You might look into adding Microsoft Small Business Server to your list of server options for "small-ish" companies. It includes a file, print, web and mail server (and optional SQL server)... plus you have flexibility in hardware choice.
From the consultants point of view it's not as good as Mac hardware because your clients have a lot more flexibility in finding another consultant if they don't like you. The advantage of Macs are that you've locked in the clients as there are many fewer Mac consultants that they can go to.
Downside to Windows SBS is that they licensing is per-user... but in 12 to 15 user range it's actually cheaper than the x-server license as you can be the CALs as needed. OS-X server forces you to buy a unlimited license.
If your clients are on Windows... the NTFS file security model and Outlook integration are pretty slick...and way better than SAMBA (what OS-X offers) and Sendmail.
I suspect if you combined the market share of ultra mobile PCs, rugged laptops and "odd" handheld devices the run MS Windows it would come close to the marketshare of Apple in the laptop/desktop market. Fanboys with less than 5% marketshare shouldn't throw stones about tiny marketshares.
You've forgotten about MS Money... the program was given away for free with most PCs... converting years worth of data from MS Money to Quicken (the only choice on the Mac) is nearly impossible. Also, with a PC buyers know that their favorite banking/shopping/financial services web sites will be supported. With the Mac there is the (real) fear that a buyer will not be able to access sites like Citibank, Sky TVs or anything that requires ActiveX.
Also, if you've invested any time in encoding your CD using Windows Media, they willn't translate well to the Mac....
The real questions... is what does joe consumer get by switching?
Existing software, compatibility with work environment, what your friends have, existing periphals and what you know. Until the Mac can overcome all of that it's a tough row to hoe.
When buying a new computer most consumer want to re-use some of their software (games, financial programs (e.g., Quicken, MS Money, and maybe productivity software). Even if the Mac has an equivalent program, the added expense of re-buying stuff that you already own pushes up the mac cost. Also, many large companies have licenses that allow for home use of MS Office suite... on the Mac this will add another $100 to the cost.
Consumers may also want to recycle their existing printer, scanner, camera and may be concerned (rightly or wrongly) that it willn't work with the Mac.
Finally, there is a learning curve with the Mac...things work differently... maybe better, but different.
Depends whether he/she is a small, medium or enterprise customer. Many small ( The minimum license quantity is 5 (for the first purchsase) which is bigger hurdle for companies that buy machines as they hire a new employee or a old machine breaks.
And all small businesses don't use MS SMB server (so no GPO). We run a SAMBA server, so can't enforce GPO as we don't have a domain controller.
What happened to the Apple ads of a "super computer in a box"? No modern Apple systems (those running Intel CPU) are on the list. A guess you can cross supercomputer off the Apple ad list. And by the way... what ever happened to the Apple ads about 64-bit computers?
Don't know the answer, but it would be interesting if there are a higher percentage of Mac users who smoke versus PC users? Macs tend to attract "cooler", artistic types who may tend to be more likely to smoke. Perhaps the flaking paint is a warning to smoking mac users to quit.
On the onther hand the smoking machines (Macs, Dells, and some IBM) are a warning to the users to keep a bucket of water handy when using their laptop.
This story has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. "A friend reported...", "I was told", vague specifics... "at a friends wedding". Somehow I don't believe that the "best engineers at Microsoft" couldn't eliminate the spyware. Hell, they could have just saved the user documents and reloaded the OS.
PDF is great for pre-press, but it's the rare user that is actually is preparing a file for printing on a high-quality press (or even know how to build a proper multi-color PDF document.) Most user create PDF's when they want to ensure the formatting will work across different printers or are reluctant to distribute the source document (especially with Word or PowerPoint.)
Frequently, I create PDF's so that the original can't be modified.
Adobe will probably own the pre-press market, but is scared of loosing the low-end to an integrated product.
I've occasionally found good prices on Dell equipment (including laptops and monitors) at both Costco online and in the Costco stores. Their prices are often 15 to 25% lower than Dell direct (but probably still more than the lowest Dell corporate sales prices).
Of course, no custom configurations...but the product does ship directly from Dell with Dell warranties.
For some reason, Apple seems to dump EOL equipment thru Costco too.
The IBM PowerPC is chasing the embedded device market which in terms of unit volume (and profit) is much larger than the entire Apple computer market. The gaming console market is well suited for an embedded device as are automobiles. Designing custom chips for Apple, for what I assume is a difficult customer, is not necessary a profitable venture.
It will be interesting if MS checks whether a Mac is running an OEM version of Windows (or for that matter Office).
As Apple isn't installing OEM versions of the Windows OS, any OEM version running on a Mac has to be illegal. The Genuine Advantage check could easily determine if the OS is running on a Mac and if the OS is an OEM version. If so, it could flag that the version is not correctly licensed.
How long will it be until Apple ships Macs with dual boot pre-installed? It would be a fairly cheap option to add--OEM's get Windows for about $75 (or less, depending on quantity).
Will Windows be sold in Apple stores alongside various other Windows software?
What happens if the Mac users decide they prefer Windows?
<joke>A Texan tasted some sushi and said that if you threw it on the grill it would taste just like fish. A geek looked at a Mac and said if you installed Windows it would run just like a PC.</joke>
In spite of have only a few profitable divisions, MS seems to be turning a profit. The entire office divsion and the OS division are highly profitable (as is consulting). The unprofitable divisions are mostly investment in new areas that may yield results.
MSFT's return on equity was 29.5%, net income $13.06 billion on sales of $41.36 b.
AAPL: ROE 19.2%; income $1.61 B; sales $16.19B
at the end of the day, MS's total profit was almost as large as Apple's total revenue.
There must have been a profitable division in there besides the Mac BU!
This is great news for Microsoft, they now have another wintel manufacturer in the stable -- some customers buy the cheapest machines available, while others go for the faster and other now have a choice of an attractive design. Apple is just another wintel box assembler. Buy the mac, through away the free OS included and run windows.
And why should MS continue to develop Mac Office? For $125 (student/teacher) you can buy the Windows OS and then run the PC version of Office. The same is true for all the other "fringe" software; just add $200 to cost and bundle it with the Windows OS, then every software vendor can claim Mac compatibility.
In the end this will just increase MS share of the OS market and decrease the availability of Mac OS software.
It's kind of cool (in a geeky kind of way) that someone has reversed engineered all of this information. But itsn't it really the vendor's responsibility to document the system and make it available to developers? Alternatively, with open source the source is available to developers who are interested.
I would have thought that how programs are loaded would be well documented by Apple, rather than being some mystery to be decoded.
Windows may suck, but at least the giant sucking sound (tm) is documented.
Isn't there an alternative where popular sites like Google, ESPN, CBS (etc.) refuse to make their content available to subscribers unless their ISP pays a fee. This is more like the cable model where the cable company pays a fee to content providers.
Thus you could turn your mac into a really expensive PC.
Step 1: Buy a mac Step 2: Buy emulation software Step 3: Buy an MS operating system Step 4: Buy applications to run on th MS OS Step 5: Enjoy the good looks and positive karma of your new mac
Can travel at the maximum legal limit in all states: Ford: YES Porsche: YES
Refuelable at all gas stations in the US Ford: YES Porsche: YES (but requires "special" premium gas at extra cost)
Passenger capacity Ford: 4 Porsche: 2
Legal on all roads in US Ford: YES Porsche: YES
Servicable at most local service stations and dealers Ford: Yes, extensive dealer network in almost every city Porsche: No, limited dealer network, hard to find parts
Tell me again about those specs? Just like apple... except the macs can't fuel up with "standard" gas--- need special software.
Dell support varies widely depending on if you are a corporate (even a small business with more than 5 system purchases a year) or a consumer. The margins just aren't there to give good consumer support. As a small business with gold service, we get fast response from a English-speaking US-based service tech. They listen and are willing to replace parts as needed.
Gold does cost a few bucks more and the the machines are probably 2 to 5% more expensive than the consumer versions.
Also, if you buy the corporate machines (Optiplexs) rather than consumer (Dimensions) you don't get all the crapware pre-loaded.
The unix/linux boxes with valuable data are generally protected by professionals with a security background (or desire). The random window boxes are consumer devices. Professionally secured window boxes (as well as Sun and Unix) are relatively safe. If average users would run as non-administrator and install patches when available their boxes would be secure.
Also, the administrators are unlikely to download and install "cool" appliations on their Unix boxes with critical applications.
Actually Walmart is doing extremely well in competing with iTunes. They do it by selling the physical CDs in stores. Although some./'ers may be suprised to learn it, Walmart actually is a much bigger (measured in revenue, employees and profit) company than all of Apple (and Microsoft, and just about every other high tech firm).
Walmart moves a much greater revenue of music than Apple. So tell me again why they need a download service.
Also, much like Apple uses iTunes to pull through iPod sales (or vice versa), WalMart (and BestBuy) use discounted CDs to pull through sales of other items. Once they get you in the store to pick up a cheap CD or DVD, it pretty likely that you'll buy a few more items.
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You might look into adding Microsoft Small Business Server to your list of server options for "small-ish" companies. It includes a file, print, web and mail server (and optional SQL server)... plus you have flexibility in hardware choice.
From the consultants point of view it's not as good as Mac hardware because your clients have a lot more flexibility in finding another consultant if they don't like you. The advantage of Macs are that you've locked in the clients as there are many fewer Mac consultants that they can go to.
Downside to Windows SBS is that they licensing is per-user... but in 12 to 15 user range it's actually cheaper than the x-server license as you can be the CALs as needed. OS-X server forces you to buy a unlimited license.
If your clients are on Windows... the NTFS file security model and Outlook integration are pretty slick...and way better than SAMBA (what OS-X offers) and Sendmail.
I believed you could have done all of that without the Mac.... so tell me again what you got with the Mac.
Surfing the web: check
iTunes: check
Installing Opera browser: check
Installing Windows: check
If you want a PC, just get a PC.
I suspect if you combined the market share of ultra mobile PCs, rugged laptops and "odd" handheld devices the run MS Windows it would come close to the marketshare of Apple in the laptop/desktop market. Fanboys with less than 5% marketshare shouldn't throw stones about tiny marketshares.
And don't forget that wonderful designed Apple hockey puck mouse. What were they thinking?
You've forgotten about MS Money... the program was given away for free with most PCs... converting years worth of data from MS Money to Quicken (the only choice on the Mac) is nearly impossible. Also, with a PC buyers know that their favorite banking/shopping/financial services web sites will be supported. With the Mac there is the (real) fear that a buyer will not be able to access sites like Citibank, Sky TVs or anything that requires ActiveX.
Also, if you've invested any time in encoding your CD using Windows Media, they willn't translate well to the Mac....
The real questions... is what does joe consumer get by switching?
Existing software, compatibility with work environment, what your friends have, existing periphals and what you know. Until the Mac can overcome all of that it's a tough row to hoe.
When buying a new computer most consumer want to re-use some of their software (games, financial programs (e.g., Quicken, MS Money, and maybe productivity software). Even if the Mac has an equivalent program, the added expense of re-buying stuff that you already own pushes up the mac cost. Also, many large companies have licenses that allow for home use of MS Office suite... on the Mac this will add another $100 to the cost.
Consumers may also want to recycle their existing printer, scanner, camera and may be concerned (rightly or wrongly) that it willn't work with the Mac.
Finally, there is a learning curve with the Mac...things work differently... maybe better, but different.
Depends whether he/she is a small, medium or enterprise customer. Many small (
The minimum license quantity is 5 (for the first purchsase) which is bigger hurdle for companies that buy machines as they hire a new employee or a old machine breaks.
And all small businesses don't use MS SMB server (so no GPO). We run a SAMBA server, so can't enforce GPO as we don't have a domain controller.
What happened to the Apple ads of a "super computer in a box"? No modern Apple systems (those running Intel CPU) are on the list. A guess you can cross supercomputer off the Apple ad list. And by the way... what ever happened to the Apple ads about 64-bit computers?
Don't know the answer, but it would be interesting if there are a higher percentage of Mac users who smoke versus PC users? Macs tend to attract "cooler", artistic types who may tend to be more likely to smoke. Perhaps the flaking paint is a warning to smoking mac users to quit.
On the onther hand the smoking machines (Macs, Dells, and some IBM) are a warning to the users to keep a bucket of water handy when using their laptop.
This story has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. "A friend reported...", "I was told", vague specifics... "at a friends wedding". Somehow I don't believe that the "best engineers at Microsoft" couldn't eliminate the spyware. Hell, they could have just saved the user documents and reloaded the OS.
Don't believe everythinig you read.
PDF is great for pre-press, but it's the rare user that is actually is preparing a file for printing on a high-quality press (or even know how to build a proper multi-color PDF document.) Most user create PDF's when they want to ensure the formatting will work across different printers or are reluctant to distribute the source document (especially with Word or PowerPoint.)
Frequently, I create PDF's so that the original can't be modified.
Adobe will probably own the pre-press market, but is scared of loosing the low-end to an integrated product.
I've occasionally found good prices on Dell equipment (including laptops and monitors) at both Costco online and in the Costco stores. Their prices are often 15 to 25% lower than Dell direct (but probably still more than the lowest Dell corporate sales prices).
Of course, no custom configurations...but the product does ship directly from Dell with Dell warranties.
For some reason, Apple seems to dump EOL equipment thru Costco too.
The IBM PowerPC is chasing the embedded device market which in terms of unit volume (and profit) is much larger than the entire Apple computer market. The gaming console market is well suited for an embedded device as are automobiles. Designing custom chips for Apple, for what I assume is a difficult customer, is not necessary a profitable venture.
It will be interesting if MS checks whether a Mac is running an OEM version of Windows (or for that matter Office).
As Apple isn't installing OEM versions of the Windows OS, any OEM version running on a Mac has to be illegal. The Genuine Advantage check could easily determine if the OS is running on a Mac and if the OS is an OEM version. If so, it could flag that the version is not correctly licensed.
How long will it be until Apple ships Macs with dual boot pre-installed? It would be a fairly cheap option to add--OEM's get Windows for about $75 (or less, depending on quantity).
Will Windows be sold in Apple stores alongside various other Windows software?
What happens if the Mac users decide they prefer Windows?
<joke>A Texan tasted some sushi and said that if you threw it on the grill it would taste just like fish. A geek looked at a Mac and said if you installed Windows it would run just like a PC.</joke>
In spite of have only a few profitable divisions, MS seems to be turning a profit. The entire office divsion and the OS division are highly profitable (as is consulting). The unprofitable divisions are mostly investment in new areas that may yield results.
MSFT's return on equity was 29.5%, net income $13.06 billion on sales of $41.36 b.
AAPL: ROE 19.2%; income $1.61 B; sales $16.19B
at the end of the day, MS's total profit was almost as large as Apple's total revenue.
There must have been a profitable division in there besides the Mac BU!
This is great news for Microsoft, they now have another wintel manufacturer in the stable -- some customers buy the cheapest machines available, while others go for the faster and other now have a choice of an attractive design. Apple is just another wintel box assembler. Buy the mac, through away the free OS included and run windows.
And why should MS continue to develop Mac Office? For $125 (student/teacher) you can buy the Windows OS and then run the PC version of Office. The same is true for all the other "fringe" software; just add $200 to cost and bundle it with the Windows OS, then every software vendor can claim Mac compatibility.
In the end this will just increase MS share of the OS market and decrease the availability of Mac OS software.
It's kind of cool (in a geeky kind of way) that someone has reversed engineered all of this information. But itsn't it really the vendor's responsibility to document the system and make it available to developers? Alternatively, with open source the source is available to developers who are interested.
I would have thought that how programs are loaded would be well documented by Apple, rather than being some mystery to be decoded.
Windows may suck, but at least the giant sucking sound (tm) is documented.
Isn't there an alternative where popular sites like Google, ESPN, CBS (etc.) refuse to make their content available to subscribers unless their ISP pays a fee. This is more like the cable model where the cable company pays a fee to content providers.
Thus you could turn your mac into a really expensive PC.
Step 1: Buy a mac
Step 2: Buy emulation software
Step 3: Buy an MS operating system
Step 4: Buy applications to run on th MS OS
Step 5: Enjoy the good looks and positive karma of your new mac
I think to get to channel 9, you just hold the remote upside down and press the 6 button.
Specs:
Can travel at the maximum legal limit in all states:
Ford: YES
Porsche: YES
Refuelable at all gas stations in the US
Ford: YES
Porsche: YES (but requires "special" premium gas at extra cost)
Passenger capacity
Ford: 4
Porsche: 2
Legal on all roads in US
Ford: YES
Porsche: YES
Servicable at most local service stations and dealers
Ford: Yes, extensive dealer network in almost every city
Porsche: No, limited dealer network, hard to find parts
Tell me again about those specs? Just like apple... except the macs can't fuel up with "standard" gas--- need special software.
Dell support varies widely depending on if you are a corporate (even a small business with more than 5 system purchases a year) or a consumer. The margins just aren't there to give good consumer support. As a small business with gold service, we get fast response from a English-speaking US-based service tech. They listen and are willing to replace parts as needed.
Gold does cost a few bucks more and the the machines are probably 2 to 5% more expensive than the consumer versions.
Also, if you buy the corporate machines (Optiplexs) rather than consumer (Dimensions) you don't get all the crapware pre-loaded.
The unix/linux boxes with valuable data are generally protected by professionals with a security background (or desire). The random window boxes are consumer devices. Professionally secured window boxes (as well as Sun and Unix) are relatively safe. If average users would run as non-administrator and install patches when available their boxes would be secure.
Also, the administrators are unlikely to download and install "cool" appliations on their Unix boxes with critical applications.
Actually Walmart is doing extremely well in competing with iTunes. They do it by selling the physical CDs in stores. Although some ./'ers may be suprised to learn it, Walmart actually is a much bigger (measured in revenue, employees and profit) company than all of Apple (and Microsoft, and just about every other high tech firm).
Walmart moves a much greater revenue of music than Apple. So tell me again why they need a download service.
Also, much like Apple uses iTunes to pull through iPod sales (or vice versa), WalMart (and BestBuy) use discounted CDs to pull through sales of other items. Once they get you in the store to pick up a cheap CD or DVD, it pretty likely that you'll buy a few more items.