3 ms·

The mach kernels in general are buggy, regardless of the release. e.g. I'm pretty sure they end up delivering SIGPIPE to the wrong thread in some circumstances

by lmb 9y ago

The mach kernels in general are buggy, regardless of the release. e.g. I'm pretty sure they end up delivering SIGPIPE to the wrong thread in some circumstances on Sierra. There is also a problem with recvmsg not returning control messages some time. Another reason they killed OS X Server maybe.

pjmlp 9y ago
To be fair, the whole story about signals and threads on UNIX OSes is not that clean.
astrodust 9y ago
They killed server because that was a losing battle: Apple was never going to "win" at servers. Despite all their effort they managed to score only a few modest wins, and the intense competition in that space made it a huge distraction. Remember Apple started down the "server" road decades ago with their A/UX UNIX server (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX). Throughout the 1990s you could get a high-end Mac spec'd as a UNIX machine if you wanted, though I've only ever seen a handful in the wild. The introduction of a special-purpose server was an anomaly, the Xserve had no specific predecessor, perhaps some kind of "go big or go home" effort on Apple's part. While that system wasn't bad by the standards of the time, it couldn't compete with the likes of Dell, HP and others who offered way more flexibility on configuration and who would seemingly sell super budget low-end servers at a loss to lock people into their product line so they can squeeze them on support costs, a model Apple's allergic to.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Still it did fulfil a market, servers for Apple shops. Now there is only Mac minis for it.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Even then they realized it was a losing battle. Apple is an Apple shop and even they couldn't use their own gear at scale. I'm sure when the Xserve team saw racks and racks and racks of generic kit in Apple's own datacentres they realized they weren't going to win. You're right that the Mini is a very capable workgroup server, and providers like http://macminicolo.net/ http://macminicolo.net/ are hosting Mac "servers" by the thousands, so it's not like they've completely given up. Intel's the only other player in this space with their NUC machines and those tend to cost as much or more. Hopefully they'll kit out the Mini better in the 2018 iterations. That 2012 quad-code i7 variant was an exceptional unit.
0x0 9y ago
On the other hand, the Darwin kernel also powers iOS, and Apple seems to be eager to keep the system secure so that the App Store appears trustworthy. While a local privilege escalation might seem dull on macOS, the fact that the same flaw might affect iOS where untrustworthy local apps need to be sandboxed is probably the saving grace for Macs.

by lmb 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago

To be fair, the whole story about signals and threads on UNIX OSes is not that clean.

astrodust 9y ago

They killed server because that was a losing battle: Apple was never going to "win" at servers. Despite all their effort they managed to score only a few modest wins, and the intense competition in that space made it a huge distraction. Remember Apple started down the "server" road decades ago with their A/UX UNIX server (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX). Throughout the 1990s you could get a high-end Mac spec'd as a UNIX machine if you wanted, though I've only ever seen a handful in the wild. The introduction of a special-purpose server was an anomaly, the Xserve had no specific predecessor, perhaps some kind of "go big or go home" effort on Apple's part. While that system wasn't bad by the standards of the time, it couldn't compete with the likes of Dell, HP and others who offered way more flexibility on configuration and who would seemingly sell super budget low-end servers at a loss to lock people into their product line so they can squeeze them on support costs, a model Apple's allergic to.

pjmlp 9y ago
Still it did fulfil a market, servers for Apple shops. Now there is only Mac minis for it.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Even then they realized it was a losing battle. Apple is an Apple shop and even they couldn't use their own gear at scale. I'm sure when the Xserve team saw racks and racks and racks of generic kit in Apple's own datacentres they realized they weren't going to win. You're right that the Mini is a very capable workgroup server, and providers like http://macminicolo.net/ http://macminicolo.net/ are hosting Mac "servers" by the thousands, so it's not like they've completely given up. Intel's the only other player in this space with their NUC machines and those tend to cost as much or more. Hopefully they'll kit out the Mini better in the 2018 iterations. That 2012 quad-code i7 variant was an exceptional unit.

0x0 9y ago

On the other hand, the Darwin kernel also powers iOS, and Apple seems to be eager to keep the system secure so that the App Store appears trustworthy. While a local privilege escalation might seem dull on macOS, the fact that the same flaw might affect iOS where untrustworthy local apps need to be sandboxed is probably the saving grace for Macs.