Apple's new rackmount server certainly looks sweet. Doc Searls has some notes from yesterday's announcement. The Cult of Steve is certainly big on this one: comparing an unreleased $4000 XServe configuration against a "comparable" $20,000 Sun configuration doesn't sound right, even if Apple did switch from SCSI to ATA disks.
I think Doc nailed this one: Apple is positioning these boxes as a loss leader to get into the enterprise. They're certainly throwing away the per-seat licenses that other vendors use to juice up their profit margins. Whatever the reason, it looks like all of the right stuff is in here -- and no expensive black magnesium box this time. :-) If I were going to be on the market to stock or update a datacenter around Christmas, I'd certainly keep these new gadgets in mind...
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
