[hnarn]

Firstly, Apple has never been a respected actor in the server market. If you're investing heavily into Apple servers, you're investing in a niche. Presume accordingly. Secondly, converting/reformatting 300 Tb of disk is a lot of work, but it's probably less work than contacting Apple, and whining about how Apple is going down the drain in a public blog post.

I've never been a big Apple fan in terms of the company, but the iPhone is an excellent product. The iPod was an excellent product. I have never heard anyone say that in terms of server infrastructure, Apple makes "excellent products". The only lesson here is: don't drink the kool aid, and investigate every use case thoroughly without making emotional assumptions.

edit: Despite knowing almost nothing about AFP, I found articles on Google saying that Apple shifted from AFP file sharing to SMB2 in an article dated 2013 -- that's five years ago! Apple themselves state that AFP is deprecated. If you elect to run your own servers and support your own services completely, these are news you should be reading.

[code_sloth]

> ... converting/reformatting 300 Tb of disk is a lot of work, but it's probably less work than contacting Apple ...

He didn't know what the problem was, so he contacted Apple support. Unless you are suggesting he reformat 300tb everytime there's an issue, I don't see how he could have avoided contacting Apple in his situation.

> ... and whining about how Apple is going down the drain in a public blog post.

I don't see why the author can't voice his opinion on his personal blog. You've voicing your appreciation of specific Apple products in a public forum.

> Apple themselves state that AFP is deprecated. Deprecating isn't the same as removing. Unless Apple has previously said they are removing (or will remove) AFP support in High Sierra release notes, or otherwise announce it somewhere, I don't see how it's the user's fault at all.

[hnarn]

1. I'm suggesting that if you are hosting and supporting your own physical infrastructure and file hosting solution, your first interest should be solving the problem, and as far as I can see Apple gave this outdated setup the best solution available. You can either whine about it or accept the fact that you did not keep your house in order and do whatever it takes to solve it for your users and customers.

2. Of course anyone can voice any opinion about Apple in any forum they want, but I'm not the one with a current ongoing issue that I know a solution to but am choosing not to implement to the benefit of shaming Apple in public instead.

3. You are correct that deprecating isn't removing, but when you're in a niche market (Apple servers), using any setup that includes deprecated protocols or components is a bad idea, and you should know this and plan for it if you elect to roll your own.

The person who wrote this post seems to have a very entitled sense of what he as a customer deserves in terms of continued software support from Apple, and very little sense of what in turn his customers and/or colleagues are entitled to and should expect from him/those that are responsible for keeping their business critical solution working.

[dagw]

I have never heard anyone say that in terms of server infrastructure, Apple makes "excellent products".

Once upon a time they did. The Xserver and Xserver RAID where really amazing products when they where first released. However they couldn't really gain traction and quickly gave up on that market.

[extra88]

Certainly the hardware was great and the Xserve RAID was a surprisingly good value for its price.

[ckastner]

> edit: Despite knowing almost nothing about AFP, I found articles on Google saying that Apple shifted from AFP file sharing to SMB2 in an article dated 2013 -- that's five years ago! Apple themselves state that AFP is deprecated

I too found third-party articles, but the only official notice I could find from Apple was in the recent APFS FAQs [1]. Either I'm searching for the wrong terms, or Apple could have communicated the issue better.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Fi...

[PeterStuer]

It was worded at the time (2013) in a way that I can see people not familiar with typical soft-balled IT marketing speak could have misinterpreted.

"SMB2 is the new default protocol for sharing files in OS X Mavericks. SMB2 is superfast, increases security, and improves Windows compatibility. ... SMB2 is automatically used to share files between two Mac computers running OS X Mavericks, or when a Windows client running Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 connects to your Mac. OS X Mavericks maintains support for AFP and SMB network file-sharing protocols, automatically selecting the appropriate protocol as needed. ...

The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) is the traditional network file service used on the Mac. Built-in AFP support provides connectivity with older Mac computers and Time Machine–based backup systems."

https://images.apple.com/media/us/osx/2013/docs/OSX_Maverick...

[wazoox]

The real problem isn't the server. SMB client implementation in MacOS sucks rocks, period. He could use any high end top of the line cutting edge server hardware, and he would have the same problem: MacOS doesn't know how to move data quickly through the network unless you're using AFP. Or eventually, NFS, but then the Finder behaves erratically.

[tzahola]

“Apple shifted from AFP file sharing to SMB2”

* SMB2 with undocumented Apple-specific extensions (https://www.mankier.com/8/vfs_fruit)

[fredgrott]

given that BSD is having trouble of keeping enough contributors to keep up with security issues its not an idle claim that Apple is going down the drain...its in fact reality but its like boiling a frog in boiling water its tarting out slow