how far have mac's made it into large installations?

Fri Apr 22 10:43:07 PDT 2011

Hi guys.  Thanks for the cool thread.  As a long time Mac user, I was just 
looking up this issue.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-in-the-enterprise-living-without-xserve/9399?tag=nl.e539

There are other companion articles on the subject.  Now, I'm not sure who's 
stockpiling or clustering of Mac Minis in the data center, or why they're 
wanting that many instances of Mac OS.  ;-)  But I guess for someone, somewhere 
it's cost effective!  I guess!  I'd really like to know.  Also, I was surprised 
to find that a multiuser Mac OS terminal service exists 
( http://www.aquaconnect.net/ ).  Speaking of which, I read an article that Mac 
OS 10.7 beta ships with a multiuser VNC service.

Anyway, it is said that Apple is accidentally seeding the enterprise -- brought 
in backpacks, pockets, and briefcases --  and succeeding despite themselves. 
 Sometimes it's due to hardheaded VPs who coerce IT to support a given one-off 
cool product.  It was cool to hear from the person at Netflix about their 
widespread Mac deployments.  I've always heard that Netflix has a positive 
culture, and I'm a huge fan, so thanks for being candid.

Personally, in my humble opinion, I think we're fortunate that Steve was 
effectively sent out to start NeXT in the enterprise market, and bring back such 
a high-caliber product in the form of OPENSTEP.  Or else Mac OS might have 
become a one-trick pony for consumers, and Macs might be basically giant 
iPods... instead of iPods being tiny Macs.  ;-)

And on a final note for the future of all computing, I'll say thank God for ZFS. 
 ( http://code.google.com/p/maczfs/ )  My personal system at home has an 8x2TB 
raidz1 on Mac OS.  Hopefully, Ten's Complement will revitalize the community 
soon with their port of the latest Solaris ZFS code, and bring in the new era of 
Mac OS's storage strategy.  Mac OS needs enterprise technology, because the 
platform fosters such large workstations with the same kind of intensity and 
scale as has been associated by the likes of SGI.