Apple continues to mostly ignore the enterprise, observers say

Computerworld ^ | 05/31/2007 | Darrell Dunn

[Swordmaker]

Apple for the enterprise... PING!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[AhOmEsChOoLeDmInD]

Their mission, to go were no fruit has gone before.

[ikka]

IF Leopard uses ZFS as a filesystem, it will go gangbusters.

[DesScorp]

Apple shouldn't even bother with OSX Server, or Xserve anymore. They've hung their hat on being a trendsetting consumer electronics company. The day might very well come when Macs aren't even their primary focus.

It's a shame. They pissed away the education market, and that was their ticket into the enterprise. In the mid 90's, they had a really nice departmental server, but they never pushed it hard enough. Worse, it ran licensed copies of IBM's AIX, when all along, Apple had their own excellent version of Unix called AUX (that has since become legendary). AUX was notable in that it was a scalable, rock-solid descendant of AT&T's Unix, but had a classic Mac OS interface and ran Mac OS software as well as Unix software. Apple just never pushed it very hard, and charged a far too high price for it when they were selling it. I've long said that had they chucked the Copland project and simply made AUX their operating system, they might not have even needed Steve Jobs to return. As it is, monolithic Unix kernels such as the one AUX had are superior to the Mach-based Microkernel that OSX uses (sorry, I love OSX, but Mach always has, and always will lag in performance compared to monolithic kernels). What Apple should have done was replace the Mac OS interface on AUX, and put Aqua on there instead. Viola, a highly usable operating system that could scale as well as Solaris in the enterprise.

You can read about AUX at this website, with screenshots and the backstory behind AUX, the OS that should have been the future of the Mac.

[tubebender]

Would you describe what a “enterprise” is...

[SlowBoat407]

It’s the latest catchword for “business” (all Star Trek jokes aside).

[IslandJeff]

PCs are also used for accounting.

This is inexcusable. There are laughably-few-to-no Mac beancounting apps out there beyond the workstation level. The system stability and BSD screams for a one-stop shop, but accountants just aren't cool enough, it seems.

Great machines and boutique hardware (BIL has iTV, which I badly want) might just work for them, but they're getting their Opportunity Cost lunch eaten.

[neb52]

You got to be kidding me! Apple HAD a Unix based OS and tossed it! and then go back to that a decade later! What nutters!

[neb52]

Enterprise typically refers to large businesses like 500 employees and up. But I see smaller to mid size companies use “enterprise” level software all the time. So it really doesn’t mean anything.

[neb52]

Being BSD based they could easily make ports of already in use *nix software.

[Swordmaker]

This is inexcusable. There are laughably-few-to-no Mac beancounting apps out there beyond the workstation level. The system stability and BSD screams for a one-stop shop, but accountants just aren't cool enough, it seems.

Let's see...

• Quicken (really small biz)
• Quickbooks Pro
• MYOB AccountEdge
• MYOB FirstEdge
• Connected
• AcctVantage
• FirstOffice
• Kashflow
• Exponent Enterprise
• HansaWorld
• Tiny ERP
• Big Business 6
• UNIX ABS Accounting System
• AccountiX
• CODA
• NetSuite
• OpenSystems Accounting
• AdaptAccounts
• SQL Ledger
• Ceridian
• Adempiere
• Iris Enterprise Exchequer
• Access Dimensions
• Compiere

And, of course you can run anything that will run on Windows...

No, I guess there really aren't any "bean counter" apps out there for Mac... ;^)>

Of those, MYOB and Quickbooks will do fine for any small to medium size business although I prefer MYOB for payroll over Quickbooks if you are going to keep payroll in house. CODA, HansaWorld, and UNIX ABS will handle almost anything you can throw at them.

[Tribune7]

Most IT departments remain resistant to introducing Apple because IT COSTS LESS TO SUPPORT APPLE END-USERS...And no IT manager ever kept his budget ot job downsizing his staff...

That has always been my suspicion.

[antiRepublicrat]

sorry, I love OSX, but Mach always has, and always will lag in performance compared to monolithic kernels

What you lose in speed, you gain in portability and stability.

[BlazingArizona]

Actually, ‘enterprise’ refers to large-scale businesses. Their IT needs are fundamentally different from those of small business. For example, you would sell cluster servers and partitioned databases into the enterprise space, but not to small business.

[zeugma]

One thing that confuses me about this is, who the heck needs a GUI OS on a server? Seems pretty wasteful of resources to me. When we roll out new Unix servers (mostly RedHat these days, though we still use quite a bit of Solaris), they don’t have any X installed beyond what is necessary to be able to export a display to a remote host.

[antiRepublicrat]

One thing that confuses me about this is, who the heck needs a GUI OS on a server? Seems pretty wasteful of resources to me.

Aside from disk space, the UI on OS X doesn't take many resources even when its being used, since it mainly uses the GPU. Plus, OS X Server is pretty easy to configure using that GUI.

[zeugma]

Aside from disk space, the UI on OS X doesn't take many resources even when its being used, since it mainly uses the GPU. Plus, OS X Server is pretty easy to configure using that GUI.

Actually, I wasn't really thinking so much about disk space or CPU so much as RAM. I don't know of any gui that doesn't have a significant memory hit. Memory and CPU are pretty critical on servers. As for configuring the server, is there a way to export the desktop? (XDM?) I can't recall the last time I actually sat down at the console of one of our servers, so unless you have specific tools that you could call and export the display on, the pretty GUI won't do much good.

Granted, being essentially BSD, the servers should be pretty solid, I'd still think they'd need a different OS load for servers. Can you boot to runlevel 2 or 3 on OSX?

[antiRepublicrat]

Actually, I wasn't really thinking so much about disk space or CPU so much as RAM.

Aqua mainly uses the GPUs RAM, and any system RAM it does use when idle probably gets swapped-out to VM.

As for configuring the server, is there a way to export the desktop? (XDM?)

I'm not sure. Obviously you can put X11 on it and go that way. Aside from that, Apple does have their Remote Desktop product (which, BTW, rocks).

Can you boot to runlevel 2 or 3 on OSX?

I don't know about that one. But if you need to get into a mostly-dead system for troubleshooting, Apple uses EFI with lights-out administration. Aside from that, if it's a feature of FreeBSD, it's probably a feature of OS X.