May 14, 2002: Xserve Introduced

Apple had offered plenty of servers throughout its existence but the servers always looked exactly like the top of the line professional Mac being offered at the time. The reason that they looked so similar is because Mac servers were pro models with the configuration tilted towards the server side of the equation.

The problem with just tweaking the specs on a standard box is that as the number of servers needed grows, the form factor of a desktop machine becomes unwieldy and unmanagable. If Apple wanted to grow in the server market, something more was needed than just reconfiguring machines off the assembly line.

Apple finally got around to making a server the right way. The Xserve, as it was called, fit in an industry standard slot, boasted either one or two G4 processors running at 1 GHz and could be paired with the Xserve RAID to access up to 2.5 terabytes of memory. The software that ran the impressive aluminum miracle was the highly thought of X server. The Xserve, which fixed a lot of what was wrong with Apple's server offerings, was introduced May 14, 2002.