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Can Apple Penetrate the Corporation?

Posted by kdawson on from the awareness-gap dept.

coondoggie sends us a NetworkWorld story on the prospects for Apple gaining market share in the corporation. A number of factors are helping to catch the eye of those responsible for upgrading desktops and servers, the article claims: "Apple's shift to the Intel architecture; the inclusion of infrastructure and interoperability hooks, such as directory services, in the Mac OS X Server; dual-boot capabilities; clustering and storage technology; third-party virtualization software; and comparison shopping, which is being fostered by migration costs and hardware overhauls associated with Microsoft's Vista." On this last point, one network admin is quoted: "The changes in Vista are significant enough that we think we can absorb the change going to Macs just as easily as going to Vista."

8 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. HOLD ON THERE, SON by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Whoa there young whippersnapper...OSX in Corporations isn't the real issue. THIS IS:

    For Microsoft's new Vista operating system, is [Cancel] or [Allow] the new BSOD?
     

    ([Cancel] or [Allow])

  2. Might be a smart move for businesses by edwardpickman · · Score: 0, Troll

    I can see Corporations more inclined to switch than consumers. The added security alone could save a lot. People talk about the learning curve in a migration but there's a minimal learning curve with Mac. The migration from PC is pretty smooth. It's more jarring going from Mac to PC. I can see the added headaches of Vista being a reason to switch. The constant prompts has me considering a Mac shift again. Given the power of the new servers I can see Mac being very attractive to businesses. Also something that is rarely mentioned is low maintainence on Macs. I push a lot of files around and find myself doing regular maintainence like Defragging. Generally it takes a while to settle in a PC. I found with Mac it involved plugging it in and allowing it to update the software. After that once a month it prompts me for updates. Pretty painless. Consumers may feel married to their software and PCs but businesses are interested in efficency. It may be a big reason for Microsoft backing off from Mac support, they see a real threat in the business world.

  3. Re:Paradigm-shift. by JimDaGeek · · Score: -1, Troll

    MS Office for Mac sucks. It is _totally_ different and still is only available for PPC. That means it runs like poop. I tried the trial version and it really sucks and is far too slow. Oh, there is also no MS Outlook for Mac, which is the big MS Office app for corps that run MS Exchange.

    At the fortune 500 I work for, MS Outlook is the most used MS Office app. Period. There is no support for that on the Mac. Personally I would love for our admins to get a clue and switch to a real IMAP server that is not MS Exchange so that our email client is not forced on us. Sadly, I don't get to make that call.

    Photoshop? Huh, why do Mac-boys always try to throw that around? How many of the big corps (where MS makes their money) _need_ Photoshop? Probably close to none. The majority of image editing that employees at a big corp does could be handled by the Gimp, without question. Actually where I work, a lot of the programmers like me use Gimp and the graphics dudes don't use Photshop but Macromedia suite. For those circumstances that need Photoshop, well just give those employees an XP or Mac box and be done with it.

    Linux can handle the majority of desktop, development and server needs of most big corps. The only problem is that most big corps have most of their eggs in the MS-Basket, so switching to Mac or Linux is a long shot.

    --
    General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
  4. Re:Paradigm-shift. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Or I could just continue using Photoshop and get on with my work. BTW - here's a newsflash - Gimp sucks wholesale and across the board.


    While we are making stupid comments and passing value judgements - your MOM sucks wholesale and across the board. Oh and Um. Pwned.

    Fucking internet trash. Go back to digg.
  5. Re:Say what? by DogDude · · Score: 0, Troll

    Even SCO doesn't lock you into proprietary hardware.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  6. Re:Are you sure? by Dun+Malg · · Score: 0, Troll

    Once you've got the MAC hardware, with windows dual booting or in a VM, you can slowly rework those applications that need to be, where it is appropriate. It's not going to happen overnight, and in some companies it's certainly not worth doing. But that doesn't make it impossible. VM, maybe. But you sound like an idiot suggesting dual booting. How, pray tell, do you migrate your apps from one platform to another with dual booting? Say, for example, they migrate the inventory tracking app to OSX/Cocoa first. All the rest of the apps are still Wintel. When someone comes into your office and asks "Hey Joe, how many widgets are in warehouse 3", do you say "Hold on while I fucking reboot into OSX"? No, dual booting is no better than just dumping all wintel in one fell swoop, as it requires migrating all apps at once.

    Jesus, people, think, don't just type shit.
    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  7. fucking faggots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    they're already penetrating the fucking mac fags around here.

  8. Re:Are you sure? by gb506 · · Score: 0, Troll
    But why are you making this switch?


    Because we want an OS that doesn't require draconian security policies, and that's not windows. Because we want an OS designed with usability as a fundamental requirement, and that's not Linux.

    And above all, because we want to spend the majority of our waking hours working with an OS that doesn't suck shit. Is that too much to ask?