Earlier this year I purchased a Mac Mini Server with Snow Leopard Server. I did this so I could set up shared calendars with my family, facilitate wireless Time Machine Backups, host a local update repository, and enable remote services for our iPads, iPhones, and Laptops. So far this has worked well. The big steal in the buy was getting the server software, which on its own would have cost $500. For $950 I got a little server with raided hard drives and the OS.

At last weeks WWDC, Apple announced that Lion would be made available for $29.99 and that users could purchase Lion Server for $79.99. or was that $89.99? It doesn’t matter, all I know is that it was priced very low. If I would have known this I would have forgone the Mini Server and simply bought the software for the White Core 2 iMac I have sitting around as a spare.

Hind sight being 20/20, I think the success of Mini Server drove the reduction of the OS X Server software. I believe that Apple found that by making a server based machine available to the masses, it showed that there was a market for small businesses and home based techies. But now with the introduction of the iCloud I find myself wondering where it is really going. Many of the reasons why I purchased the Mini Server will be satisfied by iCloud. The Time Machine backups would have to addressed by either Time Capsule or and Airport Base Station with an external HD.

Is the Mini Server dead? Probably not yet, there are enough propeller heads out there to drive the need. But I think the writing is on the wall and eventually it will be killed off. In the end I’m still happy I purchased my server. It gave me a chance to solve some technical needs and play around a bit on OS X administration side. I’m looking forward to see how things pan out. I look forward to hearing other people’s thoughts on this.