Apple canned Xserve due to poor sales?

By on Nov 8, 2010 at 2:53 PM
Hardware November 8, 2010

Uh oh, another Steve Jobs email? French Mac enthusiast site MacGeneration is reporting that it has obtained an email exchange between Steve Jobs and one if its readers about the discontinuation of Apple’s Xserve server product line. The reader emailed into Steve Jobs asking why the Xserve stopped serving, and here is what Steve Jobs, apparently, replied with:

Hardly anyone was buying them.

Sent from my iPhone

Short and sweet, eh? It is said that Apple only sold around 10,000 Xserve units a quarter, according to some old Gartner published data. If you’re not giving up on Mac OS X Server, the Mac mini and Mac Pro make pretty great replacements, though nothing can fill the void of a rack-mounted server unit for some of you.

Read [Google Translation]

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16 Comments

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  • Anonymous

    Is this really news? Isn’t it pretty obvious that this was the reason, combined with the extra requirements in the enterprise market that Apple has no experience in?

    • androidwins

      I agree. People in the server data center world (the real world) want cheap, reliable server equipment, which apple is neither.

      • Jordan

        I’d love to see some data showing that the Xserve is unreliable. I’m not arguing about value, form factor, or OS, but you just claimed that Apple enterprise equipment is unreliable and I’d like you to back up your facts. It’s data that quite a few people I know would like to see.

        Thanks in advance!

      • Fred

        Steve already told you there are not enough of them out there.

        Not enough units = not enough data.

      • Anonymous

        On the flip side, show me a mid to large company that relies on these servers in a production environment. I agree that they may not be “unreliable” but they’ve also never been tested in that type of environment from what I can see in the business place.

      • androidwins

        Reliable, as in, it will be around and supported for some time. You just know a linux box will perform well and is easy to upgrade/replace.

      • Jordan

        “You just know a linux box will perform well and is easy to upgrade/replace.”

        You “just know” huh? Kind of like how you “just know” that Xserves aren’t reliable? Rather than responding to my request for the data that you are basing your assumption on, you listed another assumption. I choose to not make assumptions.

        I have a great deal of experience with many types of servers. My anecdotal experience? They are all pretty reliable. While I don’t have as much experience with Xserves, I’ve never seen one go down in flames either. Did you know that they have replaceable motherboards on a tray? It’s amazingly engineered for rock-solid reliability and extremely fast repair in the field. I don’t think you know much about Xserves, you’re just spouting BS.

      • Jordan

        “You just know a linux box will perform well and is easy to upgrade/replace.”

        You “just know” huh? Kind of like how you “just know” that Xserves aren’t reliable? Rather than responding to my request for the data that you are basing your assumption on, you listed another assumption. I choose to not make assumptions.

        I have a great deal of experience with many types of servers. My anecdotal experience? They are all pretty reliable. While I don’t have as much experience with Xserves, I’ve never seen one go down in flames either. Did you know that they have replaceable motherboards on a tray? It’s amazingly engineered for rock-solid reliability and extremely fast repair in the field. I don’t think you know much about Xserves, you’re just spouting BS.

  • sirpaul

    Oh Steve….classic :)
    Hardly anyone was buying them. Stay tuned.

    Short and sweet is the way to go.

  • http://rmbo47.myopenid.com/ rmbo47

    It’s just good business sense to kill products that don’t pull their weight in sales. Especially when there are alternatives that can easily replace that product. Standardizing the production line is a smart move. For the relatively few customers that needed rack-mounted servers, it just wasn’t worth it to Apple to continue the XServe line. The MacPro will offer even better expandability, and the Mac Mini will allow small businesses or individual users to run Mac OSX Server on the cheap.

  • Anonymous

    Mac fans prefer form over function. There’s only so much you can do to a rack mount server to make it pretty and magical. Rack server users want power without the price, i.e. wintel servers running lunux. There’s no value proposition for OSX at the server level in corporate America.

  • http://twitter.com/andrewsoong Andrew Soong

    Hey, I emailed Jobs to ask him what he thought about all these news articles about mundane topics he may or may not have had any input into, and this was his reply!

    “Probably bullshit!

    Sent from my iPhone”

  • CDeeRON

    Apple doesn’t even use Xserve in their DCs why would anyone else….

  • Anonymous

    If they were going to kill the Xserver, they should have just killed OSX server entirely.

    The Mac Pro Server is just a bastard child product.

    No SAS Enterprise drives, no hotswap front-accessible bays and only 4 drive bays

    To rack mount it takes 7U! I could fit 3 Dell R710s and a 1u KVM in that space, giving me up to 36 CPU cores and 576gb of RAM and 24 SAS disks!

    No redundant power supplies.

    Ugh

  • Cynder Gray

    Apple’s servers sell in a space where small office and such are more appropriate. The Xserve was a great value initially but without it pulling it’s own weight and OSX Server buyers tending to buy lighter duty equipment that meets their needs… the answer is pretty clear.

  • http://myuserid.myopenid.com/ Private

    > Apple canned Xserve due to poor sales?

    I think Apple canned it because it was selling VERY well, and making HUGE profits, and worked great!!!!

    (What kind of question is “Apple canned Xserve due to poor sales?”)

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