[MisterTea]

> Another entirely missing Apple product line: rackmount servers, with all the proper stuff like ILO management.

They tried. But the irony is MS is more deeply ingrained. I worked a short stint in a shop that no joke ran Windows server to manage a whole floor of Macs using Active Directory. The only other Windows PC was a machine hooked to a large format printer. I spoke to the admin (dyed in the wool Apple user) who stated that as much as he loves MacOS, it can not match the features offered by Active Directory like AD controller replication.

[pjc50]

> as much as he loves MacOS, it can not match the features offered by Active Directory like AD controller replication.

Sure, but that's a choice by Apple to not even attempt to offer such features, or integration with AD, or a comparable feature stack. That all comes under my "proper management features" handwave.

Even managing a few Mac Minis for CI is a massive pain. There's popups that can only be resolved by logging in on the desktop directly, which is completely unsuitable for proper "server" use.

[cmiles74]

I setup an XServe for a mid-sized office, Open Directory was Apple's solution at the time. It worked but my recollection was that they did it by emulating a lot of Active Directory by layering code over OpenLDAP. When it worked it was nice, when it didn't work it was a headache to figure out where the problem might be. The management tools really couldn't compete with Active Directory, it was a mix of incomplete UI and command line tools.