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Why Apple Doesn't Market Squarely To Businesses
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.'"
Apple's not very big on jumping into crowded markets. I'd love to see them take a good shot at unseating Windows in the server business, but they look at how much it would cost to try to push their way in, versus what they can make if they put the same resources into something like the iPad. So far, Apple's growing like crazy without doing much about the business market.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If you ignore the products that they market to businesses, then it probably does look like they don't market to businesses.
Actually the only thing I see is people complaining that "They're not in business so why should we have them". I can cite multi-floor buildings stuffed with lawyers that run exclusively on os x systems. The same for 5,000+ strong schools. The remote management tools (ARD, DeployStudio, SSH) are more than powerful enough for what the staff want and need and can be used to lock down a machine if necessary. Policy dictates that the whole "your machine must be locked down tighter than a cows arse at fly time" is no longer necessary, so it isn't put in like that - even in the law firms.
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.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
AFAIK, Microsoft makes the bulk of its money by selling to the big corporations. By entering the enterprise market, Apple would attack Microsoft biggest and safest money source. If they do that, Microsoft will stop selling MSOffice for Mac and will prevent Macs from interacting with the AD. This way, Apple will lose more trying to enter the enterprise market than ignoring it altogether.
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
I work in the ITS of my university and whenever the faculty and staff using macs consider or even hear about management apps like puppit or how if they have a PC they MUST install (novell) zen they cringe. They HATE the idea of the IT department invading their computer because their PC(Linux, Mac or Windows ) still feels personal. Even the sub-departments of our IT infrastructure HATE it when our the central sysadmins push updates to computers without telling the departmental support teams.
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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dqLT0UBPx0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcuSOfjR6w
Print ads, too:
http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/newads10/Macad1.jpg and http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/newads10/Macad2.jpg
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.
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.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Because their service level agreements are just not good enough.
I standard "business" laptop from Dell comes with next business day on-site service, wherever you are in the world (well, within reason.)
i don't care how attractive Apple's laptops are, unless they can give me that sort of coverage for USD$1500, I'm not interested. I continually hear horror stories from my friends with Apple laptops about what they need to go through for it to get fixed.
When you travel, and travel a lot, you discover that stuff does have a finite lifetime - especially hard drives. There's only so many bumps from being wheeled around or bouncing through air pockets that they will take.
$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.
That is all.
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 and here. I've been using it since OS 10.4, it's easy to set up and works pretty well.
grep -iw skynet
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).
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
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
If things are as bad as you say they are in the windows environment, I think it is time for you to find a new IT staff.
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
Screen sharing is also included so you don't even need a third party VNC client.
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.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
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.
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.
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
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.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
meh
But the Apple /// didn't fail because of operating system nor application software. It failed because of HARDWARE instability. The Apple /// was technically too advanced for the PC board fabrication techniques (they had to find a PCB fab that would even attempt to do THREE traces BETWEEN IC PINS. Unheard of at the time). As a result, the Apple /// was very crash-happy, and by the time it was discontinued (AFTER the introduction of the Mac, actually), it didn't matter that all the hardware problems had been worked out...
By the way, AppleSOS was VERY sophisticated for its time (1980), and AppleWorks integrated office software was pretty cool as well...