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Why do they even bother making macOS server anymore? They clearly don't care about the corporate enterprise. They keep stripping away features. No DNS, no DHCP,

Why do they even bother making macOS server anymore? They clearly don't care about the corporate enterprise. They keep stripping away features. No DNS, no DHCP, no VPN, what is anyone gaining using macOS server? If you use it you likely are going to have to hack together a bunch of services just to get it functioning.

mitjak 8y ago
The enterprise is not the only reason to make a server OS.
sephware 8y ago
1) It probably makes them at least a noticeable percentage of revenue, if not much, so that cutting it out completely would maybe cut funding for a dozen employees. They'll need to dwindle sales down first, probably by deprecating it, so that they can justify the cut internally. 2) Even if they're backpedalling on the idea of macOS as a server and pushing for migrating to open source tools, they don't want to openly admit this, that always looks bad and unprofessional. 3) They're probably phasing it out slowly and in the next release or two they will probably deprecate it, and remove it completely from MAS in the next major macOS update. 4) They'll want to wait until they can play up their contribution and downplays that they were on the wrong side of history: "We're deprecating macOS Server, which has been a boon and a huge innovation in this space for 20 years, and helped $N millions of customers, but at this point the open source community has finally caught up to our quality." 5) At that point, the remaining useful features will be integrated into macOS proper for free, and they'll tout how they're benefiting everyone by doing this and simplifying everyone's workflow and saving everyone money.
- jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
  > ) Even if they're backpedalling on the idea of macOS as a server and pushing for migrating to open source tools, they don't want to openly admit this, that always looks bad and unprofessional. I think it looks way worse to just let it limp along and slowly die. Fail fast, learn your lesson, and move on. >1) It probably makes them at least a noticeable percentage of revenue, if not much, so that cutting it out completely would maybe cut funding for a dozen employees. They are APPLE, they have ridiculous cash. If said employees are of a high quality/standard then I am sure they can figure out something else for them to do at Apple. Even if it means paying them for a few months while they get trained up on a new project/department.
  - sephware 8y ago
    > I think it looks way worse to just let it limp along and slowly die. Fail fast, learn your lesson, and move on. The benefit of limping along and dying slowly is that it can be relatively quiet and uneventful, and at least the project dies with the appearance of dignity, even though it's actually the opposite. Investors applaud "sticking it out" even though the engineers knew it was dead for years. Review sites write poignant eulogies, instead of writing angry rants which they would do if it was cut short. The thing about software (and probably most kinds of products) is that there's always someone who relies on it, no matter how dumb of an idea the product is, and usually that group is larger than you expect or seems reasonable. Those people are often the ones who yell the loudest when you inconvenience them, which is why Apple has to pander to them by torturing macOS Server to death instead of euthanizing it. > They are APPLE, they have ridiculous cash. They have always acted like a start-up that's strapped for cash. I've known many Apple employees and it's just been part of the culture, that if you work at Apple, you're going to wear many hats and they're going to utilize every second of yours to 200%. It was especially so this in the days of Jobs, and I doubt it's changed much in the past decade.
    - jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
      >Investors applaud "sticking it out" I am an investor (not in Apple, but other companies). Believe me, as an investor, there is nothing more that I want than for a company fail fast, and drop things quickly when they aren't working out. The worst thing for an investor is when a company tries to "stick it out" (investors read that as "wasting money").
  - zerkten 8y ago
    > I think it looks way worse to just let it limp along and slowly die. Fail fast, learn your lesson, and move on. I'm sure Apple are well aware of the lesson and are simply doing the right thing for the folks who did invest in macOS as a server. It is possible for a company to learn their lesson and do the best thing they can for their customer. Apple's financial position enables them to give a much longer runway than a typical startup changing direction.
sirn 8y ago
The announcement sounded to me like they're refocusing Server.app for Profile Manager / MDM than one-application-do-it-all approach like they did previously. I think this benefit even more for enterprise users, because they're likely not going to use the bundled Apache/Dovecot/etc. that came with Server.app, but rather using existing infrastructure they already had in place anyway. Edit: one thing to note: macOS Server is not an entire OS, but rather a Server.app application running on top of existing macOS installation that you can download from Mac App Store.
- wcfields 8y ago
  Profile manager / MDM on MacOS Server is a goddamn nightmare. It's amazing when it works, but when it breaks you're SOL. Case in point is I inherited a semi-broken system when I started my job 3 years ago. ~40 enrolled laptops but couldn't add any more. Peeking into the logs the SQL server built into the .app bundle broke/corrupted. Many others in the Apple forums had the same issue but no resolution and the solution ended up being "flatten and reinstall". For a small business, sure Profile Manager might work, but scale beyond 10-20 users Jamf Pro is the way to go.
  - EvanAnderson 8y ago
    One of my friends spoke to an Apple engineer about problems he was having "scaling" Profile manager. The engineer basically laughed and said that they never actually intended for anybody to use Profile Manager.
enitihas 8y ago
iOS build servers maybe?
- plorkyeran 8y ago
  None of the macOS server functionality is particularly relevant to build servers. We don't use it at all despite having a decent-sized build fleet and instead do everything that doesn't have to run on macOS on linux servers.
- sirn 8y ago
  I don't think you even need Server.app for Xcode Server anymore. It's now built into Xcode.app.
  - george_perez 8y ago
    Yep, you're right. They've been slowly decoupling services from macOS Server to macOS. A big one is content caching which was added to macOS High Sierra under System Preferences > Sharing > Content Caching. It will cache iCloud and software updates so that devices checking for updates go though that cache.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
amaccuish 8y ago
> No DNS, no DHCP, no VPN, what is anyone gaining using macOS server Probably because the big enterprise go for Microsoft and Active Directory, and the small ones go for nothing, just a "home" router, and iCloud/GApps/O365. Or you can spin up a Linux box and do most of this if you start getting bigger. The only place I can see this is large Mac heavy shops like designers etc. But even then, most of the MDM stuff can be hosted outside.

mitjak 8y ago

The enterprise is not the only reason to make a server OS.

sephware 8y ago

1) It probably makes them at least a noticeable percentage of revenue, if not much, so that cutting it out completely would maybe cut funding for a dozen employees. They'll need to dwindle sales down first, probably by deprecating it, so that they can justify the cut internally. 2) Even if they're backpedalling on the idea of macOS as a server and pushing for migrating to open source tools, they don't want to openly admit this, that always looks bad and unprofessional. 3) They're probably phasing it out slowly and in the next release or two they will probably deprecate it, and remove it completely from MAS in the next major macOS update. 4) They'll want to wait until they can play up their contribution and downplays that they were on the wrong side of history: "We're deprecating macOS Server, which has been a boon and a huge innovation in this space for 20 years, and helped $N millions of customers, but at this point the open source community has finally caught up to our quality." 5) At that point, the remaining useful features will be integrated into macOS proper for free, and they'll tout how they're benefiting everyone by doing this and simplifying everyone's workflow and saving everyone money.

jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
> ) Even if they're backpedalling on the idea of macOS as a server and pushing for migrating to open source tools, they don't want to openly admit this, that always looks bad and unprofessional. I think it looks way worse to just let it limp along and slowly die. Fail fast, learn your lesson, and move on. >1) It probably makes them at least a noticeable percentage of revenue, if not much, so that cutting it out completely would maybe cut funding for a dozen employees. They are APPLE, they have ridiculous cash. If said employees are of a high quality/standard then I am sure they can figure out something else for them to do at Apple. Even if it means paying them for a few months while they get trained up on a new project/department.
- sephware 8y ago
  > I think it looks way worse to just let it limp along and slowly die. Fail fast, learn your lesson, and move on. The benefit of limping along and dying slowly is that it can be relatively quiet and uneventful, and at least the project dies with the appearance of dignity, even though it's actually the opposite. Investors applaud "sticking it out" even though the engineers knew it was dead for years. Review sites write poignant eulogies, instead of writing angry rants which they would do if it was cut short. The thing about software (and probably most kinds of products) is that there's always someone who relies on it, no matter how dumb of an idea the product is, and usually that group is larger than you expect or seems reasonable. Those people are often the ones who yell the loudest when you inconvenience them, which is why Apple has to pander to them by torturing macOS Server to death instead of euthanizing it. > They are APPLE, they have ridiculous cash. They have always acted like a start-up that's strapped for cash. I've known many Apple employees and it's just been part of the culture, that if you work at Apple, you're going to wear many hats and they're going to utilize every second of yours to 200%. It was especially so this in the days of Jobs, and I doubt it's changed much in the past decade.
  - jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
    >Investors applaud "sticking it out" I am an investor (not in Apple, but other companies). Believe me, as an investor, there is nothing more that I want than for a company fail fast, and drop things quickly when they aren't working out. The worst thing for an investor is when a company tries to "stick it out" (investors read that as "wasting money").
- zerkten 8y ago
  > I think it looks way worse to just let it limp along and slowly die. Fail fast, learn your lesson, and move on. I'm sure Apple are well aware of the lesson and are simply doing the right thing for the folks who did invest in macOS as a server. It is possible for a company to learn their lesson and do the best thing they can for their customer. Apple's financial position enables them to give a much longer runway than a typical startup changing direction.

sirn 8y ago

The announcement sounded to me like they're refocusing Server.app for Profile Manager / MDM than one-application-do-it-all approach like they did previously. I think this benefit even more for enterprise users, because they're likely not going to use the bundled Apache/Dovecot/etc. that came with Server.app, but rather using existing infrastructure they already had in place anyway. Edit: one thing to note: macOS Server is not an entire OS, but rather a Server.app application running on top of existing macOS installation that you can download from Mac App Store.

wcfields 8y ago
Profile manager / MDM on MacOS Server is a goddamn nightmare. It's amazing when it works, but when it breaks you're SOL. Case in point is I inherited a semi-broken system when I started my job 3 years ago. ~40 enrolled laptops but couldn't add any more. Peeking into the logs the SQL server built into the .app bundle broke/corrupted. Many others in the Apple forums had the same issue but no resolution and the solution ended up being "flatten and reinstall". For a small business, sure Profile Manager might work, but scale beyond 10-20 users Jamf Pro is the way to go.
- EvanAnderson 8y ago
  One of my friends spoke to an Apple engineer about problems he was having "scaling" Profile manager. The engineer basically laughed and said that they never actually intended for anybody to use Profile Manager.

enitihas 8y ago

iOS build servers maybe?

plorkyeran 8y ago
None of the macOS server functionality is particularly relevant to build servers. We don't use it at all despite having a decent-sized build fleet and instead do everything that doesn't have to run on macOS on linux servers.
sirn 8y ago
I don't think you even need Server.app for Xcode Server anymore. It's now built into Xcode.app.
- george_perez 8y ago
  Yep, you're right. They've been slowly decoupling services from macOS Server to macOS. A big one is content caching which was added to macOS High Sierra under System Preferences > Sharing > Content Caching. It will cache iCloud and software updates so that devices checking for updates go though that cache.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

amaccuish 8y ago

> No DNS, no DHCP, no VPN, what is anyone gaining using macOS server Probably because the big enterprise go for Microsoft and Active Directory, and the small ones go for nothing, just a "home" router, and iCloud/GApps/O365. Or you can spin up a Linux box and do most of this if you start getting bigger. The only place I can see this is large Mac heavy shops like designers etc. But even then, most of the MDM stuff can be hosted outside.