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In the mid 2000s, it looked like there was good hope that Apple would finally make inroads into corporate IT. In addition to their professional software suites

In the mid 2000s, it looked like there was good hope that Apple would finally make inroads into corporate IT. In addition to their professional software suites (Shake, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Aperture, Motion, etc.), they had already released XServe, which was really good by those days' standards, as well as XSan -- these products solved many of the needs of small professional creative groups. Mac OS X server's abilities to handle small offices' needs seemed like a prelude to larger things. Sadly, those hopes never really panned out. Apple is historically reticent to entering a market they aren't confident they have a good chance of dominating if they execute well, and their own growing internal use of Linux servers (and maybe other 3rd-party corporate domain/directory services, like Active Directory?) probably persuaded them to scale back their efforts around 2010.

snowwrestler 5y ago
Apple has made huge inroads into corporate IT. How many corporate employees carry iPhones and iPads today? How many companies let employees request Mac laptops instead of Dell? The answer is: a lot more than in the mid-2000s! And even a lot more than 2010. And corporate IT changed along the way too. The idea of buying and running a “Mac server” makes as much sense as buying and running any server: not much. Corporations are migrating to cloud platforms and application-level authentication. And away from hardware servers running on a LAN.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  > How many corporate employees carry iPhones and iPads today? I was referring to IT management of macOS - that was ambiguous in my post, apologies. iPhone only came in 2008, and its deployment in corporate environments is entirely dependent on iCloud (launched in 2011) and related services, which didn't really come into their own until the mid 2010s. Before the mobile revolution, it seemed (or at least some of us hoped) Apple was poising itself to capture the IT low-to-mid-market for corporate Apple desktop computers and potentially move upwards/outwards from there. Alas.
  - closeparen 5y ago
    Some of the largest and most valuable corporations in America (the big names in Silicon Valley) have IT issued and managed Macs, at least for their engineering and product groups.
    - TimTheTinker 5y ago
      Right, but the identity/directory/device management solutions being used are still 3rd-party -- things like Jamf, Azure AD, Mosyle, JumpCloud
      - oneplane 5y ago
        But that's not really a problem, is it? If it works and the contracts cover everything all the same, does it really matter which party is responsible for it? Better yet, if it's not the core business of the company (a Bank for example), would they even care at all how far removed from the ODM a service vendor is?
        TimTheTinker 5y ago
        No, it's not a problem. But Apple could have covered those bases themselves, like Microsoft did with Windows (via Active Directory, Azure AD, etc.)
        prmoustache 5y ago
        Yes but AD is king and has been for many years and is virtually undethronable. You can authenticate linux and macos X users to AD, this is the only thing they needed. To compete with MS they would have had to build infra tools that are also compatible with MS product. This would have been a high risk low reward task.
        TimTheTinker 5y ago
        > This would have been a high risk low reward task. Not if they had already captured the market on the Mac OS X-only side and were expanding outwards. Remember, this was the mid 2000s, when Apple had already released Safari for Windows, in addition to iTunes for Windows (which they had announced during a keynote with the quip "Hell just froze over"). A lot of things were possible, and the future was looking bright again for Apple. Microsoft also had just released Vista, which was flopping. Microsoft had been abusive for years to honest competitors and the open-source world, and was still spreading FUD about Linux. So there was some hope (and a strong wish) among Apple devotees that Apple could and would finally make inroads into historically Microsoft-held ground. We had no idea what was ahead with the introduction of smart phones and cloud-based infrastructure/computing.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I went into Bank of America last week to get a cashier’s check. An employee greeted me in the lobby of the bank with an iPad, took me to their desk, had me tap my debit card on the back of the iPad, put my PIN in, typed out the cashier’s check details on the iPad, had me review it, and then printed it. I was in and out in probably 3 minutes max. I am assume iPads are simply much cheaper to operate and troubleshoot and replace than desktops.
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    They don't need to worry as much about 'locking them down' cause they're basically there already by default.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      They are essentially application kiosks, which is exactly what a user needs in most cases. We tend to forget that most computing in the world really has nothing to do with OS management, hardware management or installing/removing applications. In a way, they also have the RIM/BlackBerry "peace of mind" in that they can delegate some blame if something were to go wrong with something only the vendor controls. The same goes for desktop operating system, and hardware components, but due to the huge amount of possible configurations, a vendor can easily wash their hands of responsibility because it was always the client's fault for having a bad configuration.
greenknight 5y ago
I think a lot of people dont realise how big of a mistake Shake was. Apple acquired Shake from Nothing Real in 2002. by 2006, it was essentially dead. This was a huge problem with the visual effects industry as it was the standard for compositing works and nothing was comparable. quickly there was a scramble for alternatives to up their game, two major players were Fusion and Nuke, with Nuke evenutally winning out.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  Shake itself was awesome, but Apple let it languish. To get an idea of how big it was: Shake was used to composite Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, King Kong, Star Wars episode 3, and MI:3, among others.
  - 0xRusty 5y ago
    And hundreds if not thousands of other movies and tv shows. Shake was it. It was all there was around the late 2000's to be able to comp 2k footage in reasonable time. The void filled by its demise was so real some vfx companies panicked and bought the source code from Apple for a fee (I think it was about $100k) to maintain their own version. Luckily nuke came along by around 2010 and is now the absolute standard. I don't know of a single major vfx studio that doesn't use it for all their compositing.
    - Teever 5y ago
      Any idea what made Apple shit the bed on Shake?
      - TimTheTinker 5y ago
        Apple's MO with product acquisitions has always been to port them to MacOS if necessary, then kill off support for other platforms. In this way they hope to strengthen their own desktop platform, much like Office strengthened Windows for many years. If this MO is a non-negotiable, then Apple really made the mistake when they acquired Shake. Production studio workflows built on Shake were all Linux-based, and there was no way that was going to change, regardless of the price. Apple tried to lure then with increasingly lower prices for the MacOS version of Shake, but it had few takers, even with new features and Final Cut Pro integration. So Shake (which was still primarily a Linux product) became a liability for Apple, because continued support of it didn't align with Apple corporate's priorities -- because it wasn't really a Mac OS X product that would increase Mac OS X's platform value as long as they had to also support Linux/IRIX. Just my guesses ... there was likely significantly more nuance involved than what I detailed above.
RachelF 5y ago
The reality is that most organisations choose Microsoft server products for legacy reasons. They aren't that good for their eye-watering cost. If they were to start from scratch, they'd go Linux or cloud.
brazzledazzle 5y ago
If they were using AD back then it was nowhere near their macs. For a while there they were on a mission to break AD integration and/or Kerberos with every update and release.
bezospen15 5y ago
Apple never stood a chance
hankman86 5y ago
Even corporate clients are moving into the cloud. On-premise servers are a shrinking market. Not to mention that Apple’s traditional strengths (vertical integration across large swaths of the hardware and software stack, great usability) doesn’t matter for server workloads. I totally get why they’re finally ending macOS Server.

snowwrestler 5y ago

Apple has made huge inroads into corporate IT. How many corporate employees carry iPhones and iPads today? How many companies let employees request Mac laptops instead of Dell? The answer is: a lot more than in the mid-2000s! And even a lot more than 2010. And corporate IT changed along the way too. The idea of buying and running a “Mac server” makes as much sense as buying and running any server: not much. Corporations are migrating to cloud platforms and application-level authentication. And away from hardware servers running on a LAN.

TimTheTinker 5y ago
> How many corporate employees carry iPhones and iPads today? I was referring to IT management of macOS - that was ambiguous in my post, apologies. iPhone only came in 2008, and its deployment in corporate environments is entirely dependent on iCloud (launched in 2011) and related services, which didn't really come into their own until the mid 2010s. Before the mobile revolution, it seemed (or at least some of us hoped) Apple was poising itself to capture the IT low-to-mid-market for corporate Apple desktop computers and potentially move upwards/outwards from there. Alas.
- closeparen 5y ago
  Some of the largest and most valuable corporations in America (the big names in Silicon Valley) have IT issued and managed Macs, at least for their engineering and product groups.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    Right, but the identity/directory/device management solutions being used are still 3rd-party -- things like Jamf, Azure AD, Mosyle, JumpCloud
    - oneplane 5y ago
      But that's not really a problem, is it? If it works and the contracts cover everything all the same, does it really matter which party is responsible for it? Better yet, if it's not the core business of the company (a Bank for example), would they even care at all how far removed from the ODM a service vendor is?
      - TimTheTinker 5y ago
        No, it's not a problem. But Apple could have covered those bases themselves, like Microsoft did with Windows (via Active Directory, Azure AD, etc.)
        prmoustache 5y ago
        Yes but AD is king and has been for many years and is virtually undethronable. You can authenticate linux and macos X users to AD, this is the only thing they needed. To compete with MS they would have had to build infra tools that are also compatible with MS product. This would have been a high risk low reward task.
        TimTheTinker 5y ago
        > This would have been a high risk low reward task. Not if they had already captured the market on the Mac OS X-only side and were expanding outwards. Remember, this was the mid 2000s, when Apple had already released Safari for Windows, in addition to iTunes for Windows (which they had announced during a keynote with the quip "Hell just froze over"). A lot of things were possible, and the future was looking bright again for Apple. Microsoft also had just released Vista, which was flopping. Microsoft had been abusive for years to honest competitors and the open-source world, and was still spreading FUD about Linux. So there was some hope (and a strong wish) among Apple devotees that Apple could and would finally make inroads into historically Microsoft-held ground. We had no idea what was ahead with the introduction of smart phones and cloud-based infrastructure/computing.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
I went into Bank of America last week to get a cashier’s check. An employee greeted me in the lobby of the bank with an iPad, took me to their desk, had me tap my debit card on the back of the iPad, put my PIN in, typed out the cashier’s check details on the iPad, had me review it, and then printed it. I was in and out in probably 3 minutes max. I am assume iPads are simply much cheaper to operate and troubleshoot and replace than desktops.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  They don't need to worry as much about 'locking them down' cause they're basically there already by default.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    They are essentially application kiosks, which is exactly what a user needs in most cases. We tend to forget that most computing in the world really has nothing to do with OS management, hardware management or installing/removing applications. In a way, they also have the RIM/BlackBerry "peace of mind" in that they can delegate some blame if something were to go wrong with something only the vendor controls. The same goes for desktop operating system, and hardware components, but due to the huge amount of possible configurations, a vendor can easily wash their hands of responsibility because it was always the client's fault for having a bad configuration.

greenknight 5y ago

I think a lot of people dont realise how big of a mistake Shake was. Apple acquired Shake from Nothing Real in 2002. by 2006, it was essentially dead. This was a huge problem with the visual effects industry as it was the standard for compositing works and nothing was comparable. quickly there was a scramble for alternatives to up their game, two major players were Fusion and Nuke, with Nuke evenutally winning out.

TimTheTinker 5y ago
Shake itself was awesome, but Apple let it languish. To get an idea of how big it was: Shake was used to composite Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, King Kong, Star Wars episode 3, and MI:3, among others.
- 0xRusty 5y ago
  And hundreds if not thousands of other movies and tv shows. Shake was it. It was all there was around the late 2000's to be able to comp 2k footage in reasonable time. The void filled by its demise was so real some vfx companies panicked and bought the source code from Apple for a fee (I think it was about $100k) to maintain their own version. Luckily nuke came along by around 2010 and is now the absolute standard. I don't know of a single major vfx studio that doesn't use it for all their compositing.
  - Teever 5y ago
    Any idea what made Apple shit the bed on Shake?
    - TimTheTinker 5y ago
      Apple's MO with product acquisitions has always been to port them to MacOS if necessary, then kill off support for other platforms. In this way they hope to strengthen their own desktop platform, much like Office strengthened Windows for many years. If this MO is a non-negotiable, then Apple really made the mistake when they acquired Shake. Production studio workflows built on Shake were all Linux-based, and there was no way that was going to change, regardless of the price. Apple tried to lure then with increasingly lower prices for the MacOS version of Shake, but it had few takers, even with new features and Final Cut Pro integration. So Shake (which was still primarily a Linux product) became a liability for Apple, because continued support of it didn't align with Apple corporate's priorities -- because it wasn't really a Mac OS X product that would increase Mac OS X's platform value as long as they had to also support Linux/IRIX. Just my guesses ... there was likely significantly more nuance involved than what I detailed above.

RachelF 5y ago

The reality is that most organisations choose Microsoft server products for legacy reasons. They aren't that good for their eye-watering cost. If they were to start from scratch, they'd go Linux or cloud.

brazzledazzle 5y ago

If they were using AD back then it was nowhere near their macs. For a while there they were on a mission to break AD integration and/or Kerberos with every update and release.

bezospen15 5y ago

Apple never stood a chance

hankman86 5y ago

Even corporate clients are moving into the cloud. On-premise servers are a shrinking market. Not to mention that Apple’s traditional strengths (vertical integration across large swaths of the hardware and software stack, great usability) doesn’t matter for server workloads. I totally get why they’re finally ending macOS Server.