It could run applications written using the "Yellow Box" API, and featured components such as NetBoot, the QuickTime Streaming Server, components carried over from NeXTSTEP, and the "Blue Box" environment (which allows a Mac OS 8.5 session to be launched as a separate process to run legacy Mac OS software).
The user interface still uses the Display PostScript-based window server from NeXTSTEP, instead of the Quartz-based WindowServer, which would appear a year later in Mac OS X Public Beta.
This was particularly useful in a school or other public-machine setting, as it allowed the machines to be booted from a single OS copy stored on Server 1.0.
Although marketed as a large advancement over AppleShare IP, it cost $499 and did not support Apple's own FireWire, making it incompatible with products like MicroNet's SANcube, a line of external high-speed high-capacity storage systems (debuting in the year 2000 for $4599 to $6999).
[2][3] Buyers of OS X Server 1.0 (who often purchased new Macs to run it) and the SANcube were forced to downgrade to AppleShare IP in order to use it.