cnet is reporting that the Apple XServe, Apple’s attempt to overtaking the datacenter, will be no more as of January, 2011
For the 99% of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, XServe was Apple’s supposedly enterprise-level server platform.
My first response to this is identical to my response when I first saw the XServe. Who cares?
I never understood what Apple was thinking, though I did know what they were thinking.
It’s exactly why I’ve never liked Apple, actually. Despite their “1984″ image of being the rebellious alternative, from the very beginning they have been closed off, elitist and unwilling to work with anyone for any reason.
XServe didn’t fit into standard racks, didn’t have hot-pluggable drives, had no management hardware or software, and apparently even worse service. They had no expandability and didn’t work with, well, anything that wasn’t made by Apple- which wasn’t much.
I’m always amazed they sold any of them, frankly.
So in case anyone at Apple is listening I have two words of advice:
1) Stop trying. You suck at anything but being elitist snobs catering to closed-minded elitist snobs. I don’t care if XServe is more ‘pretty’ than other servers. If people can see your datacenter, you have an immediate security problem. So who cares if it’s pretty? Brushed aluminum finish? Give me a break. It only shows you’re not serious about being at the enterprise level. It takes more than snappy looks and clever advertising.
2) If you really want to learn how to do things in the Enterprise, I’d suggest arranging a tour or two of your average datacenter. You’ll find a mix of brands all working together. You’ll see Dell Blade servers attached to EMC SANs with Cisco switches and HP servers, all connecting to IBM Mainframes. Interoperability is key, as is having a game plan.
It is, however, clear why Apple pushed the XServe at all- they felt it was the best way to get people to buy more Macs in the enterprise. I can tell you first hand that Macs are being replaced left and right in the Enterprise, and no amount of whining about it is stopping it from happening. Design departments are getting new hardware- Xeon workstations running Windows 7. Why? Because it’ll work with what they have for the entire infrastructure. They’ll whine and complain, some will quit- but ultimately Apple is loosing the Enterprise market- whatever hold they had.
In other words, Apple has become a toy vendor.
iPhone and iPad are actually quite popular with executives, even though they still carry a Blackberry for real work (I’m the first to admit that Blackberry has hands down the best security enforcement of any device, even if they do suck for everything else they do). Ironically the best boost iPad has gotten is that it was an early adopter of the Citrix Receiver. So basically you’re running a remote control to Windows. So, for many iPad that are sold, a Windows license is silently taken up. No wonder Microsoft isn’t trying to make a tablet (yet).
Apple should stick to what they’re good at. Making toys.
