I just had an epiphany. I might understand why Apple removed MySQL from OS X Lion Server. It's because of all things, MySQL should be a free app, downloaded from the app store. That's not Apple's job, it's MySQL's job. This is how software works now.

We'll talk about the inclusion of PostgreSQL in a second, just hold on.

Here's what my problem with MySQL has always been, and it's actually the reason I got a Mac Mini Server: installing and upgrading MySQL is always a major pain in the ass, especially upgrading. But it shouldn't be hard at all. Minor releases of MySQL should update just as easily as any other software, so why don't they? I don't know!

In MySQL's defense, they try to make installation easy on a Mac, but you can tell their heart just isn't in it yet. But everything even the most anal system administrator does when upgrading MySQL can and should be be automated. Shutdown? Yes. Backups? Yes. Rollback if necessary? No. They should actually work to make sure rollbacks are never necessary. That's what testing is for.

Having said that, I'm sure Apple would be willing to support multiple major versions for server applications. It's not something the current apps require, but we get it, some people need MySQL 5.0 and can't move forward yet, fine, that's a separate app from 5.1 and 5.5. Maybe these versions could be "in app" purchases (which have no cost, for the free versions.) There could be one MySQL app that can be configured for a specific version, or maybe even multiple versions at once.

The point is this, the days of manual software installs are over, even for server software. If MySQL doesn't do it, you can bet within the next year one or more other database makers will.

The other thing to factor in is that Apple released a new Mac Mini Server with OS X Lion Server. This would indicate that they aren't giving up on the server market. It says that as usual, they are trying to change it, for the better. I hope that's what happens.

Oh, I almost forgot about the inclusion of PostgreSQL. Apple needs a database on the server to support the wiki feature, but there is no app store database ready yet. PostgreSQL may have even been chosen because it is the less used package, to encourage MySQL to take action. Or maybe PostgreSQL was chosen because they've already committed to making an app which Apple will use once it's ready.

Anyway, this is what I'd personally like to see, an app store database. We'll just have to wait and see what actually happens.

I posted recently about switching to Google Chrome. Safari seemed to be going very slow. Well, Google Chrome was definitely not the answer. It was a little better on flash content, but not much. The biggest problem is flash.

So instead, I still use Safari but I use the Click to Flash plugin which blocks all flash content unless you click on it’s location. Browsing is so fast now.

It seems like Google might be differentiating itself by trying to be nice to flash. This is a huge mistake. Flash just needs to go away. I’m sure Google will learn this as people start complaining about battery life when there are Android tablets.