Vratislav Holub After a long process, Apple is finally ending its macOS Server. He has been working on it for several years, slowly preparing Apple users for its final termination, which now took place on Thursday, April 21, 2022. So the last available version remains macOS Server 5.12.2. On the other hand, it is not a fundamental change anyway. Over the years, all services have also moved to normal macOS desktop systems, so there are no worries.
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Adam Kos Among the most popular services that were once only offered by macOS Server, we can mention, for example, Caching Server, File Sharing Server, Time Machine Server and others, which, as already mentioned above, are now part of the Apple system and therefore there is no need to have a separate tool. Even so, the question arises as to whether Apple will rather harm someone by canceling macOS Server. Although he has been preparing for a definitive termination for a long time, concerns are still justified.
macOS Server does not load
When you think of a server, you probably don't think of Apple, meaning macOS. The issue of servers has always been solved by Linux distributions (often CentOS) or Microsoft services, while Apple is completely overlooked in this industry. And there's really nothing to be surprised about - it doesn't match its competition at all. But let's go back to the original question, whether anyone will really mind canceling macOS Server. It says enough in itself that it wasn't really a twice-used platform. In reality, this change will affect only a minimal number of users.
macOS Server was (as a rule) deployed only in smaller workplaces where absolutely everyone worked with Apple Mac computers. In that case, it offered a number of great advantages and overall simplicity, when it was much easier to manage the necessary profiles and work with the entire network of individual users. However, the main benefit was the aforementioned simplicity and clarity. Administrators thus had their work significantly simplified. On the other hand, there are also a lot of shortcomings. In addition, they can exceed the positive side in an instant and thus get the network into trouble, which has certainly happened many times. Integrating macOS Server into a larger environment was quite a challenge and took a lot of work. Likewise, we cannot ignore the necessary costs for the implementation itself. In this regard, it is simply more advantageous to choose a suitable Linux distribution, which is even free and offers significantly more options. The last problem, which is somehow related to those mentioned, is the difficulty in using Windows/Linux stations on the network, which again could have resulted in problems.
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A sad end for apple server
Of course, it's not all about pros and cons. In fact, the fan base is rather disappointed with Apple's approach to the server issue with the current move. After all, as we mentioned above, it was a great solution for smaller companies or offices. In addition, there are also interesting opinions regarding the connection of an apple server with Apple Silicon hardware. The idea quickly began to spread among Apple users, whether this hardware, which is significantly undemanding in terms of cooling and energy, could not shake up the entire server industry.
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Unfortunately, Apple failed to properly use all its resources in this direction and did not convince users to try the apple solution instead of the competition, which somehow doomed it to where it is today (with macOS Server). Although its cancellation will probably not affect many people, it is more likely to open up a discussion as to whether the whole thing could have been done differently and significantly better.
Quite a question, how would M1 or M2 be useful in the server question. This is not h.264 video streaming. Xeons and Epyc have higher performance in multicore, as well as in encryption and data throughput than Apple M ARM. Another thing is the usability of internal storage. We are talking about a server, not a PC built for video processing.
Well, I don't know, but M is not such a miracle again, if I leave out only operations with multimedia where a significant acceleration can be seen, but I once had a MacOS server at work, although it was simple to start up, when all I had to do was click, but today it also stops me PC with AM1 (due to 25W consumption) and three disks in RAID with the fourth as backup. I use OMV6 (Shaitan)