Summary ... What Apple Uses: 80+ Apple WWW Servers
In my opinion, Apple WWW needs to be all-Mac OS.
Please
send
your opinion to Apple today.(email:
Apple Forever)
[ Pieter Hartsook's mostly differing 1995 views on this subject, published from his Mac OS Apple Internet Server ]
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 15:17:57 -0700
To: webstar-talk@starnine.com
From: brad@brad.net
(Brad Schrick)
Subject: Mac OS sold down river for AIX and other EUNUCHS
Cc: macway-for-guy@solutions.apple.com, macway@aol.com,
james_staten@macweek.com
My name is Brad Schrick, and I've worked for two years morning, afternoon, night, midnight, and later to demonstrate by example that Macs with Mac OS make powerful Internet servers. http://brad.net/ Actually, the nearly 1600 Mac OS WWW webmasters on my list have done it, with the multiple thousands more who have not yet listed. Many of you have done as much, or better, for Mac OS WWW.
Most of my (our) time has been uncompensated, Apple's and others' promises to the contrary. Thanks to those who came through with a little support.
Apple executives need to get the Mac OS WWW message straight, and then get that message out. Private communications have done little.
The alpha, beta, and omega of the message is: Mac OS ... Mac OS ... Mac OS!
Instead, key high Apple executives apparently still don't get this, and are actually working against us to undermine the Mac OS. Their messsage is 'Mac OS ... Mac OS ... AIX!' There's not much time to prevent the compounding disaster:
-- Recently many Apple WWW efforts have been told to move from Mac OS web/internet server boxes to AIX boxes, and apparently some important ones are.
-- It's obvious: Nothing spent on AIX will help Apple's 56 million Mac OS customers, or the 5 million who are scheduled to sign up this year alone!
Picture: Customers Apple executives
56,000,000 Mac OS customers <-- 'in the bag' (NOT)
5,000,000 Mac OS 1996 units <-- 'in the bag' (NOT)
5,000 AIX boxes -- maybe <-- 'spend here' (""!)
-- Imagine what would happen if a newspaper printed a picture of Sun's server room, and it was half-full, or even one-tenth-full, of Macs... Some say the AIX Shinola is an Apple product... By that (il-)logic, Windows is an Apple product, since Apple ships so many DOS compatibles!
-- Imagine what happens when an Apple sales rep goes into a business happily running Mac OS WWW servers, and says that AIX is 'higher performance and more reliable.' Per dollar and per hour, this is a lie, in case you started wondering. Imagine what happens when that business was on the fence between Mac OS and NT...
-- Apple is jeopardizing 5 million Mac OS sales this year, in a continuing, successful, consistent program, by setting a horrible very public example with a handful of UNIX servers. This is also all they can hope to sell. (3000 ... 5000 maybe ... 10000 max ... less than the Lisa ... 1 per executive...)
-- In fact, every dollar and hour spent on AIX hurts, thousands of times over, stolen from Mac OS sales by simple arithmetic. [Make Shiner Mac OS -- QED]
-- Mac OS and WebSTAR are fast and reliable for WWW. Mac OS works hard on the net for almost every service, from almost every Mac ever made. This has been proven thousands upon thousands of times, in public, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week... for more than two years. Where there is a hole, Apple is directly responsible. Apple executives have barely funded the LaserWriter of the Internet (the Apple Internet Server (AISS), a 'WebWriter') and were shocked to find sales and profits there. Those profits have apparently been spent on AIX, which has been a massive multi-year project with flip-flop non-Mac OS goals and no revenue.
-- There have been problems with Mac OS WWW at Apple. Key executives still don't understand that almost every last one of Apple's WWW problems on the net have been caused almost solely by not being able to get past a UNIX node on a crowded line; if a Mac is around, it seems an Apple executive will blame it and get a promotion. Or get blamed, or get ignored, and quit.
-- Key Apple executives have ignored the many meltdowns of Apple UNIX servers, like the ones in Austin that are unavailable much more often than www.apple.com. I can't count the times that the Apple home page appeared, but *without* the navigation bar, during the many months it was served from Austin by another company's UNIX box...
-- I went to always.apple.com to give some feedback, but it was wasted because the feedback machine was down. always.apple.com is two Macs, the feedback machine (cgi.info.apple.com) is UNIX, running Netscape's server. For feedback, try www.salon1999.com ... they use Macs for a WWW bulletin board (webx for Table Talk), right on your WWW page, with dozens of discussions! Radical idea.
-- The NET is the bottleneck for serving. A T1 is supposed to be high capacity, BUT it is only 50 28Kb modem connections, at the never-achievable maximum (a T1 carries 1.5megabits/s, or 150K Bytes/s). That's about 5 to 10 typical web pages served at a time, meaning about 5 to 10 customers at a time, per T1! Any Mac can serve that load. Apple has more than 100 public web server machines
( http://brad.net/macwww/apple.sites.checks.html ),
more internal ones, and about 100 T1s of customer demand, but it does not have 100 T1s. It has the rough equivalent of 10 to 20, after a recent major upgrade. Ergo, gridlock has always been possible, and still is, and will be. Throwing expensive machines at that net is like turning up the speed limit and driving more Ferraris downtown -- nothing will increase, except costs and crashes.
-- see http://louvx.biap.com/white-papers/performance/summary.html and http://louvx.biap.com/white-papers/performance/overview.html
-- Every dollar spent (or given away) on an AIX Shinola gets multiplied by ten or twenty or more by the time UNIX software, UNIX consulting, and UNIX maintenance is paid for. [Give us Mac OS Shiners!]
-- Soon we have multiple $ millions $ MORE $ spent on NO ONE who will EVER help the Mac OS. You may point out that Apple has been doing this for years (can you say 'AUX?'... knew you could, but this time it will work, see? ... ) but it's still not funny, and Apple can't afford to do it for even one more quarter.
-- There is nothing more public at this time than the Internet. Apple can hide the Suns and VAXes in Cupertino and the Suns in Austin and elsewhere, and the megabuck HP's and fools-gold-plated UNIX tombstones at eWorld, but on the net you can't hide what you're using for WWW.
( http://brad.net/macwww/apple.sites.checks.html ),
-- Most likely, we will just see again the very people and decisions that have brought Apple to its sorry state. In the midst of Mac OS excellence, rotten anti-Mac decisions at the core time after time have been eating the capital of the Mac Plus and Mac II year after year, while making excuses for omissions. While Apple was not delivering fundamental obvious OS and DB improvements, those same system services were deployed on other platforms by others spending far less money but using the same processor...
-- [ Of course, let's not forget the heroes who have made the Mac so much more than it was in 1987 ... though you may have noticed that they don't get their names published anywhere. Who brought us MacTCP? Not executives. Not OOPS projects. It often seems to only get dumped on, but Mac OS and MacTCP made Macs on the net possible, powerful, and reliable while WinDOS was absolutely broken... of course, that was then, the lost opportunity. eWorld was the only answer... Now WinDOS is less broken...]
-- Apple will sell almost no AIX boxes this year, or next. The revenue and profit will not likely be detectable on the bottom line, barely in the best case. (most likely, 3,000 boxes times $12K is $36M, or .3% of $13 billion... best case, 5,000 boxes times $15K is $75M, or .6% of $13 billion... ) Some claim good margins here, but they're not factoring in heavy non-Mac OS support spread over zero units combined with zero software sales ... Apple has more cards and cables revenue than this, probably at better margins, though executives wrecked that (key captive strategic networking) business too, and Apple could sell a lot more ... if it spent its marketing and development budget on Mac OS.
-- Every AIX or other UNIX box that is used at Apple destroys untold Mac OS sales and referrals, and has for years and years. This speaks volumes about the sales and marketing executives at Apple. Every AIX box pitched to Mac OS customers will destroy Mac OS confidence, and convince some few customers to use UNIX, and therefore will sell several times more Suns and SGIs, not to mention making those customers some of the most miserable people on earth after totaling all the costs and complexities, after it's too late. This speaks volumes about the sales and marketing (and R&D;?) executives at Apple.
-- Apple is scheduled to spread its new plan and new message soon.
-- This loud and clear message can therefore already be summed up in a sneak preview: "Hi. We're Apple Sales and Marketing. Buy Macs. But we don't use the Mac OS ourselves, suckers, we use UNIX!"
-- We can amplify this message... Customer: "Why?" Apple execs: "Macs are good for people, but UNIX is good for serving." Customer (confused; aren't eunuchs illegal?): "What's the difference?" Answer: "Well, servers have to be fast and reliable."
-- In fact, Mac OS is reliable and fast serving the Internet, by long test, and there is a Mac or cheap set of Macs that can handle any load on a given network connection, and even for *less* than the competition. This has been true for WWW for two years. We've proved it. Apple executives apparently still don't know this.
-- Some reviews and benchmarks claim the Mac is slow; a few show the truth: The Mac is fast, the Internet is slow, so use a Mac! Networld says WebSTAR is the network product of the year; Apple executives say AIX is. This says volumes... oh, !@$*^#!!.
-- Yesterday it took two hours for a download of Netscape, from the best connected UNIX (and Mac client) company on the net... is this going to get in the paper or on some benchmarks page? Go to Netscape or Sun or SGI and time a full download of a page or file. Then go to an Apple page...
... and it will be plenty fast or faster, for you. The Apple home page has always been on a Mac, and the majority of Apple's sites are now on Mac OS, make no mistake, bless those people!... But the majority is not overwhelming. Check the times at
( http://brad.net/macwww/apple.sites.checks.html ),
... so there is no performance reason to use UNIX, and *certainly* no cost reason! Apple has plenty of dollars to waste on UNIX, though, apparently...
-- I've worked for two years straight, using every penny I could scrape up, publishing lists of Mac OS WWW boxes on the net, working day, night, midnight and after (with only a Mac Plus for my server on the net, for the first long 5 months) (worked great, no crashes) to show by hard public example that Macs can serve the WWW as well as any other machine -- better, because anyone who can manage complex applications on a Mac can do it if they invest the time.
-- Many, many other Mac OS stalwarts are the ones who made Macs on the net possible, or showed how to get the most out of a Mac on the net, or otherwise moved us forward. (Chuck Shotton, the MacTCP crew, the Mac OS crew, the Mac Mosaic and MacWeb and Navigator free Internet software writing contingent**, the MacHTTP/W* providers and third parties...) Most of our time has been uncompensated, and most of that unjustifiably so, since that limited the benefits to Apple in one of its most profitable businesses. Apparently that time is also unappreciated, both in understanding and in action, at least by those executives inside Apple who should know better in order to know where to find and build profits.
-----
Responsible parties (responsibility doesn't mean you made the decision...):
Gil Amelio, Jim Buckley, Larry Tesler... executives in Apple sales, marketing, MIS, and networking.
-- Let them know what you think, see if Kawasaki and Roizen care, let us know who is making these decisions, and where to reach them.
-- B.rad //brad.net/ ... 1600+ Mac OS WWW Server Listings ...
** Stuffit, Fetch, Eudora, Newswatcher, FTPd, Gopher, Finger, MacTCP Ping, MacTCP Watcher, WebMap, ... and on and on and on ... none officially supported by Apple **
PS -- Non-Mac OS companies and people who choose to use UNIX for
network services for themselves are OK by me. But when Apple or a Mac
OS vendor pitches UNIX to Mac OS customers, that's treason to
customers, employees, and stockholders, by arithmetic. For any of the
very few services where UNIX still leads Mac OS in networking enough
to require a UNIX purchase from a Mac OS customer, it is the result
of years of neglect at Apple, not insuperable obstacles in Mac
OS.
Brad has kept independent lists of Mac OS WWW servers since October 1994.
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Directory ©1994, 95, 96 Brad Schrick //waymac.com/