eWeek: Apple Could Broaden Its Enterprise Presence

This yearis Macworld keynote is bound to be one of the most watched in Appleis history. Why? Because Apple has somehow wrangled the enviable distinction of being an industry leader, even though it only commands small piece of the computer industryis pie.

Many will be watching, and hoping for Appleis CEO and resident cool-guy, Steve Jobs, to announce a cheaper version of the iPod while others look for announcements concerning AppleWorks and iLife enhancements. These topics lean heavily towards to consumer side of the business and, as many Apple watchers know, lately Apple has been testing the waters over in enterprise IT land with Xserve and OS X Server.

In a recent article in eWeek, David Morgenstern diverges from the popular predictions and wishes of whatis to come out of Steve Jobsi keynote and posts a wish list that is enterprise and IT heavy. Hereis a bit of his article titled, Mac Enterprise Computing: The Return of the King:

At its release, the 128K Mac was famously touted as the computing device "for the rest of us": It was aimed at anyone who wanted a graphical desktop and wasnit ready to pony up the $12,000 for the Lisa, Appleis remarkable workstation aimed at enterprise computing. Most other contemporary computing?business or otherwise?bent to the will of the command-line interface. That forbidding standard served a variety of personal computers as well as so-called minicomputers and mainframe terminals.

Despite a premium price and some technological limitations, the Mac caught on with a wide range of users, including businesses and even large enterprises. This history may be difficult to swallow for a generation weaned on Microsoft Windows the realities of Appleis current market share.

Mr. Morgenstern goes on to list some of what he believes Steve Jobs will announce during his keynote. Stop by eWeek for the full article.