It was *not* common in mid-90s. x86 was commodity hardware - home PCs, early NT workstations. PHP was still written in Perl. Linux was a few years old - industry veterans (e.g. Greenspun) were throwing rocks at it.
Yes, the x86 platform was documented - through reverse-engineering efforts. Compaq was the first to produce PC clones, to IBM's great disdain.
Don't get me wrong - you're probably better off running Ampere. Just don't dismiss commodity hardware.
“I wonder why people keep writing that PHP was ever written in Perl. It never was. #php”
The PHP history page at one point claimed it was:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090426061624/http://us3.php.ne...
He may have had some Perl scripts on his computer before the 1.0 C release, but that’s a far cry from “PHP was written in Perl”.
This wouldn't work with Apple products because Apple ultimately has control over the hardware. You don't want a server that suddenly shows "Please enter your AppleID" in the middle of something, for example.
Sun Microsystems were also big in universities. As were IBM. Lots of people believed the "servers have special hardware" voodoo back then, and parroted that it's bad news to run servers on consumer hardware.
Somehow, decades later, the meme refuses to die. Unlike Sun Microsystems. Or IBM's Unix server business.
If Google had used Apple appliances for their servers they would be violating the EULA and have lawyers knocking on their door.
Apple appliances are made for consumers. Apple's lawyers were not paid to cover business usecases, so they basically don't allow it.
The point is: commodity hardware is powerful, and it's interesting to explore its capabilities outside of its original purpose. Apple or not.