Comment by Melatonic

3 days ago

Apple has also never been big on the server side equation of both software and hardware - don't they already outsource most of their cloud stack to Google via GCP ?

I can see them eventually training their own models (especially smaller and more targeted / niche ones) but at their scale they can probably negotiate a pretty damn good deal renting Google TPUs and expertise.

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Melatonic

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jnaina  3 days ago

Mostly AWS actually. Apple uses Amazon’s Trainium and Graviton chips to serve search services. "Fruit Stand" is the internal name for Apple at AWS.

ghaff  3 days ago

Xserve was always kind of a loss. Wrote a piece about it a number of years back. It became pretty much a commodity business--which isn't Apple.

  • no_wizard  3 days ago

    I always wondered what they were hoping for with their server products back when they had them. Consumers and end users benefit greatly from the vertical integration that Apple is good at. This doesn't translate with servers. Commodity hardware + linux is not only cheaper, its often easier, and was definitely less proprietary.

    Its also a race to the bottom type scenario. Apple would have never been able to keep up with server release schedules.

    Was an interesting but ultimately odd moment of history for servers.

    • ghaff  2 days ago

      Pre-iPhone and pre-Intel Mac, Apple was experimenting with a lot of things. The iPod wasn't a clear initial win--and the iPhone wasn't either. A lot of the success happened in retrospect.

    • ghaff  3 days ago

      Companies were still figuring out Linux with servers at the time. Xserve seemed like it might be something of interest to at least academia but Apple never really had their heart in it as I wrote at the time.

  • simondotau  3 days ago

    How is server hardware more "commodity" than MacBook laptops? Both are quite sophisticated and tailored to their audience in nuanced ways; both are manufactured at scale and face fierce competition. I don't think Xserve was a uniquely commodity business, it was a B2B service business--which isn't Apple.