“Every so often, you see a research survey that shows IT organizations plan to buy Windows tablets or Windows Phones more than any other type of mobile device,” Galen Gruman writes for InfoWorld. “Then you look at the data on what people actually buy and don’t notice Microsoft technology gaining any appreciable traction. So why does IT keep saying it plans to buy Microsoft technologies that users don’t want?”
Gruman writes, “The answer has to do with a sort of in-breeding within IT organizations. Many IT organizations are at heart Microsoft shops, running Windows Server, Exchange, and SharePoint for much of their systems… IT simply expects that Microsoft core to extend into the newfangled technologies such as mobile and cloud. Never mind the evidence to the contrary — Microsoft has long been the answer, so it surely will be there, too — if IT only waits long enough to outlast users’ Apple, Google, and Amazon.com foolishness.”
“That ‘waiting for Microsoft’ mentality is why IT keeps hoping beyond any realistic basis that Windows tablets will displace iPads [and] Windows Phones will displace iPhone,” Gruman writes. “Waiting for Microsoft? You might as well be waiting for Godot… If IT doesn’t get a clue, users may decide they don’t need IT any longer either. IT needs to stop waiting for Microsoft and instead deal with the reality: Client computing tech is now heterogeneous, and Microsoft doesn’t have all the right answers.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s nothing worse for workplace morale than enlightened employees handcuffed by intransigent IT doofuses.
Awaken, finally, ye brain-dead cretins or begone!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “CognativeDisonance” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple’s iPad expands lead in tablet usage at the expense of Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft Surface – April 18, 2013
Microsoft partners say Windows 8 caused ‘millions of customers’ to switch to Apple – April 18, 2013
Stick a fork in Microsoft’s Windows, it’s done – April 17, 2013
Steve Jobs’ revenge – April 12, 2013
Microsoft’s stock takes beating after putrid Windows PC shipment reports – April 11, 2013
Apple Macintosh on the rise as Windows PC market plummets – April 11, 2013
Gartner and IDC trumpet wildly incongruous Mac unti sales estimates – April 11, 2013
Gartner: PC Market posts 11.2 percent decline in Q113; Apple Mac sales up 7.4 percent in U.S. – April 10, 2013
IDC: PC shipments post the steepest decline ever in a single quarter, down 13.9% in Q113 – April 10, 2013
MDN’s take is spot-on.
Agreed. As a Mac user, my working life has been a constant war with IT doofuses. They can tank staff morale faster than Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss.
They have cost me, and many others, materially over the years with their Microsoft shibboleths and mesmeric influence over Human Resources who do the hiring and promoting. They are little better than mercenaries, shills, and sycophants in thrall to commercial interests. They have lorded it over their intellectual superiors for years now, and the day of reckoning is approaching. I long for the satisfaction once only accorded to sufferers in medieval times when stocks were set up for sport, hangings and mutilations were commonplace social events, and vengeance was honest and forthright. Extreme? Not when applied to weak-minded, duplicitous, traitorous toads.
Not just “hiring and promoting” Hannah. Firing too. A few years ago, when my research group ran short of funding, my dearly beloved IT department, enraged at the presence of an recalcitrant Mac user, didn’t hesitate to put the boot in and successfully lobby HR for my demise.
But shortly after, when I had to be rehired on contract so the institute could complete several projects, I made great sport of bringing my new MacBook Pro (purchased with some of my redundancy pay-out) back into the building. I could hear the grinding of IT teeth at fifty paces.
But, as for “hangings and mutilations”, um, maybe just slap them around a little?
Your story is delicious and inspiring. Thanks.
OK, maybe I was a little over the top in my vengeful imaginings, but only because I’ve been reading Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of our Nature”. Time was, revenge was pure, complete, and satisfying to our animal nature. Nowadays, we have to settle for forcing our adversary to take an antacid tablet. Not quite the same as evisceration, though.
Yep, the battle of the 1990s rage on. Galen Gruman nailed my organization when he wrote: “Many IT organizations are at heart Microsoft shops, running Windows Server, Exchange, and SharePoint for much of their systems… ”
And Microsoft intentionally incorporates little inconsistencies and requirements into their software in an attempt to push people away from Macs and OS X. For instance, in SharePoint a Mac user cannot open a list into Excel, despite the fact that M$ makes both sides of that software equation. And, unlike Windows users, Mac users cannot drag and drop files into SharePoint, much less multiple files or folders. Welcome to the second decade of the 21st century, M$…can’t figure out drag and drop on the Mac? Talk to the folks who sell Parallels or Fusion…they seem to handle it just fine in both directions.
Apple needs to get off its butt and help out Mac users in the enterprise. We either need Mac software will full compatibility with the MS Server/Exchange/SharePoint trio, or we need Apple-sponsored (or, at least, Apple-supported) alternatives that handle both Windows and Mac. Give enterprise an alternative to the expensive M$ lockdown that demotes Mac users to second class citizens.
P.S. Initially, I had high hopes for iWork. Finally, I thought that Apple would strike back at MS Office and free us from the pain of dealing with Microsoft “features” every day. You would think that a company of Apple’s size and wealth could dedicate a group of designers and coders to the care and feeding of iWork. Instead, it has languished and my hope has been squashed again.
funny thing is that iOS works better with exchange and some other MS server products than Windows Phone
Pretty much have to agree.
We are heavily vested in MS technologies on the backend (Exchange, Active Directory, Forefront, SQL, Sharepoint etc. etc) but we fully support macs on the desktop if that is what our employees want. We have a good mix of PCs and Macs.
We also support the iPhone and Android but if you want a WinPhone you are on your own as far as we are concerned.
Interestingly enough I have never seen a request in IT or from a rank and file worker for a Windows Phone. I mean never.
You may fully support Macs, but Microsoft does *not*. Unless you have rewritten SharePoint, for instance, Windows users have access to useful features that Mac users do not.
This is true but we haven’t found anything absolutely show stopping more like a bunch of little things that MS is just too lazy to address.
All in all its been a smooth operation integrating is x into the enterprise for us.
They are brain washed -in just the same way that those who voted in the last election have been brainwashed for the past 20 years or so. IT = stupid. Voters = stupid.
Jean Poole, must you tie your political nonsense to every single issue that comes up? If they were talking about trees, you’d still take some sort of dumb swipe at someone that Rushie Fatbaugh told you to hate.
ooh, Mikey: in America we have this new fangled thang out called the First Amendment. Personally, I thought Jean’s analogy apt & accurate…now go take your nap.
The first amendment applies also to Mikey, you know. As for naps, you must be ready for one about now. Atter all, you’re 111 years old.
Jane, you ignorant slut, I KNOW it applies to Mikey too. I was just kindly reminding him that it applies to others as well. Thank you so much for ingratiatingly pointing out the blatantly obvious to my feeble, senile mind. Also, are you available for perform sponge baths? (Your fee would be covered by ObamaCare.)
I might be, if I renewed my NP license. I do have geriatric training. Funny, I hadn’t heard you were a proponent of ObamaCare. 😉
anything the Messiah wants, I’m all for: destroying the Bill of Rights, the military on the streets of American cities, dismantling the economy, the socialist state and especially free sponge baths.
should I turn over now so you can get the other side?
I’ll even let you see my Nimzo-Indian.
Guess you have to take the good with the bad, eh? 🙂 But I warn you, I know the Rubinstein Variation.
as long as you j’adoube with enthusiasm.
A distinct touch! You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, botvinnik, against which I must learn to guard myself.
lol, you’re fun too.
Up until now, I was so impressed as to the quality of opinions stated on this blog. It is so very sad indeed that the one who had to bring down was botvinnik. I know that you have it in you to rise above the common and elevate the conversation. Please try again.
oh shut up, Statist Pig.
It seems that you have a real issue with this name calling thing. Please get over it.
oh shut up, Statist Pig.
In your child like manner, you seem to be trying to get in the last word. Pitiful.
oh shut up, Statist Pig.
You can rise above monotony.
oh shut up, Statist Pig.
Sorry, Hannah, you’re a bit out, botvinnik is actually 11 years old, although he behaves like he’s 8.
Hopefully his mom or his dad will catch on to his extracurricular activities on their computer and slap the little tyke silly.
busted!
Weird… I’m an Apple user and an Obama supporter, quite the enigma based on your idiotic rantings.
You just can’t stereotype expats like Jean. They have minds of their own, to be sure 🙂
Yeah, botvinnik, the First Amendment even applies to people who disagree with you and that cretinous, anonymous, crap-spouting mouthpiece JP.
You and I have had our run-ins on this forum, botvinnik, and you always end up running away whining with your tail between your legs. You might as well start doing that again right now, because you know that I will not stand by and let you spout BS without repercussions.
now Melvin, let’s move “forward.”
I just don’t feel “hope and change” from you.
Melvin, “yes, we can.”
Off topic a bit, but the British comedy series, “The IT Crowd” is one of the funniest series I’ve watched in ages. One of the main IT guys answers his phone every time with, “Did you try turning it off and turning it back on?”
Remember the episode where Roy’s friend thinks he is a Window Cleaner???
“Do I do Macs??, no, I only do windows”
lol
I love “The IT Crowd” and wish they would have continued. I still watch it on Netflix.
In the future, please don’t use British and comedy in the same sentence. MDN has a strict policy regarding oxymorons. However, morons are allowed to comment. (See any post by 313c7ro)
Thank you. – The Management
When all you watch is ‘comedies’ about flatulence and pie in the face, British humour is well above your intellect.
oh shut up, Statist Pig.
I found it on Netflix streaming. I will check it out
What? I won’t let go…but if there’s such thing as IT in Mac distorted world when staring at retina displays admiring shiny logo, I might consider.
Hey, sheepie, what logo would that be? If you mean an Apple logo, I only get to see that every two or three months when I shut my pad or phone off to let them have a bit of a clear out of memory, and my Mac Mini has been shut down twice in the last eighteen months, due to one app playing up.
The Windows machine at work, on the other hand, has to be shut down at least once a week.
How to spot an IT doofus.
Three overworked fingers that are larger than the other 8…CTRL ALT DEL.
OR, just look for eleven fingers?
7
Yea, Microsoft technology is stupid, totally stupid. No doubt.
But listen to the other half of the story: Apple totally misses a strategy for business clients like us. You don’t believe me? Ok, so where is the easy-to-setup business account for the AppStore? How can I easily deploy different sets of software to different workstations? Where is the special section for business clients and their specific needs on Apple.com? Where is a scalable Mailserver? As much as I love Mail, there is a lot still missing. And so on and on.
I run a business and we have over 50 Macs, 30 iPads, 30 iPhones; and we never want to go back to PCs. But Apple could sell zillions more Macs if they would have a strategy for business customers.
Apple needs to take the IT depts. much more serious, because they say what will be bought – Windows or OSX. It’s not the folks in the office, it’s the IT. The folks in the office would love to work on Apple, but they don’t have to decide.
The reason why we made the move was simply that I as the founder and CEO realized by myself that I want to make the switch as I more and more hated Windows. And I told my IT guys: Look, Windows time is over. We will do the jump, love it or leave it. But that’s not the usual situation that the CEO does that.
Hope Apple will hear the bell ringing that they do need a strategy for business customers. They should no longer ignore the pro users as it makes sense to sell 10 or 20 or 50 Macs at once.
Please don’t say that there are specific Mac resellers for business needs. I spoke to a lot of them here in Germany. It ended when I had to tell them what would be the right solution for us. They were as stupid as the Windows guys. I guessed I was at a Dell sales point sometimes.
Apple should take care for business customers by themselves and should treat them with the best possible service like every valuable customer. And this is, what I truly miss.
So, dear Tim, don’t sit on your laurels, and by the way – don’t forget the new MacPro, the new release of Pages and Numbers, and more. We are waiting, if you may remember. We are watching at you, Tim.
Thank you!
I have been saying this for years now, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears both in this forum and also in Tim’s remote iron-clad bunker.
Time to clean house in all the corporations. Get rid of the old guard and hire new people coming out of college who have been using Apple products. Corporations will discover that they will need less IT personnel if they use more Apple products and thus save money
Waiting for Microsoft? You might as well be waiting for Godot…
Greatest analogy of the week! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot
Having worked in IT Dept’s for more than 13 years, they are almost totally brainwashed into Microsoft technology. Thinking outside Microsoft is truly discouraged, even if it is widely known to be second rate or worse technology. I have always been the Apple/Microsoft Tech in IT Depts, and the going has always uphill and difficult. No surprises here!
There are two reasons for Microsoft’s persistent endurance despite everything.
The first one is what the article describes as the “clinging IT doofus”. However, just as significant reason is Apple’s strategy NOT to pursue enterprise market.
The post by “I love Apple” above illustrates this quite clearly, and I’m sure there are more similar examples of directors, owners or CEOs trying to migrate to an Apple solution and are frustrated by the lack of end-to-end offerings from Apple.
This is NOT an accident, and it is NOT an oversight, or poor strategic thinking on the part of Apple. This is very much on purpose. Enterprise market was the most significant reason that Windows is in the state that it is right now. Because of large enterprise clients who demanded certain features, compatibility and support, MS was forced to preserve pretty high levels of backward compatibility, all the way to DOS (25 years back!!). In those 25 years, Apple radically changed Mac OS and the surrounding architecture at least four times (68k to PPC; System 9 to OS X; PPC to Intel; 32-bit to 64-bit), leaving the very few enterprise clients in the dust and forcing some rather expensive migration plans ahead of the expected schedule.
For better or worse, Apple will never seek enterprise market. Whatever market share Apple chips away from MS in that segment will be despite their (lack of) effort, NOT because of it. Ironically, it will all be because of MS’s failures.
All the more reason why, in the next 5-6 years, Microsoft and Apple must forge a series of cooperative enterprises, in order to maintain a stable world order in the face of mounting threats from a powerful new geopolitical/technological axis, Google/Facebook, that could bring down the sky, ceding king-like powers to an unorganized mob of scurrilous advertisers who are no guardians of a free society.
Apple what i see is for small businesses and consumers which are the vast majority of buyers. Microsoft sells to big coperations that are still running windows xp and some that might have just up graded to windows 7. Not a lot of turn over there so in the long run Apple will keep pulling ahead of them, even if by some miracle MS gets its act together and not mess up AGAIN. Fat chance on that.
Maybe I’m lucky, but I genuinely don’t see the Microsoft-only attitude these days. Servers tend to be a mix of Windows and Linux, desktops mostly Windows with a few Macs, and tablets/mobiles pretty much only iOS or Android (unless they’re unlucky enough to still be contracted to Blackberry). MS products have that ease of widespread management thing going on, such as throwing out a new trusted CA cert for your wireless network with a single GPO, but more and more the environments are mixed rather than homogeneous.
Yeah same here. Maybe we are both lucky!
I tend to pick the best technology for the specific task at hand for my company. I have no problem throwing out what does not work and I don’t care who made it, sometimes that means picking MS, other times it means someone else.
I see a mix of OSes and computing systems out there.
The Microsoft only mentality certainly exists in the Federal Government market. Everything is Microsoft and my Windows 7 laptop takes 10 minutes (yes, really) to boot and log in because of all the little IT fingers getting in the way of the machine. Once logged in, everything is locked down and restricted in some way. I can whip out my iPad and surf the internet faster than IE8(!) can load a web page (usually incompletely) on my ethernet-connected Dell.
Don’t you just love government? They make you create a ridiculously complex password every 3 months that nobody can remember, so you end up having to write it down on a post it note. Real good security there, Uncle Sam!
Totally idiotic. The new “best practice” is the user-friendly pass phrase, a very long string which however the hapless user can remember without writing it down on a post-it note (and Lord knows those post-it notes are all too readily purloined by the numberless ninja sneak thieves flowing through the unmonitored hallways.) The pass phrase will be along the lines of “I hate my boss with a passion you would not believe”. However, hacker algorithms in the kiddie script kits have already been adjusted accordingly, and the MTTD (mean time to decryption) has actually improved by 200% according to, well, never mind. I’ve said too much already.
“Awaken, finally, ye brain-dead cretins or begone!”
Seems someone can’t get THE HOBBIT out of there mind 🙂
My wife’s company rolled out MacBook Pros for their designers about 4 months ago. IT there still hasn’t enabled them to connect to their secure servers so she can use it effectively. Every time she has a problem with her Dell PC (which is often I might add) she asks about what it would take to get her Mac hooked up. No answer. The last time she called and told her she needed help with her laptop. The first thing out of IT’s mouth is “not your Mac I hope”. They are unwilling to take the time to learn a different system. What they don’t understand (among a lot of other things) is that eventually their skill set will stagnate, and they’ll be outsourced. They also understand that Macs need far less support.
I do think Apple needs to be more active in their pursuit of enterprise business. Apple’s recent strategy is to dumb down user interfaces to support the average joe buyer. This is great for Joe, but I personally get frustrated when features that allow insight into what’s going on with a computer are deleted. The most recent Airport Utility is a god example. It hardly deserves the word Utility attached to it’s name. IT need the ability to analyze issues and adjust settings. This is the opposite of what Apple’s consumer focus is about. The fact that it just works with minimal human intervention is great for Joe, but not so great for enterprise. If Apple would take some of that huge cash stash and spend it on pro tools for IT, maybe they wouldn’t be so hesitant to move to the Mac/iOS platform. I’ve been using Macs since 1988, and the recent trends toward less flexibility are disturbing. I guess it’s the price of Apple’s success in the consumer market.
Oh. Thankfully you can still download, install and us the older Airport Utility without wiping out the new one.
OFF TOPIC!
Apple’s Airport Utility FIASCO is easily solvable:
1) Combine version 5, the functional version, with version 6, the mickey mouse dumdum version. Apple already set the precedent. You use the ‘Advanced’ button to access EVERYTHING found in version 5. It’s that easy. Oh how I wish I was running that project. Someone’s head would be on a plate. Users would rave with approval and joy once again.
2) You boot out the current head of Apple’s Documentation Team and put his/her head on a platter right next to the head of the Airport Utility project. I’m no language or writing savant by a long shot. But let me at that Editor position and I’d induce sanity into the team once again. It used to be there! It will be again.
I am ashamed of these two aspects of Apple. Ya got that evil anti-Apple trolls! Lookie here! Apple fanbois know when to stick it to Apple. Why are you surprised? Oh I know. Because you’re haters.
Recently I replaced my Apple Airport Extreme Base Station with a Motorola cable modem/Switch/WiFi router and am so glad I can now easily get into the guts of the settings.
There’s user-friendliness. Then their’s user-anti-functionality. The two should never meet. User-friendliness and full functionality are NEVER mutually exclusive. I’ll show you why! Very naughty Apple! FIX IT!
But back to the subject of the thread…
Yeah. I downloaded the older one (5.6 I think). On the advanced screens in 5.6 you could go to wireless clients, and see their rates and signal to noise ratios. This would allow you to pick channels based on at least some data, rather than just changing channels with absolutely no clue whether what you did was better or worse. This stuff really bothered me and I’m not even an IT guy. I still think Apple’s AirPort Extreme is right up there in performance and performance, and is priced competitively when you look at their competition when you consider performance, reliability AND end user satisfaction. The software update to v6 however was a real step,backward. I only brought this up as an example of where Apple needs to improve to ever make inroads into enterprise. I’m thrilled with the Basestation, but the dumbing down process has got to stop. I agree. Heads should have rolled….over Airport Utility and iTunes 11.
I guess as a final comment on Airport Utility though. It needs virtually no IT support. It starts itself, connects itself, chooses the channels itself, works forever without rebooting (virtually never have to restart it other than a brute force reboot everything in the house to recover quickly excercise). My Motorola Surfboard however needs a restart almost every month to clear it and restore throughput.
I’m OK with the gradual de-bugging of iTunes 11. But I’ve also heard many complaints. My current biggest peeve with 11 is that I have to sync my iPod Touch 4 over and over and over to actually get a complete sync to occur. Not acceptable. Clunk Clunk Clunk.
My iPad and iPhone 4 sync OK. My biggest gripe is no multiple windows any more. You can’t look at a shared library in one window and your own in another. You can’t work playlists by dragging from your library into a separate playlist or multiple playlist windows. It’s ridiculous. In iTunes 11 you have to mouse, select, scroll scroll scroll, then select add to playlist. I went back to 10.7. They dumbed 11 down to where anyone that uses it seriously for a music management tool is left out in the cold. I would have fired the entire iTunes development team.
The mantra in the ’80s and ’90s was “No one ever got fired for buying IBM stuff.” You bought the biggest guys stuff and you hoped they could make it work under the service contract.
That same mindset has bounced over to the IT world in the ’90s and ’00s regarding Microsoft.
Not that Microsoft can come through on that, but the mindset of the IT heads reporting to the CEOs still holds, unfortunately….
IT ‘professionals’.
Is that a modern oxymoron?
The future passes them by…
So why does IT keep saying it plans to buy Microsoft technologies that users don’t want?
Luddites of the 21st Century
That’s a bad thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Supporting iOS in the enterprise is suicide. I’d have to lay off 95% of my department if we moved away from Microsoft. iOS just doesn’t come with the same support requirements as does Windows. If my department layed-off 19 out of every 20 team members, my team would no longer justify my big salary and V.P. status. Then where would I be?
Problem is, Apple don’t care about Mac’s in the enterprise anymore.
For years I’ve been running Mac studios in larger PC based organisations, and IT (and Apple for that matter) can make your life hell.
I’ve learned to keep out of their way, do nothing that upsets their Applecart (or rather Microsoftcart).
Keep networks, printing, everything separate, save email and internet if I have to.
They then grudgingly accept the Macs existence, because they have no ammo to shoot you down. About every 6 months they do try to though.
Apple gave up a long time ago on Mac’s in the enterprise, and with the right leadership they could have owned it.
I admit, a non-design or print/web based company would have been difficult or impossible for Apple to ever gain a foothold, but it should be really easy for Apple to create end-to-end solutions for design agencies, print shops and web design businesses.
All it needs is understanding of what businesses need end-to-end, create the software that ties it all together from the creative to the invoicing end, start with the businesses you already have a foothold in, and in a decade you’d have some traction.
You then show those business using Macs end-to-end, show the cost benefits (no huge IT costs for a starter), and then sell that idea to other businesses. At least it’s a plan, more than Apple seem to have right now.
Unfortunately, Apple seem obsessed with selling the ‘next big thing’, not realising that the ‘previous big thing’ still has users, market share and profit in it, still to be extracted.
Those users, then see Windows eat away at the market and mind share, because Apple has lost interest.
Meanwhile now, when I walk into suppliers premises that ought to be Macs end-to-end, I see more soulless PC boxes running Windows 7.
Or if you are at Cornell University and Bill Gates builds you a very large expensive hall, dedicated to computer study what computers do you think the college is going to stick all the staff with? Doesn’t take an Apple Genius to figure out who influences the purchasing power. Don’t even have the Apple Rep give talks on campus anymore. Used to be a regular thing.
Meanwhile, just over the hill, Ithaca College has tons of Macs.