“General Electric might seem to be the last place that Apple laptops and desktops would appear in workers’ offices, but the technology is slowly seeping into daily life at the 120-year-old conglomerate,” Kate Linebaugh reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Under a year-old pilot project, GE employees can choose Apple’s Mac notebooks or desktops instead of a Windows PC,” Linebaugh reports. “It now has about 1,000 Mac users and expects their ranks to expand further as more employees become aware of the program… GE has not trumpeted the Apple option for computers and laptops internally, and as a result, employee awareness is limited.”
“Apple has very little of the corporate computer market but is making progress, according to Forrester Research, which estimates that the Cupertino, Calif., company will sell $9 billion worth of Macs and $10 billion worth of iPads to businesses this year, up about 50 percent from last year,” Linebaugh reports. “In comparison, corporate spending on PCs and tablets not made by Apple will decline three percent this year to $69 billion, the research firm projects.”
MacDailyNews Take: So, of the total $88 billion in corporate spending, Apple Macs and iPads are expected to account for $19 billion, or 21.6% of corporate spending on PCs and tablets? That doesn’t seem like “very little of the corporate computer market” to us.
“Expanding its presence at a large customer like GE would give a boost to Apple and could put pressure on the conglomerate’s incumbent PC suppliers, including Dell and Lenovo. The development echoes Apple’s initial effort in smartphones that later became a real threat to companies like BlackBerry maker Research In Motion,” Linebaugh reports. “GE started offering its employees the iPhone as an alternative to BlackBerrys in 2008. Now, it says about 10,000 GE employees carry the Apple smartphone, compared with 50,000 using BlackBerrys.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
♫ This is the dawning of the age of Mac OS X
The age of iOS
Mac OS X! iOS!Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Mac OS X! iOS! ♫
Actually, I think the company for which I work will be the last place that Apple laptops and desktops will appear. Defense industry is definitely owned by Microsoft.
Apple doesn’t make “Apple laptops” nor do they even make “laptops,” Apple makes “notebooks.”
MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.
Apple is the company. Their computers are called “Macintosh” or “Mac” for short.
… iPhone and the iPad each have more computing power, more computing capability, than the first five (6?) Enterprise Level computers I worked on (and the first three (4?) Personal Computers I owned) … and they are not “Macs”.
A common mistake, often made by the young. 😉
Kevin J. Weise writes:
“Actually, I think the company for which I work will be the last place that Apple laptops and desktops will appear. Defense industry is definitely owned by Microsoft.”
Oh, that’s a comfort.
I felt safe until that comment …. No wonder the drone software can be hacked in mid air..
Officer: quick launch drone D213.. Men are dying
Drone operator: as soon as I download these 6 new security updates
Officer: good man you have it flying
Drone Operator:Uh no… It’s being flown by an Irsnian hacker
Officer: oh…. But at least he’s flying it well
should have been Iranian… Not sure what that word is auto spell came up with
Flee, flee! The Irsnians are coming!
Irsnians could be gov’t employees working for the IRS. So yes, flee! They want Allah your money!
Kevin J. Weise writes:
“Actually, I think the company for which I work will be the last place that Apple laptops and desktops will appear. Defense industry is definitely owned by Microsoft.”
Oh, that’s a comfort.
How about the reports that the Army host some of it’s websites on Macs, for the security advantages?
And Windows computers are owned by hackers. Taking that full circle, the U.S. defense industry is owned by hackers. That is truly scary.
Maybe not… I happen to know that some Mac’s are now accredited for use on the Navy’s NMCI network.
Bring on the inevitable !
Haven’t I been reading here about how corporate IT is embracing the iPad and iPhone. Seems only natural that IT would allow employees to bring in MacBooks, they are inherently more secure and require less attention by IT e.g., no need for Anti-virus updates. This is really not surprising. The most surprising thing is that it has taken so long to reach this point.
Anyone else surprised that only 10K out of 60K at GE “chose” the iPhone over blackberries.
Xenophobes are slow to progress.
It may be music to investor ears. But. The take is proof that MDN is a spaced-out long-haired hippie-crit crypto-marxist. Aquarius my @$$
That description of MDN is a first (and certainly diametrically opposed to those who like to describe the MDN gang as “Palin-loving, Rush-hugging fascists.”
Did Obama win in 2008 because his team were Mac users (as documented here on MDN) whereas the McCain camp were Windows users (conjecture as their computer choices were not documented here)?
$69 billion is spread out between many manufacturers.
$19 billion goes to Apple ONLY! Not a bad piece of the pie.
Apple will gain ground and then blow it somehow.
I want to be optimistic. I do. I really really do.
This is what has always happened with Apple in IT at all places I have worked.
They get accepted and macs get deployed. Then a few years into the whole thing Apple makes some big strategy shift or major product change.
They end up doing something that makes IT lose trust and faith and out they go.
It happened with A/UX on the mac.
It happened with the mac in the pre OS-X days when they missed delivering enterprise features in the OS.
It happened with the XServe.
maybe the iPad will change it once and for all.
I hope.
I dream.
I pray.
I had a job last summer at a hip young company and everyone used Macs and iPhones. Loved not having to lug the power adapter back and forth from work to home. Ended up hating the job so went back to regular corporate life and got a brand new HP EliteBook for my trouble. Whoever designed the offset keyboard must have been a moron – the keys are shifted to the left-center of the screen because HP decided to put uber-useful “home/pg up/pg dn/end” keys along the right side. And, it’s big and clunky with lots of breathtaking plastic covered in stickers!
Doubt this company will ever go Mac but there are rumors they may start supporting iPhones later this year. Baby steps, I guess.
What a catch-22: hating the job at the company that uses Macs, or hating the computer that you have to use at the company with the more enjoyable job…
I hope that you end up at a good job with Macs – the best of both worlds!
I wonder if Apple will ever consider utilizing iOS as a highly flexible embedded OS? The discussion has been rampant regarding an iOS-based HDTV. Why not other iOS-based appliances, or even an iOS house? The possibilities are exciting.
I work at a very prominent Mercedes-Benz dealership.
My company employees Macs all throughout the dealership. We also have a huge number of iPads.
It’s a perversion though… They only run Windows!
They actually do this in the name of security!
Windows is locked down so tightly, that you can’t even install software that isn’t approved by our IT Nazi. He is afraid that if someone has unrestricted access, Malware will be introduced that will steal sensitive customer info.
I negotiated for a MacBook Pro that is 100% mine.
Everyone else has to use Windows, but I will be accessing their locked-down, sandboxed domain using Remote Desktop on Mac OS X.
I told them I don’t need IT support. Let me do my own thing thing, and I’ll be my own IT.
Sorry… ‘Employees’ should’ve been ’employs’.
… you are being intelligently secure as the company “proof of concept”. Like … creating a secure Admin account as well as secure USER accounts – and only using the User accounts for corporate and user business.
Not just industry but Apple is also making inroads in (some/many) educational institutions.
I work at a community college and Apple laptops in use are probably now 1 in 4 vs 1 in 10 just a few years ago. Plus Macs have been brought into the library and many classrooms, another big change over the last few years in once was an MS-only “shop” (IT leasing Dells for desktops and portables). Even most senior administrators use iPads on a regular basis
Microsoft must be getting desperate and panicking as it has recently started offering Office for Windows and Mac and Windows 7 (Pro or Ultimate) upgrades for FREE to students.
MS must be worried seeing this generation accepting and growing up with Apple products, which will probably lead to continued use as they “grow up”, leading MS to try to hook (bribe) them with the free software give aways.
It worked for Windows (used at work so usually used at home) but now that Apple is making inroads in business, education and personal life, that MS/WIndows lock-in from the past is no longer assured.
As a longtime Apple/Mac advocate here, it does (finally) make me happy and smile a lot . About my only gripe is, what took so long? 🙂