Apple servers, so the latter would be a good way to pave the way for the former, unless, of course, the monster-server market dies in favor of stacks o' cheap servers.

Anyway, Apple had been under the impression that their users wanted good quality equipment and comprehensive service contracts for servers. We pointed out that at under $1500, the service contract for 10 rackmount servers is the 11th server still in a box somewhere. They definitely seemed intrigued by this line of thinking and said they'd think about it. No guarantees, of course, that they'll ever make this, but we did do our best to impress upon them the value of this market.

Also, don't forget, a G4 based solution would draw less power and put out less heat than the competition, which may not be a concern everywhere, but is still a concern in California. We made this point too, which they noted.

What I've heard from some Apple folks is that they might look at the enterprise market soon, but were concentrating on regaining lost ground in the education and creative markets. They know this market exists, they just had to clean up their own backyard before venturing elsewhere. I interpreted this as meaning that some server-specific hardware may be in the pipeline.

Re:cheap "everyman" rackmounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm wrong but this whole distributed processing is going to be thought of differently in a few years. Look at at&t's Plan9 operating system or the GNU-HURD. Mac OS X seems to be moving in this direction.Then the idea of a separate processor in a box would be more interesting.But, until the software provides the use of such devices on a regular basis (and not just for lab research)with true computing being shared among the processors I think you may have to wait. :) Plan9 is the only OS that does this now (maybe BeOS would have also). But it is out of date. Funny but the Plan9 folks are the same ones that invented UNIX.Mac OS X would hardly use one of these boxes for computing power. If I thought they would I would get one because I'm always compiling stuff that takes hours. (I use Mac OS X darwin) Bye for Now ;)