A server operating system that costs just £35 and is easy to configure, must have a catch.

Server software isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Apple, but it has a long history. In fact, Mac OS X Server 1.0 was released in 1999, almost a year before the public beta of the client version.

Since then, every release of OS X has had an equivalent server version, and every release has combined simple configuration with increasingly powerful, enterprise-ready features. It combines file sharing to Mac and Windows, email, web and Jabber-based IM services, as well as calendar and address book servers.

With Lion, though, Apple appears to be taking a break from this tradition. What it has produced is, instead, a server OS which is easier and faster to get up and running, but sacrifices some of the more advanced services which had been added to it over the years.

For more information see our blog or contact us if you need support.