Apple Steve Jobs has reportedly responded to an Xserve user who lamented the cancellation of the product via email:
Full article (in French) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Sean P.” and “Jax44” for the heads up.]
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@DLMeyer:
<Quote>Some of you seem to have missed the earlier posting that mentioned the Mac mini Serve was selling well. That model doesn’t even have an optical drive!</Quote>
All the Macs will drop the optical drive very soon, so that’s not a point.
But you really, really need hot-swappable hard-drives and PSUs for an enterprise level server.
If Apple allows 3rd parties to use OS X server in a virtual environment, I don’t seen a big problem, but they should start explaining that solution and advertising that solution.
Otherwise, they should build a rack mount version of the Mac mini with two hot-swappable HDs and two hot-swappable PSUs.
And I’m still curious as to what they are going to use in their own data centers like the N.C. server farm. They should sell or promote the same solution to Apple-centric businesses.
Full Disclosure: I love SJ and what he has done for the company. I do not like this move however and am shocked with the lameness of his reply. It is hard for me to say it, but it is kind of shameful to throw really nice technology out the window because they don’t want to figure it out a way of making it sell (lower prices, get out there more to sell it, find something to make it unique, etc., etc). Maybe Apple is getting too fat, dumb and happy with their 51B cash lying around to make the effort. Sad.
Another example as who cares about our clients we only are interested in comsumer products they can control with an iron fist. Microsoft may have an uphill battle in the phone market but enterprise has now been lost by apple.
Does Steve read French?
Where would Apple be now if he said that about the Macs when he when he returned? or the Apple TV… Couldn’t J. Ives and engineering folk have been invited to redesign the XServe and make it smaller, lighter (cheaper) and faster than before. Isn’t this the spirit of innovation? (rather than giving up because they are not selling well). Questions without answers.
It appears to me that Apple has a sophisticated strategy of paradigm shifting that is designed to accelerate it past the competition. Not one of you has commented on the growth in cloud computing. Relax and sit back and be patient. There is little that Apple has ‘abandoned’ that, in retrospect, we didn’t gain from in the end.
I look forward to see what they have in store for us.
First, these emails are usually fake.
Second, the cost of competing 1U products has gone down and Apple lost their cost advantage a while back. They would do better to license out the OSX server software to a partner like Unisys.
Apple knows better than to beat a dead horse. The server market has now become a commodity item and Apple can’t use their using product quality to make headway into the business.
There are customers that look forward to a full range of Apple products. The Xserve contributes such a range.
There are full sets of products within iPods, iPads, iMacs, laptops. The server group loses their flagship hardware product.
As sad as I am to see the the Xserve disappear I can see where Jobs’ head is at. Virtualization is where this field is moving to. OSX Server does work in a virtualized environment. VMware is a very big player in the enterprise virtualization market and their products are very robust. Not a problem to add OSX Server OS as a VM machine. If you are a smaller operation and not interested in virtualizing your server environment then put in a Mac Pro. It’s that simple.
With the success of the Mac mini Server, the need for a 1U server, which was never a big seller for Apple anyway, became moot. The Mac mini Server is significantly less expensive, smaller, and fulfills the needs of the vast majority of those who want a server (mostly for software needs, not necessarily data crunching).
Face it folks, Apple made a business decision based on production. Maybe Apple didn’t promote and push XServe like it could have, but that’s not Apple’s core product nor it’s bread and butter.
People need to realize that no organization can do EVERYTHING, especially not ALL AT ONCE. What apparently happened is that Apple had certain sales goals they wanted to hit given a certain level of effort they put in to developing the XServe. They didn’t hit their targets, so they had to decide whether to radically expand their effort on the chance that MAYBE they could overcome the IT weenies reluctance to buy anything Apple in a VERY competitive space, or focus their effort in areas where there are already strong and see enormous growth potential (iPhone/iPad/iOS, new areas). Jobs has already said that they are committed to mobile and this time, they are in it to WIN (market share). Android is rapidly catching up to iOS market share in mobile phones, if they haven’t already surpassed iOS, and there is no room for error or Apple could end up with 5% of the smartphone market as they did with Macs. We know from multiple news/historical accounts that Apple competes by acting like a startup: focusing enormous attention, all the way up to the C-level, on new products and enhancements in target areas. They do not try to have numerous products; they succeed by having a few great ones. Jobs and his team have only so much time in the day. No doubt, Apple would love to be successful in every arena they enter, but that will never happen. Sometimes, the most important thing a CEO can do is stop competing in one area so that the company can focus on its strengths. BTW, the new Mac Pro server product suggests that Apple hasn’t given up on the SMB server market, just the large scale data center/enterprise space.
Well said Original Jake. The large scale data center/enterprise space have all moved to the virtualized server environment.
Few schools and universities just went for Xserve racks two years ago after a decade of windose troubles. They thought to be finally relieved… But here: see! Apple just stops Xserves… very hard way to get back to reality. Over 65 piled Xserves in one of the places, over twenty in another, to be them next replaced by windose machines back again… too bad!
Some ITs must just laugh after those dummy who went for Apple, this time… and my guess is that Balmer is all laughing with them too!
Xserves also had their halo effect, you know. Here Steve, in spite of his “visionnarism” has definitly made a booboo!
I think Apple’s future is clear in the server space:
1) Concurrent updates of OS X server with regular OS X updates at reasonable license prices.
2) Provide specialized hardware to run OS X server (mac mini and Pro — and BTW the pro version could work well for any school district).
3) Make sure their OS’s play well with the more prevalent server software out there so that businesses continue to buy those devices in droves.
For better than 99 percent of Apple’s target market (consumers, small to medium businesses and education), this all works fine. For the other 1 percent, well, either make room for larger server hardware or switch to something else when it’s time to update again (which I’m sure sucks, but it’s the way it is).
Killing the Xserve shouts one simple thing:
Apple does not care about the Enterprise.
That’s bad.
And it’s not the first time Apple has said it. I see no chance in the future that Enterprise will take Apple seriously. It’s over. That’s a shame.
Boo hoo, Apple stopped selling a
money-loser. Watch out, this must mean Jobs has no idea what he’s doing.
OMG, the sky is falling!!!
I don’t like reverse trolls either. Who needs this crap:
Anonymous ‘Me’ sez: “Boo hoo, Apple stopped selling a
money-loser. Watch out, this must mean Jobs has no idea what he’s doing. OMG, the sky is falling!!!”
(o_0)
They are going to came up with a powerful mac mini, you’ll see.
“I love SJ and what he has done for the company.”
“Maybe Apple is getting too fat, dumb and happy with their 51B cash lying around to make the effort. Sad.”
Troll Alert.
“Apple does not care about the Enterprise.”
No shit, Sherlock. Apple never has.
Damn if you do, damn f you don’t ..nowadays you are a troll no matter what on this site – bash or embrace, you are still a troll, paranoia being the operative word here…
@ January 24, 1984
“What is Apple using in NC?”
Based on Apple’s own job postings, really serious heavy duty stuff from IBM, Sun/Solaris, Red Hat Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Windows.
http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJob&RID=62312&CurrentPage=8
http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJob&RID=63053&CurrentPage=11
I think Jobs envisions the need for packing numerous 1U cases into multiple racks as disappearing. How many cores will exist on a CPU in the very near future? How many RAID drives will be needed?
I think he sees the technology taking a different path, rather than going down the road of bigger and more complex systems within today’s design paradigms.
Ok. So, what is Apple using in the BILLION DOLLAR SERVER FARM? Apple is expanding their server service and dropping 1 of the 3 box types it came in.