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Rhapsody in X-- Finally (3/16/99)
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So another Apple event has come and gone. This latest one wasn't a massive media feeding frenzy, due primarily to the relatively small and specific audience at which the announced product is targeted, but there was still reason to dance once the smoke cleared. Ladies and gentlemen, Mac OS X Server is here. Finally, Apple has shipped an actual released version of an operating system based on the NeXTStep OS that Apple acquired when it purchased NeXT well over two years ago. To be honest, we've been waiting for this moment for so long now, we can hardly believe it's really happened. (Actually, it still hasn't, really-- the Apple Store expects availability within a week, though.)
To most people, the big news about Mac OS X Server isn't so much that it's now shipping; for the most part, we all expected that. Instead, it's the big ol' price drop that Apple threw into the mix that's got people buzzing. Back in January, you may recall that Apple stated the "expected price" of the upcoming operating system would be $995. Even though that price included an unlimited client license (as opposed to Windows NT, which is priced on a per-client-use basis) and Apple's lip-smacking-good WebObjects Internet development framework (which sells separately for $1499), many people were less than pleased with the idea of shelling out a cool grand for an operating system, no matter how much value it contained or how much butt it kicked.
Amazingly enough, just as an anonymous faithful viewer noted last week, Apple listened: as confirmed in a press release, Mac OS X Server is now just $499, still with the unlimited-user license. Education customers can buy the new OS for only $249, and as noted over at MacNN, a 400 MHz "icebox" G3 server decked out with Mac OS X Server, 256 MB of RAM, two 9 GB Ultra2 SCSI hard drives, and five (yes, five) 100 Mbps Ethernet ports will run you just $5000. That's mighty cheap for a mighty powerful server, especially given the web server benchmarks that Captain Steve trotted out at the unveiling. Steve compared the relative web serving performance of two Dell PowerEdge servers, a Sun UltraSparc 10S Unix server, and that $5000 G3 bundled with Mac OS X Server. The first Dell server running Windows NT benchmarked at 300 hits per second. An identical Dell system running Red Hat Linux instead of NT scored a 500. The $8500 Sun machine upped the ante to 600 hits per second. But whupping them all was the G3, clocking in at an incredible 740 hits per second. Price/performance, anyone?
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SceneLink (1401)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/16/99 episode: March 16, 1999: It's here: Mac OS X Server finally arrives, and its sticker price is only half what the world expected. Meanwhile, Apple announces its entry into the "open source" party with Project Darwin, and the nineteen states who are co-litigants in the Justice Department's case against Microsoft consider how to "correct" the company if (when?) it loses...
Other scenes from that episode: 1402: Open Source, Open Mind (3/16/99) It may not make people's eyes spin around and turn into little dollar signs, but the fact that Apple is making part of Mac OS X Server into an "open source" project may have even greater long-term ramifications than the news about the product's spiffy low price... 1403: Brainstorming the Plot (3/16/99) So "Redmond Justice" is on hiatus, the star lawyers are probably off sunning themselves on some beach somewhere, and the show's fans are battling withdrawal symptoms until the trial resumes sometime in mid-April...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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