“That 41% of enterprises won’t let Apple PCs anywhere near their computing services — not even e-mail or the Internet — should come as no surprise to the IT professionals who subscribe to Forrester Research’s market research reports,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “After all, it reflects the advice that Forrester has been giving information technology departments for decades. Take, for example, this quote from a 2008 Forrester report on enterprise computing:”
IT departments crave standardization, and Macs pose too many problems for IT departments. The verdict for enterprise-focused vendors is clear: Unless your market is a niche business group, Windows is the only desktop you need support. – Forrester Research, 2008
“Which makes the findings of the Forrester survey of 590 IT executives and decision makers… all the more surprising,” P.E.D. reports. “‘It’s time to repeal prohibition and take decisive action,’ writes David Johnson in a new report… ‘Mac users are your HEROes and you should enable them not hinder them.'”
P.E.D. reports, “‘HERO,’ it turns out, is a Forrester acronym for Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives — ‘the 17% of information workers who use new technologies and find innovative ways to be more productive and serve customers more effectively’ … because their company-supplied Microsoft Windows PCs are slowing them down [and] look cheaply made.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Better years late than never at all. Steve must be smiling today; the bozos finally wised up!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Marty Wells” for the heads up.]
Yikes. Sign of the end times for sure!
Agreed. It is a certain sign of the apocalypse! Everyone run!!
Looks lIke Steve is busy even in the afterlife. He mus have the world in his hands now. To get these guys on board requires a Global Reality Distortion Field.
Thanks Steve!
I almost spit out ky coffee. The sleeper has awaken!!! Go Apple!!!
…. i almost pee’d my pants… i just hope i didn’t leave a stain.
Something missing from the summary of the source article above.
“…Workforce Technology And Engagement Survey, power laptop users make 44% more money, use more collaboration apps, and carry an average of three devices wherever they go.”
They are defining the “power laptop user” or “HERO” as caring other devices, we call that the iPhone and iPad halo. When the top executives have iPhones and iPads and their family computer is now the Mac, what is the IT teams going to tell them? “No way” or “Can’t happen” or …? No, the halo from the top executives better just get a yes sir, we can make that happen for you or they will be looking for another job.
Hear hear
I curse anytime i have to help anyone using Windows 7ista as that interface seems designed to hinder people actually getting work done. Latest fiasco, trying to save an attachment from Outlook. Grrrrrr….
Bill Gates quote wondering why Steve returned to Apple and “He knows he can’t win” is starting to haunt more resolutely than Michael Dell’s slip of the tongue about selling Apple and giving the money back to the shareholders. Someone though said Gates doesn’t really give a rats ass about Microsoft anymore.
And neither do the rest of us. Including Forrester, heh.
first of all, you don’t need to “support” the Mac–and second of all—-THEY CAN’T EVEN SUPPORT THE DAMN PCs THEY’RE CHARGED WITH SUPPORTING!!!!!!!!!!!
Macs really don’t need support.
Sure they do its just a different and generally easier type of supoort.
Depends on what you mean by support and easier I guess… I would call it “more rewarding” windows support is regressive, disaster mitigation. Mac support is progressive, productivity and creativity enabling..
By support I mean something that a user would need assistance with. That could be technical or otherwise. If it stops them from getting their job done, its support in my book.
Easier would be the feedback I see from our helpdesk.
Typical example:
Mac User calls the helpdesk – “Hi. I need to configure email encryption on my computer so that I can send and receive encrypted emails”
Windows User calls helpdesk – “Everything was fine and now I have a bunch of windows popping up showing people having sex. I can’t get anything done”
Two totally different worlds of support right there and the mac is def easier. 🙂
Agree. A lot of support I did was setting up user sides so people couldn’t screw them up by moving things around, and installing apps. Also EDUCATING users NOT to accept Pop Ups asking you to load stuff. IT’s can keep busy providing external drive backups, and secondary off site backups, and server maintenance, plus the Adobe Creative Suite can muck itself up here and there, esp. during upgrades.
Rare is the total rebuild or even cleaning though, unlike a PC. And fighting virus and spyware just doesn’t exist if you educate your users properly.
I’m sorry, but the last thing my studio needs is a bunch of spotty windows it ‘experts’ with poor personal hygeine sniffing around trying to ‘oversee’ and ‘optimise” it.
We’ve got on perfectly fine since 1984, without the need of dedicated support, we certainly don’t need them now.
The statement, “IT departments crave standardization, and Macs pose too many problems for IT departments.”
Should read, “IT departments crave job security, and Macs expose too many difficult questions for IT departments”
@ Cold;
Very well said, my friend.
Same situation here, except that we didn’t come in to the Apple fold until 2000.
(As to clinging for years to our Microsoft-based studio equipment and living in constant clean-up and catch-up and upgrade and re-install mode … well, “Regrets, I’ve have a few…”)
had
Story from my sister last night: I was on the phone with her, and we wanted to look at a Word document (yes, a Microsoft doc!) that was on a web page. She hit the download link on her PC (that work gave her), and got a blank screen. My Mac/Safari downloaded the file and opened it right up in Word. We spent a half hour (via phone is difficult on my end!) trying to figure out how to get her PC to actually show this document.
Finally I said, wait, don’t you have an old macbook at home? She said yes, she clicked the link and downloaded and opened the file, no problem.
What the hell, MS? You can’t even get a Windows PC to open one of your Word docs?? Ridiculous.
That previous advice was incredibly short-sighted. Forrester’s clients should actually sue them for such a gross, superficial-level advice.
correct.
Duck, here comes a flying chair…
Ballmer stopped paying? WTF? Belt-tightening my ass, uncle fester!
Does this mean the Mayans were right about 2012?
Yes—the Windows world will come to an end. But what the heck, they’ve been behind since the beginning, so they are the end.
Spooky. They really did see the MS world to end. Brave new world is porn from the ashes of the thermonuclear war.
A few years ago I was shooting a magazine spread of one of the hottest architect firms. As we were packing up the equipment I noticed the open door to their IT room. Floor to ceiling there were broken windows pcs and the IT guy at a workbench. He noticed me surveying at all the pc junk, saw my MBP, and said, “I know what you’re thinking, and I agree with you. The only computer I ever loved was a Mac.”
And I said, “It’s AutoCAD isn’t it?”
“Not just that,” he replied, “the head guys are brainwashed to pc only. They won’t even let me bring it up anymore.”
Mac standardization would change the world of IT. Why? Cause the stuff works, the hardware is bomber and, the OS is more stable. No brainer except the cost of migration. I was in IT for over 15 years. I used crappy Windows based machines all day and I can tell you it was always a joy to get home and crack the macbook open. Go Apple!!!
I’m a development house and have all Mac. And a Linux Box.
It’s the best decision I’ve made.
I need to print this out and give it to the people above me…
I use a damn windows XP box at work… which died last week.
they claim they have “special” programs that were made in house that can only be run on Windows… Except they are Java and every time you open them they fire up the JRE. the rest are all in excel/word/web based.
If only I could get away with bringing in my MBP for a day…
Just got the IT email the other day, we will be upgrading our PC’s!!!!!!!!!!
in 2013…
we have PC’s from Dell/HP purchased in 2006 now.
This is the epitome of irony!
I’ve seen dozens of not hundreds of Forrester folks at their user conferences, with MBPros, iPhones and iPads.
actually its pretty easy to integrate and support the mac in the enterprise.
Your head has to be stuck in 1996 to think its hard.
Two words: “tipping point”
^_^
I’m pretty sure MDN said hell froze over when Apple introduced iTunes for windows way back when. So hell is just getting closer to absolute Zero
Well yeah, MAC users are the higher paid ones, who else can afford one.
‘who else can afford one.’
Anyone with a brain capable of discerning total lifetime cost.
It’s Mac BTW.
Amazing how long it takes some to come over from The Dark Side. Better late than never I suppose.
Too bad Steve isn’t alive to read that one. Hope the news reaches the Cloud for him.
What Forrester identified is the wave that Apple has been riding – the consumerization of IT.
Our IT department has been very resistant to Macs even though I was able to justify one. But we just switched to mostly iPhones and everyone in IT is using an iPhone now. We are in a pilot program to allow iPad connectivity.
As the tools and software that IT uses becomes more Mac friendly and they become familiar with Apple technology, those barriers will start to fall.