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.

Comments

Corporate sales?

[TheRaven64]

You mean that there are now three businesses using Macs? Amazing!

Re:Corporate sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

No dummy.

Obviously the growth from 2 to 3 Macs would be an increase of 50%.

The only logical answer is Apple sold 5 Macs to business as opposed to 3 last quarter.

Re:Corporate sales?

[Richard_at_work]

Heh, its ironic - I'm currently sat in an office where all the computers (a dozen or so) are Macs - iMac 27" to be precise.

The irony is that they are all running Windows 7, not one is running OSX. Business owner bought them because they looked cool, but the business is a .Net software development house.

Re:Corporate sales?

[wisty]

Nah. It's just a few more "freelancers", who hope you can do a couple of jobs off elance, and then get a sweet tax deduction for your "business" computer.

Re:Corporate sales?

[beelsebob]

The 27" iMac is pretty hard to beat. Consider that a 27" IPS 2560x1440 screen is about $1000 to start with (hell, dell's more expensive than apple on this one), that gets you a small, quiet, mid range i5 system with a real graphics card for $700... It's not unbeatable, but it's a reasonable price.

Re:Corporate sales?

[LordLimecat]

Ive heard the sentiment "but the hardware is better". I usually explain that there isnt any fairy dust that they sprinkle on the Seagate drives (Dell uses Seagate as well), Foxconn motherboards (again, dell uses foxconn), Hynix RAM, nVidia Graphics, or Intel processor to make it more durable; so if theres any "durable" theyre paying for, its for a really really nice, $1500 case.

Re:Corporate sales?

[Penguinisto]

"Talk about wasting money."

If you spec out a similar HP or Dell (esp. at corporate pricing), you often pay around the same amount - sometimes more. Seriously, look around sometime and try it. A lot of it depends on where in Apple's refresh cycle you are when you make the purchase, and a lot of it depends on how close to the end of the fiscal quarter HP and Dell are, but generally the prices are close once you start matching spec for spec.

( While I'm pretty sure that some bargain hunter will come up with something that is cheaper if they look hard enough, the general rule applies, and since most businesses don't have the time or expertise to go do the tech equivalent of extreme couponing, it definitely applies here. )

The perception of expense comes with folks being used to seeing the cheap low-end consumer-grade stuff that {$OEM} pukes out in volume. Since Apple doesn't bother with that market, they get the perception of being too expensive.

...plus you need the Windows 7 Licenses.

Those are going to be dirt cheap compared to the seat licenses of Visual Studio that the guy coughed up for - after all, we're talking about a business here.

Re:Corporate sales?

[jimicus]

Parent is generally right, subject to a few ifs and buts:

1. Comparison must be truly like-for-like. For instance, the iMac is an all-in-one machine with Bluetooth, integrated webcam and I believe an IPS panel. So if you're comparing something else to the iMac, it also should be all-in-one with Bluetooth, integrated webcam and an IPS panel. These things may not be important to you personally, and if that's the case then by all means don't include them in your feature list when you're going shopping. But you must account for them in any like-for-like comparison otherwise it's not like-for-like.

2. Design and build must be taken into account. All the major vendors have a product line where the laptops have an entirely plastic casing and ventilation in the bottom effectively preventing you from using them actually on your lap; these aren't in any way comparable to a machined lump of aluminium with the ventilation holes hidden in the screen hinge.

Re:Corporate sales?

[petermgreen]

but generally the prices are close once you start matching spec for spec.

The thing is that isn't how one normally buys computers, normally one starts with a set of requirements and then looks for a computer to meet those specs.

And when looked at in this way for many sets of requirements the cheapest mac that meets them is a LOT more expensive than the cheapest PC that meets them.

Re:Corporate sales?

[Phurge]

I worked at a managed services business last year - they were an MS partner / reseller. All their solutions were MS based. So what did their senior execs use? - Powerbooks running windows of course.

I hazard to guess for the same reason - they looked cool and matched their iphones....

Re:Corporate sales?

[teh kurisu]

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that a lot of businesses use Dells in their offices and Macs at their reception, for this reason.

Re:Corporate sales?

[Jeppe Salvesen]

The base config is pretty OK priced. There are some gotchas, though:

1. You can't replace the harddrive (link).
2. You can't upgrade the graphics card after you've purchased your unit.
3. You can't upgrade the CPU after you've purchased your unit.
4. You don't keep your glorious monitor when your machine becomes too slow after a few years

Yes, I sorta regret getting that iMac a few years ago.

Back on topic:

I see a good business model in becoming a certified Mac shop and offering corporate service deals (tech support + physical service). Slowly but surely, the walls are being torn down as applications are becoming web applications. HTML5 may make the OS completely irrelevant in a few year's time.

Re:Corporate sales?

[amiga3D]

You are absolutely right about this. It's trivial to find a cheap PC with the same basic specs as a Mac. When you set them side by side though it's like looking at a chevy cavalier with a v6 sitting next to a porsche 911. Yeah...they're both 6 cylinder cars.

Re:Corporate sales?

[nomadic]

Don't feed the trolls. /. people are convinced that Macs are more expensive than their PC counterpart. This is just because you can't find a cheap mac, but you can find craploads of cheap PCs.

Because they are. Apple skimps on the specs to maintain an absurd profit margin. The "Apple premium" is sometimes lower than other times, typically because there's some gimmicky thing that Apple mass-manufactures that it's hard to get elsewhere (in the imac's case, the especially high resolution screen), but the fact is that you are always paying a premium, typically anywhere from 20%-50%.

Re:Corporate sales?

[jedidiah]

...except both are still just going to the corner store.

Both adequately address the actual end user requirements. Both accomodate the use case.

You remember the end user, right?

Re:Corporate sales?

[biglig2]

Because it's very, very hard to open - a consequence of it's size and appearance - so in order to dissuade people from opening it badly and breaking it, Apple have declared the disk non-user-serviceable..

If for some reason you need a Mac whose innards can be fiddled with, Apple are very happy to sell it to you a Mac Pro that is incredibly easy to open and swap out drives.

Re:Corporate sales?

[LordLimecat]

Since that hard drive is not a user serviceable part and never has been,

Redefining something as "not user serviceable" doesnt all of a sudden mean that Macs are better; I have yet to see a Mac that could not use a standard SATA drive. It sounds like this is not a case of "preventing damage" (when the hell have you seen harddrive damage due to heat? the processor is likely to overheat if the ambient temp is getting high enough for HD failure), but another attempt to limit user-serviced computers and to ensure that you have to pay for the upsell from Apple.

I seem to remember Dell doing this with their latest PERC H700s-- they refuse to take any non-dell flashed drive, even if its the exact same model. Its not a feature, its a reason not to buy the damn thing; damned if I want to pay a 300% markup on a drive for a custom firmware (as if Apple knows more about harddrives than Seagate...).

Re:Corporate sales?

[mikael_j]

Not really, most companies do this, when they buy something it has a planned lifetime. A desk might have a planned lifetime of ten years, a chair might be expected to last five years and a computer three years.

This also means that barring sudden economic hardships the company puts replacements into the budget even if the hardware in question is still in perfect working order.

It's kind of like how you don't see your local UPS man drive around in an ancient truck because "it's still working" (based on some calculation that looks at the cost of downtime should it break, the cost of repairs and when it becomes less expensive to simply replace the truck), chances are he's driving a truck that was bought when the previous one was written off.

The larger the company the more likely it is that things are handled this way (a small startup is more likely to try to save a few bucks, a large multinational corporation is more concerned with keeping things running smoothly and they run a lot more smoothly if you simply schedule hardware replacements rather than try to keep every machine running as long as possible).

Re:Corporate sales?

[Missing.Matter]

I remember reading about a guy who got so fed up with it he beveled the edge with a file. Here he is: http://onemansblog.com/2010/03/11/video-rant-taking-the-sharp-edge-off-the-macbook-pro/

Re:Corporate sales?

[tibit]

Because, obviously, giving your employees something they'd find pleasant to look at is just unthinkable, right?

Re:Corporate sales?

[jo_ham]

No, the reason that they're doing it this way, according to most educated guesses, is that SMART status while standard is a little unreliable sometimes, and you really don't want to be polling it all the time, and in the prior iMac (2009-2010) they used a specific special cable that was different for each manufacturer's drive (and they use about 4 different makes in the iMac line - including Seagate - they don't claim to know more than them, they simply ask Seagate and others for a drive that has specifications they can use, in this case a custom firmware that makes the drive more useful to them).

What they then did was repurpose the LED access light connector, which they don't use (there's no external LED HD light on the iMac) and used the signals for temperature sensing. What this means is that they can simply use one connector (the same connector) regardless of what drive they install, streamlining inventory and assembly. Since it was never designed for user service, they didn't see it as a downside that it was a non-standard method.

Now, having personally upgraded the HD in my own 20" white Intel iMac, I wish they'd made it possible for me to do without jumping through hoops if I upgrade to one of these machines (my white iMac simply has a temperature sensor that attaches to the outside of the drive, so you just transfer it to the new one), but I'm sure it won't be long before some third party solution comes along to cure it. Apple's own documentation mentions shorting that line out if an SSD is installed in that bay instead of a spinning drive, for example, and I'm sure they are looking at what some third party shops are doing - they released firmware for the 2011 iMacs that enabled full 6GBs speed on 2 of the 3 SATA busses, for example, despite not shipping any BTO parts that could use it, ostensibly after OWC said "hey, it would be cool to put our SATA 3 SSDs in here!"

The iMac is a big laptop, essentially, so I expect it to come with various issues like this. It's no different from a custom logic board and PSU. It will be documented and worked out soon - likely using Apple's own documentation.

If they're so determined to force the upsell, you think they'd have stuck to having the CPU soldered onto the board though, eh? As it is now, this is one of the first times in the iMac they've gone for a socketed stock CPU. I'm not sure anyone has attempted to put in anything different, but no doubt it will be tried soon. The GPU is also on an external card that is clearly a board made by AMD. It's obviously custom and thus not upgradable easily, but the door does remain open for the possibility of changing it out in the future - even if it's only for one of the more powerful cards currently in the lineup (like the one in the top spec 27"),

Re:Corporate sales?

[Darinbob]

We've got them at work. I think the main reason is that they run Unix. Having a hip cool laptop back when a lot of founding employees were younger was a bonus. Over time though a lot of drawbacks appear. They're expensive, they're expensive to support (seriously, IT can't even install new hard disks, and newer models don't even have replaceable batteries), they've had hardware problems, there are full disk encryption headaches, and the IT staff has fewer people who understand something other than windows (those who did in the past are no longer in the help desk trenches). There are all sorts of goofy bugs with it when using a laptop with an external monitor/keyboard, and I suspect this is one use pattern Apple doesn't care about.

But there are benefits also. Ie, Unix which is absolutely essential for the job in a lot of the company. I've used Windows+Cygwin in the past and while it's nice it's not the same thing as a real Unix. Plus it's the first laptop with some horsepower behind it that I can deal with lugging around when I have to (I liked the thinkpads but they were bulky), and the touch pad is actually easy to use when I have to. To be fair the small/light design is a cause of most of the hardware problems I think. And you can get real MS Office apps for it which is nearly vital for corporate use (though sadly the new Outlook for Mac is just plain awful next to the older Entourage). I think the MS Office factor is the primary reason why corporations would rather go with Mac instead of other Unix solution.

Re:Corporate sales?

[jo_ham]

But you can upgrade the RAM aftermarket - easily in fact, and it's user serviceable. They take temperature data because the iMac is cooled by zones, rather than simply monitoring the CPU temperature. There are sensors all over it. Their old method (custom cable) required a separate part, as did the even older method (a physical temperature probe (the most user friendly method). This new method removes the need for both of those things, and you can bypass it by shorting the cable out, in the same manner to jumper settings, so presumably other in-zone sensors are fine, although an internal reading is obviously more accurate and allows finder control of the fans.

You are quick to mark it as an "anti consumer conspiracy" when the far more obvious choices are "it was designed that way because it worked for them.

Collateral success vs indication of support need

[Chas]

Translation: Hope these businesses don't want actual enterprise support from Apple. Rude awakenings to ensue.

Bring-your-own platform

[tripleevenfall]

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.

Re:Bring-your-own platform

[tripleevenfall]

Could be.

I was just pondering, however - not being a developer any longer, I don't see why I couldn't be as productive with an OSX desktop. The enterprise stuff I administer comes mainly through Citrix. We've recently switched to a remote-desktop substitute that is kicked off from a browser as well.

I don't see what, for me, would count as "advantages", but I don't see any costs, per se.

Re:Bring-your-own platform

[MightyYar]

"Total cost of ownership (TCO) for a Mac vs a comparable Wintel device over 3-4 years is actually lower!" Think about that."

I'm sure this varies drastically based on company size and requirements of the employees. If you were going high-end anyway, then the capital outlay difference is far lower. If the users are virus-magnets, then even expensive hardware may pay for itself in short order.

But for a big company with many lower-end users and the virus situation under control, it's hard for me to understand how TCO could be lower - though 3-4 years is a long time to make up a few hundred bucks.

But yeah, if I were setting up a bunch of new computers at a real estate office or something similar in scale, I might try Macs.

Re:Bring-your-own platform

[telekon]

I work in IT at a large private university. The official gospel is that 'we are a WinDell campus', but the students all buy Macs, and my group actually all use Macs for most tasks, except where there's some stupid reason we have to use Windows. So IT here have slowly moved toward full Mac support, and it'll happen elsewhere, as the pressure to support them increases. Think about shops in the early 90's that were all Sun or SGI, and as the cost and convenience factors ushered in the great tragedy of 'Windows is Enterprise', IT departments were dragged with much cursing and gnashing of teeth to support Windows.

Re:Bring-your-own platform

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have a virus than Symantec!

Re:Bring-your-own platform

[AvitarX]

I'm seeing a lot of Parallels and Boot Camp in the Litigation Support field.

The Apple machines look slicker (image counts for something when billing cheap clients (lawyers always are) significantly money), and are easier to pack two into a single case (key when flying). I use T-series Think Pads myself, as they are small enough and sturdy enough, and the fingerprint reader (best $18 add on ever) impresses even on older hardware.

A couple (litigation support) firms I've worked with use Keynote for all opening and closing slide shows (primarily because the table editor is better I hear), and shift to Windows for all of the industry specific software.

In the field Apple appears to have 33% penetration of new laptops.

Not a Surprise

[TyroneShoe]

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...

Re:Figures

[Spad]

Looking at it again, maybe they mean 66% in the last *year* as those numbers look more plausible at ~540,000 for Q1 2010.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[telekon]

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.

Ain't That A Shame

[SavoWood]

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.

Re:Ain't That A Shame

[drinkypoo]

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.

Some of us were happy about that, too. I was a Mac user when they promised us Copland. I was using BeOS when they suggested they would use that. And now we (well, you) are stuck with a bastardized, bloated version of NeXTStep which ruined everything good about its interface.

Re:Ain't That A Shame

[bigredradio]

And now we (well, you) are stuck with a bastardized, bloated version of NeXTStep which ruined everything good about its interface.

Probably written using Windows. The interface for NeXTStep was/is not that great. It might have been great at the time, but comparing it to OSX of today is stupid. To use a car analogy, that is like comparing a car engine from the 1960's to today. The advances outweigh the simplicity. The "in my day everything was better" is the war cry of those who can't or won't adapt. I am so sick of that argument. If your PREFERENCE is to use an interface that looks like 1997, then by all means you still can use GNUstep.

collateral

[datapharmer]

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.

Re:collateral

[dwightk]

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.

I don't think y'all understand that Steve don't care.

Re:collateral

[gibbsjoh]

Amen to that. I don't have experience with AD integration but even with an all-Mac network we still have all sorts of problems with Mac OS X Server (AFP processes maxing out to 1000's of % of CPU usage, Apple's own apps being very IO heavy, etc). In my experience Apple don't care about the enterprise market, and for all the hype, Mac OS X server can't do (well) most of the things Apple say it can. I've used OS X Server and Xserve since 2003, and for anything more than a small install I don't recommend it.

As the parent said as well, the lack of redundant PSUs (and a power cable that will just fall out!) on the Mini and Apple's policy on virtualisation just make it more clear that it is indeed collateral income for them.

Re:collateral

[Lookin4Trouble]

As someone who doesn't work in a datacenter, is the rackmount absolutely necessary? Apple offers the Mac Pro in a server configuration.

Yes. Rack-mounting 2U Servers in a 42U cabinet means I can fit 16 comfortably with room to breathe, plus have my cable management solution, and room for a Power Distribution device.
Trying to shoehorn server towers into the same rack means I can fit 6 servers, with each pair sitting on a heavy-duty shelf. My cable management is screwed because I'm putting power, data, and control all bundled together up both sides of the rack, and if I need to perform hardware replacement/addition/maintenance, the server has to be removed, surgery done, and then hauled back into place.

Let's not forget the whole density thing - if I can fit 6 quad-CPU xServes in one cabinet, or 16 quad-CPU PowerEdge Servers, which one gives me the best bang for my (ridiculously expensive) pay-by-the-square-foot-per-month footprint dollar?

Re:collateral

[Zuato]

We integrated 30+ Macs into our AD environment, and it was not painful at all. The domain is a mix of 2008 R2 and 2003, so you can imagine that most people would figure it would be difficult to integrate them, but it wasn't. All of them are on Snow Leopard, so maybe that's the difference from your experience? We have all of them logging in using their domain accounts and it was not much more difficult than it is to add a Windows PC to a domain, although some additional information is required to be entered in the Directory Services tool to get them attached.

One thing I do enjoy from a support standpoint is the ability to remote control our work from home folks...we end up doing screen shares with the sales and other regional managers and any training or software issues have been resolved rapidly with that built in tool.

not necessarily

[Weezul]

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.

Re:not necessarily

[John Bresnahan]

I have a Mac specifically because it will run EVERYTHING. I run Windows 7 in a VM, and I could run it natively if I wished, and I can run Linux (or other *nix systems) in a VM.

I refuse to rely on Windows as my primary OS, and I don't want to rely on a "Hackintosh" system. I used to run Linux as my primary OS, but got tired of its limitations (primarily video and multimedia stuff). So, this is the most versatile and easiest to use system.

Re:not necessarily

[mlts]

I'd argue differently:

Each platform has different strengths:

If I was sitting on 1000 computers and needed policies to make the legal eagles happy, with finance getting one set of rules, dev another, IT another, etc., I'd go Windows, because in this arena, it is the best for ease of managing on a large scale.

If I was going with a department that just needed office/clerical applications, I'd go Mac. On a small scale, it gives fewer headaches, and I can define policies (password changes, etc) in OpenDirectory. If I needed Exchange capabilities (most companies do after a certain size [1]), I could hang the machines off of AD as well.

If I wanted a Windows alternative for basic desktop work, and the hardware was generic PC stuff, and I wasn't worried about 100% Word compatibility, I'd go RedHat or SuSE on desktops.

Easiest to manage on a departmental scale -- Linux.

Best combination for application compatibility plus security and manageability on the department/workgroup level, while giving few malware headaches -- OS X.

Best for enterprises where one has to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley, audits, ISOyadda checks, etc. -- Windows.

[1]: I'm not a fan of Exchange, but realistically, it is the only game in town if you need tools for archiving, SOX/HIPAA/FERPA compliance, replication, and other things the PHBs want.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[Richard_at_work]

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.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[pleasegetreal]

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".

Re:Figures

[dwightk]

That's how financial people do it, they compare last quarter to the same quarter the year previous. That way you don't get terrible reductions after the holiday quarters.

Government...

[Third Position]

More interesting is the figure for growth in the government segment - 155.6% isn't shabby growth there, either...

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[beelsebob]

Actually, I would bet heavily that the increase is tied strongly to one simple thing – everyone wants to develop an iOS app.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[LoganDzwon]

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.

Re:Mandatory ACLs

[dzfoo]

Is that a troll question, as in rhetorically expecting an answer in the negative?

Mac OS X has ACL built in:
          http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2005050120073947

          -dZ.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[Penguinisto]

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).

IT hates apple

[EreIamJH]

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.

Re:IT hates apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, IT hates Apple. Not because it's Apple, but it's because they don't understand it much like they don't understand Linux. What they tend to not understand is that Windows is the one doing things differently, not LInux or Mac. Oh and there aren't any policy wizards.

Secondly, the reason users in corporate environments like Apple is because IT doesn't understand Apple. That means that you don't have to deal with silly, overbearing policies that make your computer run slow and stop you from using your applications until you call the Helpdesk who opens a ticket that will be addressed within 8 hours. Heck the best bit of news I got was the news that I could have my own Linux box at work and that IT wouldn't support it.

The worst thing that could happen to Apple is that IT start to love them. Then your Mac desktop would end up as unusable as the Windows desktop you currently have.

Re:IT hates apple

[King_TJ]

Good! Only problem is, they should have sacked him a LOT sooner....

IMO, there's really NO excuse for spending money to change out a system that's proven to work efficiently for people in a company. This isn't about "Microsoft vs. Linux" or anything else. It's just simple math. If you spend money on your infrastructure, it should always be towards quantifiable improvements (often/usually involving upgrading an existing system that works, vs. ripping it out and starting over with something else).

I remember years ago.... a couple of my friends had jobs at Ralston Purina (long before their merger with Nestle Corp.). They were one of the firms in town that used OS/2 extensively, with Lotus Notes for email. The story I heard is, the C.E.O. wound up getting "wined and dined" by salespeople from Microsoft, including giving him a fancy titanium golf club/driver under his hotel room bed as a gift, to get him to switch the company to Microsoft Exchange.

Well, the switchover was hugely expensive, and they wound up with not only no new functionality for the end-users, but MORE problems than before in certain circumstances. (There were things the administrative assistants could do with their boss's calendars/schedules in Notes that weren't possible anymore as "delegates" in Outlook/Exchange, as I recall them saying.) Additionally, as Notes allowed more UI customization than Outlook/Exchange did, it caused them some issues with things they'd developed in-house for OS/2 and Notes in the past (like kiosks they had set up with very simplified screens with, say, 4 or 6 buttons displayed on them that could be tapped to do very specific things like viewing one calendar of events, or checking one public information type mailbox).

Ultimately, I suppose it worked out for the better for them in the long-run, only because IBM wound up pretty much dumping OS/2 support. But that wasn't a factor back when this changeover was done.

Re:IT hates apple

[TheRaven64]

No, the moral of this story is that you should evaluate the best tool for the job, not just jump with your favourite vendor and expect everyone else to work around their limitations. If all of your clients are Windows machines, then a Windows server for all of the Active Directory stuff might be the best solution. If they're all Macs or *NIX machines, then a Windows server would be a terrible idea. In most environments, no single OS is the best tool for all jobs, and trying to force a single platform is usually a bad idea.

Re:IT hates apple

[maztuhblastah]

You just know you fucked up when migrating away from Lotus Notes results in a worse experience.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[sootman]

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?

Makes sense.

[wezelboy]

If you want to develop for iOS, you pretty much have to have a Mac.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[jellomizer]

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.

Managers Had It at Home

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Managers Had It at Home

[Excelsior]

Being an employee of a major corporation, I'd offer a different theory. I've watched us go from no-Macs to maybe 100 Macs in the past quarter. It has nothing to do "I have a Mac at home". It has everything to do with iOS development. iPhones and iPads are now supported devices in the enterprise. We can now receive our corporate email on iOS devices, where previously this was restricted to BlackBerry devices.

As a result, internal corporate applications are being developed in iOS. The iPad in particular is attractive as a business tool. Carrying one to a corporate meeting is as easy as carrying a notebook, and the company doesn't even have to pay for the hardware because many people already bring their own to work.

Since Apple has created a situation where you can only develop for iOS on OSX, voila, we have a large number of OSX machines by necessity.

RIP, xserve

[oneiros27]

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.

This can only be a good thing for users

[ooh456]

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.

Anecdotal experience from my company

[david.emery]

"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.

Re:Anecdotal experience from my company

[cforciea]

Er, where do you think your Mac parts come from? Apple frequently uses Seagate drives, even! Sometimes to disastrous result!

No, your random crappy anecdotal evidence does not prove that the same parts from the same manufacturers are any higher quality when you put them into an Apple chassis.

Re:Mandatory ACLs

[betterunixthanunix]

That describes discretionary ACLs; my question was about mandatory ACLs e.g. SELinux, Windows Mandatory Integrity Control, TrustedBSD, etc.

Incorrect

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Maybe because Macs have real security?

[SuperKendall]

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?

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[jedidiah]

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.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[RogerWilco]

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).

Mod parent up

[keithpreston]

Approaching 200 million iOS devices, I bet they have sold half a million macs to developers making programs for them.

Re:Collateral success vs indication of support nee

[MachineShedFred]

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.