Why Apple Doesn't Market Squarely To Businesses 510
snydeq writes "Despite feature enhancements that suggest otherwise, Apple remains lukewarm to any Mac and iPhone success in business environments. 'Apple has intentionally created a glass ceiling it has no intention of shattering. My conversations with Apple employees over the past decade have always been off the record when it comes to the topic of Macs in the enterprise. The company has had no intention of signaling any active plans to serve the enterprise,' InfoWorld's Galen Gruman writes. 'In a sense, Apple views enterprise sales as "collateral success" — a nice-to-have byproduct of its real focus: individuals, developers, and very small businesses ... likely because to do otherwise would greatly increase the complexity Apple would have to deal with.'"
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Re:I'd like to see Apple make a move, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, it's not a bad thing, it's just not their focus. Apple doesn't want knobs and buttons, they want an intuitive UI and consumer friendly products. It's very difficult to marry that with the robustness required for enterprise software.
Re:I'd like to see Apple make a move, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
This statement is interesting because it gets to the crux of the matter in terms of design philosophy. Microsoft designers probably get paid a lot of money to add the right knobs and buttons. Apple designers probably get paid a lot of money to remove the right knobs and buttons. It's like the old quote, "I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make
it shorter." (Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters XVI). Apple invests a lot of time and money in removing control elements to what an individual needs to make the device a fluid part of their lifestyle. That's not necessarily what most business needs, having to contend with all sorts of contractual, systemic, and other specifics that require tweaks not deemed essential by the Apple designer.
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The design mentality of Apple (well, Steve Jobs at any rate) seems to be that of "lets figure out how to build this interface as simple as possible while retaining the bare minimum functionality. It's not about removing "knobs and buttons," as they were never there to begin with.
The reason Apple won't deliberately get into business or government technology is simply because they aren't equipped for it. 99% of their marketing experience is geared towards direct-to-consumer sales. They don't even want to deal
Re:I'd like to see Apple make a move, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
mano.m - you're using a very wide brush there.
I happen to have been a unix administrator, developer, and most recently an architect. I've used just about every type of computer system you can imagine from the 1970s to the present. I've assembled the parts and built and upgraded many machines over the years.
Today, I reserve Linux for my servers - and prefer OSX (and looking forward to the iPad) for my personal laptop and related personal devices are concerned (I see the iPad as an extension of my Macbook Pro....it doesn't need to duplicate the functionality because I don't need to lug (yet another) fully functional laptop around for my personal stuff (I carry 2 laptops back and forth for my job now as it is) - I just want access to some key information, email, web, and other stuff that I am interested in (ebooks) and sync that with my laptop at home. From that perspective, the iPad is not sub-functional to me.
I would say that all the netbooks and laptops that I've lugged around over the years are over-functional for what I really want for my personal stuff at work, on a business trip or on the bus. I want something as small as a legal pad that I can tote around to meetings or whip out while traveling and entertain myself with, or find information I need. For me, the netbook/laptop is too much for that simple task (and not really portable for all that).
So - before making such broad assumptions, a person should preface them with "as for myself..." or "I believe..." etc. Readers will appreciate your deeper understanding of reality - instead of an overly simplified binary interpretation of the universe, which implies an overly simple mind.
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The truth is, Apple is a marketing based company even more than Microsoft is. That's not an insult at all (I happen to think marketing and sales are as important as the tech itself).
The truth is, that's what steve jobs said when he, woz, and the other guy founded apple.
Re:I'd like to see Apple make a move, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
John, are you seriously saying that the personal music player market wasn't already a crowded market when Apple released the iPod?
Are you seriously saying that the cell phone market wasn't already a crowded market when Apple released the iPhone?
Are you seriously saying that the web browser market wasn't already a crowded market when Apple released Safari?
Or are we only considering the "hipster-targeting" markets, which Apple basically created?
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Pre-iPod there were ubiquitous CD players made by everybody and a handful of random companies making MP3 players that only slashbots were buying (e.g. Creative Nomad). The MP3 player market may have been crowded for its size, but it barely existed.
The iPod entered the very small, but crowded market for MP3 player, and while it did take sales from its competitors it mostly did what the Nintendo Wii did for console gaming: it opened up a huge new segment of the market. And then they got the CD player busin
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Pre-iPod there were ubiquitous CD players made by everybody and a handful of random companies making MP3 players that only slashbots were buying (e.g. Creative Nomad). The MP3 player market may have been crowded for its size, but it barely existed.
More significantly, Apple released the iPod around the time that technological developments made it worthwhile. Had they done it three years earlier, it wouldn't have been the iPod as we know it.
Yes, there were MP3 players circa 1997, long before the iPod came out. But the first models had circa 32MB of memory (with support for expensive memory cards of similar capacity if you were lucky). That was enough for one hour's worth of low bitrate music uploaded via a hideously slow serial cable or whatever. (US
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Is the Xserve [apple.com] their attempt?
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Yeah, I think a big part of it has to be that they still don't want to get into a direct fight with Microsoft. In some ways, it's probably smart for them to keep to specific (sometimes niche) markets and nibble around the edges, building up their strength. By introducing products like iWork and the iPhone and slowly improving their server offerings, they can slowly erode Microsoft's markets over years while improving their technology. iTunes alone did Microsoft a lot of damage without declaring open war.
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I'd love to see them take a good shot at unseating Windows in the server business
Then what was the Xserve & OS X Server?
Do you not recall their extensive ad-campaign?
Apple is still trying to increase their marketshare, this time by using Quad-Core Xeons to provide the performance their offerings should have had all along.
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I don't think the business market is as important as it used to be. Computers have become like appliances, which people use for their entertainment, and Apple's goal should be to put one Mac into the hands of every person. If they do that, they will sell FAR more units (~110 million homes times 2 adult per home) than what business would buy.
That's what made the Commodore=64 the world's number one selling computer. It flopped in the business world, but it still managed to sell 30 million units by focusing
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I'm sure Apple could do a wonderful job of building enterprise servers, if they wanted to do it.
But that's the rub - why would they want to? Most companies that have specialized in proprietary servers have ended up being bought out by either IBM or HP. Well, then there's Oracle...
But the point is, it's a brutal market that's already well served. Much as I'd love to see Apple in the enterprise, there's nothing in it from Apple's perspective, so I'm gonna bet that It Just Ain't Gonna Happen.
Consulting division (Score:2)
No Enterprise Offerings (Score:2)
Businesses certainly run Macs but they really don't have any great centralized administration tools. Apple Remote Desktop and Open Directory aren't nearly as powerful out of the box as Active Directory and its accompanying tools. There's nothing comparable to Exchange server that I know of. MacOS is to business desktop computing in much the same way linux is...you can use it, but you need to develop the tools for administering it (or use some open source tools, etc).
Re:No Enterprise Offerings (Score:5, Interesting)
Businesses certainly run Macs but they really don't have any great centralized administration tools. Apple Remote Desktop and Open Directory aren't nearly as powerful out of the box as Active Directory and its accompanying tools. There's nothing comparable to Exchange server that I know of. MacOS is to business desktop computing in much the same way linux is...you can use it, but you need to develop the tools for administering it (or use some open source tools, etc).
Problem: Adminstrating a lot of macs.
Solution: Products like Deep Freeze.
http://www.faronics.com/html/DFMac.asp [faronics.com]
Combine that with restricting macs to network logins with home directories stored on the server and you have one central point for configuration management and backup of user data.
Oh, wait. You wanted "enterprise" solutions that require your constant attention so you can justify your existence. Sorry about that.
Re:No Enterprise Offerings (Score:4, Informative)
$33/seat is not an unreasonable price for system management. If you've spent enough to have 500 Macs, $16K for system-wide admin is peanuts. If your company is in dire enough straits that they can't afford that, you might want to start looking for a more stable outfit to work for.
Re:No Enterprise Offerings (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No Enterprise Offerings (Score:5, Informative)
Apple Remote Desktop (http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/) is $499 for unlimited clients.
But if your company doesn't have $500, you can use any VNC client, as the macs support it natively (In the sharing settings is where you set up VNC access).
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Screen sharing is also included so you don't even need a third party VNC client.
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"Perform over a dozen commands securely on remote Mac OS X systems, such as locking screens, sleep, wake, restart, and shutdown."
Wow! Over a dozen? You mean I can restart AND shutdown?? Amazing!
"Configure Task Server* to perform package installation...*Task Server requires additional Unlimited Managed Systems license."
Brilliant.
"Apple Remote Desktop 3 is licensed per administrator..."
So if your company grows and an hire a second admin you get to buy that license again?
Listen, if yo
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For the sake of fairness...
Well, all Macs have remote ssh support so if you were so inclined, you could spend 3 minutes wrting a shell script to restart a service or rename 500 macs. Out of the box (assuming you configured each appropriately when setting them up on your LAN, as you would have to do with Windows as well).
If you're working at that level, there's not a lot of difference between platforms to be honest. If you're referring to GUI level tools and utilities though then yes, OS X is lacking in th
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There's nothing comparable to Exchange server that I know of.
Well Apple does have mail, calendaring, and address books built into their server software. It's comparable to Exchange but not as well fleshed out. They don't have as great control of delegation, for example, no ActiveSync support, and frankly the webmail isn't too hot (it's just Squirrel Mail).
The webmail thing is pretty frustrating to my mind. MobileMe has decent web applications for mail, calendaring, and address books, and meanwhile the included webmail in their server software stinks.
Of course not (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Of course not (Score:4, Informative)
There are some things that are not enterprise ready - I would like to see a more robust printing system and their group policy replacement (Managed Preferences) could be fleshed out a bit more - but the idea that the tools are very limited is indicative of either a lack of training, or the Apple Tech you have needs to be re-trained severely.
Re:Of course not (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some things that are not enterprise ready
Let me tell you right now: the iPhone/iPod Touch platform is one of those things not enterprise ready. This seems as good of a post to rant off of as any.
I work at a company that wants to sell iPhone software to enterprise customers. We've talked to Apple a hundred times and they reneged on every single one of their promises to help so far. They have no interest in the enterprise or enterprise applications.
Hello, App Store.
Now, our competitors can see our (awesome) product and we have weirdos downloading it who can't use it. Not to mention, we can't put out quick fixes (which is kind of important for my business) because of the Apple Gatekeepers.
Oh yeah, and we can only have one client version and must retain server compatibility (and/or customer-specific lock-out logic) for older clients.
Re:Of course not (Score:5, Informative)
The enterprise license is what an organization would buy to deploy an application to their workers.
We sell to organizations - not our workers. The enterprise license doesn't let you do that.
What we *wanted* to do was give our customer organizations our source code so that *they* could use the enterprise license and so that we could avoid the App Store.
Our lawyers, and Apple's lawyers, had agreed on this model, as well as various people at Apple. Then, someone high-up at Apple came down and said that route wasn't possible anymore and against their terms. Because their terms are so damn broad, we didn't have any recourse and certainly didn't want to get into a spat with Apple.
But thanks for your suggestion!!! I hope you feel smug now for calling us cheap, asshole.
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Perhaps I'm not explaining this correctly. I don't really want to implicate my company by being too specific, but I'll try this again.
We sell software to businesses. I'm sure you're familiar with the site-license type of model. That's what we do. We have many, many customer organizations. In short, we send them CDs and they install and maintain the infrastructure like any other enterprise solution (with our help, of course).
The only legitimate way to get an iPhone application to our customer organizati
Not worth it for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not worth it for them (Score:4, Insightful)
You make a good point on the cheapest hardware possible. I haven't been in the windows world for a while, so what is the expected price and rotation in years on a machine. Back when I did virus cleaning for 50% of my "admin" time, we'd spend $1100 - $1500 on a machine and rotate every 3-4 years.
Are businesses now buying the $600 specials from Walmart? Or are they still spending over $1000?
$1199 will buy you a 21" iMac, C2D 3.06GHz and 4 GB of RAM, which should easily last you 3-4 years. Comes with Exchange mail and clients out of the box, that even a clueless user can set up on their own. (Provided they know their email and password, which I admit can be a tall order.)(Of course adding the 3 year applecare does add to the total.)
As far as being cool, I think that's just a byproduct of design. Take the iMac for example, yes it does look cool, but its all in one design makes it a breeze to set up/replace. You can carry two at the same time, plug in ethernet, power, keyboard and it's good to go. You don't need to manage 2 boxes and interconnects between them. Magic mouse is spendy, but it has no moving parts, no balls to gum up with hand lotion and should last a long long while.
Esoteric in consumer vs enterprise? Riiiiight. (Score:5, Insightful)
Businesses demand a lot of esoteric features
What? Look at the enterprise-marketed laptop lines for a great example of what corporations want. They're not "esoteric" by any stretch.
Way to prove you don't work in IT, much less corporate level. We care about things like price, TCO, parts availability, interchangeability of accessories (within reason), and management.
Meanwhile, consumers want just about everything under the sun.
and are concerned with getting the cheapest hardware possible.
Purchase price is not the ultimate concern, no- ballpark is important, yes. Again, way to prove you don't work in IT. I've never had a boss that said "well, this $3000 server is $300 cheaper than the other one, so we're going to get that, even though it doesn't have IPMI and we have no in-house experience with this brand, and their support contract is 8hr, not 4hr."
They have no desire or tolerance for "cool" Completely not the market Apple is going for.
It's not a matter of "cool". It's a matter that Apple likes consumers because they're easily pushed around and they CONSUME. And if you think companies don't want "Cool", you haven't seen a CEO of a million dollar company get handed his new Blackberry (hell hath no fury if it works more poorly than the old one, however.)
Corporations say, "Hey. Why did you just change the display port AGAIN? Now half of our 2000 member sales force have a different display port from the other half." Or, "why are all of our iMacs developing vertical lines? Our CEO's secretary has gone through two machines in a month and he's raising hell because they can't work. Don't you people have any quality control? Send us some goddamn WORKING computers or we buy Dell from now on. That's straight from the CEO's mouth."
Corporations have legal departments, so that when machines die, lawyers say "give us our money back or we seek damages." Consumers just bitch and moan on online forums- and purchase decisions are more rational in corporations (heh, I can't believe I just said that, but I mean they're not *emotional*.)
Corporations say "Oh, Macbook Pros are $2k? Well, we're buying 100 of them this month, and we've given you $500k in business this quarter. So, how about $1700?". Consumers just hand over their CC.
Corporations say, "If a laptop breaks, we want someone to come in and fix it. And if you won't, we want to be able to train our own IT staff in how to fix them and be able to order parts." Apple a)won't let you order parts unless you're a reseller, b)won't do on-site service of anything except Mac Pros and Xserves. Ever spent your day standing in line at the Genius Bar with a laptop belonging to a CEO of a $50M company because that was the best support option, and then arguing with some pimply-faced "Genius" who is used to talking to grandmas about why their gumdrop iMac is dead?
In big Apple-using companies I've worked at, we kept every single machine that died and cannibalized them for parts for the other ones, because we couldn't get the goddamn parts from Apple, couldn't get service manuals, couldn't train CSRs.
Meanwhile, HP, Dell, IBM, Sun will all happily take our precious dollars and promise that if anything breaks in my shiny server or desktop, I'll have a replacement part sitting on my desk in FOUR HOURS. They'll let almost anyone order parts, and happily train people in how to repair their products. And if a laptop breaks, they'll come out and service it on the spot if you bought that support plan, so our CEO doesn't have to be without his laptop while it gets shipped to fucking TEXAS, the only place you can get a Macbook Pro repaired if it's anything remotely complicated (the Apple Store can do drive replacements, that's about it.)
I had to replace two failed drives on an HP server once (one system drive, one data array drive.) I said "I have red lights, they were kicked out of the array by the controller." We had a 4 hour support contr
Different markets (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple has traditionally had two target markets. Those markets are education and "creative professionals". Creative professionals aren't going to turn out enterprise applications, but they can sure come up with some spiffy product literature. The education culture is focused on learning, not application development. In the past decade Apple has expanded their focus to include the consumer market.
Apple is so far behind the curve in the business market that they'd run themselves out of money trying to play
May be for desktops and laptops (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite a lot of laptops are making inroads into the business environment which used to be just Windows Shop. But if you still see, they are runnig Windows OS on it for majority of the cases. I think Apple would face the same compitition like MS from Linux and other Open source OS.
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What does it offer that any other *nix would not?
Runs Adobe Creative Suite native, for the most part. Doesn't sound like much, but it's enough.
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Don't think it'd really pull a lot of folks from OS X, to be honest.
Besides, Apple and Adobe will sort it out once they can figure out what will make the most money for each of them, at the expense of their customers :D
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It depends on the server.
Linux runs on anything you want and is gratis. You might CHOOSE to buy an expensive service contract from Red Hat but it's hardly mandatory.
And yes, real companies do actually run production Linux servers with something other than RHEL or SLES.
The fact that you could prototype on Linux for free is what got Linux in the door in the sorts of corporations that don't take a crap without a service contract.
Apple's doing the right thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Doing B2B sales is completely different (longer attention spans, bigger deals, but much more demand for customization/configuration).
Needless to say, Apple's image and culture is focused completely away from B2B type sales. Furthermore, they are focusing on what they're successful at. I wish other companies would take Apple's lead, and do something *really* well and only venture into other markets when they have aligned their brand with that market audience.
Apple needs to downsize Enterprise (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't mean downsize in the sense of "fire".
What I mean is, that right now if you want to do enterprise iPhone development, you have to have an employee base of 500 people. Seems fair enough at first...
But the trouble is, although you can have a normal developer account and distribute applications via AdHoc to your employees - where the limit is 100 separate devices.
Now you probably are not going to need one device per employee. You can kind of work around that with multiple accounts, but that's a pain - it would thus be way better if they made the step clear, by supporting 500 devices on any developer account OR dropping down Enterprise requirements to 100 employees.
To me what separates "small business" from Enterprise is a clear delineation of worlds... a small business does not mind having data exist all over the place, whereas an "Enterprise" studiously guards data and wants to keep as much of it in-hous as possible (and then send it all to India as an afterthought).
That's why the enterprise iPhone program is useful, because it keeps your business apps off the store. Basically anything Apple can do to support self-isolation helps the enterprise, and they've actually been much better about this in recent years (along with adopting ActiveSync all over and adding in good VPN support, which again goes back to that "separate world" thing).
XServe, OS X Server, XSan? (Score:4, Informative)
If you ignore the products that they market to businesses, then it probably does look like they don't market to businesses.
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They have a few products for small businesses, and mostly web-centric ones at that. TFA was about the enterprise market, competing with Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc.
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If you ignore the products that they market to businesses, then it probably does look like they don't market to businesses.
I'm a university professor and a heavy Mac user. I like having my unix tools together with the sexy interface. (Having wifi working without having to hunt for driver patches and recompile a kernel is nice, too.)
Last year, I bought an XServe so that I could manage a bunch of iMacs in labs. But, to make everything really work right, I needed the OpenDirectory on the XServer to handle some user information but forward password authentication to the University's existing ActiveDirectory setup. I don't have
Avoiding docking stations (Score:2)
If Apple marketed to corporate america, they'd have to make docking stations... not the crappy third party ones that by pulling a handle, they plug in all your cables.
Support (Score:5, Insightful)
XServe? (Score:2)
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The Xserve? This is like the netbook equivalent of Enterprise computing.
Apple needs to kick it into gear. (Score:2)
Doesn't market squarely to business, then why the hell do they sell Xserves with dual quad core xeons, 24GB ram, 3TB w/on board RAID, FC cards, XSAN (!) software, even reselling Promise vTrak raid storage, and Tandberg 80-tape storage libraries on the Apple store website. A SAN deployment among XServes and Mac Pros is not exactly a 'very small business' kind of situation. They took some big steps but it feels like Apple is dropping the ball on the business side beyond individual sales.
I went from the Wind
canards (Score:2, Informative)
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They aren't docking stations. Those are awkward things that require you to line up ports on two sides and try not to break something. A docking station is something you can just snap your laptop into and out of in one action.
Enterprise Mac = War with Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Because they'd have to become like their customers (Score:2, Insightful)
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To properly cater and market to faceless corporations, you have to become one.
And Apple are NOT a 'faceless corporation'!!!
Apple have a face and it is the face of GOD!!!
Yeah, right.
Re:Because they'd have to become like their custom (Score:4, Informative)
Case in point, Microsoft started losing its juice when it got serious about enterprise
Microsoft has always been serious about the enterprise market.
In July of 76 Microsoft was selling its microcomputer BASIC to corporate clients like General Electric.
In April of 79: Microsoft 8080 BASIC was the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award, "traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers."
The single most important decision Microsoft ever made was to negotiate a non-exclusive license for MS-DOS. That would permanently alter the landscape. Apple is the lone survivor of the era when hardware and software was tightly bundled.
In 1983 Microsoft Multiplan spreadsheet the company's first application product, was ported across many platforms. "While Lotus 1-2-3 surpassed Multiplan in domestic markets, Multiplan was the winner in almost every other country in which it appeared."
In September of 83 Microsoft introduced Word for MS-DOs 1.0. Microsoft Timeline [thocp.net]
I can think of two reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Just off the top of my head:
1) Price.
2) Legacy (OS/applications).
The first one is pretty obvious.
The second, I need to define better. Apple generally limits new hardware to the version of the OS that was in production when the machine was built. So I can't work out all of the kinks in 10.4.11 relevant to my environment and load up all new systems with an image of that same OS. The most recent PowerMacs I've bought won't run 10.4. I had 10.4 locked tight and all of our software runs great on it. 10.5 gives me font cache problems similar to the ones I'd already ironed out of our 10.4 systems long ago. To me, that's not an upgrade. I don't want bleeding-edge in production. I want stable and reliable.
OTOH, every PC I've bought since Vista came out has been able to run XP just fine. In fact, I just got some new systems last week pre-loaded with XP. (Win7 license with XP downgrade.) This means the environment my company's been grooming and tweaking for years can be applied to brand new installations and I don't have to deal with, "I've never seen THAT before."
And getting back to the cost, I can get a decent C2D windows machine with 4 gigs and a 20" flat panel, keyboard, and mouse for about $500. A mini with 4 gigs, no monitor, and no mouse starts at $700. Apple wants another $50 each for a mouse and keyboard. Each. Don't even ask what they want for monitors.
Those are the two main reasons Apple won't be making it beyond the Creative departments in my company. And I'm actually a bit annoyed that we're still purchasing Macs for those departments since they're running Adobe suites that are available on the PC. If one of my hats wasn't "the only mac tech in the company", I'd consider making strong arguments against the continued waste of money. :)
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What? Apple's monitors are identical to everyone else's, afaik. I know the displays themselves are all produce by the same people, Apple's just uses nicer glass and cabling. Also, Apple's multi-touch mouse does not well fit the human hand, just like all their previous mice.
Enterprises don't like getting work done. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple builds OSs that largely get out of your way so you can get work done.
Enterprises like OSs that can be locked down until you can't get any work done.
Polar opposites in agendas really.
Training, Training, Training (Score:2)
Here's the dirty little secret we all know:
Schools (and easy piracy) train people to use Windows and Windows-based software. If you're at home, who cares if you have to spend a few hours to learn the OS, or a new email system, or a paint program.
Go into a business office, and an employee costs $100/hr or more to train. With, say, 12 desktop apps the typical employee might use - half of which have no direct port - and maybe a dozen hours to get "fully productive" on the custom apps, you've got a $7000 price
on managagement apps (Score:2, Informative)
One print page. (Score:2)
http://infoworld.com/print/112907 [infoworld.com]
Apple has no clue how to do enterprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I maintained an OS X Server box for 4 years. Very nice hardware, but the OS had a lot of issues (10.3 and 10.4) and support from Apple was non-existent. We struggled with a race condition in Apple's directory services architecture (the glue between the system and LDAP) for years. Apple really wouldn't do anything about it until some guy on a forum managed to come up with step-by-step instructions on how to trigger the condition. finally Apple acknowledged the problem and, to my amazement, said, "we've fixed it in our new OS, please upgrade." We're talking a full OS upgrade from 10.3 to 10.4. I tried to explain to them that OS's are upgraded in an enterprise normally with the hardware cycle and that we cannot take a production server down for a full system upgrade. Even MS understands that.
Additionally, the lifespan of Apple's server OS was tied exactly to their consumer OS. So instead of 5-6 years that we expect from RH and MS, apple supports their server OSs for about 2 years only. Even within major versions, updating was a real pain. Each and every OS update required a reboot. It was just silly. Of course the bug brought our system down every month or so, so I guess that worked out.
Another time a disk died in our XServe RAID. So we called to get a warranty replacement. The guy on the phone said, "are you sure it has died? Put it back in the array and see what happens." Dumbfounded, I told him this was a production array with mission-critical data on it and that I simply could not trust any disk that had been kicked out of the RAID. The risk was too great for data loss. Had to go through a local rep to lean on apple to just replace the disk.
After I finally figured out how to make my OpenLDAP server on Linux look and act like Apple's OpenDirectory (making Mac client access seamless with no custom ldap mappings required), I ditched the OS X server and will never go back.
Apple doesn't care too much about the enterprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
The bulk of enterprise space wants cheap whitebox farms of GateDellPaq machines interchangeable and uninspiring of possessiveness enough that the IT guy can drop by your desk and switch out your box four times a year and you won't care.
Apple, meanwhile, has a farm full of insanely loyal customers willing to pay premium prices to avoid precisely the GateDellPaq style of non-shiny nuts-and-boltism.
To get the part of enterprise space that they can't get with their current business offerings, they'd have to do things that would alienate a tremendously loyal, premium-paying customer base. And for what, exactly? To enter the tremendously crowded, cutthroat space of GateDellPaq where everyone competes on price and has to ensure compatibility with a massive ecosystem of devices and ISVs?
Why exactly would they do this?
Why does every other Slashdot poster seem to imagine that the goal of Linux, or Apple, or OLPC, must be to dominate the world and arrive in every home and business everywhere with all competition eliminated? I suspect many businesses would be more than happy to be in Apple's shoes right now, and I also suspect that their investors aren't too upset with them for not going out there trying to get every MBA farm on the block buying an Apple line of cheap-and-dirty-ware.
It tried in the '80s (Score:5, Informative)
Those with unusually long memories will remember that, in the '80s, the Macintosh (and while it lasted, the Lisa) were Apple's Serious Business Computers. The Apple II was the home/education line.
The Mac had networking built-in from the beginning. (Not very useful for home users, essential for offices.) It had a black-and-white screen. (Not very useful for games or creative work.) Advertising almost exclusively focused on how a Mac could make businesses more efficient by reducing training and support costs. Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MaDXt30xSo [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dqLT0UBPx0 [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcuSOfjR6w [youtube.com]
Print ads, too:
http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/newads10/Macad1.jpg [macmothership.com] and http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/newads10/Macad2.jpg [macmothership.com]
For about fifteen years, Apple desperately wanted to be taken seriously by business users, who dismissed Macs as incompatible and expensive (with good reason.) Apple lost loads of money during this period. Meanwhile, Apple's sales were coming entirely from home users, artists, and education sales.
One of the first things Steve Jobs did when he returned was shit-can that approach and release the cute, cuddly, home-student oriented iMac. And whaddya know, the company suddenly started making money.
X Serve (Score:3, Insightful)
If the X Serve isn't aimed at Enterprise users, I don't know what is. I use both X Serves and Dell Linux servers, and rate them about equal overall.
Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally. If you have only a couple folks and want something that is easily usable and interoperable, OS X is great.
Get beyond that, though, and it's not that you *can't* do it, but Apple isn't particularly interested in addressing the need with a wide array of enterprise solutions.
Which is fine, OS X integrates fairly well into an Active Directory setup with a little tinkering. It'll be a lot nicer again once Microsoft re-releases Outlook for OS X in the next version of Office.
Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:5, Interesting)
Pardon the uninitiated, but with 10.6 supporting Exchange Mail and Calendar with setup time of about 2 seconds (to enter your email and password), why does one need Outlook?
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Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:5, Informative)
Because it ONLY supports certain versions of exchange and if you are not running the EXACT versions that Apple tells you are compatible you are pretty much screwed.
Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:5, Informative)
Pardon the uninitiated, but with 10.6 supporting Exchange Mail and Calendar with setup time of about 2 seconds (to enter your email and password), why does one need Outlook?
The incredible thing is that is true. I brought my Mac to work, then specified my company e-mail address and password and it simply asked me to specify my account name, since this was not the same as my e-mail address prefix. In doing so it discovered the mail server (internal and external), the calendar server and the contact directory. With this configuration in place I can even read my work e-mail from home, which is something I can't fathom how to do with the Outlook 2007. BTW for anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch, this approach works there too.
Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:4, Interesting)
This is totally true. I am actually one of those folks who takes OS X Server the "extra mile" so that it can scale into medium/large businesses. It's not even that taking OS X Server to those levels is hard, but there are so few of us out there with the skill set to accomplish this that the overall belief is that OS X Server just can't do it.
Case in point, I just rebuilt an entire Open Directory backend for a school that had grown from 200 nodes with a cheap SOHO network to upwards of 900 nodes and a Cisco backend. Until the moment I finished, the current admin was adamant that OS X Server and Open Directory in general just couldn't handle the load they were putting on it (essentially one-two hundred authentication transactions at peak times).
That's ridiculous and since the rebuild and migration, OD has been rock solid... and they have Kerberos again (someone removed it entirely at some point in history). As with anything like this, proper setup, configuration and tweaking will allow most technologies to scale as necessary. Hell, I didn't even have to tweak the OpenLDAP config to optimize this install...
There just aren't a lot of people who "know how to do it" on this platform and so a stigma is attached... and amplified when Apple refuses to actually push forward on the Enterprise end of things.
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Which is fine, OS X integrates fairly well into an Active Directory setup with a little tinkering.
As somebody who has to try and get OS X working in our already existing AD environment... I think you're using definitions for "little" and "fairly well" which I'm not familiar with...
The first time is the hardest :)
Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:4, Informative)
and Apple uses open directory instead, which is a much more open system. But it too can become something of a tangle. But having worked with both, Apple's use of OD is a good deal more sane than Windows AD.
Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they have a services hosted on Mac OS X Server called NetBoot, NetInstall and NetRestore that do system imaging functions. You can read some marketing speak about it here [apple.com] and here [apple.com]. I've been using it since OS 10.4, it's easy to set up and works pretty well.
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Just out of curiosity... what's your take on Xserve with Mac OS X Server [apple.com]?
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It probably doesn't run the obscure vertical apps that you've never heard of but everyone seems to need.
The Xserve might be able to handle the server backend part of such an app (like Linux) assuming it's supported. However, the frontend is going to be all WinDOS.
A shop could have just 3 machines and this could be the case.
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It probably doesn't run the obscure vertical apps that you've never heard of but everyone seems to need.
Probably depends on that vertical app. According to Apple, "[As] an Open Brand UNIX 03 Registered Product, Mac OS X Server can compile and run all your existing UNIX code. So you can deploy it in environments that demand full conformance, complete with hooks to maintain compatibility with existing software."
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It's basically Linux-designed apps running with the ultimate control panel. If you know what you're doing it's a waste of money. However, if you don't know Linux, then OSX Server can save you a ton of time showing you around with Mac-designed interfaces leading the way.
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Just out of curiosity... what's your take on Xserve with Mac OS X Server?
An uninspiring low-end dual-socket server with a big pricetag.
Re:Macs are great for small business though (Score:4, Informative)
You'd also sink your business.
/. really needs to get over the myth that you could have a Mac and not need to support it, it's the same as any other machine.
Contrary to popular opinion Mac's suffer problems. I've had to support Mac's in mixed enviroments and I spent more time per machine just getting things to work on a Mac. The whole "just works" fallacy only works when you dont do anything with it.
Further more, 99% of business software runs on Windows, I may not like it but I have to deal with it.
Finally, Mac's do not perform well in any Domain, I've tried Windows AD and Linux domains and Mac's seem to reject the whole idea of centralised services.
Mac's are not ready for business, they are not designed to work in business. Given the fact that if I buy 10 of anything from Dell, Lenovo et al. I instantly get 10% off the top and Apple does not do volume deals you have to be certifiably mad to buy Apple.
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IBM PC-compatible
FYI: it's currently 2010.
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How about "Windows PC"? The primary difference is the OS, correct? You have Windows PCs, Apple PCs, and Linux PCs. Each and every one of them is a personal computer. You can also have Windows servers, Apple servers, Linux servers, BSD servers, et al. The hardware is all compatible (generally speaking), the primary difference is the software.
What exactly does it mean to be "IBM PC compatible"? Does that mean you have a computer that is compatible with every personal computer produced by IBM? Does that
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You got that sweet deal because MS dropped the ball on delivering Windows Vista on time. Don't expect to get that free ride again.
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I didn't claim that it was more difficult, I claimed that the IT infrastructure cost was higher. To some degree, I'm sure that was a "manufactured" problem. Our IT department built in constraints to try and protect the computers and networks from malware. These constraints then created hardware and software conflicts. They controlled and regulated what could be installed. Their paranoia - not mine. They managed the wireless connectivity in some peculiar and secretive manner - to this day I can't connect to
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Nice use of sarcasm... but you're missing the points.
First, the ad hoc managed Mac solution was working fine. In fact, most people thought it was working better. However, even if the goal WAS more structured management of computing resources, this could have been achieved at lower cost and higher security if they would have stuck with the Macs.
BTW, I've been somewhat disingenuous. They didn't completely drop support for Macs in the company. Most of the senior managers and a few privileged elite in the
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I've never heard of anyone who works at a company that uses Macs.
I work in a large research institution, and nearly every scientist or programmer I've met here uses a Mac on their desktop (though the HPC resources are mostly Linux/UNIX variants). One thing that would be great is if Apple would customize their computers for their corporate and government clients, since all of our Macs have to be modified to remove cameras, WiFi, etc.
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Just because you've never heard of it, hardly means it doesn't happen.
Companies in creative industries (e.g. like R/GA) are typically a mix of Macs and PCs, but you probably knew that. But in 30+ years of supporting computers, I've seen plenty of mixed organizations. Usually they'll have 90% PCs with a handful of Macs for either (a) the creative types in the design department, or (b) the people who demanded one because it was "better" in some way. Heck, nearly 20 years ago I came across a lab full of hea
Re:Maybe Businesses Don't Want Macs (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to - and one of the biggest. We switched to PCs and nothing has worked quite right since, and really no serious attempt has been made to fix it for 12 years. Document control, in particular, has completely broken down. We still have a few Macs around (OS8.6 and OS X) to try to correct document corruption problems caused by PCs. Even on PC to another can't correctly read, render, or print a document correctly. Create it in Office 2000, move it to another Office 2000 machine, characters are screwed up. It's even worse with 2000/2003/2007 and NT/XP/Vista (for those poor saps who got stuck with it). Put them on the Mac, using Office 98/2001/VX/2004, and frequently, no problem, and/or you can fix it and have it work with any of the PC versions. But reports created on 2003 two days ago, into Windows-based document control, and try to extract them today, completely hosed.
For critical items, we print it out (however we can get a correct version, PC or Mac) then scen them in as TIFF files. This was suggested by the senior Microsoft tech working the Platinum trouble ticket as the most reliable way!
Brett
Re:Maybe Businesses Don't Want Macs (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never heard of anyone who works at a company that uses Macs. The company I work at uses PCs exclusively, and probably saves quite a bit of money by doing so. My work PC has never crashed, has never had a virus, runs relatively fast, and was probably quite cheap. I do have to have an IT person mess with computer every now and then, and thats usually because a poorly written application fails and needs to be reinstalled.
For most businesses switching to Macs would require new IT people, retraining of employees, and finding applications that function in OS X. The computers would also likely cost considerably more than PCs.
Ever heard of Cisco? We are free to run a Mac that the company will pay for, as long as IT doesn't have to support it. We have an internal user community that provides its own support in lieu of IT. There are thousands of Mac users here. I switched about four months ago thinking that the worst-case scenario is that I could still run Windows on the hardware if switching to a new OS didn't work out. So far, I'm still running OSX, but am also still running Outlook under virtualization; enterprise messaging on the Mac is currently not very good.
Obviously this type of solution is not for everyone, but it works for us.
Re:Why Apple Doesn't Market Squarely To Businesses (Score:5, Funny)
Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft would beg to disagree.
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Hell, the only major software released for OS X has either been (poorly) written by Apple, or has been writen by a company that Apple bought specifically so they wouldn't be able to release a Windows version of the software.
Huh??? What are you talking about?!
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It was 4:20 on the coast when he posted that.
What about the stuff about hardware open-ness? Seriously 90% of the hardware problems are because the supplier used 3-rd rate components, or shipped with faulty drivers. Granted, yes there are instances when you need a special card to drive a device, but when was a last time a legion of bankers or bean counters demanded some crazy hardware? Yes, clearly it's a great investment into my business.
Software open-ness? Certainly, that's why you can, you know, grab a co
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I'm not so sure about power. Hardware specs are at par, no more; the locked OS on anything non-Mac is starting to alienate the more sophisticated users, as is the lack of hardware options. I'd probably have an iPhone if there was one with a bigger screen.
I'm not quite sure about ease of use either. It's no longer DOS vs MacOS, and as a Windows users that sometimes uses a Mac, I find MacOS does things not only differently, but not that intuitively either. My brother had to teach me how to launch apps that ar