Fruity and nutty cargo-cult Apple has finally given up on servers and effectively ended its long history of poor networking technology.
MacOS Server pre-dated Mac OS X by a year, launching initially in 1999. One of its main feature was Open Directory, which launched within Mac OS X Panther Server. It was a poor man’s version of Microsoft’s Active Directory and was designed to manage Macs, user accounts, and any settings on Mac-based networks.
It was part of the life of publishers and newspapers which remained Mac based even when common sense suggested they would be better off with something that did not fall asleep on press day or slow to a crawl when a page needed saving.
But its role in bigger enterprises fell flat rather fast and smaller business users were better served by the Mac mini server.The Mac Pro was the only remaining Apple product capable of functioning as a truly enterprise server.
Apple released it could not compete and removed almost all of macOS Server features in 2018 and suggested some alternatives for organisations still based around it (most of those options were open-source versions Apple had built into macOS Server) soon only Open Directory and Profile Manager existed. Profile Manager was a lightweight Apple device manager console that was more limited than competing enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions.
It is unlikely the technology will be missed by anyone, even the most ardent Apple fanboy.
