SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — When Apple discontinued the Xserve server last year, there was a huge outcry from the IT crowd.
But as one school in Hawaii has demonstrated, the Xserve platform is a dinosaur.
“The entire lab uses less power than a blow dryer,” said director Dr. Bill Wiecking, speaking here at Macworld.
According to Dr. Wiecking, an Xserve in sleep mode uses more power than a Mac mini HDMI going full blast on all cores.
“Not a lot of people know that,” he said.
Although Mac mini servers aren’t good for everything, they are perfect for a smaller institution like HPA. The Lab discontinued its six Xserve servers and now has eight Mac mini servers serving 60 MacBooks/Pros and three i7 iMacs.
The future of computing is clearly lightweight, low-power and portable, Dr. Wiecking said.
“Change is on the way,” he said. “You can either be a victim of it or a change agent.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
35 responses to “Why Did Apple Discontinue Xserve? Because It’s a Dinosaur”
Where did all of our previous comments go? There were a lot!
Sooooo Did you erase our comments because they painted Apple in a bad light or is it because you don’t know how to backup your wordpress blog and thus lost all the comments. There were about 10 to 15 and they were very detailed and interesting specifically discussion the topic.
I am just asking so I know what to think of CultOfMac.com. Such as ran by people who don’t know how to run backups and restores or people who DELETE comments which they don’t agree with.