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Apple Forcing IT Shops To 'Adapt Or Die'
alphadogg writes "Many IT departments are struggling with Apple's 'take it or leave it' attitude, based on discussions last week at MacIT, which is Macworld|iWorld's companion conference for IT professionals. Much of the questioning following technical presentations wasn't about Apple technology or products. It was about the complexities and confusions of trying to sort out for the enterprise Apple's practices. Those practices include the use of Apple IDs and iTunes accounts, which are designed for individual Mac or iPad or iPhone users, and programs like Apple's Volume Purchase Program, which, according to Apple 'makes it simple to find, buy, and distribute the apps your business needs' and to buy custom, third-party B2B apps."
He actually made computing cool.
First, who gives a shit? Second, he didn't make computing cool - he used cool to sell consumer electronics. That's not 'computing' any more than watching TV is 'computing'.
an iTunes account have to do with the business workplace and enterprise computing - no iTunes on company computers - problem solved!
Linux mentioned, CHECK. Claiming King Geek in front of a nation of geeks, CHECK. Apple Fanboi posing as a Geek, priceless.
Apple markets their devices to consumers first, and they provide enough support for businesses so their stuff is accepted. This is why Apple paid Microsoft and licensed the ActiveSync protocol, so their devices would get past the corporate blood/brain barrier (which before that, only Blackberries and Windows Mobile devices could cross.)
It is just not in Apple's model to do that much for the enterprise. The XServe did not sell well so it got pulled. Same with Apple's SAN hardware. Even the old Mac Pro doesn't seem to be selling well, and has not gotten a refresh in a long time.
Apple knows that it makes its bread and butter selling to the dedicated fans who have been camping out for days at their stores for the latest iGadget. They know that trying to pitch to the enterprise will have a "meh" response at best.
Another example of this is how Apple handles product releases. As an IT person, I can sign a NDA in blood, and get a roadmap from IBM or Oracle about what they plan to do for future products, when to make sure funds are available for model refreshes, and timing budget constraints. Apple doesn't offer this. There is no way to time when to have funds ready for a product refresh when it comes to Macs or iDevices.
[1]: Ideally, Apple would make a Mac Pro case that could work as a tower, but also fit horizontally into a rack with just a simple drawer style mounting kit (similar to the venerable Ultra 450s.)
Apple is still a niche player. IT shops can easily buy elsewhere, and bring in policies that lock out employee-owned devices. How is this a good business model for Apple?
Apple is not a player in business and enterprise period and it's far too easy to buy elsewhere.
Apple products get met with one word from my department, unsupported.
When a user complains about not being able to use their Macbook because it cant log into half the systems we use the problem is theirs because the platform is unsupported. Having done mac support before, I'll quit before having to touch another mac. Mac solutions came in three types, 50% of the time it cant be done, 40% of the time it's a hack, 10% the feature was there but so poorly implemented it's still a pain to use let alone administer. Support was a pain, it took those "geniuses" at Apple a week to fix a blown PSU in an Imac, they didn't do collect and return let alone the on site next business day support I got from Dell, Lenovo, IBM and Toshiba. Worse yet are the users, when a virus makes it onto the network, most of the time it came from a Mac user forwarding Adobe_CS3_Crack.exe to someone.
So I have a very long list of reasons why Apple products are on the unsupported list.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Let me share my experience with OSX and "how great" it is.
Last summer, as part of some volunteer work I was doing, I was tasked with locking down about 100 user laptops. About 60-70 were Windows based, 1 was Linux, the rest were Apple.
The tasks were to set up full disk encryption (or as close as possible with the host OS), some kind of email encryption, set up the mail client, set up a Cisco (or equivalent) vpn client, and make sure the computers were generally up to snuff (updates and whatnot).
The Windows machines took maybe 3-4 hours each, if that. I spent the better part of a day and hashed together a program that automated 90% of the work, including the installation of many of the programs (through AutoIT scripting), which made most of the process hands-off. There were about a bazillion options for automation, forcing updates, scripted certificate installation, etc. We could have used a WSUS server, if we had desired (though we did not). The various OSes (XP, Vista 32/64, 7 32/64) basically worked the same; though there were some "if {os}=" clauses that had to be used, it was mostly for picking the proper executable (32bit Cisco vpn vs 64 bit).
The Linux machine was of course a PITA, since we did not know ahead of time we would be dealing with it.
Then there were the OSX computers. They were a gigantic PITA. How? Let me list the ways:
And there were various other quirks which branded OSX in my mind as "decent, with a decent CLI, but vastly overrated"; but the big issues were that the system really wasnt designed to be administered quickly in batches, and the documentation was very often less than stellar. For all the flak Windows gets for its registry, at least every bit of it is documented, and you can find articles out the wazoo about how to automate X on windows.
People talking about the new wave of OSX boxes on corporate networks are either bad admins, way more clever at this kind of thing than I am, or ignorant reporters. It might be a different story if there were a capability (on both the Windows Server, and the OSX client side) to launch logon scripts, and if those scripts could install printers and map network paths; call me when that happens.
Note the "lets say OmniGraffle".
That's why I gave you info on Omnigraffle.
Pick an app which is only distributed via the App Store. Say, the Blink SIP soft phone.
It looks like Blink will even give you a pre-configured and branded version if you want to approach them for a volume licence.
http://icanblink.com/inquiries.phtml
As I say, the Mac is no more a walled garden than Windows or Linux. Software vendors can supply you with software any way the choose to on any of those platforms. Some obviously choose to only do so via the Mac App Store, because if you're an indie developer it's so much easier. But any app that's got the potential for enterprise use is going to be supplied by the company in a form that is accessible by the enterprise.
Um... so define "regulated". Until five months ago I worked for a Federal Government Contractor, held a security clearance, and did work day to day on classified machines. My workplace was piloting the use of iPhones for e-mail and corporate access when I left. Of course you couldn't put classified information on them, but you couldn't put classified information laptops either, so that's not saying much. There's all kinds of rules for what you can and can't do regarding classified, but for unclassified uses, iPhones are likely as common as Blackberries and laptops there now.
My brother works for a hospital. Out side of the government, probably the most regulated industry in the country. He has a work issued iPad. Again, it's not allowed to contain patient information but neither are any other phones or portable devices that leave the hospital. I currently work for an international security company. We use iPhones for e-mail and corporate messaging.
Indeed, the only "regulated" industry that I can't claim at least some insider knowledge of is finance, so maybe that the one you're thinking of... Otherwise "regulated industry" is caving to user desire to use iDevices and Android in the workplace.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
You really sound like someone who's supported Windows for years, learning the little details like hashing together a program to automate your workflow.
Yet you don't have any clue about the Mac, and that makes it hard. Somehow, that's OS X's fault.
VPN issues are VPN company issues. Ask them to write the software?
There is full disk encryption. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4790
What the hell is launch on startup? Google shows nothing. Launch at login is a user preference that's been around for a decade. It doesn't make the computer slow.
Never had any issues importing certificates across all those versions of OS X.
defaults settings are well documented. http://secrets.blacktree.com/
There's also things like radmind that would probably be much better at doing what you want. But your ignorance led you astray.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I dunno, how many people wanted voice commands on their phone before the iphone 4s came out?
I think Apple tells people what they want quite successfully.
Its not that these people secretly wanted it but didn't know it - more like they didn't want it until they saw it, and then they wanted it.
Its clever, and it seems to work very well for Apple.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
OS X 10.5 and later on Intel is official Open-Group-certified UNIX. It's not "built on top of UNIX", it is UNIX.