Jonathan Blum, “tech guru” for Fortune Small Business, asks “Is it time to consider moving your small business to Macs?”
Blum writes, “First, you should know that I’m no Apple fanatic. I’ve used the gear steadily since the Reagan era; the early Apple II and the computer-as-Cuisinart lookalike that was the original Mac were both college tools of mine. But overall, I have found Apples, as lovely as they are for certain applications, just not worth the hassle for most small businesses.”
MacDailyNews Take: Typical ham-handed set-up that attempts to establish impartiality: I’m no Apple fanatic, but I’ve used their products for a long time, so, even though no iMac model ever made even remotely resembles a Cusinart, get ready to believe the mountain of bullshit I’m about to shovel.
Blum continues, “Still, even I have to admit that the latest Apple line of desktops and laptop computers is flashing some serious small-business form. Apple computers now run on the same basic electronics guts – Intel chips and the like – as any PC using the Microsoft operating systems. Peripheral support for Apple is strong: Every gadget vendor wants a piece of that sexy iPhone/iPod pie.”
MacDailyNews Take: Shouldn’t a real “tech guru” implicitly understand “Apple computers” are referred to as “Macs?” We ask, not only because Blum does it repeatedly and awkwardly throughout his piece, but also because the last “Apple computer” rolled off the assembly line in December 1992. Now, can someone please explain how a printer or scanner or whatever peripheral maker is getting “a piece of that sexy iPhone/iPod pie” by writing Mac drivers?
Blum continues, “Many smart shops I chat with are dumping their Windows machines for Macs. Take Jaffe Associates, a Washington, D.C., marketing and business-strategy consultancy. This 25-person firm recently unplugged its traditional Windows server architecture to install a similar system from none other than Apple. The company considered upgrading its aging Windows XP terminal server but endured Microsoft sticker shock when it calculated the cost of deploying collaborative software: Chief Operating Officer Shani Magosky got a quote for $100,000. Then she priced Apple technology for same functionality and found she could build a similar system for about half the price… To see if Steve Jobs’ brainchild really does have game for the average small business, I ordered up an iMac several months ago and installed it in my little digital world. “
MacDailyNews Take: So, instead of stopping with a nice example of how a smart person dumps Windows for Macs and saves a lot of money, Blum proceeds to conduct his own experiment to see just how much meaningless nonsense a cretin can generate for Fortune Small Business.
Blum continues, “My verdict? Though Apple computers can produce excellent results for small business, expect issues: Macs remain a niche product. No matter what you do with a Mac, you have to deal Apple’s peculiar vision of all things computerish. First off, the packaging is seriously overdone: ‘Designed by Apple in California’ is prominent on the box. Like I care.”
MacDailyNews Take: Well, there you have it. Because Macs come in award-winning packaging that prominently displays the words, “Designed by Apple in California,” small business should expect “issues.”
Blum continues, “Why should locating the ‘on’ switch be such struggle? Just stick the thing where I, and my employees, can find it: right up front.”
MacDailyNews Take: We hereby apologize; we had no idea Fortune Small Business was employing the mentally-challenged as a tech writer. Jonny is obviously “special.”
Jonny continues, “As promised, setup was a two-click, plug-and-play affair: Plunk the iMac on the desk, plug it in and turn it on. Setting up peripherals and Web access was also dead easy. But – as ever, with Apple boxes – there were not enough USB ports. A USB hard drive had to be dumped in favor of Ethernet enablement unit.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Ethernet enablement unit?” Jonny, all iMacs come with built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet via RJ-45 connectors. There’s no need for an “Ethernet enablement unit,” Mr. “Tech Guru.” Match the ends of the wires with the holes on the iMac, Jonny. Spend a bit more time with your Sesame Street shape cube before setting up your next computer, okay?
Jonny continues, “No question, running native 64-bit Apple code on the Mac is blazing… But again, there are issues: Offsetting all this speed are some curious features clearly not aimed at the average small business. The desktop is divided into quadrants that exist beyond the screen’s edge. Only with some complex keyboard commands can I slide from one to another. All the goofy Apple-centric commands leave users trained on PCs constantly fighting to parse out what the control, option and command keys do. And there is the very odd mouse. Apple devotees swear by the touch-sensitive shell of the ‘Mighty Mouse,’ but its top left- and right-click buttons still look an awful lot like just one.”
MacDailyNews Take: Jonny, the ability to conceptualize virtual screens and mouse buttons requires an IQ above 70.
Jonny continues, “The real eye-rolling winner is Time Machine, quite possibly the silliest operating system extension in history. Must I really sit through a full round of special effects – the desktop slides away to reveal some mysterious star in full supernova disappearing into infinity behind my various back ups – just to find a what I said to a client in a lost e-mail? Honestly.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, by all means, replace an intuitive visual representation with a typically opaque Microsoft dialog box festooned with badly-labeled tabs that offers only text descriptions and buttons. That’ll help you more quickly find your files. Most people would appreciate things being thought out to such a degree and made simpler (and – gasp! – more fun) for them. Not Jonny the “tech guru.”
Jonny continues, “On balance, is there money to be made with Apples? Depends… But other than raw speed, I had a very difficult time measuring any quantifiable improvement over the PC for average business chores – that kind that ultimately affect your bottom line.”
MacDailyNews Take: How quickly poor Jonny forgets his own perfectly measurable and quantifiable example of Jaffe Associates’ Chief Operating Officer Shani Magosky and how “she priced Apple technology for same functionality and found she could build a similar system for about half the price.”
Jonny continues, “Yes, Apples can be easier to use, but with some things, like as syncing your Apple to not-Apple portable devices such as BlackBerrys and smartphones, expect real trouble. I and my assistants had terrible problems getting all of our company programs to work properly.”
MacDailyNews Take: Color us wholly unsurprised that poor Jonny and his attendants had terrible problems syncing their ancient and outclassed mobile devices. Jonny seems to know that Macs can also slum it with Windows, so why doesn’t they just fire up that ancient and outclassed OS to sync their ancient and outclassed devices until they can afford iPhones?
Jonny continues, “Yes, more businesses can now go to Macs – I would say they now make sense for maybe 20 companies out of 100, up from just 5 a few years back. But for the rest of us – particularly those that need basic computing and basic features – Apple is still more expensive and simply not worth the integration headaches for the average small shop.”
Full article, Think Before You Click™, here.
MacDailyNews Take: How fitting that Jonny ends his FUDfest with a random concoction of nonsense numbers and then caps it off with an outright contradiction of the very real-world example he cites, Jaffe Associates, which shaved half of their costs by dumping Windows for Mac.
In all seriousness, the fear is palpable. Expect the volume and vehemence (along with the ridiculousness) of the FUD to increase as Apple Macintosh continues to take share from Windows PCs.
[Thanks to virtually every MacDailyNews Reader on the planet for the heads up.]
Hi Adrian!
Sorry I didn’t see your reply posts until now. Distracted by Apple’s marketing drivel I inferred Leopard’s 64 bit capability into abstraction and made wrong conclusions. However, reality turned out to be not quite so simple:
I had an entire concession speech written, but I did some home work (about bloody time!) and found that the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard kernel is NOT ENTIRELY 32 BIT. Here is the best article I could find, written in 2007 and published on the web in January 2008:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/attachments/986_inside_the_mac_osx_kernel.pdf
Its title is “Inside the Mac OS X Kernel. Debunking Mac OS Myths.”
Here is the crucial quote from page 4, first paragraph in the second column:
“There is just a single kernel image for 32 and 64 bit Intel: It is loaded as a 32 bit process in 32 bit protected mode on both kinds of machines, and if 64 bit support is detected, the kernel switches into long mode compatibility mode – a mode that supports running 32 bit code, but also allows easy switching to 64 bit code. So the whole kernel code is still unmodified 32 bit code, but tiny stubs that deal with copying between user address spaces (which can be 64 bit), and the syscall and trap handlers are 64 bit code. Next to being an easy port, this has the extra advantages that the 64 bit capable kernel can still easily support 32 bit KEXTs, and conserves memory by being able to use 32 bit pointers throughout a large part of kernel code. On the flip side, the kernel cannot use the extended x86_64 register set and is restricted to a 32 bit address space.”
As for Mac OS X Leopard and Apple provided 64 bit apps, your rectification of your original statement is correct. And the facts are even more silly. Using your very helpful CLI command line I found that the 64 bit apps in Leopard were already in TIGER! IOW Apple added no 64 bit versions of apps to Leopard. Reading around on the net the assumption by Apple is that making apps 64 bit at this point would only take up more disk space in the OS distribution and that the speed gain would be negligible. One quote I read suggested that Chess had been made 64 bit, in Tiger, simply as a demonstration of a 64 bit app.
(x_0)
derekcurrie – 1
Adrian – 0
But it was very close.
I know a guy named Jphnny… he is ALSO mentally challenged
I read the original article and I was thinking the same thing as discussed in this post.
Note to Editors of Fortune Small Business Magazine: when one of your writers complains about the box a computer comes in then you need to assign the article to a more qualified writer. Blum’s article would be more appropriate for mybiggestcomplaint.com than a business magazine.
If Fortune Small Business was going to publish an article like this it really should have been as an op-ed piece or a “humor” article.
There are good reasons why Macs might not be right for some businesses, but this guy didn’t talk about any of them.
It was a lot of words without much being said.
Enderle probably wants to hire this guy thinking he’s brilliant. BTW, the comments are worth a look. It’s a shame that the media whores will ignore them.
yes those comments are great, most of those commentators are better writers and better informed than Blum.
and so many are switchers !
Clues and inconsistencies that show he didn’t do ANY research nor bought ANY iMacs in his life:
1. “Every gadget vendor wants a piece of that sexy iPhone/iPod pie”
What does iPhone/iPod got to do with PERIPHERAL SUPPORT?
2. “Apple computers”
Any Mac user, regardless on whether he’s a fanboy or not, addresses Apple laptops and desktops as “Mac” more often than “Apple” itself.
3. “Macs remain a niche product”
MAYBE Macs WERE a niche product, if you call low market share as defining niche or not. Macs ARE for everyone, from kids to students to adults looking for simplicity and elegance to professionals looking to maximise effort and minimise hassle.
4. “All the goofy Apple-centric commands leave users trained on PCs constantly fighting to parse out what the control, option and command keys do.”
What about Ctrl+Alt+Delete? Sticky Keys? Alt+F4? I don’t know about those CODES when i started using windows 9 years ago.
5. “I and my assistants had terrible problems getting all of our company programs to work properly.”
He said he bought 1 iMac. Since when did he switched his whole office to Macs?
6. “particularly those that need basic computing and basic features – Apple is still more expensive and simply not worth the integration headaches for the average small shop”
A lot of small shops in Malaysia are using Macs because (i’ve interviewed them) windows gave them more headaches. Viruses, spyware, and security issues. My college uses Dell, and ALL the students always complain of viruses, corrupted thumbdrives, ruined assignments and projects. I pity my lecturers who constantly deal with viruses ruining their notes and slideshows every single day. Mac is for everyone, basic or advanced. That’s why lots of schools and colleges in USA use Macs.
Valid arguments NOT to use Macs: NONE
Design enhances business and productivity, since it enhances working space (offices) and comfort (retail outlets).
There are only 6 sides to an iMac. How hard is it to find the ON switch?
WTF is an Ethernet Enablement Unit? Congratulations for creating a new product name. How many ethernet cables do you need for your Mac or PC?
if your IQ is miserably less than 10, you can reduce your “quadrants” to 1, and if smarter, you can increase Spaces to 16, though i never use more than 2 at one time.
Complex keyboard commands? Odd mouse? Dude, business owners are above 2 years old.
Business owners rarely sync devices compared to home businesses and normal consumers.
Obviously, he didn’t do his research. he didn’t even get his terms and jargons right.
@derekcurrie
Thanks for the article. That’s the best info I’ve seen on the subject.
Found another one…
http://www.vladville.com/2008/05/antimacfanboism-as-a-religion.html
Stumbled across this one while reading the full thread on Jonathan Blum at Fortune.
I checked it out and since the blog posting was only a week old and still accepting comments, pointed out to Vlad that his “AntiMacFanboism” ignorance was present in iTunes DRM, in how to put “4-6 HD RAID” into a PowerMac (and a Mac Pro) as well as how the Mac Pro is cheaper than a Dell and that his ranting about wanting a cheap midrange tower is increasingly irrelevant when 50% of consumers are now buying laptops, etc. Pretty much most of his claims were torpedoed.
Refreshed and found my post (as well as a few other new ones) now listed on the page.
Checked back after lunch … poof! Its all gone.
Gosh, it seems that Vladimir Mazek can’t take criticism, so he deleted it all. Of course as a MCP, MCSA, MCSE 2003 it shouldn’t be at all surprising that he’s exhibiting religious intolerance because in his own words, “AntiMacFanboism … has more merit than the MacFanBoism”.
Good thing I kept a copy. Maybe if Vlad responds to my email, I’ll put it up on my own blog as YA example of a FUDing MS Astroturfer in action.
-hh
OFF TOPIC!
Adrian sez:
“@derekcurrie, Thanks for the article. That’s the best info I’ve seen on the subject.”
Derek sez:
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
It’s time for LOVE FEST!
Derek <<admires>> Adrian.
It was kewl that we both got new info out of it.
OFF TOPIC!
-hh sez:
“Found another one…
http://www.vladville.com/2008/05/antimacfanboism-as-a-religion.html“
Classic old school trolling. <<shaking off the dust>>
This troll’s approach reminds me an awful lot of the propaganda methods of the Neo-Con-Jobs, such as the Sean Hannity & Rush Limbaugh humans. Say something stoopid long enough and vehemently enough and someone might believe you. It got a brain dead president elected!
<<snark snark>>
@derekcurrie
“Classic old school trolling. <<shaking off the dust>>”
It really is. The dumb part is that I really wouldn’t have cared that much if he had let my comment stand without comment or attention. That this Astroturfer deleted it and shut down the comments is what drew my attention to his hypocrisy…classical Microsoft.
-hh