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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)
Now if only Apple would get their shit together when it comes to their server products. Anyone who has had to administer OS X 10.5 Leopard Server knows that the entire release was a complete gong show. From crashing AFP and directory services, to a half-implemented calendaring solution, a laughably broken server administration GUI (I mean, who would want to mark reverse zones as transferable _anyway_), and countless other problems... Microsoft , Red Hat, SuSE and Ubuntu are just walking all over them when it comes to the server offering.
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...
If you need a server OS, you don't need eye candy on it. OS X is built on a BSD core, therefore just use BSD for your server.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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.
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...
as touched on in the article, Apple is overly secretive on new upcoming things. This is not what companies want. I work in an IT department and I've seen what both IBM and sun have coming in the next few years. Its called a non-disclosure. This helps my bosses shape future purchasing requirements, because they know whats coming ahead of time, versus a big flashy presentation at a conference and it being available in afew days.
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.
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.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If Apple becomes a significant player in the corporate market, it will almost certainly destroy the image the company currently has among its customers. To think that as Apple products creep into the business world more they would not be the new target for hackers/malware is silly. There is a point where Apple's success will make it attractive enough to write exploits for. Say what you want about the current state of affairs, but you are ignorant if you think that OS X isn't as vulnerable as XP or Vista.
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.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
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".
I work at a MAJOR cable television network, based in Atlanta, with branch offices all over the country and about to be global. Our in-house Mac inventory has only been steadily increasing over the last few years and is expected to go even higher in the next budget. Whole departments are switching to MacBook Pros, en masse, and not just the "creatives". Even the engineering department is switching over to Mac, as most of their applications have OS X versions or they BootCamp/VMWare Windows if need be. Even Blackberries are being supplanted by iPhones, since the recent patch allowing Exchange integration and the next version of the device being fully Exchange compatible (according to our Apple vendor).
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.
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.
My company bought a white Macbook for me about 6 weeks ago, it arrived with broken internal speakers. The nice kids at the Mac store ordered the parts and said to bring the machine in for a quick fix. Being all cool and slack, the Apple store does not take appointments, so I brought the machine in last nite to see if they could fix it. The nice technician told me it would take 1-2 days and there was nothing to speed the process. This Macbook is my work machine, it's not for school or personal use - it's part of a (small, agile) global enterprise that runs 24/7 and I can't be without it for that long. HP and Dell send technicians onsite to service problems like this, no questions asked. It's like pulling teeth to get repairs out of your people. Until you figure out how to fit into business customer's needs, you will self-limit your reach.
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?
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
From The Desk Of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc
Dear Slashdot Member 122034 ("Animats"),
It has been brought to my attention that you understand my business better than I do.
As you know, Slashdot is full of people who have far more opinions than money and far more enthusiasm for offering their opinions than for doing any real work.
Of course, I have no reason to believe that you are one of these foolish, idle creatures that can be seen pontificating on Web sites every minute of every day while able-minded people are accomplishing things.
Congratulations on having brilliant, instantaneous insights into my own affairs that I can only begin to understand after spending more than half my life in the computer industry and running one of the most successful electronics companies in the world.
I've instructed my assistants to alert me to any future guidance that you have time to offer.
Sincerely,
Steve Jobs
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
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?
about how wonderful their macbook/ipon/iphone is. Apple's really got a lot of people by the balls. It's too bad that Macs are more expensive and less productive in an office environment than PCs, and these advocates don't know what's best for them.
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.
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.
Quote: "He believes it's difficult for any company, including his, to be effective at satisfying both corporate buyers and consumers." from the article/posting. Maybe this explains why they don't even try to do either . . . just go down the list of failures,
Apple vs. Java http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/03/1929212
Apple Safari not ready for primetime (no anti-phishing) http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/03/2049205
iphone SDK http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/16/1435254 and http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/08/1932232
their treatment of Adobe (loss of Photoshop CS4 64bit) http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/04/1247246
need I go on? And I only went back a month!
True Apple believers will stick their heads in the sand and ignore this long running trend of contempt for customers, but enterprises do notice, and remember bad behaviors from their suppliers. Until the corporate culture changes (and evidently this belief comes from the top) Apple does not belong in the enterprise.
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Mac OS X is a usable Unix with integrated hardware. And *cheap* integrated unix & hardware. Of course it's gaining critical mass. Mac OS X is stepping in where Linux somehow couldn't reach within the last few years. I have yet to find anything remotely resembling the Mac Mini in bang for bug, handling, usability and stable MS-independant desktop applicability.
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
http://us.shuttle.com/KPC/
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.
If Jobs knew anything, he'd stick to taking his advice from Slashdot UIDs that are three digits or less.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's amazing how ignorant Apple haters are:
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
What Sony needs to do to get a piece of this action is release the PS3 with a builtin Linux distro (not a kit like it is now), with Open Office, Evolution and Firefox, like Ubuntu.
Then I can frag during coffee breaks.
I worked for AppleCare for 2004/2005, I don't know if anything has changed since then (some how I doubt it). I can tell you at least from my little corner at that time Apple really wasn't set up for corporate support.
For one thing they would have us sit there and troubleshoot every call to its fullest. I would get calls expecting us to act like Dell, as in mention a bad part and expect it to shipped right away. Oh no, we have to ask questions and troubleshoot even corporate customers. As opposed to Dell and their "gold membership" 800 number.
Before Apple I had job where I had to call Dell regularly. Their Gold 800 number was extremely good: the [American] tech support would simply ask a couple questions and the part was on the way out, arriving often within 24 hours.
Apple has nothing like that. I assume because they do not have contracts with larger suppliers keeping extremely large stocks of all their spare parts. Now that Apple is more PC-like with x86 and all this could be changing (again, I doubt it).
Not that I'm an expert or anything but I was starting to assume companies care more about the service contract for phone support and hardware replacement than the brands. Since Dell can provide phone and hardware support and that all works alongside the server end of it that's what the companies go with. They don't really care about the brand (Dell this week, HP next week, GateWay or Toshiba or whatever the next) only the support contracts that make the most sense financially. Until Apple can put that kind of support structure in place I don't think they'll make large inroads in the corporate world.
Also, not booting Ghost or DriveImage...what hell is that? Those seem to be the deployment methods of choice for so many companies...
I love the smell of frightened MCSEs in the morning!
Or do we simply call it fear of 'something I know nothing about'?
"Mac bad! Beat on Mac! Me no like, want smash! Get away! Make scared! No understand!"
- I am made of meat.