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Gutting mac minis to retrofit into blades. Producing tons of e-waste in the process. All because Apple wont enter the server space. Insane. How come they're no

by lijok 3y ago

Gutting mac minis to retrofit into blades. Producing tons of e-waste in the process. All because Apple wont enter the server space. Insane. How come they're not including the impact of what they decide NOT to do, into their climate impact calculations?

bodyfour 3y ago
I can understand reasons they won't (re-)enter the server space themselves. However it is a shame they don't sell bare boards for specialist integrators to build these sorts of products with.
dboreham 3y ago
> All because Apple wont enter the server space. Because they won't allow virtualization.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- CharlesW 3y ago
  They do, and the standard macOS SLA specifies the rights you have as an individual customer. I'd assume that custom volume licenses are negotiable.
iampims 3y ago
fwiw Apple entered and then exited the server space a while ago.
runjake 3y ago
Apple has no moral obligation to enter the server space. Mac Minis aren’t designed for data center use. This is a hack. Apple was in the server space and they were terrible at it[1]. Further, macOS is a terrible, inflexible server OS. Linux is king, for better or… well, for the better. 1. I worked for an organization that was part of a pilot into Apple’s enterprise push and I felt like it was more of a marketing effort than an honest attempt.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- _ph_ 3y ago
  I think it does. Apple wants people to use and support the Mac with software. That means that people need development hardware, here for running automated tests. Even if Apple isn't selling server hardware to end users (what I think would be great if they did), they should have some offerings for commercial vendors like here, Microsoft. At minimum, you should be able to order just the motherboards of a Mini, ideally, they would make slightly optimized versions of this.
- kevincox 3y ago
  No, but I think they have some moral obligation to allow people to develop software for their platform. They license their compilers and software so that it isn't legal to run them on other hardware. If they just changed the license to not make it illegal. I'm sure someone would figure out how to make it work. Then you can run CI on real servers, build and test iOS apps on your Windows desktop.
bee_rider 3y ago
It looks like Apple has a Mac Pro with a rack mount chassis. I’m slightly confused by this video, it came out a month ago, but is about M1 Macs… is this specifically a plan by GitHub to recycle old Mac minis? Anyway, I don’t think Apple should include the impact of another large company not buying the right skus in their climate calculations.
- eropple 3y ago
  The Mac Pro does have a rackmount, but that's mostly a box for PCIe devices. If you just want Mac compute and storage, it's not nearly as suitable, and the pricing/unit economics are a mess.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Still though—we have a picture of what their entry into the server space looks like. The picture is… the pricing/unit economics are a mess. Maybe Apple is just bad at servers, haha. I’m not sure why people are clamoring for them.
    - dijit 3y ago
      try building iOS CI/CD pipelines without a mac.
- TillE 3y ago
  The Mac Pro is enormous (5U) and wildly overpriced. It is absolutely not designed for a large-scale datacenter. You don't even get ECC RAM like back in the Xeon days.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Waterluvian 3y ago
Apple entering the server space feels like the kind of distraction I’m critical of businesses falling for. I’m not sure I’m a fan of most Apple stuff these days, but I think they do very well staying focused on premium consumer gadgets.
e12e 3y ago
Does apple run it's cloud on freebsd or Linux? Or is it special Mac servers? What of their own build farms and ci?
robertoandred 3y ago
Metal is pretty recyclable.
- lijok 3y ago
  Not all electronics are used in the approach github are taking

by lijok 3y ago

bodyfour 3y ago

I can understand reasons they won't (re-)enter the server space themselves. However it is a shame they don't sell bare boards for specialist integrators to build these sorts of products with.

dboreham 3y ago

> All because Apple wont enter the server space. Because they won't allow virtualization.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
CharlesW 3y ago
They do, and the standard macOS SLA specifies the rights you have as an individual customer. I'd assume that custom volume licenses are negotiable.

iampims 3y ago

fwiw Apple entered and then exited the server space a while ago.

runjake 3y ago

Apple has no moral obligation to enter the server space. Mac Minis aren’t designed for data center use. This is a hack. Apple was in the server space and they were terrible at it[1]. Further, macOS is a terrible, inflexible server OS. Linux is king, for better or… well, for the better. 1. I worked for an organization that was part of a pilot into Apple’s enterprise push and I felt like it was more of a marketing effort than an honest attempt.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_ph_ 3y ago
I think it does. Apple wants people to use and support the Mac with software. That means that people need development hardware, here for running automated tests. Even if Apple isn't selling server hardware to end users (what I think would be great if they did), they should have some offerings for commercial vendors like here, Microsoft. At minimum, you should be able to order just the motherboards of a Mini, ideally, they would make slightly optimized versions of this.
kevincox 3y ago
No, but I think they have some moral obligation to allow people to develop software for their platform. They license their compilers and software so that it isn't legal to run them on other hardware. If they just changed the license to not make it illegal. I'm sure someone would figure out how to make it work. Then you can run CI on real servers, build and test iOS apps on your Windows desktop.

bee_rider 3y ago

It looks like Apple has a Mac Pro with a rack mount chassis. I’m slightly confused by this video, it came out a month ago, but is about M1 Macs… is this specifically a plan by GitHub to recycle old Mac minis? Anyway, I don’t think Apple should include the impact of another large company not buying the right skus in their climate calculations.

eropple 3y ago
The Mac Pro does have a rackmount, but that's mostly a box for PCIe devices. If you just want Mac compute and storage, it's not nearly as suitable, and the pricing/unit economics are a mess.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Still though—we have a picture of what their entry into the server space looks like. The picture is… the pricing/unit economics are a mess. Maybe Apple is just bad at servers, haha. I’m not sure why people are clamoring for them.
  - dijit 3y ago
    try building iOS CI/CD pipelines without a mac.
TillE 3y ago
The Mac Pro is enormous (5U) and wildly overpriced. It is absolutely not designed for a large-scale datacenter. You don't even get ECC RAM like back in the Xeon days.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Waterluvian 3y ago

Apple entering the server space feels like the kind of distraction I’m critical of businesses falling for. I’m not sure I’m a fan of most Apple stuff these days, but I think they do very well staying focused on premium consumer gadgets.

e12e 3y ago

Does apple run it's cloud on freebsd or Linux? Or is it special Mac servers? What of their own build farms and ci?

robertoandred 3y ago

Metal is pretty recyclable.

lijok 3y ago
Not all electronics are used in the approach github are taking