Ogg writes, “Now here’s the big question: Does your IT department, the guys who think it’s just fine that you’re still using a Windows XP laptop (and P.S., stop whining about it), give a hoot about all this Apple stuff?”
“The pitch [Apple] has been making in recent months is simple: Employees are already using plenty of Apple products on their own time and like them, and the iPad is a great, lightweight tool for Web-based corporate software,” Ogg writes. “If you thought this was just lip service, Apple is even now working with the decidedly old-school consultants at Unisys to approach big corporate and government customers.”
“‘IT managers in the past have said, ‘I don’t want unique experiences,” pointed out Richard Shim, analyst for IDC. For IT department managers, people on different systems often just translates to a huge headache,” Ogg reports. “[But] The Enterprise Desktop Alliance, a group of enterprise software companies that integrate Mac and Windows systems for businesses, said that during its recent survey of more than 460 IT administrators that more and more employees are asking their IT departments for Macs.”
Ogg reports, “The Enterprise Desktop Alliance is predicting that Macs will climb from 3.3 percent of all systems at companies last year to 5.2 percent in 2011. That’s still small, but it represents sizable growth: between 2009 and 2011 one of every four new systems added at companies will be Macs, though much of that will come from companies already deploying Apple machines, according to the IT administrators they surveyed.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. IT Doofus: Lead, follow, or, finally, GTF out of the way. Luckily for world productivity, many of the most myopic IT idiots are retiring or soon will be. Here’s to the disappearance of entrenched, unreasonable IT morons dedicated to erecting walls to progress!
Possibly, as soon as the Apple doofus’s price their crap inlinewith the rest the technology world.
Plus as soonas they actually get some software not developed(or restricted) by Apple.
Maybe then they could compete.
Can someone please point me to where I can purchase OSX versions of Primavera P6, Primavera P6, Deltek vision, MS Project 2010 and Suretrack?
The day corporate software developers start developing for Mac is when it will be realistic that Mac’s will be used within businesses. The ignorance falls on the people asking for Mac’s without any knowledge about what they are talking about.
@Jim
Aww the old Macs are overpriced nonsense.
Yeah the 90’s called, they want their argument back.
Im the “IT doofus” you speak of — I would love to have Macs in my 250+ user office….but since none of our software has a Mac version, I would have to buy the Mac, also buy a Windows7 license, and then my users would boot into Windows7 all the time and never use the OS X side of things — a waste of money….
“We don’t use Macs because MACS DON’T BREAK!”
Jim isn’t serious. Sarcasm, right Jim?
Sorry MDN, but didn’t Apple just pull the plug on Xserve? no servers means no enterprise market. What makes you think Jobs is interested in enterprise? probably iPad or iPhone are going enterprise, but what it needs is just an iTunes on Windows 7 desktop hooking up to Windows 2008 domain network. That’s it.
The XServe bullshit just blew any reason for corporate IT to trust Apple. Jobs and Co. just pissed off the entire creative media and pharma industries without blinking. Why should anyone else in the enterprise buy Apple?
OK so RP3 thinks project management software is the be all an end all…
So RP3 thinks he controls what he watches because he’s holding the remote control.
Bzzzz! Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. EPM software is for MBAs with out brains and Type X management ‘roids
@KillBill– You haven’t answered my questions. How would I run my mission critical software on a Mac? I have $50,000 invested in licensing for these project management products and they are also used in collaboration with clients that also use this project management software.
So what is the solution?
Same here, everyone is so quick to blame IT. I put 20 iPads out in our medical offices all complained. I put a Mac Mini in every conference room. Every executive complained and we then had to replace those with dell zino’s with windows 7. I put one iMac on the a providers desk who uses nothing but Macs at home. His only complaint is that they software we use “Nextgen” has to be run via RDP session to our servers and running it that way is kinda of pain. Our IT department is very much pro-Mac our software vendor and general users are not.
IT peeps tend to be conservative- not politically but in their work. Corporate environments are risk averse, cost sensitive, and such. The people above who have to sign off are commonly the same way if not more so.
In a time of recession, it’s a hard sell to throw out paid for hardware & software that already works and spend a truckload of money for new plus the costs of training and reworking manuals, policies and such.
Perception is reality & many simply do not see the benefits of switching as worth sticking their necks out.
A famous fiasco happened years ago when vendors over promised and under delivered at the US Patent Office with an atrocious mess of a system that still has jaded examiners and managers more than a decade later.
What IT knows is that it had damn well better work or they are gone.
MDN, no all IT people are winblows only. I would love to have everything MAC, but our business pretty much runs on a MS infrastructure. We did forgo exchange, for a XServer with Cyrus mail and web, and that works great. But business is business and a lot of business software is just not compatible with OSX. It is a shame, but at this point, it is reality. And to expect businesses to just go out and replace their entire infrastructure is riduculos. One day perhaps, just not today.
Hmmm..
The cheapest 13″ macbook pro = $1,199
A MUCH better equipped Windows laptop = $600-800.
Do the Math !!!
Luckily in the real business world, IT as no actual authority for making purchases, they can recommend, but when senior management compares price points and your recommended Apple system comes in at triple the price and is incompatible with 90% of their software.
Guess what?? Any business that wants to be sucessful will simple say… NO.
If I’m wrong about price then answer me this?
Why if Apple is SO great is windows in like 97% of computers around the world??
Surely if people other than Mac Heads thought Apple was SO much better than Microsoft, then Apple would make up the 97% share computers? Right??
Curious??
Bottom Line is most people don’t think that Mac OsX is that much better to justify paying double or triple in price.
I don’t think the IT doofus will ever see the light.
In my last job, the bunch of Windows bigots who ran the IT dept. persuaded management to let them lock my Mac off the network on the grounds that it was a “security threat”. I even had to provide the MAC address (the real one, not Zune Tang’s) in case I tried to sneak back on.
Prior to their decision, my Intel iMac had access to email, all other internet services, SAP, all network printers, and all folders on the server. Apart from asking IT to provide the string for SAP, I set all of this up myself, and I’m by no means a techie. I never once, in 25 years of use in my various workplaces, required IT to sort out an internal Mac problem. Whenever I couldn’t fix it myself (a rare event, after the advent of OS X), the friendly guys at my local Apple dealer have always given the right advice, free of charge.
Therein, I suspect, lies a large part of the problem. Experienced Mac users don’t need IT depts. They’re irrelevant, we’re an irritant, and they feel threatened by us.
And I don’t buy the “cost of maintaining an exception” argument. My IT spent hours sorting out small stuff for my PC-using colleagues, who struggled to achieve straightforward tasks that were a breeze on my Mac. Unbeknownst to IT, their charges were always sneaking into my office, asking me to download some photos from their camera, convert file formats, draw something for them, create a pdf, etc.
I managed to retain the Mac on my desk, against strenuous IT objections. But, for all network connections I had to use an unbelievably crappy PC running XP, with IE for browsing. It had a fan like jet engine, and a keyboard with the tactile feedback of reinforced concrete. I found it wonderfully ironic that XP (which I used for a running a specific program) ran much faster on my Mac under VM Fusion than on the PC.
Pathetic as it sounds, I resorted to petty symbolism to make it clear to IT that they had only achieved a draw. My iMac sat centre stage on my desk, surrounded by all the evidence of activity. The PC was perched precariously down one end, oozing neglect, with the dusty screen at an odd angle. When not in use (95% of the time), the keyboard was set up to look as if it was raping the mouse. IT gritted their teeth and said nothing, but the contrasting arrangement got noticed.
I’ve never sought to make IT depts the enemy; they arranged it. In my view, corporate IT obstructionist policies help to artificially lower Mac market share, and justify the existence of fight-back sites, like MDN. That’s one reason why I come here, several times a day. I can live with the over-the-top comments and political hit-whoring for the sense of revenge this site imparts.
(Sheesh, Micro Me must consider switching to decaf when posting about IT deptartments).
DaveH et al…
The last stand for windoze apologists is in the IT room.
I was the art director at a $150M company and specified an Xserve to run our asset management system.
I have never seen such a backlash before!
Basically if AAPL is going to get a foothold in the IT room, they have to play ball like HP and Dull.
What that means is, buy some knee pads, loosen up the old gag reflex, and get your hands on bags and bags of bribe money!
These IT manager guys get their vacations and house paint from the Dull rep. and M$ has a blowjob factory on wheels that makes the rounds every quarter.
p mfn s: macs run the everloving shite out of windows
Cost is the only real issue. Why does everyone thing the IT department has loads of cash laying around and that if we have Macs we will be out of a job? Come on helpdesk calls make up very little IT department work. I would love to have 500 macs in my company, an iPad in every one of my doctors hands to use while in exam rooms with patients. But when i go to my CEO and CFO they dont care how much better a Mac is, or how cool it would be for an doctor to use an iPad would be. They ask where is the $, are we getting federal funding? Are their grants for using a Mac over a PC. Does our huge EMR investment even work on a Mac? All of which the answers are no to btw. they will just laugh me right out of the room.
@Jim “A MUCH better equipped Windows laptop”
How could it be better equipped if it’s running Windows?
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Sorry, Jim, but Windows sucks no matter what hardware it’s on. I have seen windows eat files and fuck things up in ways I have never seen on Macs. I have seen IT departments take 6 HOURS to get a single printer to work correctly on an all-Windows network. Windows? No thanks.
a rack full of mac pros would be HILARIOUS..
i think we’ll stick with non-apple in the server room thanks.
@Jim
Being more popular does not necessarily mean something is better. Windows is cheap, and comes free on any bargain machine. So more people are bound to have it, no?
Also define much better equipped, please. My last windows laptop, which I bought for $999, was a POS compared to my 13″ Macbook Pro.
Re: Jim
First off, your price comparison speaks nothing of software. Secondly, you didn’t really think about your 97% argument before you made it did you?
Would you say a big Mac is the best burger in the world? Is it even in the top 5% of burgers? No, it sucks, but it is much cheaper than a Red Robin burger, much more convenient and McDonalds is ubiquitous around the world. People buy it because it is cheap and easy. The percentage of people buying a product has NOTHING to do with how good it is, or its superiority.
There are HUNDREDS of factors of why people buy things. My piece of crap dell laptop actually is being used right now to hold up my bed stand on one side. Is it superior? Of course not. I bought it because a friend said it was a great computer and not crazy expensive (and my mom’s name is Dell and I thought that was cool). That is how companies get market share. Not by having a superior product, but by marketing, hitting the right market at the right time, etc.
Your argument seems incredibly shortsighted and not thought out. If you think superior “products” always get the best market share you are sadly mistaken. It is usually things like marketing, approach, business acumen that gets products into people’s homes.
The Big Mac isn’t the best burger. It is cheap, fast and dirty. Much like Windows isn’t the best operating system. Windows is cheap (notice I didn’t use the word inexpensive, they are different) fast and dirty.
As usual, IT doofus’ like Jim above know the headline PRICE of everything and the true VALUE of precisely nothing.
And of course they need problematic Win PC’s to keep themselves busy fixing them.
The cost of maintaining a Windows machine is way too high. With mandatory anti-virus costs, and a higher chance of bad motherboard parts from cost, cutting and sloppy manufacturing processes (not to mention the instability of any MS OS), maintaining a Windows machine can be a nightmare.
When Vista first came out, I installed it on my laptop and my CD-ROM unit stopped functioning altogether. I knew right then that the OS was a POS. From then on, every system I sold or purchased for myself was meticulously downgraded to XP.
I will never use any other MS OS, other than XP. Anything built on the Visa kernel is pure garbage. Hell, even XP is unpredictable, and it’s the most stable OS that MS has. Even so, the updates are serious and never ending and so are the maintenance costs associated with maintaining a 10-year-plus OS. It will be retired soon and Apple will bring up the rear.
This could be about Cornell University. Staff members stuck on PC’s BEG for Macs but department IT’s tell them “No way.” You can’t convince them it would make required tasks 2x faster, they don’t care. (Bill Gates donated millions for a building here, Steve Jobs didn’t.)
Only high paid Faculty, and of course the President and Vice President and his minions can demand a Mac of any kind. All other lowly staff must suffer under the ball and chain of Windows making every task, even simple ones like creating a PDF, more laborious than need be.
They want to cut staff here but they’re keeping plenty of PC tech support guys in plenty of work fighting all kinds of problems that just don’t happen on Macs. They could cut the number of Tech staff in near half if they’d ditch the PC’s.
So much for Ivy League brains.
Q: Will the IT doofus finally see the Apple light?
A: NO, not now that Apple’s knifed the XServe baby and effectively killed OS X Server in the Enterprise
IT guys, just remember, Doofus is as Doofus does.
Our IT department is made up of many Mac users. But i think the reason for this is age. They are all younger. The Senior Network Administrator is only 27 has Macs at home. The majority of them have iPhones, only a few have incredibles; but i think that is because they have verizon. They have slowly put macs out on the network, but have to use remote desktop for applications that dont run on the Mac that we need business wise. The old IT director that is now the Ops Chief, is very anti-apple. I have been in meetings where a website may be down or something and she will blame the Mac. She got in our CEOs ear so much that they actually made IT remove the computer from the conference room. I know for a fact that she wanted to have an IT person written up because they gave a employee an iPad to try instead of a computer for checking email while on a buisness trip. but as i was saying my IT department is made up of a younger generation who is fine with using Macs. I am sure as they become more popular with employees the newer IT personal will be very willing to give the employees the computer they want to use.
Be kind to the IT doofus. His only experience of the IT world heretofore is Microsoft. Its complexities, bugs, flaws, problems, malware, and the long hours on the weekend to placate a raging executive to save his job has given him a sort of post-traumatic stress. Now you ask him to add Apple to the mix. He has a flashback! He explodes! He’s terrified! His involuntary reaction is that adding Apple is like adding another Microsoft, and if that were true, it would be an impossibly hellish nightmare job.
One way to treat flashbacks is to gradually and repeatedly expose the person to the stimulus until it doesn’t evoke a flashback anymore.
(I had post-traumatic stress. Once I was in the grocery store when a song over the PA system gave me a flashback. I left my cart and my groceries in the middle of the aisle and got out of the store. When I got home, I listened to that song over and over again until the pain was gone and it was just a song.)
So expose the IT doofus to Apple stuff gradually. Give him an iPod. Let him play with your iPad. Talk to him about UNIX. Show him the switcher videos on Apple’s web site. Set up a temporary account on your MacBook and let him play with it. Ask him to join your MacBook to the AD domain, and let him see there is no restart.
Microsoft is more than just a software company. It’s a disease, and recovery is possible.
As an IT Doofus for a large company in the financial sector, I have seen the light (for many years now) and Apple products are in use, in our marketing department for artists. The big killers here are custom written apps and excel macros and formulas that do not work on a Mac. The second “Big Killer” here is up front cost. Mac Pro towers vs Dell hardware is about a 4:1 price difference. In a financial company, these things matter.
But yes I have been places where Macs outnumbered the PC’s 10:1, and with a staff of 3-4 IT people we kept EVERYTHING running. T.C.O. on the mac is MUCH lower, but it’s a lot harder to show an accountant that.
@RP3
The need to run P6 and project are the only reason I own a few Windows computers.
Now that Koppleman has sold out, let’s see if Steve’s buddy Larry will port P6 to OS X.
@dijonaise
The company I’m consulting for at the moment has a multi-million dollar investment in XServes, used as animation render farms and XSan controllers. Following last week’s announcement they are now seriously looking at moving away from their FCS based workflow, meaning Apple will also lose all the pro app sales and possibly even sales of the MacPros the work currently gets done on.
Apple are free to ditch these products completely of course, but when they arbitrarily make decisions to cut the lifetime of product lines that their customers build their entire business model on nobody should complain that other companies’ IT functions refuse to deal with Apple at all. When your own company’s revenue depends on a large scale IT deployment you don’t want any company that can suddenly and without warning pull the rug out from the products you need involved in any way.
So if the enterprise doesn’t want Apple, Apple only have their own decisions to blame. Suddenly killing the XServe just blew years of progress they’d made with IT.
Get used to your Windows PCs at work folks.
@ Jim
“Surely if people other than Mac Heads thought Apple was SO much better than Microsoft, then Apple would make up the 97% share computers? Right??”
Very true, and by that same logic, MacDonald’s makes the very best hamburger in the world.
And stop calling me Shirley.
@ Dave H
Not to mention the higher ed market as well.
I agree with those who say Apple turned their backs on the enterprise when they announced discontinuing the XServe. Although I would never need one, it always indicated to me the Apple at least had their foot in the door. The recent Unisys announcement, gave me additional hope, now dashed by the Xserve issue. Many will remember the Apple RAID card discontinuation, but at least there was another viable card available. I also agree that in a large enterprise environment, it is difficult to integrate Macs. I am responsible for a small business environment and have introduced Mac hardware (it is simply far more elegant) but most are running W7 because of software requirements. Where that is not an issue, they boot into OSX. Like many things, there is no simple solution.
@Micro Me
I took the opposite approach to introducing my MacBook Pro into the office. (Everyone had a laptop)
I began by putting the company-issued Dell laptop under my desk where it could not be seen. I positioned the Dell monitor with its back to the door. No one could see my monitor but me.
After some time, I replaced the keyboard with Apple’s wired keyboard (works fine on a PC). People were amazed to see me use a flash drive by plugging it into the keyboard.
After a while, I added an Apple mouse.
My next gutsy step was to replace the Dell laptop under the desk with my MacBook Pro. I did all my work on the MacBook Pro, but no one could see because of the way I had positioned my monitor. I kept the Dell handy just in case I needed it. When I determined I didn’t need it, I left the Dell in my trunk. Eventually I checked it in so that I had no company-issued computer at all.
Because of my duties, I was able to add computers to the domain. I added the MacBook Pro.
Finally, I had a conversation with an executive who claimed that Macs weren’t suited to the office. I turned around my screen and told him I had been using a Mac exclusively for half a year.
No one bothered me about the Mac.
O ye of little faith. So many people were using the Mac Mini as a server that Apple started selling a server version. Now they sell a server version of the MacPro. They discontinued the Xserve. That means 1) they are not discontinuing servers, 2) they are coming out with a new product to replace the Xserve.
Apple is in the business of selling CONSUMER ELECTRONICS; IT doofuses are trying to keep a BUSINESS running.
Until Apple products are ENTERPRISE focused, why should IT doofuses be Apple focused?
Apple is doing just fine without enterprise products, and enterprise is doing just fine without Apple products.
If employees want to play with Apple toys, they are free to do that on their own time.
@ A Scheduler
I would really like to see that! Oracle needs to move towards Mac sometime.
@ Harvey
Thanks for that. I suspect there are many others like us, quietly battling their IT depts.
My fall back position, if my iMac was confiscated (there were several threats to do so), was to hide a Mac mini under my desk, attached to their PC monitor. A techie friend said he could get me a switch that would toggle the monitor between the PC and mini if anybody came in the room. Fortunately, I never had to try out that approach.
If Apple wants to play in the enterprise and has $50+ Billion available, who’s fault is it?
License OSX server to IBM to run on their server HW and make investments in SW companies to develop their apps for OSX. Otherwise- we’ll loan you x dollars at no interest to develop for our platform, and will convert the investment into common stock if you don’t pay back within a certain time frame.
@Micro Me
It might not be necessary to have a switch. The monitor I was using had two inputs, VGA and DVI. I plugged both computers into it and switched back and forth with the monitor’s controls. The manufacturer doesn’t recommend it, but it worked for over a year with no ill effect.
Make sure you are facing the door so that no one can see the screen without standing behind you.
If you don’t know this already, Ctrl+Shift+Eject turns off the screen. Any mouse movement or keystroke restores it. You can use that to hide the display when you need to do it quickly, but don’t touch the mouse.
I hope Macs become more common in enterprise, because Apple will learn a lot and I, as a consumer, will benefit.
I love my Mac for what it’s security, but it’s a pig to use.
No, no they won’t … because Apple just exited the server market.
It is apparent Apple is focusing on consumer market, not enterprise.
After this latest pronouncement, I’m worried about how long support for Mac Pro is going to last.
Incidentally, a cost comparison between Apple and Dell won’t necessarily produce meaningful results. The company likely gets a discount from Dell for volume purchases, and they also get on-site service within 24 hours (really). That makes Macs look even more expensive to the IT department, and since (for them) the repair cost of the Apple hardware is unknown, there has to be a justification for the Mac that outweighs any cost consideration.
@Harvey, IT budgets forecasts don’t run on faith. As the tech guy in a small non-profit I have to project major expenditures up to 3 or 4 years in advance, and know that the pieces I’m putting together aren’t going to disappear from under me in six months’ time.
If Apple wanted to play in the enterprise hardware business they should’ve announced a viable replacement strategy (like allowing virtualization on HP, IBM or other established “big iron” players) the same time they killed the X-Serve, but they didn’t.
MacMinis and Mac Pros might be fine for a small office, but MacPros aren’t suitable replacements for high-availability rackmount servers–no hot-swappable drives, no redundant power, and even put on its side it takes up 7 times the rack space of a single X-Serve. So a full server cabinet that could hold 42 1U X-Serves, can only hold 6 Mac Pros. For a small business renting rackspace, that’s a horrible value.
Having worked on a Mac in a previous job, lost that due to layoffs, took another job and was forced to use a Dell.
It’s like being sentenced to Hell for a crime you didn’t commit. IT staff says NO MACS.
Nice to go home to my iMac for relief from computing Hell. An oasis of sanity and productivity.
Wonder how many people sneak tasks home to do on their Mac because it’s faster/easier than trying to do them at work on a Dumb Dell? Hmm… maybe that’s management’s secret weapon to get people to put in additional unpaid work hours at home.
MDN magic word: “red” as in seeing red over all this.
This is why business always buys the cheapest. No exception – you know like the cheapest switches and routers from cisco, the cheapest servers from hp and dell, not forgetting the absolute bottom rate printers and copiers for their worthless office staff.
Cheap desks and cheap office chairs all housed in a very cheap office somewhere.
But when it comes to personal computers, it’s a very different matter entirely. Only good quality, high end will do. We’re talking hp and dell here folks, top quality and worth every penny.
Wintard logic would have you believe that accountants can’t figure out savings Made through long term cost benefits. Do they really think everyone else here is as stupid as them?
What do you expect from people whose job relies on computers being a headache for user?
@ Harvey
There was nothing as sophisticated as a DVI input on this monitor. One VGA port only, so a switch it would have been. And there was no option but for my desk and iMac to face away from the door, which fortunately was always closed.
Incidentally, my Mac use only became an issue when other staff started lobbying to get one like mine, in spite of my pleas for them to remain silent.
I found it ironic that none of the IT staff I was battling with was born when I first started using a desktop computer (1983; an Altos running 8 bit CPM). But these kids were quite happy to try and tell me what computer I needed to get my job done.
When I explained that the PC made me less productive, one of them actually said, “We don’t care. We just want you to use what everybody else does”. I suspect that pretty much sums up a lot of IT thinking.
Everytime I have this argument with my IT buddy I realize 2 things. He’s never really used a Mac for more than 1 minute. And he is trying to ensure he has a job.
@I CAN HAZ IT doofus?
I can see why everyone is crying in their beer, but look at this: Apple discontinued the Xserve at the same time they began an agreement with Unisys for enterprise sales. They can’t be exiting the enterprise market.
When you sell to consumers, sending outside salespeople to knock on people’s doors won’t work. Instead, you open a store and advertise. When you sell to the enterprise, opening a store and advertising won’t work. Instead, you hire an outside salesforce to call on prospects.
There’s no need to advertise your enterprise business, because the salesforce takes care of that. (How many Unisys ads have you seen on TV?) If you do advertise your enterprise business, it changes your corporate image in the eyes of the consumer, which hurts your consumer business. Would the average consumer be more motivated to buy an Apple product if they knew that http://www.army.mil was hosted on OS X? Or would Apple start to become a faceless corporate giant in their eyes? Apple actively and successfully markets to the US Army. It’s invisible to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
My contention is that Apple’s enterprise sales are and will remain
as invisible to you as Apple can keep it, because that’s not the corporate image they want to project to the public.
97%!? Well I’m not one of the sheep… I’ll walk with the 3%
So you guys really think all those servers are running Windows?
Look, it’s sad that Apple doesn’t make the Xserve any more, but what the heck does that have to do with what desktop users are running? Many, if not most of the servers in the back are running Linux variants, but that doesn’t mean anything to desktop users. So IT can’t buy a 1U Apple server any more… That has nothing to do with the laptops they buy. If they’re running Linux and using Windows laptops the argument doesn’t really hold up.
Did anyone notice the reason that Jobs gave for killing XServe? No one was buying them. So how is it all that bad when they shut a door no one was walking through?
And as far as how ridiculous it would be to use MacPros instead, let’s remember the Big Mac
ITs will not feel concerned with a firm that doesn’t produce heavy servers.
The two posters above don’t seem to get why everyone’s pissed off here. MDN regulars are always quick to point out the FUD generated by others. This time Apple have generated their own. If their corporate customers lose confidence and jump ship as a result it’s Apple’s fault, not the customers’ IT departments.
Erratum : The two posters above almux
this is a real setback. Why trust apple in a pro environment? What else will they excise? Now I do use macs privately and have been promoting professionally even worked with them in a pro level. This is undermining.
However what if this is in line with the IOS speculations I have been reading.
What is needed though is a clear migration path and you keep the old shoes before you have the new ones, I.o.w keep x serve alive until moving on. The suggestion of spinning off is a better move.
Ok, egg on face; I thought I wasting on the x-serve topic.
In reply to Jim’s comment “Why if Apple is SO great is windows in like 97% of computers around the world??”
The number of roaches on earth far exceeds that of humans, so why aren’t they the dominant lifeform on the planet?
I don’t believe they will EVER allow Virtualization – since this provides large Amounts of possible Configurations and therefore work to solve Issues…
As soon as Apple would cancel their Xserve EOL and provide an adequate Upgrade to the Line
OR
provide a reasonable “noisy” Xserve/MacPro Hybrid that is 1-2U high and can be either Rack-mounted or stand vertical like a Tower
— then they have the GREENLIGHT!
Hey at least you know microsoft will be around in a few years, not just kill off their enterprise support with 3 months notice. Apple has lost all credability in all areas other than toys. (And this is coming from a die hard apple supporter)
“‘IT managers in the past have said, ‘I don’t want unique experiences’ ”…
…which led to some major disappointment in the honeymoon suite.
I AGREE A LOT WITH JIM. I am in IT business for 14 years already. Mac is better, but not for enterprise. Mac is pretty, funtional, simple and all. But it’s just not for enterprise. Justification for purchasing a Mac does not fit for enterprise whatsoever, software wise, network wise, cost wise. Sorry guys, but Jim is right.
Not good for enterprise eh? When you accept a new job at Google you have two choices for your OS. Linux or OS X.
Mac isn’t good for tired old thinking enterprises…there I fixed it.
I’m a teacher, and I bring my MacBook Pro to school every day. I have never asked IT for help integrating my mac, but can still add every printer in the school, access the internet, etc. It just works. My school Dell just sits there most of the time, except for my computers class where I need to demonstrate things the exact way it appears for students.
I get more done in less time with my mac. So does my wife.
My argument is consistency. I need to be sure that it will work every time, because when you have 30 students sitting around while you try to log in, and your profile is corrupted (a major issue plaguing our division) you are simply not doing what you are paid to do. Teach.
Many teachers in my division feel that IT decisions exist to make life easier for them, not to make our jobs easier. Isn’t that what computers are in enterprise for? Making our jobs easier?
I’m an IT doofus, and have been for the last 20 years. Just for starters, the X-Serve was discontinued. And don’t get me started on the Mac Mini Server or the new Mac Pro Server. Installing server software on a desktop computer does not a server make. They have no worldwide on-site warranty (which I have with Lenovo and HP). No free virtualization software (which I have with Citrix and VMware).
The ONLY thing Apple does offer to the enterprise is that it’s easy to connect an Apple computer to an enterprise network running Windows, AD and Outlook. Note I left out easy managing of iPhones in the enterprise, because it’s anything but.
The apple on your laptop ‘front cover’ lights up only when the screen is illuminated. It is actually just backlit from the screen lighting. You can’t illuminate it when your laptop is in sleep mode. You may be able to have your screen stay lit when you close the cover, however, and if your screen stays lit the apple will stay lit. Not sure why you would want to do this, though.
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/force-factor-reviews-do-force-factor-supplements-work-2369634.html
The apple on your laptop ‘front cover’ lights up only when the screen is illuminated. It is actually just backlit from the screen lighting. You can’t illuminate it when your laptop is in sleep mode. You may be able to have your screen stay lit when you close the cover, however, and if your screen stays lit the apple will stay lit. Not sure why you would want to do this, though.
Force Factor
MDN fuck you. You ever had a real job? Ever had to work in IT? I doubt it. There are a tremendous number of great folks in IT out there who are apple supporters but are handed the ms pos and have no choice. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.
The IT situation is simple. They love the strangle hold they have on the employees of most companies including the CEO. They love to show how smart they are in being able to solve your never ending problems. The companies I own have always used Macs. The first was a Lisa ($10,000) when I was a one man company. The high cost argument does not hold water.
While they expect Apple to control a whopping 10% of the computer market, what they don’t mention is that things are going the way of the tablet and while the ipad might be the best, it is also the most expensive. Apple controls nearly a quarter of the smart phone market? What they don’t tell you is that this has stabilized with Android already surpassing this (http://www.betanews.com/article/Android-usurps-iPhone-in-market-share/1273506043) and expected to be the lion share of smart phones in the coming decade and android has only been around for 2 years!!!! (well 26 months but whose counting).
Common to both:
Hardware is generally reliable (yeah, you can complain all you want but I have owned many a pc and haven’t had a problem with a single one that I didn’t cause myself with liquids or falls). Also, you can’t judge all pc’s because some are made out of balsa wood (what do you expect when you buy a 50$ computer made in Afghanistan).
Pros of apple:
It looks good (Great UI, no lag, intuitive)
Runs fast
Runs reliably
Pros of PC
It looks good enough (but what do I care, all I do is Facebook, and Gmail)
Everything and I mean everything runs on it. You want to virtualize windows inside a virtualized linux and run ie 6 on in that setup – no problem – and you can do it in a number of ways. You want that 15 year old game you played in high school, cool! And you can download the tool that will make it work. Ironically, the only thing that won’t run on a PC is apple after version 10. I wonder why that is . . .
It’s cheap and I mean cheap. A desktop that will run any game is in the 500 region and a decent laptop is not much more. My mom bought one for 300 2 years ago and that thing isn’t much slower than my supped up developer machine. And what the hell do I care how fast it is. I play my games on my phone, check email, and check status updates when I’m not writing my documents in the cloud. I don’t need a hex core/256 GB ram thingy-ma-bob!!!
It integrates with corporate environments. There isn’t an app out there that doesn’t work with a PC that is corporate oriented.
Cons of Apple
Nothing runs on it. My games no run, my apps no run, that nifty tool from widgets are us . . . u guessed it, it no work!?!?!?!?
This shit is expensive. I can buy 3 pc’s, a phone, and a tablet for the price of one apple. For that price it damn well better not break, and it better be intuitive, and it better be fast!!!
But all this is moot because Android is going to wipe them both out. The PC won because of open hardware with a closed windows on top, apples lost because of closed hardware and closed software. Android is going to win because it is open software on top of open hardware. While windows and Apple are going to be scrambling to come up with native APIs to communicate with the TV/Home Security System/Car/Airplane/Remote controlled helicopter/Toy built on top of Android, Android will have all of this functionality built in. Android has won, it’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet.