Network home directories, why is this a deep secret for newer OS

Apple assume (or want) everyone to have a laptop these days. Being a laptop it would not use Network Home Directories. (Portable Home Directories were discontinued even longer ago by Apple.)

I would agree there is a genuine use case for Network Home Directories e.g. Education labs and even Enterprise office environments but the reality is Apple have over the last few years made it harder and harder to use and it is now effectively unusable.

A different approach which Apple also do not want you to use is what is referred to as 'Virtual Desktop Environment'. A fancy name for what is effectively a Terminal Server solution. (Strictly speaking with VDI the individual sessions are stored as virtual machines and each user 'runs' their own which they see on their client computers screen.) Here it is a combination of Apple's licensing and software issues which make this hard but not impossible to achieve. (It requires a Mac server.)

With this approach the client computer would then run a session on a (Mac) server. The users files and applications would all be stored on the server and the apps run on the server. The server would allow multiple Macs to connect and run individual sessions at the same time. There are two competing solutions to do this.

Aqua Connect - Mac Remote Desktop Services - Mac Terminal Server & Services - Virtualization Solutions for OS X - Mac Re…

and https://www.nuords.com/

Gerard,

I too am frustrated by the change to "every user carries their own device." I am working on transition plans and none of them are as easy as having computers where we need them and anyone can login at any time. However, we are now out of date and stuck on the last (mostly) functional OS that permits that reasonably easily. Operating out of multiple facilities and due to the nature of our work, we will require laptops to be constantly traveling with users and periodically being left in hot or cold cars for multiple hours. The users will have a computer to be responsible for in addition to their regular work. A challenging transition to be sure but not an insurmountable one. Our main issue is that I now need to put a computer, to be carried around perpetually, in the hands of users who only need them once a week and sometimes as infrequently as once every two weeks.

It's always a funny argument that a company with a recent market value over $1 trillion has limited resources. On the other hand, if it does not generate income I totally understand the business decision to end targeting of small business and education management markets. I was willing to spend $1000 for a new version of server in decades past. It was their decision to make software essentially free. As it is, we're looking at other providers for hardware and software.

Good luck.