In my experience it has typically been small businesses (think 5-30 people) or sometimes schools where they might have one room of ~20 Macs to network.
As I understand it, no. For mass provisioning there are more "enterprise" grade third party tools for the provisioning, and it can back on to Active Directory (with some additional software I think) for enterprise deployments.
From what I understand, I don't think macOS Server scales to large volumes of users.
As others have said, the general stack is good for small businesses, and they will likely just run it on a mac mini.
The one component that any sized org can really benefit from is the caching server, which stores app store and OS updates on the local network so your 10 or 1000 machines aren't all saturating your internet connection. Even here, running it on a Mac Mini isn't that big of a deal as it is neither mission critical nor underpowered for this one task. And given the size, a mini almost fits anywhere.
I wonder how much they considered the implications of the sentence "Any share point can now be used to share documents with your Mac, your PC, or apps like Pages on your iPhone or iPad."
This is a new version of macOS (OSX) Server, now with added iCloud-style file collaboration. Looks good to me. Useful within organisations like iOS development teams or just teams with a lot of i* and mac devices.
I agree with you, this does look useful. My wife and I use Mac Laptops and it would be useful to leave one of our old laptops always on for caching, etc. the only issue would be electricity use - always leaving a computer turned on.
Has anyone used Profile Manager for mobile device management of iPhones and iPads? Can you configure per-app VPNs, or otherwise isolate network traffic for business and personal apps? Does it allow central configuration of all policies available in Apple Configurator? It would be worth the purchase cost of a Mac Mini, if all my iDevices could be consistently managed by a non-cloud Apple computer.
I use Profile Manager. I run OSX Server on a 2012 16GB/1TB macmini and it's been pretty good. It's stable - I think I've rebooted it once in about a year and a half. Anything you can do in configurator you can do with profile manager aside from a few things like setting the wallpaper.
That would be ideal. I'd love to see it as part of an Airport. There is some overlap in features already - I can back up to Airport or OS X Server, for example.
You can already manage an OS X Server from a separate laptop.
I am sorry but this is really dumb.
Having worked with the Xserver before it was discontinued [1] it was frustrating having to deal with ''special'' HW, Licenses(Xgrid, etc.) and old libraries(apache, python).
I am emotional and frustrated but not improving MacBooks, lame MacBook pro and iMacs not sure how this will help. Too late too little.
They have just completely given up on anything except small business. The complete lack of a real MacPro or Xserve is abysmal. And the new feature is just an iCloud cache -- something only small business might use.
The idiocy of how painful it is to manage a pool of ipads on a corporate network is the worse part. In particular because they can actually be locked down and secure and hence a perfect corporate device.
It's entirely possible MacOS Sierra Server is also frustrating to work with but I wouldn't base that on experience from 2002-2004 when the hardware was still PowerPC-based (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve). The OS is not too late, there has been an update almost every year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_Server)
Considering that Apple doesn't care much about developer's exerience (look at XCode crashes, iOS UI Bugs, shitty UX of itunesconnect portal) I won't engage in any new tool by apple.
I've had macbooks for years. I finally gave up and got a Dell XPS running Ubuntu earlier this year. Best decision I ever made. So much faster, so much more responsive. No massive delay waiting for that idiotic spinner.
It's been clear for a while Apple don't care about developers.
This is something I'm considering. I'm interested to hear more about your switch. Did you have any major problems? Is there anything you're particularly missing about your MB? I wonder whether there are a whole load of solid integration things I take for granted with Apple products (simple stuff like the machine actually going to sleep when you close the lid etc)
The Dell XPS goes to sleep when lid closed, and correctly (and fast) wakeup when you open the lid. Battery life amazing as well. So I just shut the laptop, and open it the next day and continue...
I have been meaning to switch to Linux, however I am yet to find something that has as good of a display quality (retina fonts) as the Mac. How is the XPS like?
The XPS13 has a hiDPI screen. Hardware wise, the screen definitely seems on-par with MBP but on the software side, it's a little infuriating encountering applications that don't support hiDPI. Instead of those apps just looking blurry like when OS X introduced 2x resolution, they show up at native resolution (50% of normal size)
But who knows, maybe I missed a setting somewhere to correct that.
I've used high-DPI displays under Linux, and they consistently work fine.
GNOME autodetects a high-DPI display and scales well by default, and all modern applications handle this as well. (If you run old non-toolkit applications, they may not scale automatically.) I did find that Firefox doesn't seem to autodetect high-DPI displays, but if you open about:config and set layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 1.4 (for 1440p) or 2 (for 4k), Firefox works great. (Adjust to taste.)
This is not true. Linux does not handle HiDPI just fine. Try using 2 displays with 2 different dpis. You get your choice: one screen normal, and one screen teeny tiny.
Linux is not something that handles hiDPI. X handles it, Gnome handles it, Qt handles it. Almost all of them are a bit different, and you have to take care of them separately. There are things that already work together well, e.g. X DPI detection works with Gnome 3, but if you open a Qt GUI (old Skype) then that might very well be tiny. Chrome has not worked well until recently, I don't know if they fixed it already or not.
That's all I needed to hear to know that 2016 (and probably 2017) is still not "the year of the Linux desktop" (coming from a Linux desktop guy until 2004: switched to the Mac because I value my time, I keep monitoring any new developments in my old camp but if I had held my breath I'd be dead.)
I've used Xcode actively the last couple of years and I can't really say I've experienced that many crashes. I've seen far more NetBeans crashes, to give an example of another IDE I've frequently used. That is not to say I think Xcode is perfect though - it still needs improvements.
Not sure what OP meant by crashes, but yeah, Xcode itself doesn't crash that much for me. SourceKit crashes all the time, but it restarts automatically and doesn't bring down Xcode. Not pleasant, but not terrible either.
As much as I would like to defend Xcode it isn't a great tool allround. Visual Studio + ReSharper feels like it's from another planet, yet it's so much nicer than anything not from JetBrains or Microsoft.
It's not crashing all the time but yes I get some vague bugs that are resolved by restarting, clearing some files or simply compiling again. Not to mention Swift 2.3 in the last version of Xcode 7 isn't compiling Swift 2.3 code in Xcode 8.
But it's fast and the code completion works pretty well.
I don't understand why they're not open-sourcing xcode, framework-by-framework, keeping whichever frameworks they need as private. It would make devs happy, free bug reports, free fixes and a pool of potential developers to hire.
It might be an enormous not-so-organized codebase without much review about what is going in.
In that case taking it apart and open sourcing parts is going to be a massive effort.
I think you'll see some of that eventually, but to me it seems like they're gearing up to provide Xcode for iOS, which means they probably won't open source anything for a while after that at least.
Confirmation bias turning HN into an anti-Apple echo chamber of niche, subjective rants is really getting old (...and it's not even been a week).
As an iOS developer, I've got the experience to know this kind of drivel doesn't reflect reality. More then that though, I simply find it amusing how people here rush to judgment about a product they've never used, then circle the wagons. I guess it's not surprising, developers and entrepreneurs tend to be god-awful at understanding the needs of end users, tale as old as time. What's more concerning is that despite over 40 years of technical revolutions, attention to minor detail wins, and adoption/consideration of community input, industry "professionals" won't give Apple even the slightest hint of the benefit of the doubt.
But I do wonder about the empathy and humanity of people who say that Apple "doesn't care." They has over 125,000 employees worldwide, many of them hardware engineering, open-source software, and design veterans who know and are passionate about the work they do. Passionate enough to know about tradeoffs you make when shipping a successful product. Marginalizing these people simply because you've decided to switch to Desktop Linux reflects really poorly on you, not on the Touch Bar.
Nor does it get anything done, as time and time again Cupertino shows that the haters have less memory than a Nomad and are lame. Meanwhile, scores of developers will use the tbMBP, Xcode, and even iTunes Connect to do tons of productive things with their time. Maybe think of that next time you decide to lower the discourse +1 on every damn article.
> Confirmation bias turning HN into an anti-Apple echo chamber of niche, subjective rants is really getting old (...and it's not even been a week).
Oh come on, HN is one of the most pro-Apple communities around. That still doesn't mean people can't criticise them when they do something they don't like.
k so you're at the center of Apple's attention. You're lucky. You perhaps don't need 32 Gig. Many of us do though, and 16 gig limit is just as nonsensical as it gets on a "Pro" computer and no amount of "oh this is getting old now please stop" is going to change the hard fact that Apple screwed up, or is dumping serious power users. I'm still angry, and I agree with the backlash. I want to toolup away from Apple as well. There is something useful to me in posts that show that I'm not alone, because it suggests a certain momentum towards alternatives, reducing my risk. There is also something very useful to Apple's competitors in gauging frustration as it may push them to create closer alternatives.
> There is something useful to me in posts that show that I'm not alone, because it suggests a certain momentum towards alternatives, reducing my risk.
No, there really isn't anything useful in statistically insignificant samples, except to further your confirmation bias. Stats 101.
How are 1800 comments in one HN thread post-Macbook-pro launch, an "insignficant sample"? Stats 101. And should we ignore the qualitative evidence that this issue has been picked up by multiple independent sources, including the ultra-Apple-friendly Macrumors itself?
You analyzed 1800 comments and can say which way each leans? 1800 comments from people who come here and want to be heard is not a good sample and is statistically useless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias
oh please. Not everything in life has an rsquared and a p-value. It's perfectly obvious, when perusing the HN comments and the rest of the internet, that the Macbook Pro has been generally poorly received by high end users, for credible reasons. You don't need a degree in statistics to figure that out.
For the most part I like Apple's engineering efforts. They're in the rather cool position of having enough margin to do things mostly right. After 20+ years of Windows I started using Macs a few years ago, and they were great for getting work done.
Of course, Apple has screwed things up all along: Skeumorphic apps. Lack of repairability of devices. The howling, churning cesspool that is the iTunes UI.
But they do awesome things, usually on their own (with the help of a pile of money), with small teams, and that's pretty admirable.
But then we have the last couple of years, and it seems like stuff is going off the rails. This "server" thing is laughable without hardware to back it up. Office infrastructure (which this claims to be) needs to be run on hardware utterly different from any of Apple's current offerings. Oh, you can probably get away with running it on a spare laptop or mini or whatever, for a while. But anyone making their company financially dependent on this thing will eventually be let down, and hard, and that is going to suck.
Maybe next week Apple will announce a rack-mounted "pro" (or Apple's cool-but-screwy take on real server hardware) and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief that Apple hasn't gone full bull-goose crazy and left the tracks entirely, that there is someone at the helm who knows WTF they are doing. Could happen. Not holding my breath.
'[T]his "server" thing' has existed for years, this is just the latest update. It's hardly meant for enterprise environments, that hasn't been the target for some time. As others have pointed out, the target audience is small businesses with a fair number of Apple computers to manage. It makes that task relatively easy. If this is what "going off the rails" is, then they went off the rails more than a decade ago (when they discontinued their Xserve line but persisted with the server software).
Question: How many profitable companies are out there that started their lives as mobile apps? The PC birthed Microsoft, Adobe, VMWare. The web gave us Google, Amazon, and Facebook as giants.
I guess Instagram would probably be profitable if it were on its own? Maybe Snapchat is? I don't know how companies like FiftyThree, Flipboard or Foursquare are doing, but you don't hear much about them any more?
I am sorry for my rants. I admire Apple for so many amazing things they invented.
This frustration is not sudden, it took time to build up. And I share this opinion with many of my colleagues and many other developers. This is similar to what happened to Windows and Microsoft thing which happened to Microsoft.
iOS development has been getting frustrating and Android is improving A LOT. AppStore search algorithm/flow is now so brutal that its getting very difficult for new developers to get a breakthrough.
Been running OS X Server on a Mac Mini for the last couple of years. Doing this on a static-IP fiber home address, and it runs a full email server on multiple domains, and has been working beautifully. Set-it-and-forget-it.
Used to run a web server on it as well, but now I have a much faster separate Skylake Xeon FreeBSD machine behind the router/firewall, with terabytes of image data. I can server Django pages in about 350us, from home.
Every web developer should have a home static IP address and OS X server. It's just so much better than Gmail or cloud providers. OS X Server has so many services available in it, including file sharing, messaging, and VPN, and the Server GUI is so much easier to manage than any other Unix system. I expect the services offered by it to grow over time (family photo sharing maybe?)
Edit: Also, OS X Server isn't anything at all like the Linux/Unix home servers that people are complaining about. You're not supposed to tinker with it at all or learn about the intricacies of PostFix or SMTP or spam filters or VMs or containers. All of it's details are hidden from you - it literally has an 'ON/OFF' button for each service. It's not a hobbyist thing at all. It really is a Zero-knowledge 'set-it-and-forget-it' system. If you are spending more than an evening on it, then you have already screwed up, and might as well stop using it.
> Every web developer should have a home static IP address and OS X server. ... OS X Server has so many services available in it, including file sharing, messaging, and VPN...
Or a linux server running VMs and containers for all the same.
> ... and the Server GUI is so much easier to manage than any other Unix system.
Ummmm... that's a personal preference. I much prefer CL as I find it many times more productive.
Yes, CL is more productive for frequent tasks that you remember the interface for. But, the OP's point was that you set the server and forget it. If you don't manage servers for a living then tweaking postfix config files is far slower than flipping the 6 toggles in OSX server.
If you already know how to tweak postfix, et al then OSX server probably isn't for you.
As I understand their marketing page, yes, sort of.
The caching server will make local access to your cloud photos faster. But, first the photos have to go through iCloud, so despite having a server with lots of storage running 24x7 you still need to pay apple for iCloud storage. Sigh.
I used to have a home static IP address and run OpenBSD. I used mail whitelisting because otherwise spam was a pain. It was still a pain, though, because I'd have to work out where I might get mail from to pre-whitelist it.
So I went for Gmail with my own domain. No more spam, no more hassles dealing with span.
And for running my own services? File sharing: Dropbox. VPN: Nothing to VPN to.
What's better about running your own? I just got sick of managing it. OpenBSD, Debian, whatever I used, just broke in new and exciting ways every time I applied updates, meaning I had to spend time managing stuff that I could just hand off to others - and get for free/cheap.
It's great learning by managing your own server[s], but after so long doing it, I wouldn't want to continue without being paid to.
Are these problems you face with Gmail? I don't regularly use Gmail, and I think my uptime is about a year. There is a spam filter in OS X Server, but I don't know how it compares to Gmail.
JustSomeNobody was referring to sending emails rather than receiving them. And of course, Gmail is a great piece of technology which is free, et still comes with a price - privacy, corporate greed, ads.
I hosted all my own services on Linux for a decade and a half. I was concerned about using Gmail because of privacy issues. I pointed a vanity domain at my house, and did web sites, VPN, and email (among other things, like Nagios). But, oh god, email. I tortuously configured Postfix with all the anti-virus and blackhole and spam filtering bells and whistles, and procmail to fetch from other accounts and combine them, and then set up some sync server software (I forget which one) to handle sync'ing contacts and notes with my phone. Then I realized that 90% of the email I got was from someone else using Gmail, so Google had a copy of most of my email anyway, so I threw in the towel. When I started using Google, I realized how pitiful my home-brewed attempts at spam-proofing my email had been, despite all my efforts. Mostly, though, I was just really glad to have the time back, and not feel the need to go over and tweak every moving part of my stack whenever Gentoo would rev one of the pieces or Ubuntu would release a new version, so that I could keep up with all the security issues without needing to read every notice. As with most things, YMMV, but that's my perspective. Now I use iCloud because I trust Apple more. (Not completely; just more.)
I think pretty good one is security. If you are running your own mail server on your own domain, you need to figure out how to secure the domain and DNS against hijacking. Google provides some practical security here. It is well known that there's no human support available for Gmail, which means there's no support people who could be fooled by Mallory's social engineering skills.
And of course if you took a bit wider view to the security, it includes also being able to access the data. While Gmail has probably had some issues in the past, I still feel it is more reliable than the internet connection which I have at home. This becomes a factor especially when I need to access my emails while travelling (and there's nobody at home sorting out possible connection problems).
It would be interesting what IBM could do for Apple / macOS customers on an enterprise scale. Or perhaps not, they kind of have a reputation on certain products like Lotus Notes or the pricing of their big iron products.
I don't think OP is saying there is literally no hardware on which to run the OS, just that by restricting it to Apple products and then not producing any actual server-grade hardware, the offering seems pretty pointless.
Mac Minis are underpowered dual-core, I wish they kept the quad core options around. And the Mac Pro is so outdated for the price tag it's not even funny (although I could consider one if the price were slashed by a half or more).
They are not powerhouse machines that is for sure. For small stuff they work great. I don't think I would ever deploy one for anything mission critical/large volume of users.
My Mac Pro still feels very useful to me. I use it daily as my main machine. I may consider upgrading the SSD to a TB when the prices come down.
They'd rack mount really great also. Just stack them on top of each other. At 18mm thin you'd be able to go 152 high in a 9ft rack! Good luck hitting numbers like those with a blade loaded with Xeons.
Each one comes with a built-in KVM console, and boy does it look good! Finally, no more pushing that cart with a 17" CRT around the data center so you can use vi in a 40x80 console. These laptop servers have retina screens, baby.
Only one question should stand between you and outfitting your data center with MBPs: Space Gray or Silver?
Without getting into the financials, I will say that the $/gflop wasn't bad. A Mac Pro rack was significantly cheaper per system than the next cheapest type of rack we deployed (using Supermicro FatTwin systems, for a different use case).
Server hardware is very expensive, and workstation or server class GPU hardware is not cheap either. Mac Pros are not the best price/performance ratio in that class, but they are (even now) within reason.
Just because something photographs well, it doesn't mean that caution was thrown to the wind just to get something pretty. It's a datacenter after all, it's meant to facilitate a task. The rationale behind imgix deploying Mac Pros in a datacenter environment was pragmatic and based on certain fixed technical requirements.
It fills me with a certain amount of dread that a company I've never heard of has the time, money, focus, and decision-making process to bring racks of Mac Pros to fruition. In other words, how can one succeed, when others--presumably smart people--are busting their asses and tons of resources on a concept for which I can muster, at the very most charitable angle, moderate disapproval?
The essence of competition is quite simple. Anyone in a garage with a great idea can put them out of business.
Money doesn't equal success. It may mean you have more at your disposal and can be more wasteful to get to your goals but if your idea isn't sound and nobody pays you lose anyway.
Especially for seemingly basic image processing. The type of decision making that decides to design new rack mounting options for the worst price to performance hardware available is mind boggling.
I use to manage networks for small graphic design firms, local news papers, and other small businesses. In one or two instances I used OS X Server for network file management, and node backups. This looks like a further cleaned up version of that software. Over all once I got the software up-and-running it ran solid for years of service. I don't always understand Apple's recent decisions but this release is consistent with their past small business professional network software.
except for the lack of server-class hardware to run it on... AFAIK the mac mini is the closest they have in that regard, and it doesn't seem to be a core focus for them in terms of updates.
I'd have thought most smaller companies that don't want to do cloud hosting, would be better off with a NAS system, like the ones from Synology..
Yea it's quite funny, is the expectation that you buy a laptop, stow it away and run OSX server on it?
I guess Mini is the expectation, but it's really a "oh no" feeling to buy something running 2 year old hardware for that price, and for a server it also lacks dual drives (and no quad-core since 2012).
They used to sell a server version of the Mini (discontinued in 2014). However, I guess you could attach an overpriced Lacie Thunderbolt RAID array to the 'newest' Mini ;).
An iMac, a Macbook/ Macbook Pro Pro, an old Mac Mini or Mac Pro... plenty of options. For what is intended (small groups/teams) should not be a problem.
I have never used macos Server. But I wonder, are there people who like to rely on a company which is famous for planned obsolescence when servers are supposed to run smoothly for a decade. I can count several restrictions imposed in iOS or macOS, I wonder who is the audience of macOS server and how differ in experience with Linux or Windows server.
It's good to see a powerful server platform available at $19.99. Where do I install this? Mac Pro was last updated Dec, 2013. Existing customers would find this cool, but it's high time to build professional hardware with truly professional standard.
Can't run in a VM, that's against the license. So there had better be something rack-mountable, with redundant network and power, and a separate management port, or this isn't a server, just some app you run on some hardware that you hope won't get jostled much (or stolen, or "Hey, that Mac that's been in the corner hasn't been used in years, so I ...")
There has to be a license change coming, or new hardware, or this is just . . . wow.
They are selling the software for $20. If you even know about VMs, rack mounting or redundant power supplies then there's a good chance you're not in the target market.
We have them for our small group of designers. We also have a complete on prem and off prem datacenter. Mini server is used as our LDAP bridge to AD and to push device profiles.
Still haven't found an effective way to manage OSX clients in a Windows domain. Password expiration is a nightmare.
I found that clang did super weird things under VirtualBox though (I know, wrong host software for this...) and needed to be patched for anything to build.
Why would 10 people cause the server any problems?
We used to run corporate email server in the 90s with thousands of users, and they had 8GB memory and 2 processors - same as a Mac Mini. And their processors were slower than today's with slow hard drives, not the SSDs of today.
None of the services Mac OS X Server does is compute intensive.
I've run Novell servers on machines that have less power than your phone just fine; even a stale Mac Mini will be fine for your hypothetical ten users.
I'm pretty sure that thing is better than Windows Home Server. It's not a competitor to a high class Linux server, maybe more a competitor to e.g. a Synology NAS (and there you have your redundancy for storage).
Is this a good solution for syncing home profiles?
I would like to have both a laptop for on the go work, and a home desktop Mac. Ideally, these would share the same profile, or at least documents, bookmarks, etc. Several VMs; this is tricky because the laptop would not have all the hard disk space of the desktop, so I'd want to selectively sync these.
Is running OSX Server a solution? If so, would it be on a separate machine, or would (say) the desktop Mac run Server, a user profile there being able to be logged in locally, and synced with the laptop too?
I don't believe Server is its own OS per se, but a collection of "server" software running on OS X.
That being said, I would physically separate the server, personally (not use it a daily-use machine).
Not too relevant, but I remember doing web-dev many years ago and was told to never turn off my workstation because it was also a DNS server for the whole company.
Wow, there's a lot of whining in here about this it being a 'real server', hardware limitations, etc etc. Did none of you read the actual web page? This is clearly not targeted at anyone with requirements for rack mounting, let alone dual PSUs and OOB management. This is aimed squarely at the 5 man shop with an old laptop sharing some files (ps - there's your backup power):
From the copy
"The server for everyone.
macOS Server is perfect for a small studio, business, or school. And it’s so easy to use, you don’t need your own IT department."
And
"Small studios, retail shops, even home-based businesses can all benefit. It’s simpler than ever for people without much networking experience to set up and host macOS Server. "
So yeah - If you've heard of devops or need to spec out BTU and rack space for your servers this is not for you.
The herd mentality I am seeing regarding recent Apple announcements, from a supposedly intelligent, introspective group of people on HN, is frankly disappointing.
You may be right, I think I am able to generally filter out FUD posts, and there is still a high concentration of quality exchanges that I enjoy. My comment stemmed from the fact that I've noticed this trend to be more extreme than usual in this case.
Agreed. On Hacker News, it often seems as if everyone has an opinion about everything and feels compelled to share it immediately, without doing any investigative work or deep thinking first. It's a race to the bottom.
I'm tired of Apple (and others) tying their products to subscription services.
Ie. The server can now act as network storage for your iCloud services (e.g. iCloud drive and photos). But, despite the fact that your server is now your preferred cloud storage you'll still need to pay Apple a monthly fee for iCloud storage.
We manage two schools on using Mac Server and the network profiles (like roaming profiles) bring everything to it's knees.
In one school - because Apple laptops are rather expensive, each student doesn't have their own laptop. Every time a class fires up and logs in - the 30 laptops saturate the GB network for about 5 minutes. Until the darn things are done churning, the students can't do any work.
And yes, we've done all the smart things - pruned home folders, SSDs, awesome WiFi. It used to take 20 minutes before.
I send construction workers out in the field with MacBooks because they're so rugged and the RDP client it awesome, and we really enjoyed Apples line of plastic MacBooks. At the time, they were a great value for schools. I love apple stuff generally - I'm typing this on a Macbook right now.
But I'm absolutely convinced that Apple will lose the lower education space entirely in the next few years if they don't throw some effort into their server line (the software) and come up with a less expensive laptop.
2nd Rant:
Each new version of Mac Server makes fixing the Open Directory parts harder - in older versions you could search google to find the arcane chant to punch into the terminal to do magic. You could fix the underlying database, prune a user that isn't working well, and fix all sorts of corner cases.
Apple keeps removing these tools year after year.
Apple generally says that fixing the OpenDirectoy should amount to restoring from a backup - that would be fine if you found out about a problem right away, but if you've gone a month down the road it's annoying to potentially lose a months worth of work to fix a small problem. I haven't been bitten yet, but others have.
Whats the environment like for those network users? Are you only using 1 server? There's ways to load balance that. You're probably hitting throughput issues for sure.
On the second point: do you know whats missing from before? I'm pretty good with macOS server related terminal-foo. Might be able to help.
It's a shame that there are no "current" desktop class machines from Apple to run this on (since the only server class machine, Xserve, was dropped long ago). I hope this is a sign that updates to the Mac mini and Mac Pro are coming soon. I'm half-scared of any upcoming updates after seeing the MBP refresh from last week.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadFrom what I understand, I don't think macOS Server scales to large volumes of users.
The one component that any sized org can really benefit from is the caching server, which stores app store and OS updates on the local network so your 10 or 1000 machines aren't all saturating your internet connection. Even here, running it on a Mac Mini isn't that big of a deal as it is neither mission critical nor underpowered for this one task. And given the size, a mini almost fits anywhere.
For things like per-app-vpn you need to create custom payloads for each app: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/featu...
While searching for info about per-app VPNs, I found this guide for on-demand VPNs that are associated with specific web sites, https://www.derman.com/blogs/Setting-Up-iOS-OnDemand-VPN
Is this used in a business or family setting?
I could see this being useful for my family and their collection of iDevices.
https://help.apple.com/profilemanager/mac/5.2/
What about just installing this on a time-capsule instead?
You can already manage an OS X Server from a separate laptop.
I am emotional and frustrated but not improving MacBooks, lame MacBook pro and iMacs not sure how this will help. Too late too little.
[1] - http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277A_Xserve_Guide.pdf
The idiocy of how painful it is to manage a pool of ipads on a corporate network is the worse part. In particular because they can actually be locked down and secure and hence a perfect corporate device.
The Dell XPS goes to sleep when lid closed, and correctly (and fast) wakeup when you open the lid. Battery life amazing as well. So I just shut the laptop, and open it the next day and continue...
But who knows, maybe I missed a setting somewhere to correct that.
GNOME autodetects a high-DPI display and scales well by default, and all modern applications handle this as well. (If you run old non-toolkit applications, they may not scale automatically.) I did find that Firefox doesn't seem to autodetect high-DPI displays, but if you open about:config and set layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 1.4 (for 1440p) or 2 (for 4k), Firefox works great. (Adjust to taste.)
It's not crashing all the time but yes I get some vague bugs that are resolved by restarting, clearing some files or simply compiling again. Not to mention Swift 2.3 in the last version of Xcode 7 isn't compiling Swift 2.3 code in Xcode 8.
But it's fast and the code completion works pretty well.
What makes you think this is going to happen sometime soon? Have you seen anything specific that indicates that?
As an iOS developer, I've got the experience to know this kind of drivel doesn't reflect reality. More then that though, I simply find it amusing how people here rush to judgment about a product they've never used, then circle the wagons. I guess it's not surprising, developers and entrepreneurs tend to be god-awful at understanding the needs of end users, tale as old as time. What's more concerning is that despite over 40 years of technical revolutions, attention to minor detail wins, and adoption/consideration of community input, industry "professionals" won't give Apple even the slightest hint of the benefit of the doubt.
But I do wonder about the empathy and humanity of people who say that Apple "doesn't care." They has over 125,000 employees worldwide, many of them hardware engineering, open-source software, and design veterans who know and are passionate about the work they do. Passionate enough to know about tradeoffs you make when shipping a successful product. Marginalizing these people simply because you've decided to switch to Desktop Linux reflects really poorly on you, not on the Touch Bar.
Nor does it get anything done, as time and time again Cupertino shows that the haters have less memory than a Nomad and are lame. Meanwhile, scores of developers will use the tbMBP, Xcode, and even iTunes Connect to do tons of productive things with their time. Maybe think of that next time you decide to lower the discourse +1 on every damn article.
Oh come on, HN is one of the most pro-Apple communities around. That still doesn't mean people can't criticise them when they do something they don't like.
k so you're at the center of Apple's attention. You're lucky. You perhaps don't need 32 Gig. Many of us do though, and 16 gig limit is just as nonsensical as it gets on a "Pro" computer and no amount of "oh this is getting old now please stop" is going to change the hard fact that Apple screwed up, or is dumping serious power users. I'm still angry, and I agree with the backlash. I want to toolup away from Apple as well. There is something useful to me in posts that show that I'm not alone, because it suggests a certain momentum towards alternatives, reducing my risk. There is also something very useful to Apple's competitors in gauging frustration as it may push them to create closer alternatives.
No, there really isn't anything useful in statistically insignificant samples, except to further your confirmation bias. Stats 101.
It's not like Apple will never offer a 32GB laptop. At most it's one refresh cycle behind.
Of course, Apple has screwed things up all along: Skeumorphic apps. Lack of repairability of devices. The howling, churning cesspool that is the iTunes UI.
But they do awesome things, usually on their own (with the help of a pile of money), with small teams, and that's pretty admirable.
But then we have the last couple of years, and it seems like stuff is going off the rails. This "server" thing is laughable without hardware to back it up. Office infrastructure (which this claims to be) needs to be run on hardware utterly different from any of Apple's current offerings. Oh, you can probably get away with running it on a spare laptop or mini or whatever, for a while. But anyone making their company financially dependent on this thing will eventually be let down, and hard, and that is going to suck.
Maybe next week Apple will announce a rack-mounted "pro" (or Apple's cool-but-screwy take on real server hardware) and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief that Apple hasn't gone full bull-goose crazy and left the tracks entirely, that there is someone at the helm who knows WTF they are doing. Could happen. Not holding my breath.
I guess Instagram would probably be profitable if it were on its own? Maybe Snapchat is? I don't know how companies like FiftyThree, Flipboard or Foursquare are doing, but you don't hear much about them any more?
This frustration is not sudden, it took time to build up. And I share this opinion with many of my colleagues and many other developers. This is similar to what happened to Windows and Microsoft thing which happened to Microsoft.
iOS development has been getting frustrating and Android is improving A LOT. AppStore search algorithm/flow is now so brutal that its getting very difficult for new developers to get a breakthrough.
Used to run a web server on it as well, but now I have a much faster separate Skylake Xeon FreeBSD machine behind the router/firewall, with terabytes of image data. I can server Django pages in about 350us, from home.
Every web developer should have a home static IP address and OS X server. It's just so much better than Gmail or cloud providers. OS X Server has so many services available in it, including file sharing, messaging, and VPN, and the Server GUI is so much easier to manage than any other Unix system. I expect the services offered by it to grow over time (family photo sharing maybe?)
Edit: Also, OS X Server isn't anything at all like the Linux/Unix home servers that people are complaining about. You're not supposed to tinker with it at all or learn about the intricacies of PostFix or SMTP or spam filters or VMs or containers. All of it's details are hidden from you - it literally has an 'ON/OFF' button for each service. It's not a hobbyist thing at all. It really is a Zero-knowledge 'set-it-and-forget-it' system. If you are spending more than an evening on it, then you have already screwed up, and might as well stop using it.
Wait, if OS X Server is so awesome, why not run your web server on it?
> much faster
Oh. Oh, I see. Is the Mac Pro not fast enough? Because then you could run OS X Server to do your web serving.
>> much faster
> Oh. Oh, I see. Is the Mac Pro not fast enough?
Actually, no, you don't see. You're just too much caught up in the anti-Apple circlejerk to see.
Or a linux server running VMs and containers for all the same.
> ... and the Server GUI is so much easier to manage than any other Unix system.
Ummmm... that's a personal preference. I much prefer CL as I find it many times more productive.
If you already know how to tweak postfix, et al then OSX server probably isn't for you.
The caching server will make local access to your cloud photos faster. But, first the photos have to go through iCloud, so despite having a server with lots of storage running 24x7 you still need to pay apple for iCloud storage. Sigh.
So I went for Gmail with my own domain. No more spam, no more hassles dealing with span.
And for running my own services? File sharing: Dropbox. VPN: Nothing to VPN to.
What's better about running your own? I just got sick of managing it. OpenBSD, Debian, whatever I used, just broke in new and exciting ways every time I applied updates, meaning I had to spend time managing stuff that I could just hand off to others - and get for free/cheap.
It's great learning by managing your own server[s], but after so long doing it, I wouldn't want to continue without being paid to.
DynamicDNS works just as well, and without the extra charge/phone call to your ISP.
I honestly don't know why anyone would use GMail.
And of course if you took a bit wider view to the security, it includes also being able to access the data. While Gmail has probably had some issues in the past, I still feel it is more reliable than the internet connection which I have at home. This becomes a factor especially when I need to access my emails while travelling (and there's nobody at home sorting out possible connection problems).
A laptop? with 16 gigs of ram?
Great, what about redundant power supplies? dual network?
nope thought not.
Let me guess? still can't [legally] virtualize it on non apple hardware right?
A Mac Pro addresses your concerns a bit better but there is a larger price tag.
I have used Mini's for servers for years and they hold up pretty well.
(putting aside under powered/poor storage)
My Mac Pro still feels very useful to me. I use it daily as my main machine. I may consider upgrading the SSD to a TB when the prices come down.
So in theory you could add redundant power supplies and dual wired network connections and it has a built in UPS in case of power outage, maybe.
Maybe not, 'tis a silly idea.
Maybe it's a sign that Apple are considering releasing server grade hardware again in the future ...but probably not that either.
Each one comes with a built-in KVM console, and boy does it look good! Finally, no more pushing that cart with a 17" CRT around the data center so you can use vi in a 40x80 console. These laptop servers have retina screens, baby.
Only one question should stand between you and outfitting your data center with MBPs: Space Gray or Silver?
Server hardware is very expensive, and workstation or server class GPU hardware is not cheap either. Mac Pros are not the best price/performance ratio in that class, but they are (even now) within reason.
Just because something photographs well, it doesn't mean that caution was thrown to the wind just to get something pretty. It's a datacenter after all, it's meant to facilitate a task. The rationale behind imgix deploying Mac Pros in a datacenter environment was pragmatic and based on certain fixed technical requirements.
Money doesn't equal success. It may mean you have more at your disposal and can be more wasteful to get to your goals but if your idea isn't sound and nobody pays you lose anyway.
I wonder how many tons of TNT of energy are contained within a rack full of 152 LiPo batteries...
[1] http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/ [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=76+watt+hours+in+tons+o...
(In a previous life, I have cut the handles off a mac pro to make it fit in a normal rack....)
Which means I can't shove it in the server room, monitor it, use UPS properly, and its all limited to 1 gig ethernet.
Most small businesses never have to worry about the problems that come from outgrowing their IT infrastructure.
10GE ThunderBolt NICs are a thing. Alternatively you could use a ThunderBolt PCI-E enclosure.
I'd have thought most smaller companies that don't want to do cloud hosting, would be better off with a NAS system, like the ones from Synology..
I guess Mini is the expectation, but it's really a "oh no" feeling to buy something running 2 year old hardware for that price, and for a server it also lacks dual drives (and no quad-core since 2012).
I have a standard desktop mac mini which has been fitted with 2 drives by using this kit[0] so it's certainly possible.
The issue I have is that I don't like running anything mission critical without ECC memory.
[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/Mac-Mini-Dual-Drive-Kit/IF1...
Probably less stability risks.
There has to be a license change coming, or new hardware, or this is just . . . wow.
Still haven't found an effective way to manage OSX clients in a Windows domain. Password expiration is a nightmare.
As a developer, my laptop alone is often both client and server and yet I wouldn't recommend anybody run their 24x7 business services on it.
It's all about the SLA.
I found that clang did super weird things under VirtualBox though (I know, wrong host software for this...) and needed to be patched for anything to build.
- Redundant power supplies: Connect multiple USB-C power adapters. Bonus built in UPS battery backup!
- Redundant network interfaces: Connect multiple USB-C Ethernet adapters and/or PCI-E NIC in an external enclosure.
- Separate management port: Not as comprehensive as a DRAC or iLOM but it can be setup to provide some of the same features.
- Security: Various options available for locking down a MacBook or alternatively just use a rack with lockable doors.
We used to run corporate email server in the 90s with thousands of users, and they had 8GB memory and 2 processors - same as a Mac Mini. And their processors were slower than today's with slow hard drives, not the SSDs of today.
None of the services Mac OS X Server does is compute intensive.
"Just wait, we'll release the software first, then laugh as they wail confused and cry, 'But where's the hardware? What ever will we do?'"
Try to relax. Posting on the Internet all day and night won't help you.
I would like to have both a laptop for on the go work, and a home desktop Mac. Ideally, these would share the same profile, or at least documents, bookmarks, etc. Several VMs; this is tricky because the laptop would not have all the hard disk space of the desktop, so I'd want to selectively sync these.
Is running OSX Server a solution? If so, would it be on a separate machine, or would (say) the desktop Mac run Server, a user profile there being able to be logged in locally, and synced with the laptop too?
That being said, I would physically separate the server, personally (not use it a daily-use machine).
Not too relevant, but I remember doing web-dev many years ago and was told to never turn off my workstation because it was also a DNS server for the whole company.
I know this is for your personal use, so YMMV.
From the copy "The server for everyone.
macOS Server is perfect for a small studio, business, or school. And it’s so easy to use, you don’t need your own IT department."
And
"Small studios, retail shops, even home-based businesses can all benefit. It’s simpler than ever for people without much networking experience to set up and host macOS Server. "
So yeah - If you've heard of devops or need to spec out BTU and rack space for your servers this is not for you.
The only thing the Apple announcements have going for them are that multiple herds are clashing.
Ie. The server can now act as network storage for your iCloud services (e.g. iCloud drive and photos). But, despite the fact that your server is now your preferred cloud storage you'll still need to pay Apple a monthly fee for iCloud storage.
We manage two schools on using Mac Server and the network profiles (like roaming profiles) bring everything to it's knees.
In one school - because Apple laptops are rather expensive, each student doesn't have their own laptop. Every time a class fires up and logs in - the 30 laptops saturate the GB network for about 5 minutes. Until the darn things are done churning, the students can't do any work.
And yes, we've done all the smart things - pruned home folders, SSDs, awesome WiFi. It used to take 20 minutes before.
I send construction workers out in the field with MacBooks because they're so rugged and the RDP client it awesome, and we really enjoyed Apples line of plastic MacBooks. At the time, they were a great value for schools. I love apple stuff generally - I'm typing this on a Macbook right now.
But I'm absolutely convinced that Apple will lose the lower education space entirely in the next few years if they don't throw some effort into their server line (the software) and come up with a less expensive laptop.
2nd Rant:
Each new version of Mac Server makes fixing the Open Directory parts harder - in older versions you could search google to find the arcane chant to punch into the terminal to do magic. You could fix the underlying database, prune a user that isn't working well, and fix all sorts of corner cases.
Apple keeps removing these tools year after year.
Apple generally says that fixing the OpenDirectoy should amount to restoring from a backup - that would be fine if you found out about a problem right away, but if you've gone a month down the road it's annoying to potentially lose a months worth of work to fix a small problem. I haven't been bitten yet, but others have.
Whats the environment like for those network users? Are you only using 1 server? There's ways to load balance that. You're probably hitting throughput issues for sure.
On the second point: do you know whats missing from before? I'm pretty good with macOS server related terminal-foo. Might be able to help.