Leopard Server Preview Woes

or..
How I learned love the enterprise beta-bug.

One problem with Beta-Testing is that you never know how deep you’re in, until its too late. You’ve invested countless man-hours setting up, what should be a simple server, only to find out that the bugs and glitches make it wholey un-TEST-able.

Yes, this is beta-testing which, by all accounts, should be called "Alpha-Testing" and whatever primordial ooze that companies like Apple and Microsoft conjure up in the privacy of their respective skunk-works should be called "procreative speculation".

    -316 smIntStatVErr The InitStatusV field was negative after primary or secondary init.

The point of diminishing returns comes all too late in the game as you strugggle to find purpose in what has turned out to be a frustratig excersize in futility.

You reflect, somewhat somberly, how that at 9:00am, you were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, almost giddy with anticipation about getting your hands dirty in the new pre-release server update. You cancelled your lunch plans, dentist appointment and forwarded your phone straight to voicemail.

    Error from server (debug enabled)

Perhaps you re-install, re-configure re-deploy, smiling all the while at the Execs to whom your career owes its precarious existance to. They don’t care about error strings, debugging or anything having to do with technology for that matter. Remember, these colloge educated Ivy-leagers can’t, won’t and don’t know how to set the time and date in system preferences.

In all fairness, they don’t get paid to give a damn about HOW technology gets implimented. They just want the s*** to work.

    Send bug report

So there you sit, all alone in some cold server room. Probably on your third re-install of the latest pre-release seed, murmering to yourself about how "At least its better than the last seed."

Sort of…

Its now the golden hour, rounding past tea time and you have yet to connect from a client. Your limbs are stiff, your brow is furrowed and you begin to understand just how Charlie Brown felt everytime Lucy took the ball away. If you were a cartoon character, you’d have one of those black, scratched out thought bubbbles over your head.

You reflect once more about how, until recently, Apple has been so conspicuously absent from the world of Enterprise computing. They jumped in to a crowded ring as a rookie and an underdog, with some pretty amazing offerings, some of which have replaced many of the more-expensive tried-and-true server solutions in your own company!

    Check console CrashReporter

So then you wonder, "How could Apple get it so right with Laptops, desktops, a kick-ass OS and a world-dominating MP3 player and a friggin’ phone, but miss the mark completely with its enterprise solutions?". Obviously the right hand is not on spekaing terms with the left.

A jack of all trades and master of a few? The execs who takes pleasure in holding your head under the corporate heat lamp only cares about the technology initiatives mandated by the holding company. They read their trade publications and pick up on stuff like "Web 2.0" and "Service-oriented architecture" to use during meetings and coctail parties without really knowing what they mean.

    Reinstall

We already know that they’re not paid to know this stuff. You are. And in the end (all together now): "They just want the s*** to work!"

Right now that’s exactly what you want. Nothing more, nothing less. You would trade all the fancy smoke and mirrors of "Web Collaboration", "Podcasting" and "Social Networking" for some good ol’ solid filesharing…

Yes, I hear you screaming "ITS PRE-RELEASE BETA SOFTWARE!!!" and I agree, we signed on for this. Not for girls, money, fame, power or drugs – and not even industry respect… We signed on because we get the Apple gestalt – lucid, elegant and yet powerful. A dichotomy of IKEA-like simplicity with the power of a stage-one booster rocket.

    Connection failure

Just like any successful NASA Space Shuttle launch, there are a myriad of aborted launches, red-light warnings and close-calls that preceded it, right? Your organic vegan rice-pasta, soy-cheese lasagna didn’t come out right the first time, did it?

This seems somewhere in the middle betweeen rocket science and kitchen alchemy – and what we want now, more than anything in the world, including world peace, the end of global warming and eternal life is for the s*** to just f****** work.