Xserve Macs endure as they step nearer to obsolescence


Ars Technica has an interesting roundup of what Xserve customers are doing now that Sierra no longer supports the hardware. Apple discontinued Xserve machines in 2011, but is no longer officially supported by the latest macOS. Xserve is Apple's unique 1U rack-mounted Mac.

Despite being off the market for 5 years, Xserve installations have persisted as a reliable and capable solutions for uses not served by conventional rack gear. Ars asked who was still using Xserve Macs and their plans going forward.

"I would love to buy a new Mac, but I can't justify it," writes Evan Walker, a support engineer who currently uses an Xserve as a remote workstation, to virtualize past OS X versions, to store iOS backups, and to cache software updates. "The Mac Pros aren't very appealing to me, and the MacBook Pro line is just so far out of date processor-wise it doesn't make sense. The next Mac I'm likely to buy is a Mac Mini just so I can throw it in my rack and not worry about it. But even then I'm not too keen on them."

"Apple really does need to think about the enterprise environment more," Walker added.