End of the road: Apple kills macOS Server, the place where Mac OS X began

Apple today announced that it is officially ending support for macOS Server after 23 years. The app, which offers device management services and some other features for people who use multiple Macs, iPhones, and iPads on the same network, can still be purchased, downloaded, and used with macOS Monterey. It is also still available at the regular retail price of $20, but will no longer be updated with new features or security fixes.

The server has never been used as widely as consumer versions of macOS, but macOS Server has a long history dating back to Apple’s acquisition of NeXT and its NeXTSTEP software in the late 90s. NeXTSTEP was adapted as part of a project called “Rhapsody”, which added support for some long-standing Apple software and a more Mac-like user interface, and was originally released as Mac OS X Server 1.0 in March 1999. This initial version of Mac OS X Server had much in common with what would become Mac OS X, but it predated important user interface elements such as the Dock and the Aqua theme that would appear two years later in the first consumer release of Mac OS X.

Mac OS X Server has remained a completely separate version of the operating system from the launch of this initial release prior to Snow Leopard Server (version 10.6) in 2009. Beginning with Mac OS X Lion, Apple began selling server software as a download. an add-on app for any Mac, coinciding with the death of the last Apple Xserve rack hardware. This transition also reduced the cost of the software; a single Snow Leopard Server license costs $499, while the Server application costs only $50.

Apple continued to develop the Server application in subsequent years, releasing major new versions roughly in step with the annual Mac software updates. But the software gradually began to lose features, starting with services like DNS and mail that weren’t native to Mac computers. Apple continued to offer Mac and iDevice users unique features in Server: mobile device management for IT administrators; a Time Machine backup service that can apply storage quotas on a per-device basis so that one Mac doesn’t fill up the server’s entire hard drive; and a caching service that can save bandwidth by storing and offering app and OS updates to other devices on your server’s network rather than downloading things from Apple’s servers multiple times.

Apple notes that Time Machine, caching, and file sharing services are now included with all macOS installs, and have been included since High Sierra was released back in 2017. In regards to mobile device management, Apple points to a couple of pages about choosing third-party MDM software and migrating from one MDM service to another, instead of providing more specific guidance or suggesting specific tools that can speed up the migration from Apple MDM service to another.