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Apple's MacOS Server has a 1.5/5 rating on the Mac App Store

328 points by ethanpil 7y ago

mattl 7y ago
Mac OS X was first released as Mac OS X Server 1.0, the commercial release of Rhapsody, and then released as Mac OS X Server for Cheetah, Puma, Panther, Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard, before being released as a standalone update to Lion, and then hitting the App Store for $19.99 for all future releases.
Aqua_Geek 7y ago
I think the team that was working on this has been disbanded.
rvz 7y ago
Changelog for 5.10: > Device Enrollment: Enable FileVault support on first user login > Send all traffic through VPN Great work Apple! > Release date: Apr 1st 2020 Oh dear, Nevermind.
m463 7y ago
why would they want to compete with their cloud strategy?
- aquabeagle 7y ago
  Because macOS Server was a large reason why companies bought the Mac Mini.
  - kstrauser 7y ago
    Think so? I didn’t know Apple even made a server package since 2010 or so. I bought a Mini so I could have a low cost, decently specced desktop Mac hooked up to my two large monitors at home. An iMac was too expensive and I’d rather use standalone displays anyway. We also have lots of them in my wife’s office for the same reasons.
    - gambiting 7y ago
      I mean, companies literally made rack mounts for Mac Minis, to install 6-8x of them at once in proper server racks. They didn't build this because no one was using it.
      - kstrauser 7y ago
        The post I was replying to said that was a large part of the reason to buy Mac Minis. First, even though there were quite a few decent-sized Mac Mini deployments like you're describing, I'd be genuinely surprised if that accounted for a decent chunk of Mini sales overall. Some, sure! But most? I wouldn't expect it. Second, does any of that require running Server? We have a database and application server in the office here, but it's not running Server: it's just plain macOS running daemon processes.
        btian 7y ago
        I feel that at least 80% of Mac Mini sales are for server. Why would people buy that over the iMac for daily use?
        kstrauser 7y ago
        Note that "server" is a role you might use a Mini for, but "Server" in the article's title is a specific software package. You can have a server not running Server. Also, I bought a Mini for my desktop because it's tiny, cheap, and powerful, and I can use my own screens.
        chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        At least a decade ago, it wasn't that uncommon for me to see Mac minis kicking around as "office worker" desktops in places that gave developers Mac laptops. Get one of those, bring your own cheaper display, plug in a wired keyboard, and go. My suspicion is that "cheap desktop" has always accounted for more Mac mini sales than it's usually given credit for.
      - tracker1 7y ago
  - bsg75 7y ago
    Companies maybe. I bought the last of the previous generation to have a small desktop with redundant internal drives. A Mac Pro would have been budget overkill. At the time is was useful, as the Mac desktop was my daily driver. Unfortunately current macOS versions are really sluggish, so its currently a home "server" running Fedora 31. The 16GB RAM limit is becoming a bit of a problem, so I will likely replace it with an Intel NUC.
    - kstrauser 7y ago
      The Mini I bought last fall has 32GB of RAM.
- pwthornton 7y ago
  I don't think this would actually compete. It would more likely be a compliment for certain kinds of usecases. Apple just doesn't seem to care to put in the effort. I don't think their neglect of MacOS Server has anything to do with trying to protect their cloud offerings. Even a wildly successful MacOS Server strategy wouldn't be that much revenue versus some of their other lines, but it could provide real value and help to certain kinds of businesses and users.
  - wkearney99 7y ago
    I'd venture it had more to do with not being able to actually compete at an enterprise level. Far more profitable to sell to individual users than take on the much greater cost of sales for server products. If it's just a server they couldn't compete anywhere near as profitably.
  - toyg 7y ago
    Cook takes Jobs’ zealotry for pruning (which he probably developed in reaction to the struggles of “first” Apple) as religion. Anything that doesn’t make boatload of money gets cut or left to rot. Macmini and OSX Server were products for niche markets that “second Apple” is completely disinterested in.
  - m463 7y ago
    Apple could - in a very short time - revitalize os x server just by allowing icloud to redirect to the server. Think "apple id/icloud in a box". That would be actual privacy.
xd1936 7y ago
They've taken out so many features, what's left in it? User credential management/enrollment and...?
- mrpippy 7y ago
  and Xsan. Everything else is either in the base OS (Content Caching), or open-sourced/abandoned (Calendar/Contacts Server)
jsjddbbwj 7y ago
Why was this submitted? To prove Apple does not manipulate the ratings of their listings? :P
- pwthornton 7y ago
  I assume to show how neglected this has gotten. MacOS Server used to be a lot more popular and a lot more loved. I understand this isn't a remotely core part of their business, but I don't understand why you would want such a quarter-assed product out there with your name on it. A small team, which Apple can afford, could keep this a good offering that helps out certain kinds of Mac users.
  - mywittyname 7y ago
    This seems like a great opportunity for some small team that wants to get acqui-hired by Apple in a few years for a cool billion. I doubt the domain will get much love because it is a niche product that lives and dies on the whims of a mega-corp. But a small startup could probably bootstrap itself to profitability. Worst case is they get a good five-ten years of being your own boss until the market dries completely or Apple finally decides to compete (but not buy your company).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
oneplane 7y ago
To be fair: while they did leave all the classical 'server' type use cases out in the cold and are making it worse every release, it's not actually the future or the best practice to still roll out. We are in between the legacy 'directory' based networks with authentication etc, and the more robust and expansive beyondcorp type setups. Do you really still need classical 'user' and 'group' membership things? Network accounts? Local web servers? Pretty much anything of significance is in a private or public cloud, if only because the fast pace and scaling. All that is left is basic file sharing that is sometimes done locally, and even that is becoming more and more stupid to implement in a workflow or business process. (regardless of your OS or vendor) There are of course still some true file-based processes where Apple is still used a lot, but even that is no longer local-file-only; a lot of the still and motion processing is done either super small locally or simply distributed to dedicated systems like render farms. And for the 1-man-photo business all of the local stuff still works and you really wouldn't have gotten anything out of 'server' anyway. The most problematic holdouts are the likes of Adobe who refuse to write applications that play nice with NAS-type filesharing so that just leaves you with file syncing instead.
- briffle 7y ago
  Unfortunately, most compliance policies (SOC2, PCI, HIPAA, SOX, etc) remain very outdated, and make this a challenge for anyone that needs to meet compliance needs.
  - closeparen 7y ago
    There are large, serious, public companies on Azure AD, OneLogin, Okta, etc. They often like those services because they eat some of the compliance burden. This doesn't ring true.
- Spivak 7y ago
  Uhh what? I'm with you that the days of the "trusted internal network" are coming to an end but you're insane if you think that directories are going away. LDAP has certainly fallen out of favor but every SaSS user management platform / service is just implementing what are essentially "noLDAP" directories. What do you think is providing the authentication and user management in those private clouds? OpenLDAP, FreeIPA, ActiveDirectory, Keycloak? And even when you move everything out of the office to a datacenter you still need all normal IT stuff that you needed in your little office rack just in the datacenter now. The only part of the "old-guard" IT stack I see disappearing is the office file server.
minikites 7y ago
I'm beginning to think Apple isn't very good at making software that its users want or need because their focus is flashy fluff that demos well on stage.
- droopyEyelids 7y ago
  True... but who are you comparing them to?
- ulfw 7y ago
  I can't remember a Server demo on stage. Must have been more than a decade ago. So I am not sure what you're getting at.
shp0ngle 7y ago
What was XSan exactly? The only thing I know is that it had a really nice icon and box art.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  "X" because it was MacOS X, and "SAN" for Storage Area Network. Shared local storage, like for video production houses. At the time, it was ludicrously fast. It also worked with Windows, Linux and Unix machines. Pretty much anything that supported Fibre Channel connections.
  - sabujp 7y ago
    ohh i remember those days. Was using Xsan with 2 xserves attached to infortrend eonstors. I spent so long trying to get it stabilized and reformatted the entire FS so many times. Eventually got rid of osxserver and learned how to install gentoo linux on the xservers. Tracked all the issues to a faulty riser card in one of the boxes (but had to use linux to get the low level details)! Eventually went GPFS and trashed the xserve hardware as well.
- larkost 7y ago
  It is Apple's rebranding of StoreNext's SAN product. I used to run a setup, and other then a ton of knobs to turn for tuning with little explanation, it was a pretty good product. I wish Apple had really run the ball there (e.g.: ad-hock clients), but for a server setup my memories of it are nice.
animalnewbie 7y ago
Apple underestimates the intelligence of it's professional users.
- rch 7y ago
  Not really, Apple has simply pivoted to focus on the much larger consumer (or prosumer) market.
cjamesd 7y ago
Ironically, this leads me to trust the rest of the reviews on their site. Maybe they're not all fake.
- sleepless 7y ago
  True, but in germany they disallowed rating macOS Catalina. That's a very shady policy - having a rating system for all developers, but excluding your own most prominent and important software from store reviews. Just one of many hilarious Apple moves.
  - dolguldur 7y ago
    Also, if you cancel any subscription (maybe just to make sure it doesn't accidentally get renewed), you get to keep however many days you have left. Not so with their own free one year Apple TV subscription that came with the latest phones. If you cancel that, there's an alert telling you you'll lose it immediately. Clearly tilting the playing field again and again.
    - labcomputer 7y ago
      That's only true for free trials. If you pay for Apple TV+ / Apple Music / Apple News and then cancel, you can keep using it through the end of the period you paid for.
code4tee 7y ago
Former big time user here. The product slowly declined from its own operating system to a buggy app. We really had no choice but to migrate onto other products and these days even hard core Mac folks use AD for directory, Exchange for email and 3rd party products for device management.
derefr 7y ago
IMHO, the direct competitor of Server.app in the "SMB office server" use-case is actually a Synology NAS appliance. Synology's set of first-party OS packages has 1:1 feature parity (and then some) with every function Server.app either has, or used to have. And that's the key-word here: appliance. A NAS is a standalone box that receives automatic updates, is 100% remote-management enabled by default, can be easily reset to factory settings, and can't be messed up by employees who think it'd be neat to run local native apps on it, "since it's a computer just sitting there." Plus, since a NAS isn't going to be doing any desktop-OS things, the software for it can be slimmed down enough to run on lower-specced hardware, making the appliance itself much cheaper than the sort of machine required to run Server.app smoothly. No SMB office-manager who needs this kind of functionality these days would buy a Mac or PC, to set up server software on it and leave it sitting there headless in the office. They'd buy a NAS. And, IMHO, that's why Apple haven't kept Server.app up to date. There's just no demand for it any more. Not because of the cloud (which is mostly a complementary use-case) but rather because this software-solution vertical has now evolved into a turn-key hardware-appliance solution vertical. And it's one with slim-enough profit margins, that Apple doesn't want to compete.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  > And, IMHO, that's why Apple haven't kept Server.app up to date. There's just no demand for it any more. This seems to be a primary driver of the software-rot found all across Apple's ecosystem. iOS is generally pretty well-maintained; macOS less-so. Apps like Music are kept in better condition than, say, Podcasts. Etc. You can almost directly correlate how unpopular a piece (or feature) of its first-party software is with how buggy it is. Which I guess makes some amount of sense, but it really tarnishes Apple's image as a company selling high-end products.
  - smnrchrds 7y ago
    Research In Motion (RIM) later renamed to BlackBerry Ltd. 37Signals renamed to Basecamp. I wonder if at some point Apple Inc. would rename to iPhone Inc.
    - 7y ago
bluedino 7y ago
Performance was mediocre compared to Linux. Everything that it shipped with was outdated. There was a weird mix of GUI tools and commandline to get anything done. And to top it off, things were (at the very least) just-different-enough to confuse someone who thought, "I know Linux this will be easy."
- monadic2 7y ago
  This is the first time I have heard a kerberos/ldap setup referred to as “easy”.
mrweasel 7y ago
Well 2.3 now, but that’s based on 4 reviews.
nemacol 7y ago
I setup a mac mini with this software (3rd quarter 2019) and I can tell you it deserves every bit of that 1.5 rating. No magic left in there at all. Ended up dropping it and using the functionality of Airwatch.
Angostura 7y ago
I remember when it was first launched - at the same time as the Mini and it was absolutely awesome. Then it rotted.
mdread 7y ago
One man shop pro fotog here. My macOS server 5.6.3 High Sierra is awesome, the last complete version... File Server with literally decades and multiple terabytes of raw photos… The ease of the email server is unmatched…. Websites and Nextcloud, invoiceninja, all just work with minimal php tweaking…. and all here IN MY OFFICE. I have linux droplets, and am more or less ready to make the move, but I won’t until it actually dies… but only when I have to. I hope the hardware (from 2010) holds out forever, but I do have a spare ready and daily CCC backups and disks rotated to firesafe… at least for me it just works. Knock on wood.
- mceachen 7y ago
  Are you exposing any ports to the internet? The older library versions in High Sierra have numerous security issues (of various severity). You might be able to reduce your risk by disabling server features, but that's a dangerous game of whack-a-mole. (Also, as a fellow self-hosting fotog (that never went pro): you should try PhotoStructure! Details in my profile).
  - mdread 7y ago
    Yea, no kidding, I wish apple would open source server.app, so some of the old components could be updated without hacking it. It was just a perfect all in one solution. I will check out Photostructure.
- cmurf 7y ago
  Unfortunately there's no data checksumming with APFS. Last time I checked, ages ago, CCC wasn't using a version of rsync that supports checksums. Newish versions (for a few years) of DNG compute separate checksums for DNG metadata and raw/image data, but to what degree applications use this to verify the integrity of the image file may vary. Image silent data corruption via bitrot can be frustrating. Without a regime to prevent it, it spreads into all backups. And typical workflows depend on backups for eventual migration to new storage which allows any corruption to be replicated via the backup strategy. You end up backing up the corruption, unwittingly.
  - 7y ago
olliej 7y ago
it still exists?
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
Yup. It stinks. They made a decision to leave the backbone/infrastructure market. I don't blame them. The main thing about MacOSX Server, is that I don't trust it to be around too much longer. A Linux box will be around, in one form or another, forever. However, it's easier for me to buy some canned solution; either pure software, an SaaS, or a hardware solution.
Razengan 7y ago
This is literally just a link to an App Store product page.
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
While it's a shame that the OS X, er, Mac OS Server "app" has basically been killed over the last few years (maybe more than a few at this point), I suspect it just wasn't selling very well. I know it had some great tools for configuring and setting up some services, but if you're a engineering-focused company you're probably going to use Linux for office servers; on the business/office side, you're very likely going to just go with Microsoft; if you need web or server hosting, you're almost certainly doing it off-premises, not with a Mac mini stuffed in the corner. That mostly leaves enthusiast and small office scenarios, most of which can get by just fine with "non-server" macOS. After all, they've always literally been the same operating system. My Mac mini is a headless media and file server and has, in the past, been the printer server as well -- and all of that's enabled just by clicking boxes in the "Sharing" control panel. (Heck, I could even turn on "content caching" to have it keep a copy of all macOS/iOS software updates on it, which would be great for a small-to-medium office.)
roboyoshi 7y ago
IMO Apple deserves all the hate on this one. It was good once. Thank god I moved on to proper servers with linux. They should just kill it and let the community take over.
divbzero 7y ago
For context, the majority of server features were removed in macOS Server 5.7.1, with a few features migrated to macOS High Sierra and the remainder left to be handled by open source alternatives. The initial announcement from Apple was discussed on HN in 2018. [1] [2] [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18113147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18113147
KiDD 7y ago
Real admins run linux anyways and should have no problem implementing common services. Supporting every little mom and pop that doesn't understand DNS, ports, file permissions or network users, which is generally looking for the cheapest solution will be be trying to integrate the lowest of the low end equipment and may cause even more problems beyond the control of Apple to be able to reliably support. What most small business need are just a NAS with network printer support.

328 points by ethanpil 7y ago

Mac OS X was first released as Mac OS X Server 1.0, the commercial release of Rhapsody, and then released as Mac OS X Server for Cheetah, Puma, Panther, Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard, before being released as a standalone update to Lion, and then hitting the App Store for $19.99 for all future releases.

Aqua_Geek 7y ago

I think the team that was working on this has been disbanded.

rvz 7y ago

Changelog for 5.10: > Device Enrollment: Enable FileVault support on first user login > Send all traffic through VPN Great work Apple! > Release date: Apr 1st 2020 Oh dear, Nevermind.

m463 7y ago

why would they want to compete with their cloud strategy?

aquabeagle 7y ago
Because macOS Server was a large reason why companies bought the Mac Mini.
- kstrauser 7y ago
  Think so? I didn’t know Apple even made a server package since 2010 or so. I bought a Mini so I could have a low cost, decently specced desktop Mac hooked up to my two large monitors at home. An iMac was too expensive and I’d rather use standalone displays anyway. We also have lots of them in my wife’s office for the same reasons.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    I mean, companies literally made rack mounts for Mac Minis, to install 6-8x of them at once in proper server racks. They didn't build this because no one was using it.
    - kstrauser 7y ago
      The post I was replying to said that was a large part of the reason to buy Mac Minis. First, even though there were quite a few decent-sized Mac Mini deployments like you're describing, I'd be genuinely surprised if that accounted for a decent chunk of Mini sales overall. Some, sure! But most? I wouldn't expect it. Second, does any of that require running Server? We have a database and application server in the office here, but it's not running Server: it's just plain macOS running daemon processes.
      - btian 7y ago
        I feel that at least 80% of Mac Mini sales are for server. Why would people buy that over the iMac for daily use?
        kstrauser 7y ago
        Note that "server" is a role you might use a Mini for, but "Server" in the article's title is a specific software package. You can have a server not running Server. Also, I bought a Mini for my desktop because it's tiny, cheap, and powerful, and I can use my own screens.
        chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        At least a decade ago, it wasn't that uncommon for me to see Mac minis kicking around as "office worker" desktops in places that gave developers Mac laptops. Get one of those, bring your own cheaper display, plug in a wired keyboard, and go. My suspicion is that "cheap desktop" has always accounted for more Mac mini sales than it's usually given credit for.
    - tracker1 7y ago
- bsg75 7y ago
  Companies maybe. I bought the last of the previous generation to have a small desktop with redundant internal drives. A Mac Pro would have been budget overkill. At the time is was useful, as the Mac desktop was my daily driver. Unfortunately current macOS versions are really sluggish, so its currently a home "server" running Fedora 31. The 16GB RAM limit is becoming a bit of a problem, so I will likely replace it with an Intel NUC.
  - kstrauser 7y ago
    The Mini I bought last fall has 32GB of RAM.
pwthornton 7y ago
I don't think this would actually compete. It would more likely be a compliment for certain kinds of usecases. Apple just doesn't seem to care to put in the effort. I don't think their neglect of MacOS Server has anything to do with trying to protect their cloud offerings. Even a wildly successful MacOS Server strategy wouldn't be that much revenue versus some of their other lines, but it could provide real value and help to certain kinds of businesses and users.
- wkearney99 7y ago
  I'd venture it had more to do with not being able to actually compete at an enterprise level. Far more profitable to sell to individual users than take on the much greater cost of sales for server products. If it's just a server they couldn't compete anywhere near as profitably.
- toyg 7y ago
  Cook takes Jobs’ zealotry for pruning (which he probably developed in reaction to the struggles of “first” Apple) as religion. Anything that doesn’t make boatload of money gets cut or left to rot. Macmini and OSX Server were products for niche markets that “second Apple” is completely disinterested in.
- m463 7y ago
  Apple could - in a very short time - revitalize os x server just by allowing icloud to redirect to the server. Think "apple id/icloud in a box". That would be actual privacy.

xd1936 7y ago

They've taken out so many features, what's left in it? User credential management/enrollment and...?

mrpippy 7y ago
and Xsan. Everything else is either in the base OS (Content Caching), or open-sourced/abandoned (Calendar/Contacts Server)

jsjddbbwj 7y ago

Why was this submitted? To prove Apple does not manipulate the ratings of their listings? :P

pwthornton 7y ago
I assume to show how neglected this has gotten. MacOS Server used to be a lot more popular and a lot more loved. I understand this isn't a remotely core part of their business, but I don't understand why you would want such a quarter-assed product out there with your name on it. A small team, which Apple can afford, could keep this a good offering that helps out certain kinds of Mac users.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  This seems like a great opportunity for some small team that wants to get acqui-hired by Apple in a few years for a cool billion. I doubt the domain will get much love because it is a niche product that lives and dies on the whims of a mega-corp. But a small startup could probably bootstrap itself to profitability. Worst case is they get a good five-ten years of being your own boss until the market dries completely or Apple finally decides to compete (but not buy your company).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

oneplane 7y ago

To be fair: while they did leave all the classical 'server' type use cases out in the cold and are making it worse every release, it's not actually the future or the best practice to still roll out. We are in between the legacy 'directory' based networks with authentication etc, and the more robust and expansive beyondcorp type setups. Do you really still need classical 'user' and 'group' membership things? Network accounts? Local web servers? Pretty much anything of significance is in a private or public cloud, if only because the fast pace and scaling. All that is left is basic file sharing that is sometimes done locally, and even that is becoming more and more stupid to implement in a workflow or business process. (regardless of your OS or vendor) There are of course still some true file-based processes where Apple is still used a lot, but even that is no longer local-file-only; a lot of the still and motion processing is done either super small locally or simply distributed to dedicated systems like render farms. And for the 1-man-photo business all of the local stuff still works and you really wouldn't have gotten anything out of 'server' anyway. The most problematic holdouts are the likes of Adobe who refuse to write applications that play nice with NAS-type filesharing so that just leaves you with file syncing instead.

briffle 7y ago
Unfortunately, most compliance policies (SOC2, PCI, HIPAA, SOX, etc) remain very outdated, and make this a challenge for anyone that needs to meet compliance needs.
- closeparen 7y ago
  There are large, serious, public companies on Azure AD, OneLogin, Okta, etc. They often like those services because they eat some of the compliance burden. This doesn't ring true.
Spivak 7y ago
Uhh what? I'm with you that the days of the "trusted internal network" are coming to an end but you're insane if you think that directories are going away. LDAP has certainly fallen out of favor but every SaSS user management platform / service is just implementing what are essentially "noLDAP" directories. What do you think is providing the authentication and user management in those private clouds? OpenLDAP, FreeIPA, ActiveDirectory, Keycloak? And even when you move everything out of the office to a datacenter you still need all normal IT stuff that you needed in your little office rack just in the datacenter now. The only part of the "old-guard" IT stack I see disappearing is the office file server.

minikites 7y ago

I'm beginning to think Apple isn't very good at making software that its users want or need because their focus is flashy fluff that demos well on stage.

droopyEyelids 7y ago
True... but who are you comparing them to?
ulfw 7y ago
I can't remember a Server demo on stage. Must have been more than a decade ago. So I am not sure what you're getting at.

shp0ngle 7y ago

What was XSan exactly? The only thing I know is that it had a really nice icon and box art.

reaperducer 7y ago
"X" because it was MacOS X, and "SAN" for Storage Area Network. Shared local storage, like for video production houses. At the time, it was ludicrously fast. It also worked with Windows, Linux and Unix machines. Pretty much anything that supported Fibre Channel connections.
- sabujp 7y ago
  ohh i remember those days. Was using Xsan with 2 xserves attached to infortrend eonstors. I spent so long trying to get it stabilized and reformatted the entire FS so many times. Eventually got rid of osxserver and learned how to install gentoo linux on the xservers. Tracked all the issues to a faulty riser card in one of the boxes (but had to use linux to get the low level details)! Eventually went GPFS and trashed the xserve hardware as well.
larkost 7y ago
It is Apple's rebranding of StoreNext's SAN product. I used to run a setup, and other then a ton of knobs to turn for tuning with little explanation, it was a pretty good product. I wish Apple had really run the ball there (e.g.: ad-hock clients), but for a server setup my memories of it are nice.

animalnewbie 7y ago

Apple underestimates the intelligence of it's professional users.

rch 7y ago
Not really, Apple has simply pivoted to focus on the much larger consumer (or prosumer) market.

cjamesd 7y ago

Ironically, this leads me to trust the rest of the reviews on their site. Maybe they're not all fake.

sleepless 7y ago
True, but in germany they disallowed rating macOS Catalina. That's a very shady policy - having a rating system for all developers, but excluding your own most prominent and important software from store reviews. Just one of many hilarious Apple moves.
- dolguldur 7y ago
  Also, if you cancel any subscription (maybe just to make sure it doesn't accidentally get renewed), you get to keep however many days you have left. Not so with their own free one year Apple TV subscription that came with the latest phones. If you cancel that, there's an alert telling you you'll lose it immediately. Clearly tilting the playing field again and again.
  - labcomputer 7y ago
    That's only true for free trials. If you pay for Apple TV+ / Apple Music / Apple News and then cancel, you can keep using it through the end of the period you paid for.

code4tee 7y ago

Former big time user here. The product slowly declined from its own operating system to a buggy app. We really had no choice but to migrate onto other products and these days even hard core Mac folks use AD for directory, Exchange for email and 3rd party products for device management.

derefr 7y ago

IMHO, the direct competitor of Server.app in the "SMB office server" use-case is actually a Synology NAS appliance. Synology's set of first-party OS packages has 1:1 feature parity (and then some) with every function Server.app either has, or used to have. And that's the key-word here: appliance. A NAS is a standalone box that receives automatic updates, is 100% remote-management enabled by default, can be easily reset to factory settings, and can't be messed up by employees who think it'd be neat to run local native apps on it, "since it's a computer just sitting there." Plus, since a NAS isn't going to be doing any desktop-OS things, the software for it can be slimmed down enough to run on lower-specced hardware, making the appliance itself much cheaper than the sort of machine required to run Server.app smoothly. No SMB office-manager who needs this kind of functionality these days would buy a Mac or PC, to set up server software on it and leave it sitting there headless in the office. They'd buy a NAS. And, IMHO, that's why Apple haven't kept Server.app up to date. There's just no demand for it any more. Not because of the cloud (which is mostly a complementary use-case) but rather because this software-solution vertical has now evolved into a turn-key hardware-appliance solution vertical. And it's one with slim-enough profit margins, that Apple doesn't want to compete.

_bxg1 7y ago
> And, IMHO, that's why Apple haven't kept Server.app up to date. There's just no demand for it any more. This seems to be a primary driver of the software-rot found all across Apple's ecosystem. iOS is generally pretty well-maintained; macOS less-so. Apps like Music are kept in better condition than, say, Podcasts. Etc. You can almost directly correlate how unpopular a piece (or feature) of its first-party software is with how buggy it is. Which I guess makes some amount of sense, but it really tarnishes Apple's image as a company selling high-end products.
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  Research In Motion (RIM) later renamed to BlackBerry Ltd. 37Signals renamed to Basecamp. I wonder if at some point Apple Inc. would rename to iPhone Inc.
  - 7y ago

bluedino 7y ago

Performance was mediocre compared to Linux. Everything that it shipped with was outdated. There was a weird mix of GUI tools and commandline to get anything done. And to top it off, things were (at the very least) just-different-enough to confuse someone who thought, "I know Linux this will be easy."

monadic2 7y ago
This is the first time I have heard a kerberos/ldap setup referred to as “easy”.

mrweasel 7y ago

Well 2.3 now, but that’s based on 4 reviews.

nemacol 7y ago

I setup a mac mini with this software (3rd quarter 2019) and I can tell you it deserves every bit of that 1.5 rating. No magic left in there at all. Ended up dropping it and using the functionality of Airwatch.

Angostura 7y ago

I remember when it was first launched - at the same time as the Mini and it was absolutely awesome. Then it rotted.

mdread 7y ago

One man shop pro fotog here. My macOS server 5.6.3 High Sierra is awesome, the last complete version... File Server with literally decades and multiple terabytes of raw photos… The ease of the email server is unmatched…. Websites and Nextcloud, invoiceninja, all just work with minimal php tweaking…. and all here IN MY OFFICE. I have linux droplets, and am more or less ready to make the move, but I won’t until it actually dies… but only when I have to. I hope the hardware (from 2010) holds out forever, but I do have a spare ready and daily CCC backups and disks rotated to firesafe… at least for me it just works. Knock on wood.

mceachen 7y ago
Are you exposing any ports to the internet? The older library versions in High Sierra have numerous security issues (of various severity). You might be able to reduce your risk by disabling server features, but that's a dangerous game of whack-a-mole. (Also, as a fellow self-hosting fotog (that never went pro): you should try PhotoStructure! Details in my profile).
- mdread 7y ago
  Yea, no kidding, I wish apple would open source server.app, so some of the old components could be updated without hacking it. It was just a perfect all in one solution. I will check out Photostructure.
cmurf 7y ago
Unfortunately there's no data checksumming with APFS. Last time I checked, ages ago, CCC wasn't using a version of rsync that supports checksums. Newish versions (for a few years) of DNG compute separate checksums for DNG metadata and raw/image data, but to what degree applications use this to verify the integrity of the image file may vary. Image silent data corruption via bitrot can be frustrating. Without a regime to prevent it, it spreads into all backups. And typical workflows depend on backups for eventual migration to new storage which allows any corruption to be replicated via the backup strategy. You end up backing up the corruption, unwittingly.
- 7y ago

olliej 7y ago

it still exists?

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

Yup. It stinks. They made a decision to leave the backbone/infrastructure market. I don't blame them. The main thing about MacOSX Server, is that I don't trust it to be around too much longer. A Linux box will be around, in one form or another, forever. However, it's easier for me to buy some canned solution; either pure software, an SaaS, or a hardware solution.

Razengan 7y ago

This is literally just a link to an App Store product page.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago

While it's a shame that the OS X, er, Mac OS Server "app" has basically been killed over the last few years (maybe more than a few at this point), I suspect it just wasn't selling very well. I know it had some great tools for configuring and setting up some services, but if you're a engineering-focused company you're probably going to use Linux for office servers; on the business/office side, you're very likely going to just go with Microsoft; if you need web or server hosting, you're almost certainly doing it off-premises, not with a Mac mini stuffed in the corner. That mostly leaves enthusiast and small office scenarios, most of which can get by just fine with "non-server" macOS. After all, they've always literally been the same operating system. My Mac mini is a headless media and file server and has, in the past, been the printer server as well -- and all of that's enabled just by clicking boxes in the "Sharing" control panel. (Heck, I could even turn on "content caching" to have it keep a copy of all macOS/iOS software updates on it, which would be great for a small-to-medium office.)

roboyoshi 7y ago

IMO Apple deserves all the hate on this one. It was good once. Thank god I moved on to proper servers with linux. They should just kill it and let the community take over.

divbzero 7y ago

For context, the majority of server features were removed in macOS Server 5.7.1, with a few features migrated to macOS High Sierra and the remainder left to be handled by open source alternatives. The initial announcement from Apple was discussed on HN in 2018. [1] [2] [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18113147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18113147

KiDD 7y ago

Real admins run linux anyways and should have no problem implementing common services. Supporting every little mom and pop that doesn't understand DNS, ports, file permissions or network users, which is generally looking for the cheapest solution will be be trying to integrate the lowest of the low end equipment and may cause even more problems beyond the control of Apple to be able to reliably support. What most small business need are just a NAS with network printer support.