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Webmaster's note: Brad's email refers to MacHTTP, insanely great software by Chuck Shotton (via BIAP - Brain In A Pan - Software). Since this email, which is still worth reading, MacHTTP became the commercial product WebSTAR. It's far more robust and reliable than the MacHTTP that Brad speaks about. Now there's no reason not to use a Macintosh as a production web server.

From: brad@ape.com (Brad Schrick)
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 02:09:07 -0800

A Macintosh makes a great World-Wide Web server, thanks almost solely to Chuck Shotton's MacHTTP. Several cheap Macs will beat a dedicated UNIX WWW server hands down for less money. Thanks also go to the Mac community, including a very few people at Apple itself, but primarily volunteers and dedicated amateurs, who have been determined to make every Internet service available on and deliverable by a Mac. Chuck built MacHTTP on Apple technology, it's true, but I don't know who to thank there. Apple and Internet seems to have been a mixed story at best...

There is a lot of baloney about Macs in the marketplace in general, and when it comes to WWW it just gets worse. Most of the stuff reads 'Macs are slow and expensive servers, so how fast are they and how much do they cost?' (almost literal quote from one example). National Enquirer stuff by people who don't have any experience or even first-hand accounts.

People save $400 to buy a PC instead of a Mac, and then spend every waking working moment in front of it for two years. 2000 working hours a year (I wish it were so few!) means they saved themselves 10 cents an hour to get $10(0) an hour worth of delays and headaches. When it comes to resale, high Mac prices beg the question of whether [choosing to follow] the Mac route actually cost anything extra.

In the meantime, the same people send $25K out of the country for a foreign car but sit in it only half an hour or an hour a day... to no productive purpose.

[But] back to MacHTTP...

For a list of more than 100 Mac servers on the WWW, take a look at http://www.batnet.com/ape/machttp_talk/newservers.html

or under

http://www.ape.com/ (Mac Plus on 9600 serial link for minimum demo purposes) (the serial line is definitely the bottleneck)

---- Points of performance: ----

Reliability: My Mac Plus at http://www.ape.com/ has been up continuously since 27 September 1994, running many different upgrades of MacHTTP, which appear regularly, unlike other products that will remain unmentioned... The only times the Plus has been down have been because its SPARC DNS server/PPP link went down, which happens about every other week.

Reliability: If you want to serve pages from a Mac reliably, don't use the Mac for other things (see above). However, many MacHTTP customers report using dozens of applications and extensions while serving pages with MacHTTP without noticing performance or reliability problems.

Reliability: If you want to see a system lock up every half hour, use Windows. If you want to see it every 15 minutes, use Windows 96.

Access: Office managers, admins, PR, Marketing, and Graphics can use Macs. Almost none can use UNIX boxes at all, and UNIX productivity software costs are still factors higher than Mac stuff, when such software is even available. These are the people who will be doing the publishing for the company. Why not add a few UNIX layers between them and the intended audience? Yeah, that's it!

Speed: Multiple cheap Macs can beat a fast UNIX server. The net is the bottleneck.

Speed: The network is the bottleneck. Do the arithmetic. A T1 line all to yourself is about as fast as a slow CD (150K/s); a Mac Plus will handle SCSI data transfers more than 10 times as fast as this. Faster Macs go faster. And you probably don't have the T1 to yourself.

Speed: If you're doing a database lookup, do it on another (cheap) Mac. The WWW doesn't care where the other one is very much, on the next desk or on the next continent. Practical and productive multiprocessing is here, and if you use the WWW you already take advantage it every day. If you apply the 'another one' strategy to UNIX boxes, instead of going fast, you will go broke fast.

Programming: A MacHTTP server can be extended with AppleScript, and therefore linked to virtually every other productivity and utility program on the Mac using a language non-programmers can learn and use, on a machine that non-technical people can learn to use.

Programming: If you want to go faster, use C on the Mac. Very few professionals have needed to, to my knowledge. Compiled code is great, though.

Programming: If you want simplicity, use AppleScript, or another language that is as easy to use, on a UNIX box. This won't work at all, which makes it as simple as it can be. Or use C on a UNIX box, and pay $100 an hour and wait for months to get each request done. (If you can program in C, and aren't getting $100 an hour, get out of the HTTP publishing business and into the programming end, now.)

Imagemaps: These are limited by the speed of the code. An imagemap handler in C on a current Mac is fast and may be faster than the one from NCSA. (see http://www.tucson.ihs.gov/ and others on the MacHTTP lists)

POLITICS: If you want to *not* have a WWW server, tell MIS that you are going to build one, on one of their SPARCs, on their network. This will result in the worst pile of delays, obfuscation, form-filling-out, all-day meetings, secret decoder rings, and misappropriation of duties you have ever seen...

..('we'll do that over here in MIS!' [we've been responsible for corporate messages and image all along, really, which is why we're ideal picks for this job. Plus, we think it's fun, and we have the passwords.])

..('we don't have anything else to do, which is why all those MIS requests are not piling up on desks all over the organization.')

..('we won't have to spend our days moving text and graphics files from Macs to UNIX machines, we'll just write a few scripts to do it...')

POLITICS: If you choose MIS and the SPARC, you should bet on getting a really nice set of pages that say: 'Last updated Feb 08, 1994. Look for more soon!'

POLITICS: If you want to get a high-performance, cheap (hardware and software) WWW server going, ask MIS to put your Mac on the Internet. Download MacHTTP. Double click. You will be publishing on the WWW at full speed. Modify the example pages to suit your purposes, using Mac editing and graphics tools.

POLITICS: Point out that a dedicated Mac is not a security hole, like every UNIX box. 'They' can't log into it!

POLITICS: A Mac WWW server is FAST. To make it serve twice as many people, add another Mac. Don't let the voodoo hoodoo from UNIX zealots sway the decision makers, including in particular *you*. We're talking about seconds for image downloads here. But the Mac moves local images at video speeds. Therefore, when the net gets faster, it may be able to keep up with the Mac. QED.

Please forgive some of my tone; the claims that prompted the previous letter make me mad, even though the letter itself is an honest and understandable request for hard information... hope I restrained myself enough to get some facts across too.

-- Brad

__________________________________________________________________________ 
Brad Schrick esc@ape.com *** Palo Alto, California 
http://www.ape.com/


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