On Feb 25, 2011, at 1:26 PM, William H. Magill wrote:
>
>
> Both the Mac Mini Server and Mac Pro Server are "called" successors to the
> Xserve.
I think most people think this is fairly ridiculous too. On the order of, why
bother, Apple? Just shut it down. It's like an Egyptian free election. Just
stop calling them a legitimate or real option as a successor to the XServe. For
some other context, fine, sure. But it's a bit of comedy, this official
document of theirs showing the successors to the XServe including how to rack
mount an 8u Mac Pro Server sideways...it's just. Where is George Carlin when
you need him?
>
> As best I can tell, the current Mac Mini Server is simply a SOHO device ...
> no reasonable attachments available, no FC, etc.
> And, I definitely agree, a blade configuration of almost anything (consider
> IBM's Watson) would be a better bet.
>
> Similarly, the Mac Pro Server is still a "desk-side," SOHO device, and as
> best I can tell no rack mount version is available, but it does have the FC
> card as a standard build option.
>
> However, since the new Mac Book Pro has "Thnderbolt" I think the rest of the
> product line will also be rev'd to match soon. One might guess that Apple
> will use the new Data Center as a mechanism for showing "How Apple Hardware
> can be used in the cloud." Whatever that statement might mean... but it's
> clearly something a marketing type would make. :)
I don't know why it matters that Apple would want to show that Apple Hardware
can be used in the cloud? There's no means for anyone to pay Apple money to
replicate it. There is no sellable solution so why does it matter if it's
running on Apple hardware or an Apple OS? I don't see the connection. They've
rather clearly abandoned this market, for now, exactly like they've done in the
past (Exhibits A, B, C, D), and no doubt they will come up with yet another
idea to re-enter the server market in a more serious way than Minis and 8u
Pros. Until that time, it's one of Apple's classic sneezing moments.
Maybe if they have some serious virtualization version of Server, that they are
about to offer to the public for sale, where we can run Server on any hardware
as either host or guest, now that could be a good use for the data farm for
marketing purposes. Otherwise, if I can't buy what they are using, I don't
really care what they're doing.
>
> Of course, the great unknown... is there REALLY anything which prevents Apple
> from taking an "off the shelf" 3rd party blade configuration... (does Jobs
> talk to or play bridge with Ellison?) and then either plug in their own boot
> Proms or "skip" that part of the boot process.... (how DOES bootcamp boot?)
> Considering that Apple uses EFI, could one simply begin the "pc boot" process
> and point it to Apple's EFI... which is apparently what happens on Apple's
> intel hardware. rEFIt (refit.sourceforbe.net) seems to imply that its easy
> to do, although they are starting with intel macs that already have Apple's
> boot proms.
If it's a million or two million computers we're talking about, I would think
Apple could have those built. They don't make their own hardware anymore anyway
do they? If they really need their own hardware, in these quantities, I'd think
they could do it. But maybe even 2 million doesn't make sense to customize
minimally, I'm not sure.
As for UEFI, the stuff I've read is that Apple is using something between Intel
EFI 1.x and UEFI 2.x and that it's neither. I don't know about the latest
hardware. Perhaps it is UEFI now finally. Despite this, I have booted IBM PC
DOS 2000 on a Macbook Pro early 2008 using just the 'c' key to boot off a DVD.
It ran fine. Using rEFIt I've been able to run Fedora and Mac OS concurrently,
although in retrospect it seems I only needed rEFIt in order to have a hybrid
GPT+MBR in order to do the handoff to GRUB. I think I could dispense with the
hybrid partition, and rEFIt if I used GRUB2 with EFI support but haven't tested
it.
You know that GPT is not required to boot OS X right? The partition table can
be either APM or MBR and OS X will boot fine. The issue is the installer won't
let you install OS X on a drive that isn't using GPT, and if you can't do
firmware upgrades if the partition table isn't GPT. But I've booted OS X,
Fedora and DOS from drives that had only MBRs, no GPT.
>
> The idea that Apple would run a data center based on somebody else's software
> (i.e. not OSX) would also not be a particularly positive selling point for
> Apple.
I don't think it's relevant so long as we can't buy what they employ. If they
use Mac OS X on non Apple hardware, that would be more negative in my view than
Apple using RHEL on non-Apple hardware. Eat their own dog food that we can't
get? It's like poking us in the eye with a stick. "We get to use Mac OS X on
non-Apple hardware, and you can't. Nananabooboo. And guess what you can't
virtualize it legally either. So there." I mean come on. I think if it's not
something they're going to sell, it matters not at all one little bit if they
use non-Apple hardware and non-Apple software.
> But then again, if one looks back on Jobs explanation about the termination
> of the Xserve, "nobody is buying them," the idea begins to form -- Apple is
> no longer interested in being a "computer" company, but rather a "consumer
> (read mass market) products" company - i.e. iPhone and iPad. And besides,
> nobody cares what makes up the cloud that supports me and iTunes.
Bingo. It's a consumer company. For the vast majority of what I'd use Mac OS X
Server for, use CentOS or RHEL on commodity hardware.
Chris Murphy_______________________________________________
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