Apple on Thursday released an update to its Server Admin utility for Snow Leopard Server, as well as Boot Camp drivers for Windows. Server Admin tools 10.6.2 includes the latest releases of iCal Server Utility, Podcast Composer, Server Admin, Server Monitor, Server Preferences, System Image Utility, Workgroup Manager, and Xgrid Admin.
Virtualization on the Mac has had to move forward rapidly in the past several months: where it was once enough to run basic tasks in Windows XP, users increasingly expect an experience much like what they would have in Boot Camp. That's all the more true with the launch of Windows 7, where the visual effects are not only useful but often essential. Between this and the changes in the background brought about by Mac OS X Snow Leopard, VMware's Fusion 3 has much ground to cover. We hope to find out in our review whether it's an essential upgrade or simply nice to have.
In a bid to promote its new operating system, Apple is says it is now distributing free evaluation copies of Snow Leopard Server. To qualify, people must fill out a form on Apple's website, and represent a business, government agency, non-profit organization or some form of educational institution. Specifically excluded from the promotion are resellers, students, NPOs with less than 10 people and anyone under the age of 13.
Although the operating system has only just been released, Apple has already posted two networking-related updates for Mac OS X Snow Leopard. The first, Network Registration Update 1.0, is specifically intended for Snow Leopard Server. It is a 24.8MB download, and fixes a problem with duplicate serial number alerts on servers using multiple interfaces.
New builds of Mac OS X 10.5.8 and 10.6 Server have been seeded to developers, reports say. The v10.5.8 release, titled 9L25, is said to have no known problems, and correct only two: one with saving e-mails as individual documents, and another involving URL localization. Testing efforts are now shifting from narrow to broad focus, concentrating on some three dozen components previously examined in other builds.
With the release of Snow Leopard Server, Apple will drop deployment support for the WebObjects web application server, sources claim. WebObjects is an enterprise framework for creating web apps, as well as deploying them through a related Java server. The technology was originally acquired by Apple in 1996, when it bought NeXT, headed by former (and now present) Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
The long-expected addition of ZFS to Snow Leopard Server may have been silently dropped. Although Apple has previously indicated that the file management system would be a part of Server, ZFS was not mentioned in yesterday's keynote, and is not listed in the features on Apple's website.
Although the WWDC keynote on Monday focused primarily on the new iPhone 3GS and Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Apple also introduced Snow Leopard Server. The operating system features updates to several included programs; iCal Server 2, Podcast Producer 2, Wiki Server 2, Address Book Server and Mobile Access Server. The company has integrated a new 64-bit kernel, enabling the use of more physical memory and increasing the number of simultaneous system processes, threads and network connections that can be handled by the server.
Snow Leopard Server will provide corporate iPhone support previously only available through third-party software, investigation is said to show. The OS has been slated to receive a remote access feature for sometime, but details in a WWDC session preview appear to confirm that a component called the Mobile Access Server will give iPhones the ability to retrieve corporate e-mail, contacts, calendars and web services without a VPN connection. Currently, only Cisco and Microsoft VPN servers are supported for secure access.
Apple's long-delayed push notification technology may finally see the light of day with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, a new report suggests. The Push Notification Server software was originally scheduled to launch in September, primarily as a means of allowing iPhone apps to receive background updates without burdening the processor. Although developer tools were released at one point, push notification has yet to go live.
