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Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

Apple cant do this on its servers either, considering it has no server product.

Google has this stack control in Android, Google Home, Chromebook, etc trivially if it chooses, if it doesn't have that already.

Microsoft can do this on its Cortana smart speakers and Surface Pro X running their (Qualcomms) ARM cpu.

Also I imagine bulk buyers can get Intel ME disabled if they don't want it on their server. AMD PSP can be disabled in the BIOS I believe.

Comparing a phone to a server doesn't make too much sense. A phone is a consumer product like Android or Home and a server is a business product. Apple runs its cloud on Intel or AMD like everyone else.

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> Apple cant do this on its servers either, considering it has no server product

Wat?

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack

https://www.apple.com/macos/server/

I'm skeptic this is what they're populating their datacenters with. These are niche products for smaller businesses. I meant they are not powering their cloud with these products.

Apple's icloud is partly their datacenter running a mix of systems/hardware and renting out Amazon and Google cloud units, which are Intel/AMD.

Two hours ago you didn't even know they made servers, so your statement about how niche you think they are isn't super relevant.

Google populates it's datacenters with their own servers. So does Facebook. So does Amazon. Netflix builds their own CDN appliances. Apple absolutely could if they wanted to.

Define "own servers" because this discussion is about controlling the entire stack, and eliminating things like ME or PSP. FANG runs on AMD/Intel, so they don't own their own stack. They have to contend with the AMD/Intel product.

Buying a beige box to put an intel chip is not "your own" servers in the context of this discussion. I'm not sure why you're so rude and confrontational here. We're discussing how Apple has top to bottom control in its consumer devices, not some weird discussion about datacenter packaging. Servers run on AMD/Intel and as such are stuck with the elements of those platforms AMD and Intel dictate. That's not having the entire stack to themselves.

I think you seem to be confusing what is available in the public cloud and on Newegg for what companies use internally. Custom silicon is extremely prevalent and it doesn't all run on AMD/Intel.

These things are servers in name only. Apple used to build true servers (the Xserve line) with true server operating systems, but they stopped building both around the time Steve Jobs died.

Using today's MacOS as a server is an exercise in pain, largely because there are a number of routine server administration tasks that fundamentally require the GUI in MacOS.

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