Just one minor addition - this is Things I Want To See At WWDC but probably won't.
- Xserve in a more SOHO-friendly form factor: 20%. Unfortunately, Apple seems to see Xserve as a "enterprise-only" product. If they could produce a tabletop version that's big enough to have these (or equivalent) specs:
• Single Core 2 Duo processor (no Xeon needed)
• Built-in SATA RAID support (for striping or mirroring)
• 2 hot-swappable drives, using the ADM form factor from the bigger Xserve (it holds 3 drives)
• Built-in video
• 1 expansion slot - PCI Express
• 2 USB ports, 1 FW400, and 1 FW 800 port
Apple can price it a little below the Xserve price point (but not too far below) and sell them like hotcakes to small businesses. Right now the options are G5 tower or Xserve - a G5 tower has plenty of muscle and doesn't require a rack, but no RAID or hotplug drives. PowerPC Mac minis used to make good low-end servers (if you didn't mind software RAID with the Firewire drives), but they're gone now. Plenty of 5-10 person companies could use a Apple server but have no need for all the infrastructure that goes with an Xserve, and lack the space for a rack system. Think about it, Steve...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment