Why people keep bringing this up, I'll never know.

Of COURSE no IT department is going to be impressed by this. It's aimed squarely at potential home "switchers." Not businesses.

BTW, not critisizing this article, I've seen this whole IT thing mentioned by people on lots of message boards. Since people are saying it, might as well write an article about it...but who the heck is thinking this in the first place?

told you so

Couldn't agree more.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again Apple doesn’t really care all that much about Enterprise, they do to a degree but its not their prime focus.

Why should they spend considerable amount of time trying to convince Joe IT CIO and his gang of Win-clones to support Macs when they don’t know or don’t want to know anything about a Mac.

Clearly Apple is betting on the home market which is every bit as (if nor more important). Apple only has to convince one person in a home set up to buy a Mac… the person with the checkbook.

the one comment i can't seem to wrap my head around is this:

"the fact that Apple will not be offering any Windows support for its hardware."

last i checked, you don't call HP or Dell with questions regarding windows, you call microsoft... They may have basic info at Dell or HP, but other than that, all they have to offer is microsoft's tech support hotline... i'm pretty sure thats what apple would do too. you don't call apple when photoshop is giving you problems, you call adobe!

2nd, OF COURSE the THREE machines that they have released are not geared towards IT... they haven't even released one geared towards A/V pros, apple's core (no pun intended.) let them show us the rest of their line before poo-pooing it as a viable alternative to windoze boxes, i'm sure they have taken all that into consideration and are working on a machine to meet those needs. if ANYTHING, apple "might" release an emac-like machine for school and enterprise applications, then i think the story would change quite a bit...

personally, i've just been waiting a long time to play guild wars on a mac laptop

To be fair British IT managers are the most ignorant and thick members of a pretty blinkered bunch. They still think that Bil Gates is at the cutting edge of technology. Even worse, LDV vans (they still going) and Tower Hamlets College (low end of a mediocre further education system) are hardly renowned for their stunning achievements in their respective sectors.

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Actual Reality wrote:


last i checked, you don't call HP or Dell with questions regarding windows, you call microsoft...

Yes, but if Dell puts something new in their hardware that makes Windows crash, MS will send you back to Dell. And it WILL be Dell's problem to fix.

If the same thing happens where Apple does something to their hardware that makes Windows do something weird...well they don't have to do a damn thing about it if they don't want to!

Which is probably fine for most home users since we're probably talking about tiny quirks, but for an IT professional that's a pretty BIG distinction!

I full agree with earlier posts, Apple is not targeting the Enterprise environment. Their target market is the casual home user that is searching for a simple OS with a minimum of problems with virus, pop-up and malware.

It is interresting though....the "brains" in IT departments know that moving to OS X would endanger their kingdoms and annual budgets spent "solving" the host of problems caused by the "swiss cheese" operating system called Windows xP. Job SECURITY through XP insecurity....you just gotta love it!

From my experience there will be a whole lot of corporate laptop users who WILL buy into the dual boot thing if they can wrangle permission from their IT staffs.

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Guest wrote:
From my experience there will be a whole lot of corporate laptop users who WILL buy into the dual boot thing if they can wrangle permission from their IT staffs.

I agree with that but this is still a case of Apple selling to the USER, not the IT department.

It is the user in that case who decides he or she wants such a laptop. The dual-booting nature may allow them to convince their IT department to go along with it.

That's great and all, but it's still nowhere close to "selling to IT departments."

In respect of offering Windows support I can offer this little snippet which is why Apple shouldn't touch it with a barge pole. My girlfriend suddenly found that her word would not work so she rang HP support line. This person in India spent an hour and a half trying various solutions for her to try. When she told me about this still unsolved problem ( he was going to ring back the following day) I asked how long had her new office suite been loaded. About a month she replied to which I offerred ha she actually registered the software . No she had not but at no time she told me did she get a warning that by not doing so, as I suggested was the problem, the software automaticlly stopped functioning.

So HP had spent an hour and a hlf trying to sort out a purely MS problem an desppite being (supposedly) a far more knowledgable pc person than me had not thought of this pretty obvious answer. If this is typical how much time effort andd money do the pc boys throw at solving even basic MS problems while the latter sits on its ass reaping the benefits ?

Most IT managers (I used to be one) worship Microsoft, even declaring as their "strategy" to buy Microsoft products only. IT departments have become extremely dull places. I don't think many CTOs will contemplate OS X or Linux or anything out of the mainstream.

But that doesn't mean Apple can't grow. Besides the consumer market, there are small/medium businesses and some few innovative larger IT organizations. There's plenty of room for growth.

[quote="Small White Car"]

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Guest wrote:
From my experience there will be a whole lot of corporate laptop users who WILL buy into the dual boot thing if they can wrangle permission from their IT staffs.

Totally agree it will come from the end user not from most of the it clones who have little or no interest in change, and potentially losing their jobs. This will give one lesss reason for the IT luddites from preventing staff from a real choice.

If Apple will make any headway into the non-creative areas, it will be in laptops. This is the area where Apple is somewhat price competitive with the offerings from Dell, HP and Lenova. Size, weight and battery life become big issues as well, which gives Apple a bit of an advantage. Also, a lot of individual laptop purchases within large corporations are usually driven by individual upper management executives. If they're high enough up the food chain they usually get what they want, IT be damned. So one of Apple's trojan horses into the enterprise could be the PHB (Pointy Haired Boss from Dilbert) that really wants the shiny, sleek and fast dual boot MacBook Pro. Then imagine said PHB putting on a fab Keynote presentation and showing the other PHBs what you can do. Pretty soon all the other PHBs will be clamoring for their own MacBook Pros.

It sounds like the questioners didn't understand what Boot Camp is for, or what people are expected to do with it.

Of course no one is going to buy a Mac and JUST run windows on it and ignore OS X! That is not the idea here. With Boot Camp, if someone decides to switch to a Mac, they know that _if_ OS X has a problem they can't solve they can simply switch back to windows later, or use OS X most of the time, and bring up windows only when they need it.

Boot Camp is like a backup plan. I'm betting that a lot of people will buy macs planning to add windows later, and then discover that OS X always offers better ways of doing what they need, and never get around to actually installing windows.

According to this panel, I guess the IT department at Aozora Bank must be full of idiots when they decided to choose Macs for their enterprise.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/04/03.12.shtml

ITs, like most of us, do not like change. . . too risky! Get in your comfort zone and stay there. They make up lots of "reasons" why the Mac platform is not good business. Too expensive, not compatible. . . the choir knows.
No guts no glory!

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Guest wrote:
According to this panel, I guess the IT department at Aozora Bank must be full of idiots when they decided to choose Macs for their enterprise.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/04/03.12.shtml

The bank is quoted as saying that they're moving to Macs "because of Mac OS X's stability."

So they're switching to OS X. And these IT guys were talking about running Windows on Macs.

These have nothing to do with each other.

Firgive me, any IT people reading this, for the comment I'm about to make...

The fact is, IT people want to do as little as possible. Anything that means a change in their worldview (WinTel) does not excite them. It worries them. The IT people I know and work with are among the most uncurious, least excited by technology, and let's face it...lazy.

Anything that could break their hegemony is seen as a threat and vocally disparaged. Let's face it, IT people have it pretty good with the job security that Window's flaws provides, and the ease that Microsoft's committment to backwards-compatibility gives them.

I speak as an employee of a large, Windows-based corporation, who works in an Apple envoronment. We have our own Mac IT department staffed with Windows people who know nothing about Macs.

The sole purpose (and unwritten mission / goal) of any IT department is to introduce into the infrastructure any complexity that ensures long-term employment.

I could make, perhaps, a 6-figure income if I truly charged all my family and friends for supporting their WinTel boxes. Gee, a 7-figure salary could be in the works!

For those (family & friends) with whom I evangelized to go Mac, the only time I hear from them is when they want to actually DO something more productive!

...because Macs threaten their livelihoods.

Most medium-sized and large enterprises could slash their IT support budgets if they moved to Macs, and most small (i.e., less than 50 employees) companies could eliminate their IT support budget entirely.

I work for a company with about 20 employees. Our IT support costs a minimum of $2,500 a month, or about $125 a workstation. And that's if nothing goes wrong all month. A serious problem can easily double that amount.

If we ran, say, a mixture of Powerbooks, iMacs, and Mac Minis with an XServe in the server closet, I could manage the entire network in my spare time. Our IT support budget would be $0 a month.

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ericmurphy wrote:
...because Macs threaten their livelihoods.

If we ran, say, a mixture of Powerbooks, iMacs, and Mac Minis with an XServe in the server closet, I could manage the entire network in my spare time. Our IT support budget would be $0 a month.

That's how we did it in every small (10-15 people) agency I ever worked in. it was me and whatever other person knew Macs. We were the IT department.

I don't think the cheaper is better theory works anymore. The new Intel Macs are proving they are equal or better than any PC on the market.

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Guest wrote:
I don't think the cheaper is better theory works anymore. The new Intel Macs are proving they are equal or better than any PC on the market.

being better has nothing to do with it! Cheaper is cheaper....that's the bottom line.
Don't forget too that most users at work also use a Windows box at home. Everyone's happy with the hand/eye skills required. Change to Macs at work means reskilling your workforce: say bye-bye to productivity for several weeks...at least!

"Most IT managers (I used to be one) worship Microsoft, even declaring as their "strategy" to buy Microsoft products only."

I got a good laugh from this comment. They may call it a "strategy", but really, how many of them serious look at other options.

"IT departments have become extremely dull places."

Agreed.

"Other IT bosses on the jury felt that they could get comparable hardware from other companies for much lower prices"

Yeah, because buying as cheaply as you can is always the best route. Ever heard the term you get what you pay for?

I think most people here have got it spot on. I would just add that I'm surprised an IT manager would voice displeasure at a potential "support nightmare" when it's what keeps these people in their jobs. As has already been suggested on here, most IT professionals are holding down jobs that really shouldn't even exist. Have a think what else goes wrong in your workplace as much as IT equipment....? Anything?

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Billy K wrote:
Firgive me, any IT people reading this, for the comment I'm about to make...

The fact is, IT people want to do as little as possible. Anything that means a change in their worldview (WinTel) does not excite them. It worries them. The IT people I know and work with are among the most uncurious, least excited by technology, and let's face it...lazy.

Anything that could break their hegemony is seen as a threat and vocally disparaged. Let's face it, IT people have it pretty good with the job security that Window's flaws provides, and the ease that Microsoft's committment to backwards-compatibility gives them.

I speak as an employee of a large, Windows-based corporation, who works in an Apple envoronment. We have our own Mac IT department staffed with Windows people who know nothing about Macs.

As an IT person myself, I fully agree. There's a lot of deadwood in IT these days, people who fell into it in the late 90s because of the money, who never had a passion for the technology itself. Personally I predate the whole NT4 explosion and cut my IT teeth on NetWare. Although I'm experienced with Windows (let's face it, you have to be) I've never seen it as an ideal solution for anything other than Exchange servers. However, I still get a lot of backlash when people see my PowerBook, and some companies I've done work for won't allow it on their Windows network, apparently because it's a security risk (LOL). Large companies really need to take a long hard look at who they've got in their IT departments and whether these Windows-only people should be in the positions they are. IT moves quickly. If you're resistant to change, you've not picked the right profession.

This is something the TMO snippet of the article missed:

"Only two out of silicon.com's 12-man CIO Jury IT user panel said that being able to run Microsoft Windows on Intel-based Macs would be more likely to make them try-out or switch to Apple desktop hardware in their organisation."

Two out of twelve? That's still 17%.

I think Apple would be ecstatic to get 17% of the enterprise market, don't you?