Why IT won't like Mac OS X Lion Server

InfoWorld ^ | July 25, 2011 | By John Rizzo

[Swordmaker]

The new Profile Manager is a nice addition, but in almost every other respect, Lion Server is a downgrade that may prompt a move to Windows Server

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server adds innovative features and a new low price tag, but cuts in services and the elimination of advanced GUI administration tools may force some enterprise departments to think twice about the role of Mac servers on their networks.

Some of the new features will please managers in business and education: The Profile Manager, a slick new Web-front-end tool for providing automatic push configuration and group policy management for Mac Lion and iOS clients, is miles ahead of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server's old Managed Preferences features. Then there's built-in support for Microsoft's distributed file system (DFS) and Apple's Xsan file system, the latter for accessing storage-attached networking (SAN) over Fibre Channel.

But once the initial excitement subsides and you start looking more deeply inside Lion Server, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that Lion Server is not built for those of us in IT.

[Monitor]

I don’t know about Lion, but previous versions of OS X server, for whatever insane reason, left out the GD library from their build of PHP.

As our server software requires the GD library, if a customer insists on using OS X to run our server software, I install MAMP.

Pretty stupid, if you ask me, that you should have to install a second instance of Apache, MySQL and PHP just to get the functionality you need.

On Ubuntu?

# apt-get install php5-gd

You won’t make it to the coffee machine before it’s done.

[B Knotts]

It seems pretty clear that Apple has decided to eliminate anything that is primarily non-consumer/SOHO.

Thus, discontinuing the Xserve (which was never really what it ought to have been), and retargeting Lion server to consumer/SOHO.

Bad timing, IMO. They’re just now getting into the business spaces that they were shut out of for so long.

[B Knotts]

They believe that there is no long-term server market. Everyone will have their mobile devices and they will connect to “the cloud.”

I think their thinking is, at minimum, premature. I think we will see movement in that direction, but it will take at least a decade to see any significant change. And, personally, I don’t think we’ll ever see a total abandonment of local servers, at least as long as we have desktop computers still around.

[Turbopilot]

I doubt many large corporate users are moving to Lion soon anyway. It’s never a good idea to jump right onto the X.0 version of an operating system, and Lion isn’t ready for prime time.

[AFreeBird]

What is a cloud, but a cluster of servers. I’d like to see their server handle “local” cloud duties, rather than have a lot of my data go into some big cloud in NC. Music and apps and stuff, I don’t mind. If if I can get granular control over how and what my local cloud pushes and pulls from the big cloud. I’d be happy.

As far as IT, it seems this server will implement policy profiles for the company mobile devices. What apps can run, what apps you can buy, if any, and pushing homegrown apps out to the employees. That sort of thing.

[Swordmaker]

I doubt many large corporate users are moving to Lion soon anyway. It’s never a good idea to jump right onto the X.0 version of an operating system, and Lion isn’t ready for prime time.

My office will not be jumping to Lion for several months. I have to make sure all the bugs are resolved. The top doctor in the office wanted to upgrade over the weekend but I said "no" and he found out why when he discovered his home Mac would no longer run his old copy of Adobe Photoshop his daughter liked to use. It required Rosetta. No go. Another cool tool we use all the time is KoolClip, a clipboard manager... Broken. I really miss it. I'm researching why, how soon it'll be fixed, or if there's a good replacement now.

[adorno]

HP has to sell 7 PCs to make as much as Apple does on one Mac. The reason is Apple bundles the cost of support into the base price of their computers. Apple sells a computer with bundled Cadillac level support, but charges Roll Royce prices for it. Consequently their profit margins are huge.

Yet, the HP PCs and the Macs, will be as equally obsolete in 2 to 3 years, and, to keep up with technology, the user of either one of those systems will need to upgrade within 3 to 5 years.

After 3 to 5 years, the Mac user will still have paid a lot more for something that isn't that much more useful, and in fact, will have been less compatible with most applications than those PCs from HP or any other regular PC which cost a lot less.

At the end of the day, or at the end-of-life of the computer, the Macs will have been a lot more expensive, but for no real good reason.

[TalonDJ]

I think Apple is positioning the server to deal with iDevices. More and more of which are showing up in the enterprise, whether they are company owned or, being brought in by the employees.

Forward thinking indeed. Any server OS that is not already moving in this direction is going to be old news.

[B Knotts]

Thanks for the tip on KoolClip. I’ve been missing Klipper, which is part of KDE, and have wanted that functionality on my Mac. Now, it sounds like I will get it back! I’ll hold off on Lion for now.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"...Another cool tool we use all the time is KoolClip, a clipboard manager... Broken. I really miss it. I'm researching why, how soon it'll be fixed, or if there's a good replacement now."

Try Stuf, formerly known as Shadow.

I've been using it for a while. Works great in Lion.

Incidentally, the omission of Rosetta does not constitute a bug, not all these years after the transition to the Intel architecture. Just follow the instructions here to quickly and automatically summarize the applications on your machine which require Rosetta. For me, the only casualty was an 8-year-old copy of MS Office, which sorely needed upgrading anyway.

I'm finding Lion to be a sublime OS, and a significant upgrade in terms of speed on my 18-month-old Macbook Pro.

[TheOldLady]

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[TXnMA]

My cartography for archaeology work depends on Canvas X for virtually all image processing, cartography and GIS -- and presentation -- functions. It is simply the only app I've found that will handle everything seamlessly.

But Lion won't run Canvas X -- so no Lion for me...

[dayglored]

I agree with those saying Apple is withdrawing from the server market, with one difference -- I think they've been doing it for a while, and they should be doing so.

Apple excels at delivering the world's best, smoothest, most intuitive USER experience. That's their business, and they are sticking to it.

I have a few Mac Minis at work running OS X Server, for Engineering use building our software products for customers with Macs. But I don't have any of them running the network -- they're essentially engineering application boxes.

Apple is not a server/IT company. OS X is a consumer oriented operating system, and it's getting more like IOS every day, which is a good thing for all concerned, except IT guys who would like to use OS X on their networks.

I run over a dozen BSD servers at work -- all NetBSD, which is free, stable, runs on scores of different hardware, and is easy to administer as long as you like a command line.

And IMO, if you don't like a command line, you have no business in IT. :)

[avenir]

“OS X is a consumer oriented operating system, and it’s getting more like IOS every day, which is a good thing for all concerned...”

A good thing, really? It actually bums me out because I have held out a little hope that OSX wouldn’t be subject to Apple’s iOS-style controls. I came to hate iTunes so much that I gave my new iPod Touch to my sister (she was happy). I know I am in a minority, but I also came to hate having to TOUCH THE SCREEN ALL THE TIME!!! Very annoying and tiresome.

[dayglored]

Don't feel too bad. I love a command line. Can't stand gestures for doing computing.

But gestures work well for consumers playing games and video and music. And that's where Apple is going.

I have to say, I'm saddened in some respects because I like OS X as it is. But I can live with [Snow] Leopard for a while yet. If Lion turns out to be unusable for me, well, I'm a minority of the Apple users, and I'll stick with what works for me.

[B Knotts]

and it's getting more like IOS every day, which is a good thing for all concerned

I disagree vehemently. I reject the idea that Mac OS should work like iOS, just as I rejected the absurd idea of "Windows everywhere."

Different devices need different interfaces.

[kevkrom]

Yet, the HP PCs and the Macs, will be as equally obsolete in 2 to 3 years

I disagree with that. If you stack up a 3- or 5-year old Mac vs an equivalent PC, the Mac will have retained more usability and value for the vast majority of users. My three-year-old iMac is a far better machine than any three-year-old PC I've ever dealt with.

[adorno]

I disagree with that. If you stack up a 3- or 5-year old Mac vs an equivalent PC, the Mac will have retained more usability and value for the vast majority of users. My three-year-old iMac is a far better machine than any three-year-old PC I've ever dealt with.

Usability is besides the point.

The main point with PCs and Macs is their obsolescence, which happens within 2 years of purchase. Since the technology inside a PC and a Mac are virtually the same, obsolescence occurs equally for both types of systems.

When it comes to usability, there is virtually no difference, and from my experiences, there is actually more "usability" with older PCs than there is with Macs. With Windows-based PCs, I can run virtually any application ever developed, even some 10 years old or more, while with the Macs, there is a more limited set of applications and you can't really go back to anything beyond 5 years with Macs that were sold after Apple decided to go with "Intel Inside".

Most of what is heard from the Apple faithful is more about having to defend or rationalize their higher-priced purchases, and it's not really about practicality.

When a PC can do the same as a Mac, and actually a lot more than a Mac, and when it can do it at a much lower price, and when it's also more compatible with more applications and more settings (business and personal), and when it has the same life-span (the insides are virtually the same), and when a PC user is not locked-in to the Apple echo-system, then there is a lot more real value to owning a PC, both for the short-term and the long-term.

Heck, I've set up a wireless system at home with 3 newer Windows 7 PCs (6 months to 2 years), and 2 older Windows XP PCs (Pentium 4s), and all of them still run like when they were new (the oldest XP PC was bought back in 2003). I do still use a Mac that I bought back in 2007, but, very rarely, and I don't miss it when I don't use it. My original intent was to sell the older Pentium computers once I was comfortable with the newer Windows 7 PCs, but I can't bring myself to selling them, and therefore, I just set them up as part of my home-network.

[antiRepublicrat]

Apple sells a computer with bundled Cadillac level support, but charges Roll Royce prices for it. Consequently their profit margins are huge.

There are other factors for the profit margin. Apple buys in obscene quantities, for example cornering a significant percentage of worldwide NAND flash production years in advance in order to fix a low, non-fluctuating price. Apple also pays to have new plants built or overhauled for new tech, and in return demands a lower unit price for a period of time while others still pay a premium. Apple also never sells in the low-end of the market where the profit margins are razor-thin for everyone. Others who sell high-margin products dilute their overall profit margin by also selling low-margin products.

As far as the servers go, they did cost a bit more than an equivalent server without OS. Where Apple came in good was cheaper OS licensing vs. Windows or even vendor-supported Linux in many scenarios.

[antiRepublicrat]

Most of what is heard from the Apple faithful is more about having to defend or rationalize their higher-priced purchases, and it's not really about practicality.

I've been using Windows since version 2. I start to dislike PCs after two years, seriously wanting to upgrade CPU or GPU, especially if I've upgraded the OS. My Mac is going on four years old now, and I've upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5 to 10.6 (in place, with no problems). The only thing I've done is replace the hard drive that died, which has also happened to me on Windows machines. Overall, this machine has been quite the bargain.