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I'm really surprised it still exists. I've actually tried to use a few of these services on OS X server at various points in the past. It never worked very well
by willyt 8y ago
I'm really surprised it still exists. I've actually tried to use a few of these services on OS X server at various points in the past. It never worked very well behind NAT; anyone that can afford their own IP space is not going to need hand held through setting up Dovecot or BIND.
The GUI is supposed to make it easy to get this kind of stuff set up without really understanding what it does. But, something strange always went wrong which required trying to understand what the hell the open source software was doing at the same time as trying to understand where in the configuration file hierarchy the apple GUI was inserting its config and what this was doing.
Having tinkered a bit with various services on Linux since, its much easier to cut out the middle man, install from scratch and configure a vanilla installation using the config files. All the helpful comments on the options in the config files make it much easier to understand what's happening anyway.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoI tried it years ago and it was a terrible product for exactly the reasons you mentioned - one click smiley-GUI setup that consistently failed to work. And lots of stuck-on features that I couldn't imagine anyone using in a small office, like a barebones custom Wiki. I never understood where Apple were going with it. As I understand it, it was a solid product that did what it was supposed to - i.e. help network admins manage a network full of Macs and i-devices. Then those features disappeared, and it turned into My Little Server, but worse. Which is a shame, because there may be a market for a good server product, and Apple could have owned it.