MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Try getting thru to the Windows entrenched IT guys. Not gonna happen.

We're doing a gradual roll out of Macs, since the cost of buying 25 PCs and 25 licences for them to access the Server is more expensive than buying 25 iMacs.

Plus, buying Macs from the Refurb store saves you even more money!

 Rules

This is all old hat to us, but seeing it in a magazine for CIOs is impressive. It'd be like Inside the Vatican running an article titled, "Atheism: Not Such a Bad Idea After All."

"Try getting thru to the Windows entrenched IT guys. Not gonna happen."

Don't have to. Apple is doing an end run around drones like that by placing Apple technology in the hands of the end users (iPods, iPhones) and creating a situation where the end users will demand the IT drones give them what they want.

After all, don't the IT guys work FOR the people they are supposed to be supporting?

Time for a generational change in IT department. Need to start firing the job security crowd ... they are too costly to keep around a business any more.

They want to keep down the ruinous Microsoft path, fire their ass from the job.

@Stephan

Apple is moving forward and Microsoft is going backwards!

Those companies who transitioned to Vista are now being afforded the opportunity to "downgrade" to XP. Lenovo said that they will extend the XP program until summer of '08 in spite of the January '08 deadline imposed by Microsoft.

I'll tell you what's not gonna' happen; Microsoft is not going to cut off support for XP come January.

How much you wanna' bet we'll see a SP3 and 4 for XP?

Where I work the IT guy is name Nick Burns and he's a real condescending asshole.

Winston exaggerated just a bit, but certainly had the right idea. Ed Stephan has a point, though ... most of the support people have a vested interest in keeping Windows around and will fight tooth and claw to slow the invasion. My daughter-in-law-elect (son's fiance) was a bit concerned about supporting Macs until she got to play with my son's Apples. Took the Certification course and passed the second time around. Now she's as big a Mac-addict as he is. And knows more answers, too.
The take-over will not be instantaneous, it may not ever become a Mac-dominated environment, but it will progress. Take five years to break into the double-digit market-share? OK. Five more to become the #1 enterprise brand? OK.
DLMeyer - the Voice of G.L.Horton's Stage Page Pod Cast

@macromancer

no the IT guys do not work FOR the employees, that is the point. Death to the "entrenched" IT guy

the "end around" might just be the CEO using macs and loving it, and TELLING the IT guys to learn to support it or be fired

"After all, don't the IT guys work FOR the people they are supposed to be supporting?"

This is what I thought too. I have always said IT is the only department that can constantly deny their customers. IT and Accounting are way too powerful, they make nearly all the decisions concerning the employees. Accounting, to a certain extent, I can understand. Once IT allows Macs on their network they lose a bit of power, and they don't like that one bit.

@DLMeyer

your statement "until she got to play with my son's Apples" confuses me a little. what are you REALLY saying there.

No I'm not.

The problem is this...(not troll, facts)

Corporations need CHOICE of hardware vendors because different ones supply different needs the market has.

Corporations want a Operating System that's UNIVERSAL AMONGST all these hardware choices so the investment in software and training can be used.

Corporations want to be able to port their SOFTWARE choices and not be tied to a particular hardware lockin.


Apple DOES NOT...

1: Provide Mac OS X seperate from their hardware.

2: Provide a adequate range of hardware choices nor can supply the volume necessary for worldwide coverage.


Apple DOES...

1: Have a flaky history

2: Makes hardware choices against the needs of most of the computing public. (like mandating glossy screens for instance)

3: Charges high prices for their hardware and/or doesn't offer stripped versions of their hardware.

4: Seems not to care about the corporate market, instead focusing on the consumer and media markets.


Ok , Apple does make great software and hardware Yes Apple is a hardware comapany and a OS war with M$ would be futile because it's already entrenched.

The only way to win is if Microsoft just gave up and quit, then there would be a mad rush to Apple hardware and Apple could release Mac OS X seperatly.

@anthony007
Nick Burns runs an all Apple outfit too! Still one of my favorite skits!

Fatal is right. That's how it works. Look at how the Blackberry came to be a supported. Macs, iPhones, and iPods are following the same trajectory.

A long time ago, when most people rode horses, and did not have cars, alot of people said the auto would never catch on-that is was just a fad for rich people. Some people even went so far as to say they'd NEVER buy mechanical transportation. Well, those dinosaurs are all dead now.

A lot of people still believe M$ has a future too. I'm not so sure. Ok, they've got IT sewed up for now, but considering the extremely large percentage of college-age Apple users, it's only a matter of time until the Doze dinosaurs are dead too.

@IT Pro at work, Mac lover at home,

you are a troll

your post is filled with absolutisms (is that a word), when any one of those things can change in an instant. I.E. they could easily contract with 10 more assembly houses to produce a ton more macs, thus lowering their price with such high volumes.

A flaky history? flamebait if i ever saw it.

yes your post was troll

listen people, NO ONE, especially Apple, wants the planet to be 100% Mac. They do what they do VERY well. However, they dont fit into some situations, like cubicle office data entry, as well as say a $300 PC.
Apple fanboys: calm down, apple will never be microsoft (thank god)

Microsoft fanboys: relax, you can have the drone corporate world, apple WILL take over any place were creativity and productivity are required.

I envision the PC world being 35% Mac, 35% Windows, 35% Linux... the extra 5% is because NO estimate is 100% accurate.

(all above estimates are +/- 6.2)

Apologies to Foxworthy. But if you think the corporate and consumer markets can meaningfully be treated as distinct, you might be a PC thinker. Just like your ilk who endlessly debate whether Apple is a hardware or software company, or whether Apple can survive without utter market share dominance--you'll never "get it," you poseurs, so just GTFO.

I have always said that Macintosh is for people who NEED TO GET STUFF DONE. Windows is for people who like to pretend that what they do is important.

If what they did was truly important, then they would never be able to afford to deal with the time lost in trying to get that work done by using such an unreliable and unstable OS.

@Ed Stephan

It has happened.
Sure is tough - but changes do and have occured.

w

@IT Pro at work, Mac lover at home

"Apple DOES... 1: Have a flaky history"?

And Vista would be your example of a stable business operation? Amazing that people through the years suffer through such shoddy work from Microsoft and call it success.

@ Ed Stephen. "Try getting thru to the Windows entrenched IT guys. Not gonna happen."

Unfortunately, you're right. My IT dept have minds closed even tighter than 'IT Pro at work, Mac lover at home'.

Every day, I watch my Windoze using colleagues struggle to achieve things that are a breeze on my Mac. Yesterday, one of my staff lost the ability to open Word on her PC for 4 hours, while IT bumbled around trying to fix it. Those time costs never get recorded or mentioned.

"IT Pro at work, Mac lover at home"
Your argument does not wash. Corporations now seem to be quite willing to hang their operations on a monopolistic supplier of software at exorbitant prices without regard to efficiency.
Would they not be much better off with a competent supplier of a hardware and software package that actually supplies better performance at a lower price?

x and Macromancer, you guys are right. The old guard PC-hypnotized, more-concerned-about-their-job-security-than-the people-they're-supposed-to-be-supporting IT retards have got to go.

jay, I'd appreciate some acknowledgement if you're going to quote from my posts verbatim like that (just kidding). I did just say the same thing the same way last week on a different topic on MDN.

However, I see the same trend you see about all the college-age Mac users who'll be graduating soon demanding to continue using Macs once they hit the work world. That's going to upset the Apple (no pun intended) cart in corporate America in the next few years.

CEOs with iPhones may help change things, too.

Peace.
Olmecmystic

fatal said: "your statement "until she got to play with my son's Apples" confuses me a little. what are you REALLY saying there."
Sorry, his G3 iBook and G4 tower. I believe she'd already played with his other equipment.
and: "they could easily contract with 10 more assembly houses to produce a ton more macs, thus lowering their price with such high volumes.
A flaky history? flamebait if i ever saw it."
They could, but would that be a "good plan"? Apple has priced their models into the middle to the top of the market and they can do well there because they don't have to sacrifice any of their margin to support loss leaders at the cheap end of the market.
Flaky History ! Do you not remember the years between Jobs? The years when Apple attempted to court the bottom feeders? I've made no secret of my lack of love for the single-digit OSs. I won't argue the case "they were the best of their time" ... they might have been. There were errors made before Jaguar, and the single-button mouse is still a mistake, but we're getting over that. All of that. Starting with the iMac halo, then the iPod halo, and the iTunes halo, now the iPhone halo ... and now iWork'08 is silencing more of the critics' FUD.
Microsoft's history has been quite stable, by comparison. But ... no halo's and it looks like the business-as-usual run is over - or MS is over. Gates and Balmer must be praying that Leopard crashes on take-off to give them a second chance to get back in the game. Just because their product is, and has always been, crap does not mean they have not been stable and growing.
Dave

Anyone notice the date on the original article? Welcome to almost two months ago MDN.

Have you been spying on us Dad?!?! How did you know that my fiance has been "playing with my apples"? That's private.

And what do you mean she's "got more answers" now? Huh?

That's it.... the wedding's off...

Apple does not seem interested in the corporate world and they have several areas that they cannot compete with MS at this moment (large corporate email among other). They seem to only what to crack the opportunities offered by small to medium businesses.

Another point is that even if from the back end perspective Apple is cheaper than MS, the offering on the Lunix side is free and as good as what Apple is offering. Hence from a server back end perspective open source makes more sense and Lunix may end up winning on the servers of the corporate world.

From a user perspective, we will probably see more and more Macs and with that we may see more choices. I find the offering from a desktop perspective lacking, a mid range tower would go a long way into helping Apple make more inroads in the corporate world but they may be holding to that one for until they have a larger market share since such a system could easily impact the imac and/or Mac Pro sales.

I do believe that overall TCO between a MAC and PC favors Apple. I do not believe that Apple is that much better than PC and depending on the task that needs to be performed by employees, the TCO may very likely be the same for people like secretaries and senior management who uses Office suites, emails and browse the web.

It’s going to be interesting in the next few years and indeed more and more people will try to run everything using Apple hardware, it may prove interesting and what will be found coming out of these companies may prove surprising to a lot of readers of MDN and maybe even to myself!

I swear this very article was posted previously in MDN this past August. I read it through and it sounded quite familiar. Good reading none-the-less. I did send a link of this article the first time around to the IT director at my company...

MDN Magic Word: "fear" ... No comment ...

It'd be like Inside the Vatican running an article titled, "Atheism: Not Such a Bad Idea After All."

Or American Atheist running an article titled "Catholicism: Not Such a Bad Idea After All".

Diversity and tolerance are two-way streets.

CIO: Apple’s Mac OS X is the most cost effective operating system

Finally, someone on top gets it that total cost of ownership (TCO) matters.

What good is a low upfront cost, when you pay it back through babysitting and support? In a Wal-Mart economy, where no penny outside the boardroom is safe, it's amazing the Windows PC has any corporate presence.

Apple DOES... Makes hardware choices against the needs of most of the computing public. (like mandating glossy screens for instance)

Actually Apple did the research and found most people DO want glossy screens. It's just the matte lovers who make the noise.

Actually Apple did the research and found most people DO want glossy screens.

I wish that were true, unfortunatly it isn\'t. Apple is indeed shoving glossy screens down our throats without considering the needs of those who have to sit hours in front of their machines all day, dodging reflections.

(typing this from my matte screen MacBook Pro)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061018-8022.html

http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=527

http://macslash.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=192§ion=AskMacSlash&aid=2

Bingo @Connor, now if Apple would only listen.

I\'m not buying reflective screens, it\'s also turned off my buying of anything Apple as well.

Especially those cheap LCD screen iPod Touch, iPhone and Fatty.

Apple has seriously disappointed me.