5 ms·

Sure, but there's a legit gap in the datacenter— not having a sanely, legally rackable OS X machine is a pretty big problem for a lot of organizations. Not ever

Sure, but there's a legit gap in the datacenter— not having a sanely, legally rackable OS X machine is a pretty big problem for a lot of organizations. Not everyone wants to do their Jenkins builds or generate homebrew bottles on a Mac Mini under someone's desk.

pjmlp 6y ago
None of those use cases seem relevant for iOS or macOS development.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Surely you'd want CI builds for your app? I suppose you can always go the sassy option and just offload this problem onto Travis or CircleCI, but then they're the ones stuck figuring out how to rack thousands of Mac Minis, dealing with thermals in a machine that isn't set up for hot/cold aisles, a computer that doesn't have a serial port or dedicated management interface, etc. If you're a big enough org or the app is for internal use, this might not be an option anyway. At that point I imagine most people just give up on it and figure out how to run macOS on a generic VM. But at that point you have to convince your IT department that it's worth it doing a thing that is definitely unsupported and in violation of the TOS. Or maybe some of these are big enough that they are able to approach Apple and get a special license for N concurrent instances of macOS running on virtualized hardware? Who knows.
  - damnyou 6y ago
    No company on the planet is big enough for Apple to make exceptions like that. All of them either use a cloud provider or a custom rack design just for Mac Minis.
    - IntelMiner 6y ago
      Companies like Google or Microsoft aren't big enough? Google's Chrome and Microsoft Office alone I would wager are more than big or popular enough to get special treatment Adobe is smaller by contrast but I'd speculate has a much deeper relationship with Apple as well
      - damnyou 6y ago
        All of them use Mac Minis as far as I know.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Nope, just build straight from XCode.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      Well sure, for a single person team. But as soon as you're working with other people, surely you want an independent machine making builds and running tests— this is literally item 3 on the Joel Test.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        You would be surprised how some teams actually develop code, even timesharing iMacs among teams.
        ntSean 6y ago
        I wonder what the overlap is between those teams who do not invest in their infrastructure, and those who ship broken products.
- damnyou 6y ago
  If you ever get a chance to meet employees at CircleCI or some other CI provider at a conference after Covid is over, consider asking them about how they rack Mac Minis.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Good for them, I just use XCode.
    - rowanG077 6y ago
      Ah yes, how could they have been so blind. They should have just put XCode in the server racks.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        What servers?
        rowanG077 6y ago
        The entire thread is about running OSX in data centers. In data centers you run servers if you didn't notice.
        damnyou 6y ago
        pjmlp's view appears to be that because their customers, who are not experts, don't know enough to ask for continuously tested software, they don't believe it is their professional responsibility to provide that either. This allows them to dismiss any complaints about macOS in datacenters as irrelevant.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        On the contrary, testing doesn't come for free, and everyone gets what they care to pay for.
philwelch 6y ago
Apple tried selling Xserves for years.
- lozaning 6y ago
  And to this day they're still the most gorgeous servers ever made, especially the xserve raid.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  I don't think the answer is for Apple to force people into buying custom server hardware any more than it is to force them into making janky rack setups for Mac Minis. The answer that most people would like to see would be a stripped down, non-GUI macOS that's installable at no cost in virtualization environments, or maybe with some evaluation scheme like Windows Server has, which effectively makes it free for throwaway environments like build agents.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    > The answer that most people would like to see would be a stripped down, non-GUI macOS that's installable at no cost in virtualization environments That's called "Darwin" and it's theoretically open source, but there doesn't seem to be a useful distribution of it. Whether that's due to lack of community interest or lack of Apple support is the question.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      A useful distribution (for building anyway) would require all the headers and binaries from macOS, which wouldn’t be distributable, right? So you’d have to have enough of a free system to be able to get to the point where that stuff could be slurped out of a legit macOS installation. Sounds like an interesting challenge.
colejohnson66 6y ago
Isn’t the newest Mac Pro available in rack form?
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Ah, so it is, and the thermal story there is definitely much better than with the Mini, there being a clear intake/exhaust flow. OTOH, there's still likely a gap in terms of management features, and the starting price of $6.5k for a 4U system is definitely going to be a barrier for some. Good to know there's at least something, anyway.
icedchai 6y ago
Is this really an issue? They sell shelves that let you rack 2 Mac Minis in 1U space. You can also buy a rack mount Mac Pro if you want to spend really big bucks.

pjmlp 6y ago

None of those use cases seem relevant for iOS or macOS development.

mikepurvis 6y ago
Surely you'd want CI builds for your app? I suppose you can always go the sassy option and just offload this problem onto Travis or CircleCI, but then they're the ones stuck figuring out how to rack thousands of Mac Minis, dealing with thermals in a machine that isn't set up for hot/cold aisles, a computer that doesn't have a serial port or dedicated management interface, etc. If you're a big enough org or the app is for internal use, this might not be an option anyway. At that point I imagine most people just give up on it and figure out how to run macOS on a generic VM. But at that point you have to convince your IT department that it's worth it doing a thing that is definitely unsupported and in violation of the TOS. Or maybe some of these are big enough that they are able to approach Apple and get a special license for N concurrent instances of macOS running on virtualized hardware? Who knows.
- damnyou 6y ago
  No company on the planet is big enough for Apple to make exceptions like that. All of them either use a cloud provider or a custom rack design just for Mac Minis.
  - IntelMiner 6y ago
    Companies like Google or Microsoft aren't big enough? Google's Chrome and Microsoft Office alone I would wager are more than big or popular enough to get special treatment Adobe is smaller by contrast but I'd speculate has a much deeper relationship with Apple as well
    - damnyou 6y ago
      All of them use Mac Minis as far as I know.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Nope, just build straight from XCode.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Well sure, for a single person team. But as soon as you're working with other people, surely you want an independent machine making builds and running tests— this is literally item 3 on the Joel Test.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      You would be surprised how some teams actually develop code, even timesharing iMacs among teams.
      - ntSean 6y ago
        I wonder what the overlap is between those teams who do not invest in their infrastructure, and those who ship broken products.
damnyou 6y ago
If you ever get a chance to meet employees at CircleCI or some other CI provider at a conference after Covid is over, consider asking them about how they rack Mac Minis.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Good for them, I just use XCode.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Ah yes, how could they have been so blind. They should have just put XCode in the server racks.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      What servers?
      - rowanG077 6y ago
        The entire thread is about running OSX in data centers. In data centers you run servers if you didn't notice.
        damnyou 6y ago
        pjmlp's view appears to be that because their customers, who are not experts, don't know enough to ask for continuously tested software, they don't believe it is their professional responsibility to provide that either. This allows them to dismiss any complaints about macOS in datacenters as irrelevant.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        On the contrary, testing doesn't come for free, and everyone gets what they care to pay for.

philwelch 6y ago

Apple tried selling Xserves for years.

lozaning 6y ago
And to this day they're still the most gorgeous servers ever made, especially the xserve raid.
mikepurvis 6y ago
I don't think the answer is for Apple to force people into buying custom server hardware any more than it is to force them into making janky rack setups for Mac Minis. The answer that most people would like to see would be a stripped down, non-GUI macOS that's installable at no cost in virtualization environments, or maybe with some evaluation scheme like Windows Server has, which effectively makes it free for throwaway environments like build agents.
- philwelch 6y ago
  > The answer that most people would like to see would be a stripped down, non-GUI macOS that's installable at no cost in virtualization environments That's called "Darwin" and it's theoretically open source, but there doesn't seem to be a useful distribution of it. Whether that's due to lack of community interest or lack of Apple support is the question.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    A useful distribution (for building anyway) would require all the headers and binaries from macOS, which wouldn’t be distributable, right? So you’d have to have enough of a free system to be able to get to the point where that stuff could be slurped out of a legit macOS installation. Sounds like an interesting challenge.

colejohnson66 6y ago

Isn’t the newest Mac Pro available in rack form?

mikepurvis 6y ago
Ah, so it is, and the thermal story there is definitely much better than with the Mini, there being a clear intake/exhaust flow. OTOH, there's still likely a gap in terms of management features, and the starting price of $6.5k for a 4U system is definitely going to be a barrier for some. Good to know there's at least something, anyway.

icedchai 6y ago

Is this really an issue? They sell shelves that let you rack 2 Mac Minis in 1U space. You can also buy a rack mount Mac Pro if you want to spend really big bucks.