A French Xserve user sent Steve Jobs an email asking about the abrupt discontinuation of the Xserve product lineup last week. Like our own Stephen Hackett, the email originator is pretty concerned about the lack of 1U options from Apple.
The person asking the questions even managed to toss out some suggestions, like letting Mac OS X Server work with VMWare products. The email elicited a typical Jobsian response: “Hardly anyone was buying them.” So, it’s no surprise that Apple’s pruning the dead branches off of their product tree, but we have a feeling that this might not exactly be the end of the server lineup at Apple Inc.
Sometime on Friday, Eric Zelenka, Apple’s Senior Worldwide Product Marketing Manager for server, storage, and management products, took to some public forums to extol Apple’s position on the Xserves. He said “Apple remains committed to the development of server products, technologies, and services/ Today’s announcement does not impact the future of Xsan or server software on Mac OS X.” The comment has since been removed from the XSanity forums.
The comments could obviously be fakes, but the fact that they were removed so quickly could hint at their legitimacy. If someone was pretending to be Zelenka, there’s probably a good chance that the comment would have remained. However, Apple is also notorious for keeping a tight-lip about their decisions, and it’s kind of hard to believe someone of Zelenka’s stature would take to a public forum to dispel some rumors.
Apple clearly has a plan for Mac OS X Server, but we’re just not privy to it yet.
Article Via Macgeneration (French) and 9 to 5 Mac
