The Mac In the Gray Flannel Suit 392
oDDmON oUT points us to a BusinessWeek story about the increasing use of Apple products in the corporate sector. Many companies are finding that their employees are pushing for the transition more than Apple itself. Quoting:
"While thousands of other companies scratch and claw for the tiniest sliver of the corporate computing market, Apple treats this vast market with utter indifference. After a series of failed offensives by the company in the 1980s and 1990s, Chief Executive Steve Jobs decided to focus squarely on consumers and education customers when he returned to Apple in 1997. As a result, the company doesn't have ranks of corporate salespeople or armies of repairmen waiting to respond every time a hard drive fails. He believes it's difficult for any company, including his, to be effective at satisfying both corporate buyers and consumers."
Server is not quite there yet.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure the Apple stuff is integrated and works for the basic case. However, if you try to move past what is written in the sparse user manual, you not only lose support for your basic "AppleCare" but also have to spend time figuring out how Apple has mangled the pieces of the open source offerings that hold their stuff together.
That all being said, I think with some work and polish the server side of things could really become a viable solution. It's just not quite there yet. This is coming from someone who administers these things for a living...
Re:Repairing em' (Score:3, Interesting)
Otherwise you have to wait one whole day for the parts to come in.
Secrecy is going to kill them (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has to realize if they want to compete, they need to open up a bit to their larger buyers. Yes, the consumer market is great, but now that users are becoming apple savvy, you want them to have the opportunity to bring it to their workplace. Its a similar thing happening with Linux. My bosses were very anti Linux, but the latest batch of graduates have so much experience with it, its being rolled into our environment. You get people using it at home/school and they will want it at work.
Re:Server is not quite there yet.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or conversely they could get out of the server market entirely. They do the consumer electronics thing very very well. They should continue to focus and improve on that, let some other company do the server thing well. Trying to be "all things computer" is a mistake. Apple has done well by ignoring the corporate world, and they should continue to do so. If they happen to have some proprietary architecture that would be a wonderful blessing to the server market, they can always lease the rights to Cisco.
Unfortunately (Score:5, Interesting)
My consultancy is currently working with several support companies who are starting to change their offered product mix. You would simply not believe how slow it is as the culture has to change, the training has to take place, the systems have to evolve. In my view, Apple is right to stay out. Eventually the wheel will turn and the fashion will revert to in house support. Then they will be in with a chance.
Careful what you wish for... (Score:3, Interesting)
Once they reach the point where they have the focus of new malware they will almost immediately begin to lose their image as the secure system. A venture into the corporate world could invite attacks on their machines which would hurt their consumer offerings. If they were to lose their image as the easy AND safe machine it would completely change Apple marketing(which is very important to the company) and thus lose their fanatical base over a year or two.
Macs are here. (Score:5, Interesting)
From a support standpoint, the transition is a little rougher, as others here have noted, but the company is paying to have their support staff become Apple certified techs (myself included) in order to do the work in-house and keep our warranties intact.
The server side is also increasing, for the specific purpose of running the data ingest software used to manage clips for our HD transition.
Some of us have even messed around with the hacked OS X kernals floating around and I can report that it runs BEAUTIFULLY on a Dell GX520. If companies like Psystar are indeed a harbinger of things to come, I see Apple's market share in the corporate environment only continuing to rise.
Re:Server is not quite there yet.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt they'd ever abandon business entirely, but it seems like the kind of thing where they'd want to sub-contract out the maintenance aspect of things (even if it's some sort of internal thing, an Apple for Business, Inc, if you will). I'd put my money on them actually putting a lot of development efforts into a long-term business architecture while they focus almost entirely on getting people to the platform for the next few years. Let's not forget how they've gone and positioned the iPhone after that roadmap event - they're definitely looking to penetrate more into the business market. I have no reason to think that they wouldn't want to do the same in the desktop/notebook market.
Dear Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Of the 4 new Macs I've worked on in the past year, 1 Macbook, 3 silver towers, 3 of the machines had hardware problems out of the box or within 1 week of unpacking. Specifically the broken speakers and dead Firewire ports. FIX YOUR QA PROBLEMS, CUPERTINO.
In the meantime I will be recommending HP, Lenovo or other for laptops and desktops.
Sincerely,
A Burned Customer.
PS - why is it called the "Genius Bar" if they are such idiots about these things?
Consumers go to work and brag (Score:3, Interesting)
That is why I cringe at Macs in schools because they aren't business computers and the cost of education is high enough without Apple making a buck. Again, these schools don't know what's best for them.
I'd say Linux is perfect for schools. It's free, it's a gateway to everything free, and it'll teach students how to work with computers better than any Mac or Windows will. The hardware can also be kept cheap.
Re:Macs are here. (Score:4, Interesting)
As I see it, Apple will die a quick death if companies like Psystar are a harbinger. Apple creates great software at cheap prices in order to sell hardware. In my mind that's a good business model because it's easier to control copying and theft of hardware than it is of software. Plus it allows OS X to be easy and user friendly to install, without a crippling and restrictive licensing/software key scheme.
And before some bozo says that means that Apple hardware is inferior I will point out that I have a house full of Macs that are several years old and still running great. The problem for me is that Apple hardware lasts too long. I want to get something new before the old one is actually worn out.
Re:Repairing em' (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple's warranty service is execrable. We had one machine sit there broken waiting on a new motherboard for 6 months.
The replacement motherboard gave out last month (the extended warranty expired last year), and we had to take it down to the Apple store, because we can't just buy a replacement part like we could for a PC.
Macs are just fine for personal use, but Windows is far better in a lab environment. It's easier to administrate, reasonably easy to keep secure, and very easy to buy hardware and software for.
Re:APPLE HAS NO MID-RANGE HEAD LESS DESKTOPS! (Score:1, Interesting)
The achilles heel of the mini (and the other mac models except the mac pro) is the slot loading optical drive. If a disc gets stuck in there, sometimes you can pull it out with strong tape -- otherwise, you have to take the computer apart to get the jammed disc out. So you have a good point, that Apple desktops don't seems to be designed with IT in mind, but I see IT departments using them more and more despite this, often to run Windows of all things. But that's in southern California where there's less Anti-Apple sentiment. Up north in Washington in Microsoft's backyard, the pro-Windows, anti-Mac vitriol is much stronger and more absurd.
I agree with you though: I want a mac mini with a TRAY-loading optical drive, and room for two 3.5" desktop hard drives so you can RAID them, and the hard drive should be removable without taking the whole f*ing computer apart. SATA *is* hot-swappable, so you should just be able to open the front and pop out the drive. And a pony. The computer should come with a pony.
Mac OS X is a usable Unix with integrated hardware (Score:4, Interesting)
Which actually suprises me since Laptops are falling below the 500 Euro line regularly now. I wonder why nearly nobody hasn't built a cheap mac mini equivalent for the linux market yet.
That, however, could change quickly once prices drop below other barriers (Asus EEE anyone?). Once that happens, even Apple will have a tough time justifying a hermetic system, no matter how sleek it is.
Re:Repairing em' (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hard choice to justify (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Reliability, both HW and SW. (See my earlier posting on HW experiences.)
3. NO fscking viruses, spyware, etc to worry about. (When there's a real threat -and- a counter shown to be -safe and effective-, I'll buy it. Until then, no point screwing up the machine with anti-virus software that doesn't protect against any serious threats...)
4. Expertise on the platform. I can use Windows, but I'm much better on the Mac for GUI-like things, and when I need to, there's always the Terminal for all the Unix commands I know. (And Aquamacs is my preferred text editor, a great Mac port of Emacs...)
5. Ease of customization. This is related to ease of use, but is worthy of a comment itself. I can set things up the way I want to, in part because of the Mac's support for doing so, and in part because the corporate IT Nazis don't understand them well enough to prevent me... Don't get me started on Corporate IT departments, whose primary goal it seems to be to make everyone else's jobs harder to make their jobs easier; the opposite of 'service'...
6. Software/Hardware investment. I have -a lot- of stuff for the Mac, both commercial and shareware. Duplicating that in Windows would cost more than the computer itself.
When I changed jobs, I told my new boss that I did not want to use Windows. He responded, "Look, you get what makes -you productive-. You're the one making money for the company, not corporate IT."
All this dates to before the Intel Mac and the rise of virtualization. I have -one- customer application that I'm required to run on Windows. I also have occasional problems opening supposedly compatible Microsoft documents created on Windows Office on the Mac (but NewOffice usually opens them when Mac Office crashes... Go figure!)
I still don't understand why IT departments pay $$$$ for Exchange Server when the Open Source/Open Standards alternatives are
(a) A LOT cheaper
(b) A LOT more reliable
dave
Not one point right I see (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple vs. Java
Apple has always lagged a little behind Java. Clue for you: Companies lag even FURTHER behind. A lot of companies I know are not yet off Java 4!!
Apple Safari not ready for primetime (no anti-phishing)
If you really "read back" as you said, you'd have seen PayPal had no intention of banning Safari. It's not like anti-phishing stuff works all that well anyway or companies have a huge demand for it.
iphone SDK
Oh yeah, like lack of compatibility with OSS licenses is likely to mean squat to a COMPANY. And whining about a beta release that's unusable for a few hours? Get real!! Real companies do not deploy beta to production.
their treatment of Adobe (loss of Photoshop CS4 64bit)
And in your final act of your stupidity quadfecta, you call a delay a loss and ignore that Adobe is as much to blame as Apple.
They must pour you guys all out of the same mold - and forget to wash out the brain mold between uses.
Re:Mac OS X is a usable Unix with integrated hardw (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:APPLE HAS NO MID-RANGE HEAD LESS DESKTOPS! (Score:3, Interesting)
Totally A (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I can frag during coffee breaks.