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Corporate Mac Sales Surge 66%
syngularyx writes "Mac sales in the enterprise during Apple's last fiscal quarter grew a whopping 66 percent, significantly outpacing the rest of the PC market, which grew just 4.5 percent in the enterprise. The data from Apple's previous fiscal quarter was highlighted on Friday by analyst Charlie Wolf with Needham & Company. He said though he originally viewed success in the enterprise as a "one-quarter blip," it now appears to be a "durable platform" for Apple."
What makes this especially interesting is that Apple apparently isn't looking for corporate sales, and considers them "collateral success" rather than an indication that they should market specifically to corporate buyers.
You mean that there are now three businesses using Macs? Amazing!
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Translation: Hope these businesses don't want actual enterprise support from Apple. Rude awakenings to ensue.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is an interesting change. At my former employer, they piloted a program to allow developers to develop on a Linux box rather than a Windows one, but it was not utilized by many and the desktop team found the support too painful for their taste.
Now looking at a different article from TFA: http://blogs.computerworld.com/18330/apples_mac_steals_windows_enterprise_sales
"What's driving the growth? Wolf writes, "Notwithstanding its premium prices compared with Windows PCs, the Mac should continue to grow faster than the PC market, propelled by the halo effects now emanating from the iPod, iPhone and iPad along with the international rollout of Apple Stores. The cost of ownership is emerging to be another key factor. Square Group chief, Darren King, notes, "Total cost of ownership (TCO) for a Mac vs a comparable Wintel device over 3-4 years is actually lower!" Think about that."
"Eight out of 10 organizations said they are "more likely to allow more users to deploy Macs as their enterprise desktops" in 2010-2011, up from 68 percent in the 2009 survey," the researchers said."
It's interesting that the coming decade might herald, rather than the switch we might have anticipated to Linux desktops (following the Year of Linux on the Desktop of course), a switch to desktop autonomy and self-governance at work.
I'm not sure where they're getting these numbers from, because the IDC Graph they're re-printing shows business sales going from ~870,000 in Q4 2010 to ~890,000 in Q1 2011. Now I'm no mathematician, but that doesn't look like a 66% increase to me.
In tech companies, it's still a problem retaining good talent. To a lot of people (including where I work) being given a MacBook as their company laptop is actually a perk. I work for a software company whose products run on all major platforms (OSX, Win, UNIX, Linux, BSD, etc) and a good number of our employees (more than 100) have MacBooks. It makes sense to have some people using the platform that our software runs on also...
As if there were no rude awakenings to ensue when trying to get "enterprise support" from Dell, Microsoft, and Symantec.
Enterprise support is a joke. If you don't have an IT staff capable of supporting the hardware and software you're buying... you're doing it wrong.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
If this keeps up, they might even consider introducing innovations like "maintenance contracts" on their server systems, so you can replace a power supply on a three year old machine without scouring eBay for parts.
Bastards.
To borrow a line from Fats Domino, ain't that a shame that /.ers can't find anything better to do than slam Apple's success. Not too long ago, Apple was as doomed as BSD.
Apple Enterprise does exist. It's much smaller than Apple Education, but it's not exactly tiny. Sure, the territories are quite vast, but it appears they're covering it very well. Between channel sales and direct, the numbers being put down by Apple are quite impressive. I'd guess the majority of the bump here is from the channel. That part of the organization is well funded and extremely well supported. The management there is strong and willing to do what it takes. The direct sales organization is newly reorganized as of about a year ago. It appears that reorganization is doing well under the new leadership, and they have been aligned under the VP for channel sales. This was obviously a good move for Apple.
As for Enterprise Support, it also exists. I don't know a lot about the structure of it, but I do know whenever I called for support, it was very good. I've had changes made to software, replacement hardware, and always a friendly and knowledgeable person on the phone instead of just a screen reader. Apple's support is impressive. You have to pay for it, but most good things are that way.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
More like collateral damage (at least in the enterprise). With no rack mountable servers and no licenses for non-apple hardware based virtualization it is pretty much impossible to fully integrate macs into enterprise without 3rd party solutions, and since Apple clearly isn't interested in enterprise why would enterprise want to bother with macs? I love my apple laptop, but integrating macs in an AD environment is hellish. It should be as simple as click join domain, but I can tell you from experience that is only theory. Reality is that unless you are building the domain from the ground up with macs in mind it is a PITA involving screwing with bonjour services, disabling signing, and trying to figure out why a handful of the macs won't renew their kerberos tickets when all the others in the same OU will. Using a mac server solves most of these headaches and gives some level of access control, but without allowing virtualization or having a rackmount option (that can be purchased without the bookkeeper having a heart attack) many businesses are back to square one trying to make due with basic binding or using expensive third party options like likewise or centrify. Xserve was only unpopular because it was ungodly expensive for what it did and most admins only needed something that fit in a rack and could provide active directory and group policy, which doesn't require 50 cores and a TB of ram nonsense. So Mr. Jobs, do you plan on replacing it with a rack mountable mini with redundant power supplies or can I slap a sticker on my poweredge and call it a mac? The alternative is the fancy imacs everyone loves get tossed to ebay come the next refresh cycle, and I'm not the only one with a headache from this.
Get a web developer
Yes and no. If your capable it staff figured out that something specific which is needed and should work really does not work and that it is a problem of the preinstalled software/hardware then it if a difference if you are put trough to the "did you check it is plugged in" customer phone support, which will file a case which will rot in the depths of their database unless 10000 other customers have the same problem, or if you actually have a support contract.
Mac's are fine for web development. Mac's are unwise for developing data processing software, which naturally run on Linux, or end user applications, which naturally run on Windows.
AddressBook, iCal, and iChat are all kinda light weight for business needs, but MS Office et al. exists for Mac OS X. Mac's are suboptimal though if you need more specialized business software than MS Office.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I know of a very very large cable company in the US that is allowing its managers and engineers a choice between PCs and Macs. The Macs are doing very well in the company, especially among the engineers.
I think Google also has this option between Mac,Windos, and Linux.
As for enterprise support, what does that mean for desktops/laptops? What does Dell or HP offer in that area that Apple doesn't. If it breaks, send it to them after IT looks at it. The only difference I think is that with Apple, if you have a store nearby you can take it there. Sounds like a win to me.
With desktop virtualization BYOC schemes are becoming more prevalent. My company gives us a $3,000 cheque to buy our own pc. Originally when they told me you need to use a virtualized desktop i was like "WTF? what is this crap?!...". When i actually started using it, and having my desktop run from the DC while at work, then run locally from my laptop when i took it home. Then sync back up when at work. I though - damn - this really IS awesome. I mean if i loose my laptop, its not a big deal anymore - no one who finds it can get my data (encrypted) and i can get up and running with a new one, with ALL my files and stuff withing an hour. Crazy good.
Where do we find mandatory ACLs or MLS policies in Mac OS X? Or are these systems not being deployed in security sensitive environments?
Palm trees and 8
Moving to Mac for their day to day use means that the secretary who is browsing the Web isn't going to have her computer bitten by drive-by infections
Still won't stop her from installing MacDefender, and when you call for support Apple tells you to fuck off -
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/19/apple-investigating-macdefender-malware-support-staff-barred-from-assisting-customers/
I have not data to back this up with, but it seems macs have taken off in the last few years in web development shops. not just for front-end graphic designers, but for back end coders too.
I've had no problems getting same day engineer callouts to replace parts in enterprise systems from Dell - the difference is, Dell offers enterprise orientated options, Apple does not. And the Dell systems weren't expensive in comparison either.
Growth percentage means very little. Look at market share.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
Obviously, this person has never actually worked in a corporation before. We get excellent support from both Dell and Microsoft. Can't speak to Symantec. If a piece of Dell hardware requires replacement, a simple email to them results in the replacement part arriving the next day via Fedex. If a Mac has a problem, the answer is "take it to your closest Apple Store".
At my university, computer purchases over $1500 are capital equipment, and so not subject to overhead charges. Under $1500, the grant gets charged 44% for indirect costs. So, purchase a $1k PC or a $1500 Mac - same cost to the researcher's grant.
Without knowing the specifics, I'll still explain why this study is a folly.
Let's say that 95% of all computers that where sold to businesses last comparable period where PCs (conservative guess).
Let's say, just for example that a total of 100 million computers where sold last comparable period.
That would mean 95 million PCs, 5 million macs.
If we apply the above percentages, this would mean that 99.275 million PCs where sold.
This would mean that 8.3 million macs where sold.
This would mean a total of 107.575 million computers where sold.
Not saying that these numbers are correct, just pointing out that PCs are in fact still selling more according to them, by far.
And, a single fiscal period is irrelevant for showing a trend.
I wonder if these are laptops? The recent changes to the imac (hard drive replacement - requires Apple part and special cable) would make the imac very expensive to use in a business.
I see movement in business for mac. Go back 10 years and people rarely considered it. I have seen about a quater of small-medium sized business owners over that time using macs - and integrateing themselves in.
I see more and more businesses growing with people that bring in their own devices (laptop/tablet/phone) and expect it to work. They also require remote connections to work from home and offsite. Linux and the open source movement has provided a lot of support in all of these aspects. Apple has come a long way in that respect as well - mainly due to the BSD base.
I have mentioned this few times to friends and been laughed down. However I cannot help but see a constant increase in programming, populer/useful software, support, and public view of quality vs price. With linux gaining enterpise support, and PHB's wanting work done on iPads and trying to cut all costs, this movement could indeed be a threat to microsoft if it continues to gain momentum.
More interesting is the figure for growth in the government segment - 155.6% isn't shabby growth there, either...
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Actually, I would bet heavily that the increase is tied strongly to one simple thing – everyone wants to develop an iOS app.
At another job I supported Apple Xserve and RAID. We had a "spare parts kit." It had one of every part in n xserve, "the RAID had it's own similar kit." When anything failed I swapped out the part myself with the spare parts kit, then Apple overtightened a replacement part with a pre-paid shipping for sending the failed part.
"overtightened" --> "overnighted" ?
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
Here's an example of the different levels of support that we got from Apple and from Dell when a machine failed in the university lab where I used to work:
Dell sent out a technician to fix it. He brought spare parts with him, and fixed it on the spot. We weren't paying for an expensive support contract - just the standard support Dell gives to large customers - so it sometimes took a day or two before they sent someone out. The machine was out of action for a day or two, and a technician had to spend about 10 minutes on the phone to get it repaired.
Apple kept us on hold or about half an hour, before telling us that we had to take the machine to the nearest Apple Authorised Reseller. The nearest one to Swansea was in Cardiff, which is about an hour and a half's drive away (city centre to city centre), plus a little walk at each end since you couldn't park near the shop in Cardiff. The would then send it to their repair centre, who would take up to three weeks to fix it. Once it was fixed, it had to be collected from there. Machine was out of action for three weeks, and it effectively took an entire day of technician time (two round trips to another city with the machine) to get it fixed.
Somewhat strangely, Mac owned by individuals bought through the Higher Education store got much better support. They sent out a box the next day, you put the broken machine in it, and a day or two later it returned working (normally - I had one experience where it took them a month to admit that they'd lost it, then two attempts to send me a working replacement). For some parts, they send the replacement out, and you put the old one in the box and send it back with the courier when it arrives.
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In five years, hip trendy douche guy ["I'm a PC! ;-)"] stands next to square dull office guy ["I'm a Mac :-/"].
Actually, Apple does have enterprise support options: You just have to know where to look (and don't let the "server" page name fool you - OS support sits right at the top of the page).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
True, but Mac OS X has been around for over 10 years, and Apple computers for much longer. This marks real growth, not initial market seed.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
My comany's new CTO (a total MS drone) came in 18 months ago and the first thing he did was launch a jihad against all the Linux boxen that had been quietly sitting there doing their thing for years. Massive IT pain resulted followed by a major blow out in the IT budget as he busily wrote cheques to MS and Dell. He thought he'd won. Then along came the iPad. First the Board of Directors started asking why they couldn't read the board papers on their iPads, then the CEO wanted one and asked why he couldn't get his email working, then all the executives wanted one. Now iPads have spread down four levels of management. Then people started asking about integrating iPhone because they didn't like having to carry a blackberry just for work. The CTO kept talking about how insecure apples were compared to MS and that it'll take months of careful study to integrate. Last week the CEO sacked him.
She doesn't know that admin password which MAC Defender requires to install.
Dell support has been okay. They will send a person out same day to replace most things.
Most support that we use is provided by a 3rd party contract now. If they end up supporting Macs too then it will not matter what type of machines we have.
My mom is in IT at John Deere and just this year she's having to learn how to support Macs now. As I understand it, it's only being used by some of the employees and not any of the servers. Deere is a pretty big international corporation, and they're taking Macs more seriously.
For what you pay Apple for a three year support contract which requires you to send the machine in or bring it in, you get onsite service for the same period from pretty much any other vendor. I live on a one-lane road in the back of beyond and HP sent a technician to work on my laptop even though I'm three hours away from the place from which they sent him. Of course, he did actually manage to break the laptop further, but Apple is capable of doing the same thing and I should probably thank him because I ended up getting a better one as a replacement.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
4.5% of 100,000,000 is 45,000,000. 66% of 10,000,000 is 6,600,000. My PC numbers are obviously low and my mac numbers exaggerated, but you get the point.
Factor up or down as you like, but 66% growth in Macs just isn't the same.
If you read the article and look at the charts, you'll see they state only percentages and no actual raw numbers to evaluate on our own.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
You can get enterprise support from Apple; it's just not very well known. Apple is still a bit new in this area. Business Week covered this quiet trend in 2008
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Which is why this is such a big story. Apple made a jump like this while having sub-par service and expending absolutely ZERO effort at marketing to corporations. They even quit making the XServe and XServe RAID. So why the jump in sales?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Surely Apple sending you overtightened replacements would void the warranty? Did you need a special tool to correct the tightness level?
If you want to develop for iOS, you pretty much have to have a Mac.
I don't have points today. I would mod you up if I did. Unfortunately to make iOS apps you need a Mac to do development. So iOS Developers will get macs to do their work. iOS apps are popular so companies will buy Macs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So why the jump in sales?
I would presume for the same reason that businesses installed Windows servers in droves - the mid-level managers had the machines at home. They assumed that they could thus understand the servers themselves, because no dysfunctional middle manager can have his underlings knowing more than he does.
So, "I have a Mac at home, I should have one at the office. My underlings should have what I have (but with a smaller hard drive and LCD panel)".
Just a guess based on the last go-around.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So, as I'm at one of the few enterprises that actually has an Apple Rep ...
We've been told no more xServes, as they're convinced that everyone would be fine with either a MacPro mounted sideways (which doesn't have the same density per RU, or a bunch of minis (you can get shelves for 'em ... I'd go for the 1U that holds two, as the 2U ones that hold 4 just doesn't have sufficient space for cables), which doesn't have sufficient cores to handle heavy loads.
I tried asking about when they'd release an i7 mini. (well, I had to leave early, I had one of my co-workers ask, and she's annoyed at me because our Rep gave her some rude answer about how they don't know anything about upcoming hardware).
The only good news we got was that in 10.7, 'OS X Server' will just be a pack that gets installed on top of any client install ...
If all you need the Mac for is for authentication services, the Mini will probably do you ... unfortunately, the group I work for does scientific computing, and the number of cores per rack matters, as do redundant power supplies and a crapload of memory for the database servers.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I think it's much simpler than that. Non IT folks that work for a corporation are susceptible to the sway of the "trendy" and "cool" just like most other sheep. I've even seen the odd IT guy who's been sucked in.
I think what is happening is that people are suddenly demanding Macs at work. They use them at home and can't stand using their PC at work any more. I live in Sweden. As I look around I see way more Macs than PCs. At my wife's company it's the same. Could it be that Mac has already won the enterprise in some countries? People I talk to refuse to use Windows because of domain controllers, active directory, painful software installation, cheap hardware in PCs, and poor performance in mission critical applications. Not many users given a choice would choose a PC over a Mac. Bottom line: it's prettier and it works better.
One reason I personally have seen Macs being deployed is because of the security aspect
What aspect is that? The one where the firewall is turned off by default with no GUI, or the nvram setup password that is trivial to reset (allowing anyone to muck about in the HDD with a boot CD)? Or maybe it's the way Apple doesn't fix a known Java flaw for a year?
Or IBM/Lenovo. Lenovo support consists of having you re-image your PC.
"in the beginning", I was the one corporate Mac user (by special agreement/dispensation/employment agreement with the CEO.) Then a couple of Macs were purchased for specific projects, plus a couple other 'favorite sons' got a Mac. Once the senior leadership (including the CIO and COO) actually -tried them-, they decided that the convenience/ease of use of the software platform, along with the reliability of the hardware, was A Good Thing. So the corporate policy was still "No Macs", but they became in some respects a status simple at the VP level. Then the CFO said "no Macs". But with a significant number of VPs advocating for the Mac (including the ability to connect to the corporate Exchange server, and the ability to run corporate Windows-only applications through virtualization), is likely to result a re-look in the "no Macs" policy. A big part of that is that the hardware's lasting a lot longer. If a Dell breaks in 2 years and a Mac lasts 4, and the price for SIMILARLY EQUIPPED machines is relatively close, then the Total Cost Of Ownership argument for Macs is a strong one.
But we're talking about 20 machines in a 500 person company, so Mac penetration here is not very strong. The level of interest at the VP and senior tech staff level remains high. And typically that's what I've seen in several other companies; the 'desire for Macs' is particularly strong in the senior technical ranks. In my case specifically, and in the case of others I've talked to, it's a combination of ease-of-use for everyday tasks, hardware reliability, and the lack of IT controls and interference (e.g. corporate-injected software updates that crash your machine in the middle of working or worrying about the latest crop of vulnerabilities.) Also for many of us, the Unix underpinnings provides a lot of capabilities for tools we grew up with (e.g. grep, chmod, EMACS, etc) that are often highly productive alternatives to the Windows way of doing things.
Oh that's simple.
If there were 100,000 Non-Macs previously, there are 104,500 Non-Macs today. Conversely, if there were 6 Macs previously, there are 10 Macs today
Also Macs are PCs too. I hate it when people call Non-Macs as PCs, and especially that Mac presentation in Apple Stores which claim "Mac does not get PC virus!" when it's actually referring to Windows'.
Democracy is for the people; you only vote once per season and we'll do the rest of the work for you don't have to.
So why the jump in sales?
It's a math trick. 66% of a near zero value just means they sold a dozen extra machines.
"Wipe and reload" is the starting point for hardware vendors. Once they get a baseline software install on it from a known configuration, then it is worth spending more than a few seconds diagnosing any hardware problems.
I hope you get it. The vendor's job is not to diagnose and test your poorly implemented software rollout. That is what your in-house IT staff are supposed to be good at.
Hello,
I work at a Fortune-20 company, where I am currently writing our internal standards for the Mac OS X platform, and developing the infrastructure necessary to support Mac OS X in any of the 3000+ business locations we maintain across North America.
We've had no problem getting support from Apple for all things related to Mac OS X and iOS, for the low cost of $nothing. If we run into a problem, I send our Apple Strategic Accounts representative an email about it, and an Apple systems engineer gets back to me with the answer, or asking for more information in order to get me the answer. Many things require no contact, such as the ease of scriptability in order to configure the Mac in a location-aware way using the Active Directory sites and services information we already have, join the AD domain and participate in Kerberos single sign-on, maintain accurate inventory and asset information using systems already in place for Windows XP and Windows 7, and deploy applications dynamically based upon user needs without killing our WAN.
I assure you that there has been no 'rude awakening' throughout the process.
Thanks.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
If you read the article and look at the charts, you'll see they state only percentages and no actual raw numbers to evaluate on our own.
The 'journalist' who wrote the article has an Apple sticker on the bumper of his beemer.
For the desktop machines you can generally get on-site service from Applen under regular AppleCare, as long as you ask. I don't know about England, but I have been getting it for years in the US. They don't send an Apple employee, but rather a technician from whatever company they have on contract in the area. That does lead to a bit of unevenness in the service, but for my calls it has never taken more than a couple of days before they are there, and often I have gotten a touch-base call within a couple of hours of filing my ticket.
For laptops I have usually gone with the "send me a box" option, and the longest I have ever waited from my initial call to getting the reparied laptop back is about a week-and-a-half. More commonly it was within a week.
to enter the enterprise market. They did, in the best tradition of insurgents, an end run. They knew if they captured the upscale home market, those customers would want to use their Macs at work. "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."
photosMy Photostream
Mac's are fine for web development. Mac's are unwise for developing data processing software, which naturally run on Linux
To the contrary, the Mac is the nicest UNIX development platform I have used. Anything you can compile on Linux you can also run on the Mac, much of it comes shipped with the Mac already.
I wouldn't deploy a Mac as a server, but there are no issues using a Mac as a development system and then doing final production deployment in Linux. You get a lot of productivity gains as a developer.
Also as of Snow Leopard Apple has pretty good Active Directory and Exchange integration built in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since the count for the Mac is now at one, and the count for Windows is in the hundreds of thousands - there's a pretty huge advantage there.
Just tell users not to download THE malware.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We had a team-wide meeting a few months ago, and 15 people pulled out their laptops.
We had 1 windows box, 1 linux laptop, and 13 Macs open up.
This isn't really an indicator that Windows is in trouble though, because I think the vast majority of the Mac users had paid the Microsoft tax to run Office in a VM.
I work for a large software security firm. Many of our devs have macs and we're getting more and more people using them as their primary. All of them are using the mac to emulate Windows 7 so they can do their actual work.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
The one where the firewall is turned off by default with no GUI
Because there are no open ports to start with...
or the nvram setup password that is trivial to reset
Here's a thought - perhaps your company should invest in locks on doors to prevent physical access to systems.
allowing anyone to muck about in the HDD with a boot CD
Which a user would have to know to hold down "C" to boot from since there is no auto-boot or auto-run from media unless your main HD is toast...
Or maybe it's the way Apple doesn't fix a known Java flaw for a year?
And that affects what desktop software exactly?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
FYI, from TFA:
3 Percent of all total PC business sales is a bit more than a dozen machines...
I agree with you, except I'd also point out that this level of support from Apple is well known and advertised in advance. If your workplace was caught by total surprise by this, then someone didn't do their research well enough before purchasing.
I've done corporate I.T. in places that standardized on Dell in the past, and found that truthfully, that "next day on-site support" is hit or miss, too. Sure, they may promise a human being appears at your door the next day or two to look at your problem machine, but as often as not, those "techs" were little more than parts replacers, armed with ONE specific part they thought/hoped would fix the issue. All too often, they'd swap a video card or a motherboard when it was a monitor or RAM that was bad. In other cases, they'd bring a completely incorrect part that didn't even fit the machine, only to inform us that the correct part was on back-order -- and then we sometimes waited 2+ months for a return visit.
There are also 3rd. party support options out there, like SquareTrade, which you could use on a new Mac mail-order purchase. Depending on what you get, some of those extended warranties give you quicker turn-around time and don't require you physically taking the equipment in to a specific location to be repaired.
So why the jump in sales?
Suits at the top think the iPad is "cool".
Plain and simple, they've bought into the consumer marketing. Of course when the next shiny thing from $BIG_NAME_COMPANY comes out, they'll go with that. Remember, these are the same people that built entire IT infrastructures around IE6 and VB...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
I work as a consultant to many Fortune 100 companies and I'm seeing this happen at most of them. Acceptance of OS X and a serious interest in bring-your-own computer schemes is happening in all of them.
Never mind a corporation.
You can be a single person shop or even an individual and get better support options from Dell than what's available from Apple.
It's another one of those things where Apple simply doesn't bother to offer a product. You're expected to adapt to the way that Apple does thing and you are expected to like it and not complain.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There is definitely a difference in the level of support for Apple and Dell. Especially on laptops.
I'm very happy with my Macbook Pro. The only thing that came close, is a Thinkpad I used before.
But I really hope it never breaks.
You can get a support contract on iMacs, where they'll come and fix it at the office, but not for their Macbooks, those you have to bring to the shop. Dell on the other hand doesn't care if it's a desktop or laptop.
Our IT department really doesn't like the lack of professional support from Apple.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
We get great support from Dell on hardware - but MS has never given us any.
A while back we had a MS rep come in and offer to help us with any problems. We gave him a GDI bug that hard crashes on about 1/100,000 JPEGs we get (we get a lot of photos, and some of the processing software is "legacy"). The photos are fine as far as we can tell, and open in any other program (including IE and the MS preview thingee). Our current solution was to "canary" attempt to process each photo by opening with a GDI call in a new process, and if that process mysteriously died then we use a 3rd party library to re-encode it before sending it back for the regular processing. Not a big deal in any way, but annoying.
We detailed the clear, reproducible problem reasonably, detailed what we were using as a workaround, and gave a few sample files.
The solution we got back from the "high level programmer" was to open the pictures in IE first, and copy and paste them into Paint.
We told them that was really not satisfactory. Their next idea was to stop talking to us. It has been about 7 years.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Which a user would have to know to hold down "C" to boot from since there is no auto-boot or auto-run from media unless your main HD is toast...
If the user wants to boot from the CD, a little googling is all it takes to figure that out (and then how to reset the nvram). Obscurity should not be relied upon.
Or maybe it's the way Apple doesn't fix a known Java flaw for a year?
And that affects what desktop software exactly?
Um, it affected the Java that Apple distributed. It shows a pattern of not caring about security. Java mainline had the fix. Apple dropped the ball in not compiling and distributing an update.
That exactly shows what's wrong with Apple support: It doesn't support the laptops. If an IMac breaks, they'll come and fix it, if you have the right level of Apple Care. But for a Macbook (Pro), you can't get that level of service, you're expected to bring it to the shop. 90% of the Mac's where I work (including mine) are laptops. They are really nice machines. Until they break. (Which some will, if you have several hundred users).
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
I know our business just recently went from zero to one. We bought a Mac Mini so we could better ensure compatibility of our corporate sites (and offer better support) to Mac users. Might also do an iPad app at some point. Not so much for any direct business need, but CEO mentioned we might want an iPad app as a marketing tool.
But anyways, yeah, it would be interesting to see how all those Macs are getting used.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
4.5% of 100,000,000 is 45,000,000. 66% of 10,000,000 is 6,600,000. My PC numbers are obviously low and my mac numbers exaggerated, but you get the point.
Factor up or down as you like, but 66% growth in Macs just isn't the same.
If you read the article and look at the charts, you'll see they state only percentages and no actual raw numbers to evaluate on our own.
Math check please: 4.5% of 100,000,000 is 4,500,000, which is less than 6,600,000. You're right of course that the percentages mean a lot less without actual numbers to back them up, but if you are going to troll, do it creditably.
If the user wants to boot from the CD,
The point is they have to want to do so, you cam't just have them slip a drive in the system and expect it to work accidentally. If you are talking about an attacker using a disk to get into the system then DUH DUH DUH then can get in, they have physical control of the system. They can pull the HD and go to town. They can torture the secretary for her password.
DUH.
Um, it affected the Java that Apple distributed. It shows a pattern of not caring about security.
Um, no-one uses Java on the desktop any more, has not for years so it doesn't matter. I say that as someone who use to develop Java desktop software...
DUH.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The nearest authorised eeseller IS in Swansea (AT Computers just off the Kingsway). But the nearest authorised repair centre is just outside Cardiff.
Jonathanjk.com
It is now, but they only opened a year or so ago (they're actually a branch of the Cardiff store). It's a bit of an improvement, but they still have a 3-week turn around. When I needed the hard disk replacing in my MBP, I thought it would be faster to take it to them, but it ended up being faster to ship it to Apple. With the authorised reseller being closer, it isn't quite so bad to have them tell people to take it there.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Enterprise support is:
- Special releases of software
- Longer term support of hardware
- Longer term support of drivers
- Specially tested versions of patches and security hotfixes
- And lower per seat prices at that
All three do that job exceptionally well. Just because you think that support should be something that it is not, doesn't make it a joke.
At another job I supported Apple Xserve and RAID. We had a "spare parts kit." It had one of every part in n xserve, "the RAID had it's own similar kit." When anything failed I swapped out the part myself with the spare parts kit, then Apple overtightened a replacement part with a pre-paid shipping for sending the failed part.
Sent from my iPhone
iOS development requires a Mac with OS X. Any other questions?
format c: still works...
Yet, last year Jobs on an earnings call stated that Apple is a consumer oriented company.
Approaching 200 million iOS devices, I bet they have sold half a million macs to developers making programs for them.
I also work for a Fortune 20 company and I know that when the company size drops to less than 1000, Apple support starts to suck really bad.
That might be true in your place of work. IT is very different where I work. There are people developing iPad apps for the salesforce. They love the iPad. The instant on is a big selling point when they get in front of customers. No more lugging a thinkpad around.
I use a Macbook pro. I have two Linux VM's and a rarely used Windows one. Since the IT dept got our mobiles & Mac's hooked up to the email system I really have no need to use windows and more.
Granted many of the devs are still using old Thinkpad T31's but when they come up for replacement they will be gone. The choice will be Linux or OSX.
This is in a company in the Thames Valley.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
And a lot of devs in my workplace are switching to Linux to do actual work. Just wanted to add to the anecdotal evidence.
Yup, the same company that provides our warranty HP and Dell support also supports our Macs. Is mostly the same 3 techs as well.
I drank what? -- Socrates
At my company we have many thousands of employees using MacBook Pros/Airs as primary work machines. Overall it works pretty well, but there are a couple of annoying areas:
I think Apple could look more at the corporate use case. There are a number of things that would improve their machines for the corporate environment, without sacrificing (or changing) anything about the consumer experience.
For the price of Apple Care on a PowerMAC (this was a while ago), I could get a warranty on a Think Pad that covered accidental damage.
It was quicker (less time on the phone) to get the empty box shipped on the Think Pad too.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Orientated != only. Just like other companies they provide sales and services outside of their core focus. It is not very large part of business, but it is there just like server sales are part of their business but desktop and laptops are the main part of thei computer business.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
PowerBook that was.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I work for a university department and we are adding Mac support now for our enterprise environment. The Mac head professors won't stop and our job is to support what they want.
However the problem is Apple's enterprise support is rather abysmal. We'd like to have the Mac server just be a VM. Most of our servers are VMs these days. Keeps costs down, makes things flexible, lets us route around hardware problems, etc, etc. We've got a VMWare Infrastructure setup on the backend that runs about 40 servers on 4 physical boxes. Windows, Linux, Solaris, all on there. Only systems with high end needs (like our SQL server) or special uses (like our offsite LDAP and AD servers) are dedicated hardware.
Can't do that with OS-X though, they won't let you virtualize it on non-Apple hardware. So we had to buy a Mac. No rackmount solution, of course, we got a Mac mini which was $1000 for a fucking Core 2 Duo system. Only choice we had.
Then there's the fact that the file performance is abysmal over CIFS to our NetApp, and NFS support seems to be flaky (it is strange to make it work and sometimes it just doesn't). So we had to get a third party solution (ADmitMac) to improve performance up to the level we get from Windows and Linux and to provide better integration.
This is all never mind the very high hardware cost compared to Dell or Lenovo.
It really annoys me because it is pure fanboyism/zealotry, not pragmatism. There are no applications we use that are Mac only, and indeed several that are Windows only. Every Mac I've ever seen a faculty buy has immediately been followed by a Parallels purchase so they can also run Windows.
Basically we are spending extra time and money to support something that I can see no gain for. We aren't a "OMG Windows only!" kind of place, like I said we do Linux and Solaris too and we have a reason to support both of those. I have just never been given a good reason why we should use Macs, and Apple's support does not justify it, and is infact worse than what we get form other companies.
Have any idea how to get active directory to stop hanging our macs for 5-15 seconds every 5 minutes or so? Really tired of the beachball and having to retype thing that the keyboard buffer didn't catch.
Seriously?!
I can see this being the case in SOME instances out there, but I've never worked for a place where lack of details of a long-term "roadmap" or the company's secrecy about unreleased/unfinished products kept them from buying them!
If anything, Apple's use of Intel processors means you have more of a roadmap of their products than ever before! Intel *does* provide a roadmap for their CPUs.
Erm, title says "Corporate MAC Sales" not "Corporate iPad Sales" - do try to keep up.
And for the record, I'm a security tech for an American-owned telecoms company in Surrey; 95% of our products are Linux-based, I've been using it myself at least 15 years and about 90%/10% Linux/Windows user at home (Gentoo is my Linux weapon of choice).
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
This will be news if Apple can maintain its growth. My gut feeling is the companies that bought those Macs are going to be regretting it.
If you have AppleCare, Apple will do onsite service. You have to be in a city with technicians, though.
http://www.apple.com/support/products/premium/onsite.html
Sure does! But not worth paying for! :)
Last year I was looking for a new job. I am a contracted Systems Administrator and was looking for a position directly with a company. I got pulled in for an interview with our country's main Apple Vendor but after the original position was canceled, they asked me in again, this time for a position as a Technical Consultant that can help them develop services and products that would help them make inroads into the corporate market. What was supposed to be an hour interview changed into a 4 hour debate about how Apple as a brand image does not present itself well to the corporate market. Trying to explain to the Business Developement manager that his own parent company is shooting his aspirations in the foot led to an astounding revelation of how Apple people see the Corporate market. While I was going on about Support Structures, SLA's and Corporate Packaging, he spoke about how desirable the devices are and the sleek look they can give a business not to mention their stability etc..... Listen up, the only real difference between a good and bad corporate PC is the after market support. The sad thing is that I have executives crying at me to get them "One of those cool iPad thingies" so at least at an Executive level, the guy seems to be right.
My mistake. 4.5% of 100 million is 4,500,000 (haven't been feeling well this morning). It's still relative. The numbers I read were up from approx. 500,000 to 800,000 Macs. So, in reality my number for the Mac was grossly over estimated, but still it shows the relative numbers. I'm not a Windows fan as I use Linux and I love the Mac, I just don't fall for the fanboish extremes that drive this alleged success to exaggerated proportions.
It's like, more bicycles are sold than cars, but that doesn't mean that cars are going out of favor. Even if you have an increase in bicycles it doesn't mean there's a relative or even related drop in cars. Even if you sell more Mac into a business it doesn't mean the business is going Mac, it just means there's an interest. And given Microsoft's history of abuse of their monopoly and the relative enlightenment of the masses about that it's only natural people will seem to look for alternatives.
If Apple is selling more then good for them. I wish them success. But, if, and when, they migrate to a closed OS similar to iOS that'll be when business drops them like a hot potato, period. It's something Apple just can't comprehend--you can sell to granny who knows no better a walled garden. There's a big difference in selling that walled garden to business (and don't try the iPad walled garden success because it isn't a success in business even if some businesses have adopted them).
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Oriented means predominately. It means your focus in oriented toward consumers not business. I think he knew that oriented didn't mean exclusively.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I agree, Apple is coddling his fortune 20 company where it would just leave most others wanting.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I chose Linux for my business over Mac and Windows, though I have a few each of those too.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Fortunately, I am currently working in an IT dept where we are in the midst of a massive AD migration project from Novell/Windows to Win server/Windows 7 with Active Directory. Now, part of this migration is all of the macs at this university. What can I say? We use Likewise for AD integration and its a pain in the rear. It does not work like it should. Printers that worked before with macs do not work right with Likewise in AD. Keychain problems out the butt slow down the migration and give all kinds of problems. Regardless of whatever 3rd party AD solution you use with a mac it just does not integrate fully like it should with AD. Win 7 works great with Active Directory. Even some of the Win XP migrations to AD have gone well. There are a few departments that legitimately need macs. The rest are all just for the fluff, status, and fanciness of a pretty little machine on the desk. They are good machines for the home, student, and specific types of business needs (video, audio, graphics, etc). They are, in general, not a good choice for an enterprise setting at all. As for those of you who want control over your own linux and mac machine, etc that are not in Active Directory? I think that's great actually. Just don't expect access to printers or shared filespace or anything else on the network other than internet access. And don't call the help desk whining because you can't access printers and department filespace.
Apple's AD support is a finicky beast to be sure, but usually these issues come from either not having Sites and Services set up. Without that, you're talking to a domain controller on a congested line somewhere in West Nowhere, Oklahoma. Also, Apple doesn't yet support DCs that are read-only, and if you don't have top-level SRV records for your DCs, that can cause issues too.
Here's the example given to me regarding the SRV records, by an SE at Apple specializing in AD:
Say you have a DC in the FUJI site:
$ host -t SRV _ldap._tcp.FUJI._sites.dc._msdcs.ads.apple.com dc02.ads.apple.com
Using domain server:
Name: dc02.ads.apple.com
Address: 17.219.201.81#53
Aliases:
_ldap._tcp.FUJI._sites.dc._msdcs.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 389 dc03.ads.apple.com.
_ldap._tcp.FUJI._sites.dc._msdcs.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 389 dc02.ads.apple.com.
You have to have top level SRV records for ldap, kerberos, and kpasswd:
$ host -t SRV _ldap._tcp.ads.apple.com dc02.ads.apple.com
Using domain server:
Name: dc02.ads.apple.com
Address: 17.219.201.81#53
Aliases:
_ldap._tcp.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 389 dc03.ads.apple.com.
_ldap._tcp.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 389 dc02.ads.apple.com.
$ host -t SRV _kpasswd._tcp.ads.apple.com dc02.ads.apple.com
Using domain server:
Name: dc02.ads.apple.com
Address: 17.219.201.81#53
Aliases:
_kpasswd._tcp.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 464 dc03.ads.apple.com.
_kpasswd._tcp.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 464 dc02.ads.apple.com.
$ host -t SRV _kerberos._tcp.ads.apple.com dc02.ads.apple.com
Using domain server:
Name: dc02.ads.apple.com
Address: 17.219.201.81#53
Aliases:
_kerberos._tcp.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 88 dc02.ads.apple.com.
_kerberos._tcp.ads.apple.com has SRV record 0 100 88 dc03.ads.apple.com.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I was just making a clear distinction in case somebody was reading this and got the wrong impression. I've had problems in the past as well and just either rang apple for a battery replacement which took a few days via post. Another time when my MacBook needed its case replacing, I used AT Computing because I could drop it off with them and they would sort it out. But I was lazy since I didn't want to post my laptop. :-)
Jonathanjk.com
I have a feeling that this data may be skewed significantly due the the Xserve being EOL'ed. There are a significant number of large production facilities in the entertainment sector running Xsan for their SAN infrastructure that bought a fleet of new Xserves for future expansion as a result of the February EOL. This means that the enterprise business would have gotten a huge boost is sales not because people were switching to Apple's products or using more of them, but rather because they knew that they wouldn't be able to to get them in the future and don't want to move to an entirely new platform. The real test will be to see what the current quarter brings, as I suspect we will see a drop to similar or lower market share than Apple had prior to the Xserve announcement.
Apple, to its credit, cares about user experience. They're not perfect, but they're way ahead of the windows world. I think that's what's selling the users on Macs.
I bought a Toshiba laptop a little over a year ago. It came with Windows 7, which isn't bad. The Toshiba-supplied drivers, are terrible. It's not stuff you notice right away. It's a lot of annoying little things; scratchpad scrolling doesn't work reliably, and various problems with the sleep functions. For some reason, it thinks it should wake up when the laptop is closed and it gets movement from the wireless mouse. I have to turn off my wireless mouse before I stow the machine, otherwise, it cooks itself in the laptop bag. The audio mute button on the keyboard stopped working with the last MS security update. This kind of cr@p gets on your nerves after a while.
Our household iMacs just sit there and work. My next laptop will be a Mac. I'm running my dev software in a virtual machine anyway. I, like others here, do *nix anyway. Might as well have one in my backpack too.
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
I have seen the same pattern: also university lab, positive responsiveness from both Dell and HP, their technicians were on-site in max 24h.
At the same time, Apple required the the faulty iMac to be brought to an authorized service where it took them about 2 weeks to figure out something they were actually told about by the technician who dropped of the iMac - he had ran a memtest. To top it off, they also messed up the OS while replacing the memory module.
Then what was his point? And what is yours?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Wipe and reload" is the starting point for hardware vendors. Once they get a baseline software install on it from a known configuration, then it is worth spending more than a few seconds diagnosing any hardware problems.
I hope you get it. The vendor's job is not to diagnose and test your poorly implemented software rollout. That is what your in-house IT staff are supposed to be good at.
Hardware? in this disposable world, who the hell worries about hardware anymore? Hell, hardware troubleshooting is easy compared to software debugging or malware eradication anyway.
And I was talking about vendors such as Microsoft. Sometimes those "poorly implemented software rollouts" are out-of-the-box. System Restore vs. Time Machine. I sure as hell know which one would definitely work against a recent malware infection and which one pretends to work.
Why, exactly, would they regret it? I work in a business that has historically gone with Macs and things are just fine, and they're spreading to other departments. There's very little being done today that couldn't be done on a Mac. (Or Linux box, or thin client for that matter... but we're talking about Macs here.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I [am] someone who used to develop Java desktop software
Okay, so you're not a sysadmin or info-security person. Something you might not be aware of is that information security personnel (and to a lesser extent, sysadmins) are tasked with preventing people from having more access to company data and resources than they require for their positions. Believe it or not, developers can be more troublesome in that department than any secretary who accidentally inserts a CD. I've known a few coders who think that rooting their own box is necessary for their job because IT won't let them install a daemon/service without a little (necessary) red tape. Then HR tells them differently, and infosec tells them why. Remember that most computer security breaches are inside jobs.
Physical locks can do a good enough job at locking down most desktop machines, which, in combination with bios boot options, prevents the physical access you're describing. Unfortunately, iMacs don't have their RAM locked at all. And instead of a useful (physically secured) jumper to reset the nvram(bios), it just takes a change in RAM size. A rooted iMac is a nail file and a boot CD away in most instances. Of course, there are ways to check after the fact (have daemons that poll nvram to check if the obfuscated [not even encrypted!] nvram password is the same), but it's a lot of extra work (still something you want to do in case your developers own lockpicks or boltcutters).
They can torture the secretary for her password.
This is an extreme rarity, and frankly, it's a "here, take the computer" moment. Most information security preventative measures are done to keep employees from doing things they're not supposed to, not weapon toting maniacs. That's physical security's job. I presume it involves something to do with calling SWAT or using tasers depending on the scenario.
no-one uses Java on the desktop any more, has not for years
I do kind of regularly. Some people complain if JDK isn't installed on their desktops. Maybe you're trolling me?
None of these things are your fault but nowhere on that page do I see anything that would explain why Apple is so far behind its competitors in enterprise offerings for hardware or software. I'm surprised Apple's proprietary software is so incapable of scaling out well and has been this poor for so long.
Take the appalling lack of bugfixes in some of their software: login restrictions don't work as advertised with Active Directory or Open Directory (and verified by an Apple employee). This has been going on for 2 major versions of the OS (10.5 and 10.6) at least. Service ACLs are sort of a clever workaround but no real substitute for the functionality one is supposed to get with allow/deny groups (which actually seems like a neat feature!). Workgroup Manager (which you'll use a lot if you configure OD stuff) is needlessly hard to use because its interface is pretty much amateur hour. WGM still has display bugs (don't resize that window too large or too small, and don't expect to easily see nested group relationships); you can never really add AD computer objects to OD groups reliably even though one would expect that if the computer is running and set to connect to the OD server in question, the OD server could interrogate the client to get whatever information it needs to be a first-class member of an OD group. Some of the things Apple implements with OD are nice: a single simple approach to app configuration details (plists) but there's much missing and this hasn't changed in years.
Apple has no serious package management system. I get better package management from my free software systems I run at home. Apple's packages aren't terribly useful to upgrade versions cleanly, track what's installed, allow integration with local configuration data, and a host of other things I can do with FLOSS package managers. MacOS users still think that proper app management can result from dragging something to the trash but there's no accounting for anything outside the appwrapper in this scenario. Relying on app developers to supply an uninstall method strikes me as unwise.
Printer management on MacOS for enterprises continues to unimpress me: version after version I see no major changes here. To fully set up a printer and its PPD options (printer trays, duplexing, etc.) one must either configure the PPD ahead of time and use some other tool to put it into place (radmind, static imaging, a package deployment system: you'll probably end up using static imaging plus a system Apple doesn't supply highlighting the incompleteness of Apple's approach), or one must configure the PPD on the client in place (via Apple Remote Desktop or scripting). Cleanly pushing down complete printer configs with PPDs/drivers is still not an option for MacOS and by now it should be. CUPS is still excellent for what it does (and still free software!) but deploying printer config entries is typical enterprise work and this needs a lot of development work on Apple's part to be taken more seriously.
And then there's the server hardware: always a joke. Xserves were never really that great when compared to what one could get at the time with garden-variety PC servers. Even if you thought Xserves were adequate (I know no admin well-versed in PC hardware who thinks this) Xserves went away leaving the non-rackmountable Mac Pro and the Mini with two harddrives. The Mini "server" offers no way to get to the drives without powering the Mini down. Minis are still hard to disassemble to get to the hard drive, so plan on downtime and frustration as you open the case. This is what Apple seriously offers for server use. Then Xserves became a third-party offering with some degree of Apple blessing (I'm guessing). This simply doesn't instill confidence that Apple cares about enterprise support. This progression makes me think Apple is trying hard to walk away from enterprise use without coming clean with their users and saying so. I suspect Apple wants each MacOS user to be managed by Apple (like iOS devices are) and that's not the ki
Digital Citizen
Apple doesn't want the enterprise business.
The enterprise business sucks - the hardware is sold at the tiniest of margins and it's all made up in support. Sure it can be lucrative if you can entice your business to go all your brand, but that requires a wide product line. Apple's not going for that - they don't want a wide product line - they want narrowly focused.
Dell has a wide product line and offers a million combinations of their product. Apple offers what, 6 product lines with 2 or 3 combinations in each?
Enterprises are the cheapest people on earth. Apple's known for their big margins. You think Apple wants that business? The fact that people are buying Macs for the workplace is just icing - Apple honestly doesn't care.
It's the same reason they don't have a netbook entry - let everyone else fight in the $300 market that barely makes any money. Meanwhile, make a premium laptop with more power and performance at a nicer price point (the Air's Core2Duo may be ancient, but outclasses the Atom, and nVidia graphics beats Intel, and big SSDs, high res displays, etc.).
Apple doesn't care - there's no money to be made in enterprise.
Part of the surge in corporate purchases probably involve development and QA environments for testing iOS software as well a to test websites on Safari for the mac.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I sure as hell know which one would definitely work against a recent malware infection and which one pretends to work.
Well, to be fair, a Windows restore CD (aka an Install CD) would work fairly well against the recent MacOS malware...
Long term support and long term roadmaps are like crack to IT department managers. I just happen to be a consultant in that area.
I'm not saying that it's good, but CYA clause is almost mandatory for those people. Apple does not provide such a thing...
It means that they aren't focused enough to actually attract business customers with compelling offers. And when those people start needing business oriented features Apples comes up empty handed or, even worse, cancelling whole business oriented product lines(rack mountable server).
We have the same situation. It's been great. On the other hand, we have a couple of Dell servers with faulty mainboards, it's an issue others have had (frequently), it eats RAM like a beast, and we've been trying to get the board replaced for ~1.5 months now. Enterprise support, indeed.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
These business are probably mom and pop shops or startup hipsters who'll never run anything more enterprisey then Outlook on the Macs.
No. Of course not. Nobody seriously uses Macs (or is currently studying same) in a large-scale deployment. And of course, this doesn't even count the countless educational institutions (from K through college) and R&D (pure science) labs that have each used dozens to thousands of Macs for years. If you think those don't count as "enterprise-scale" deployments as well, you're delusional.
despite the fact that I have found several Macs infected with such rootkits
I don't think you know what that term means.
Even on a Mac that is infected with the MacDefender Trojan, it is exceedingly simple to eradicate, relative to most of the Windows malware I've encountered (for example just TRY to get rid of something that has infected svchost.exe, and/or has polluted the Registry (and deleted all the System Restore points!)). I know. I just went through that on a client's machine. NOT fun!
Rootkits are anything BUT simple to eradicate. In fact, most of them are installed so deep in the system that they are almost impossible to DETECT, let alone ERADICATE. They are also nearly always interested in gaining control of your machine, not simply phishing your credit card info, as MacDefender does (and there ARE no other examples of OS X malware on the RADAR right now, and haven't been for YEARS).
Stop spreading FUD. There are ZERO "rootkits" for OS X. Prove me wrong and I'll gladly STFU. But until then, you do the same, ok?