Slashdot Mirror
The Mac In the Gray Flannel Suit
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."
I can't imagine what it would be like having to fight that shiny white plastic in able to swap out parts... No Thanks.
Http://Stineomite.org (Yeah Thats Right I'm An Organization)
So having this gap in the market for corporate mac support really opens up the possibilities for businesses to spring up and take advantage of these needs. Apple authorizes repair shops so they can repair systems under applecare... one problem is that a lot of things aren't supported under applecare and applecare is only valid for 3 years after the purchase date.
All it would take is a shop to stock up on parts, offer extended care, data recovery and on-site services. In Manhattan there are a couple of shops that offer some of this, but they are mostly targetting users who don't want to ship their machine to apple or need a quick answer for unsupported systems (TekServe and others), but I don't feel that they are taking advantage of the corporate market.
I, being one of two apple users in my department, have realized that although apple has added the capability to join a windows domain, the SSO support is lacking and there are a couple of shortcomings in their implementation. Running a mac in a windows environment isn't quite as seemless in some critical places (SSO, as I said, but also browsing the network, connecting to sharepoint and if the network is flakey or goes down, logging back into the machine can take a long time if the machine has trouble communicating with the directory server). OSX also offers no default lock-screen option like windows does... Although you can have it "show login window" from the fast users witching menu, activating that with the keyboard requires 3rd party add-ons. I use Quicksilver's FastLogout option.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
And a lot of corporate users are on mid towers they also like to reuse displays from older systems and like to swap out hard disks / not have to send them off to have them replaced.
The imac / mini are not that easy to be opened up and you can void the warranty by doing so. They also don't have send off a hard disk with data on it. HP and others let's you keep the bad hard disk and get a new one.
also the mini is not a good buy next to other systems at the same price and the mac pro is over kill for most users. AIO do not fit in to corporate use of systems and other AIO out there make it a lot easier to swap out HDD's as well.
A good $700-$2100 mid tower will be a nice fit in a corporate setting.
There laptops can use some work as well like an 15" screen at $1200-$1900 not $2000 and up.
It's time for one of the major desktop manufacturers to cut a deal with Apple to make Mac desktop machines. It's time for Apple to exit desktops anyway; laptops are taking over in the personal market. But in business, where there are desks, desktops will be around for years to come. Since they're just x86 machines, there's no technical obstacle.
Psystar may be on to something.
Have you seen their XServe? horrible. The first iteration didn't have any hardware RAID available. If you wanted fault tolerant hard drives, you had to do it in software.
With their history of indifference to the corporate market, do you think that Apple is going to spend the necessary resources to make their server offerings any more palatable? TFA notes the trouble MS is having with companies switching to Vista from XP...it looks like this could be the foothold Apple needs to launch some newer and more powerful products for the corporate user base. Of course, many of the Vista-vs-XP complaints are echoes of the XP-vs-2000 complaints we heard when XP first came out, so Apple is going to have to act quickly before MS does to Vista what it did to XP and the opportunity is lost.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
License the rights to someone who cares. I'm sure Lenovo would love to market a range of "ThinkMac" laptops to business users.
Apple is not focused there because that need is being rapidly assumed by consoles.
Some console games even support mouse/keyboard for FPS control.
With HD TV even just at 720p, you have resolution that is acceptable to just about anyone, and you don't have to do all the work of updating drivers and such - the platforms handle updates quite well as to the games.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The problem with Windows at my workplace is that it comes pre-crippled with Tivoli Endpoint, mandatory anti-virus and various other pieces of adminware. If even some of these were not available for Mac, that would be a good reason to switch. Of course, that would also prevent the change, but one can always dream...
Perhaps for 'most' people, Vista is just fine. It uses more memory to do the same stuff in Windows XP, so it's less efficient by that definition. But for contemporary machines, memory is pretty cheap. (I upgraded my laptop to max capacity 4GB for about $80 recently and it's even cheaper now) But for quite a few, there are still instances of lacking hardware support under Vista. On the Dell page for a small XPS laptop I was configuring, it ships with Vista only and describes in clear detail that specific features and functions do not work under Vista even while previously it worked under Windows XP. (Shockingly, Dell isn't offering XP as an option for that model... not that it matters to me since I use Linux for everything anyway, but it was for a friend, not for me.)
I guess what I'm saying is that "Vista" is not an upgrade when it reduces efficiency and support for your hardware. People should not use the word "upgrade" when it's actually a downgrade.
Vista is a downgrade and it's being forced onto users who don't want it. Perhaps Microsoft is attempting to reduce their market share... who knows.
What is the real requirement that would make you pick Macs over Linux or Windows?
Excluding creative firms, most companies have a really short list of genuine requirements. Track a few gigabytes worth of numbers (total, across the company), deal with e-mail, exchange a few documents. You don't exactly need expose to do an accounts receivable reconciliation or fill out a goods received note yet _these are the things that most computer users do in most companies_.
Once you take user preference out of the equation what genuine benefits does Apple really offer? Linux offers commodity hardware sourcing plus no software overhead. Windows offers the same hardware advantage and conformity with the rest of the market. After you amortize setting up a standard, well locked down image over 10k+ users are the costs of that really different enough to be significant?
What companies should be doing is deploying Macs where they could really have some benefit. I'm sure that there are some people who need access to things like FCP at work are suffering an old Windows XP box with inadequate tools. But for every 1 of those people there are 20,000 people who right now are tapping out yet another form debt collection letter and could do it just as easily from a $200 box running Linux.
Beep beep.
Just because you're a consumer and a gamer doesn't mean all consumers are gamers. There are plenty of consumers out there who don't game.
I don't think one can really fault Jobs for first targeting "people who take photos", "people who listen to music", etc. over "people who play Half Life".
Good points, but Cisco doesn't make servers.
....Apple needs to launch some newer and more powerful products for the corporate user base...
A smaller brother, both in size and power, to the MacPro, priced between the lowest and highest price iMac would probably be a very popular item they should add to their list. It could have one expansion slot and let the customer use their old PC keyboards and monitors. This would save money and help the environment with less electronic garbage to dispose of.
Apple could sell a sexy monitor, keyboard and mouse as an option.
All theory is gray
I think you missed reading the summary of the story as well as perhaps taking a glance at the story itself. Apple is not trying to compete in the corporate market.
You don't generate consumer buzz by talking about the things you're going to be releasing in, oh, five years or so. People forget about it and by the time it comes out it's already old news. Apple is much better off doing what they do now and letting the pressure of their consumer user base continue to help them in the work place.
Apple is growing. A few years ago the place where I work started offering Mac desktops and laptops for people who wanted those instead of a Dell. Judging from the amount of people I see walking into meetings with Macs I'd say that Apple has at least a 25% share at our business.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
If Mac, or Linux, is to succeed in the SMB market, an alternative to Intuit is needed.
Somewhat surprisingly, Intuit is very hostile to anything non-microsoft. The Mac version of quickbooks does not work very well. The online version of QB was specifically designed to not work with Linux. The enterprise version of QB is certified to run on certain linux distros, but that starts at $3000 USD, whereas the standard version of QB is $130 USD.
I am aware of the f/oss accounting apps, like gnucash, or ledgersmb, but none of those are adaquate for most SMBs. I think a viable alternative to QB would need a good sized company behind it.
Every company I was in (and that ranges from the very small to humongous worldwide behemoths) had a couple spares at the department level.
And you surely wouldn't store your critical data on one desktop?
Apple cares more about high margins than market share in computers. There's no way that corporate purchasing is going to be sold on high-margin items by a vendor, because the things a vendor can offer aren't going to be sufficiently compelling in a marketing blurb to overcome the fact that the price is out of line. On the other hand, Apple can sell well to individuals based on getting people to like products that aren't available from other companies regardless of price. And individual employees at companies influence how the company spends its per-employee overhead (does the company buy nicer chairs? new cubicles? better snacks? macs?). This means that Apple is in a position where companies will be looking for the most cost-effective way for them to acquire Macs. Apple could put together a whole corporate program and send an account rep to companies that are considering buying from Apple, but all that would do is give the company somebody to negotiate a better deal with. Apple actually does better to ignore the company and leave it no choice but to go to the Apple Store and buy from people or computers that don't negotiate but just charge what the price tag says.
I think the only thing that Apple would want to change is that corporate IT is afraid of getting support and repair calls they don't know how to handle. To a certain extent, this isn't a problem so long as employees only get Macs if they ask for them, because Apple puts a lot of effort into motivated individual users being able to take care of their Macs without a help desk. But they'll probably want to streamline the process of selling out-of-warranty repairs in large numbers for the same owner. And they may want to work on getting corporate IT workers to buy Macs as their home computers.
With significant Mac deployments in big companies, Microsoft only stuff won't fly. This is not as good as free software deployment but it's helpful. Increasing choice of tools in big companies is good for everyone but everyone's least favorite monopoly.
As long as common dissasters like Flash are used in all platforms, the diversity will only create marginal security improvements.
Now here's a story we've heard a few dozen times before: More workers are asking for Macs in the workplace. But the answer is always the same: "The CFO said "too expensive"."
So unless you're an executive vice-president or higher, or you're one of the rare people in "Creative" that has any pull at all with the boardroom, you're gonna be looking at Windows for a long time to come.
This is unfortunate, of course, but it's the Way Things Are. Especially in an economic downturn. Hell, you're lucky to have a job, so you might want to think twice before making a fuss about wanting a nice new Mac.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...finally someone gets it. Yeah, there have been disasters like the ATI GPU in iBook G3 debacle, and the explodey battery debacle, but Dell has hardware disasters too and so does everyone else. Macs usually are built with the best parts that Apple can get their hands on. Everyone else cheaps out and you are left with leaky capacitors after a couple of years use or other crap like that. The only other company who has been really good on quality parts was IBM when they still designed and made ThinkPads and enterprise desktops. (not Aptiva or the i-series ThinkPads, you can blame Acer for that) Lenovo has taken the brand and dragged it down to the same crappy level as everyone else (Used a Lenovo ThinkPad lately? PU!) but mas o menos Apple has kept the brand up. I've had a very happy MacBook since 2006...finest computer I've ever owned.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Clearly you have never used OpenDirectory with non-Macintosh infrastructure components. It's no walk in the park, especially given all of the extensions they tend to do.
a) Since when do you have uid=foo,cn=users,cn=company,cn=com, and not cn=foo,ou=users,cn=company,cn=com. Albeit that's minor and not a big problem.
b) Groups are a pain, especially as you cannot (with the Workgroup Manager anyway) produce groups that are not also UNIX groups (no application/functional groups??).
c) The Workgroup Manager does not allow changing of a user's [primary] uid, and if you do it with OpenLDAP tools you may desync the group memberhips due to the apple-member-guid.
d) Many fields are obfuscated behind xml inside base64, like apple-user-mailattribute. This makes use of non-macintosh tools like postfix rather difficult. True, Apple modified their postfix (among many other tools) to understand how to use this, but using it with a standard postfix install on UNIX is a pain in the ass.
Eventually what you come back with is that OpenDirectory is great, as long as all of your servers are Macs. Otherwise, it's not worth the trouble.
Apple vs Adobe is kind of like the Battle of Koom Valley. Whether Apple ambushed Adobe or Adobe ambushed Apple it's been going on and on all the way back to 1997 at least.
Anti-phishing? Give me a break. Apple's managed to only take three point something years to turn off the default "allow browser to do stupid things if it asks first" flag. Which sounds pretty bad, and I've been ragging on them about it since 2004, but I've been waiting for Microsoft to do something about the "allow browser to do REALLY stupid things if it asks first" function in IE for over 10 years now... and THAT doesn't even have an option to turn it off...
So on a scale of 1-10 in stupidity, Apple's lack of anti-phishing in Safari is about a 1, and Microsoft's ActiveX is about, oh, thirty thousand or so...
And if people were worried about bad behavior from companies, there's Microsoft's habit of ripping off developers, disabling people's computers by mistake, and the latest being Microsoft staking MSN music in the heart after telling people that "Plays for Sure" wasn't just a slogan...
Not to mention Vista.
Don't depend on good behavior from any company, and always ask "what have you done for us lately". Doesn't matter if it's Apple, Microsoft, or Ben & Jerry's.
While eye candy is not necessary, I suppose, that doesn't mean it doesn't serve a productive purpose. For hardcore multitaskers, expose is a must - in a second you can pick the window you want out of the 20 that you have open.
But the thing that most often gets ignored in geek circles is the bling factor. We can't mathematically quantify any use for it, so we assume its useless and frown upon the simpleminded advocates of eye candy. Truth is, we're humans. We have an artistic side, and when our desktop interface is beautiful to use we're happier when we use it. I get more done when I'm in a good mood, and I'm in a better mood when my interface is entertaining and beautiful.
Necessary? No, but it enhances productivity. So it's only necessary if you want optimal productivity.
Not surprising that the computers most artists and musicians use sort of pioneered this.
The reason to support servers is because of client/server compatibility. If a business/lab wants to have a bunch of servers and clients, likely they will want one vendor for both. Giving up on the server market means giving up on that chunk of the corporate/lab market. And since there is also a standardization among various departments...
Your ad here. Ask me how!
And your comment suggests that you therefore have no idea about deploying servers.
Due to the nature of graphics drivers and GUIs, by virtue of running either you introduce additional instabilities on any machine, whether it runs Windows, OS X or X-Windows on UNIX.
The whole point of running a server is not to waste CPU cycles on stuff you don't need and keep its availability time as high as possible. Therefore, a good "rule of thumb" is to avoid putting a GUI on a server but, if you need to, use GUI-based or browser-based management tools on a client machine.
My expertise is UNIX and Linux servers but I've been in enough data-centres over the years where I've also seen loads of Windows servers where whomever has administered them, has not used proprietary drivers to get maximum resolution on Windows but stuck with a 640x480 or 800x600 standard VGA display because they don't want the additional overhead & instabilities of external drivers.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.