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.