News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

August 7, 2007

software

Serving up OS X’s managed preferences

Posted Aug. 7, ’07, 8:26 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

OS X Server PreferencesApple may not be the bee’s knees in the enterprise market, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t want to play the game. Mac OS X Server is a very capable piece of software, with a long history, but it can be a bit overwhelming for someone just setting out.

Fortunately, our cousins over at Computerworld have put together a hands on piece about the managed preference capabilities of OS X Server, which let you, as an administrator, define the pretty much the entire experience for your peons users.

Ryan Faas walks you through OS X Server’s fourteen built-in preference sections, as well as managing additional applications’ preferences and network views. While my own sysadmin days are well behind me, I have to say that I would vastly have preferred working on OS X Server than on the nutso Windows NT setup we used to use.


3 Comments

Andre Da Costa said:

I will assume you are referring to Windows NT 4 which came out in 1996. Back then, you had two choices when it came to NOSs, UNIX or Windows. If you want cheap, reliable, easy to use setup and configuration, you chose Windows. Thats why NT 4 was so attractive and popular. Sure, if we all look back now, we will see a stark difference between what we have now. OS X did exist back in the days of NT 4 but was called NEXT Step and thats not something I think a lot of Admins really found attractive.

If you go back further to NT 3.1 in 1993, NT would be like how you are describing OS X Server today. Cheap 32-bit computing, built in TCP/IP Networking thats easy to setup that delivered real value. No more need for networking functionality from Banyan Vines and Novell. So,to conclude, I think your comment was sorely biased and uninformed. Still, OS X Server looks wicked and easy to use, especially the new Leopard Server.

August 7, 2007 9:18 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

"So,to conclude, I think your comment was sorely biased and uninformed. "

Hey, thanks. But it's my opinion, and I'm sticking by it.

August 7, 2007 9:22 AM
Andre Da Costa said:

No problem, but its wrong. You can't compare OS X Server (Tiger) to Windows NT 4, thats a 9 year difference in functionality and security. All I'm saying is, you should have leveled the playing field when making a comparison with something like Server 2003, Linux and OS X Server.

August 9, 2007 10:34 AM

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