John Siracusa comments on why Apple doesn’t cater to the business crowd.[...] Thanks to lcfiner for providing this nice story on Digg (more than 550Diggs).
What other users say about this:
chrismag1979: I dare you to bring your iMac on NASDAQ and on NYSE and people would see you as gay.
jabberwolf: Apple’s “Open Directory” is atrocious and is no where near the control that MS Active directory has (which lead to the demise of Novell) .
OSX servers are expensive but the the NOS is cheap. A good route if you’re doing simple directory and print shares.
OPENBASE SQL are nightmares when dealing with SQL clients sorry but true.
MYSQL is usually used with Apache, and only a few other programs.
Apples negligence costs them a huge market.
People who know an OS at work that runs everything, and also at home that runs everything, are in no way motivated by OSX that has little collaboration with programs at work and in may other markets. Now Apple basically thumbs its nose/responsibility on the business end?!?!!
Gee no wonder the iphone did so dismal in that market as well.
astrosmash: By now, people should understand that Apple does not enter a market segment unless the following two things are true:
- The current solution/technology sucks.
- Apple has what they feel is a dramatically different and better approach to the problem.
The fact is this: Microsoft is entrenched in the large-scale enterprise IT departments. People complain about Windows desktop software all the time, and rightfully so, but IT departments generally do not complain about MS’s enterprise solutions. And give MS credit. The enterprise was anything but guaranteed for Microsoft, but they worked hard at catering to corporate IT departments and it has paid off.
The bottom line is that there isn’t a really a problem with today’s enterprise software, at lease none that Apple has solutions for, so they’ll stay away. Instead, they’ll cater to small groupware and small business, for which they have some compelling solutions.
etnu: What needs to business users have that consumers don’t also have? Sure, we may not use spread sheets or word processors as often at home, but we still use them. Most “enterprise” needs boil down to security, stability, and compatibility, not actual unique feature sets.
This is, of course, unless you’re talking about servers. In the server market, there isn’t really much of a “consumer” segment yet, though the media center type of machines are gradually taking on that role.
Trueblood: There’s always this built-in assumption that everyone who tries it will naturally prefer a Mac to a Windows box. This is not the case.
My personal experience is that my Mac was nice, pretty, and I enjoyed using it, and what it did, it did well; the list of “what it did” was too short, there were always little one-off things that I had to use Windows for. I switched back to XP, then to Vista. I’ve never been more satisfied.
It’s not just me. A number of senior executives at work bought Macs (mostly Macbook Pros) to see what all the fuss was about. Responses ranged from “this thing sucks” to “eh, it’s ok, but I’ll just stick with Windows” — not a single one of them stuck with the platform. Not one.
f0dder: Corporations are right to ignore Apple. People complain Microsoft for being a monopoly. But when Apple is the only game in town for machine, parts service etc.. Who’s being the monopolist? Get burned by Apple you’re stuck w/Apple. Get burned by Dell you still have HP, Acer, Lenovo, IBM plus hundreds of different small shop.
Apple isn’t ignoring enterprise, enterprise want competition. When it makes sense, enterprise will abandon Microsoft.
GreatDrok: You know the funny thing about all this is that I remember the time before Windows was in the enterprise very well. At that time we were running Sun servers ad desktops. A few people at our site had Macs but there was also a growing number of Windows PCs (this around the time 3.0 came out). For network access you used a terminal such as the VT220 I had, the PCs were just that, personal computers without access to any data that didn’t arrive via floppy. We did install simple serial connections and VT100 emulators so the PC was able to be used as a dumb terminal but they could also do things terminals couldn’t like graphing and WYSIWYG wordprocessing. Gradually, the PC got more popular and it ended up having to be incorporated as a standard part of our IT infrastructure. Essentially, it was people buying these things and then wanting to connect them to the rest of the network that drove Windows into the enterprise. Today, PCs are everywhere but they are very very basic boxes used simply to run office and do some fairly simple web based tasks and e-mail. However, Macs are coming in too which are capable to interoperating nicely now since they can run the Windows stuff under emulation (rather like the old VT100 emulator when Windwos first appeared) but a Mac can do so much more than a PC so the enterprise is going to start finding them more often and it will change. Apple doesn’t need to change the Mac to fit the enterprise as it is today, the enterprise just has to catch up like it did when Windows PCs first came in.
pyrates: Enterprises mainly don’t want to be tied to one maker of a product. Doesn’t matter how good it is, they want competition. Then if one maker of the product gets to be too much, they can switch to a cheaper one. That’s what they like. The only exception is software, they don’t mind. But at the very least, they want competitors for hardware. Plus where can you get $400 dollar mac’s from? No where. You can find them with PC’s.
Billions: Maybe in YOUR workplace, Apple seems to be ignoring you - but in advertising, design, video and audio, it’s always been a professional option, and often, the only professional choice.
streak: It’s my opinion Apple focuses on what Steve Jobs knows. The company dabbles in other areas, but if Jobs doesn’t understand the market, then he’s not going to feel in charge, and consequently that part of Apple won’t get the same attention or receive as many dollars for R&D and marketing.
neodorian: Because when you need to buy a whole bunch of workstations, it doesn’t make much sense to spend the extra money for a more aesthetically pleasing form factor.
ars3n: Apple is going to first take over your home and then when you get to work, you’re going to say “Why can’t I use Mac…I use Mac at home…I am comfortable with working in a Mac environment….I used to have a PC but it was wack…why is my company wack like my old PC” and everyone’s going to want to use a Mac at work.
archer75: Would be nice if they’d put some focus on gaming, support more video cards and provide a system for the home user that has upgradable video cards.
dimitrisokolov: It’s the same ass clowns in “The Enterprise” that keep buying expensive EMC storage for millions when they could have just bought 1 petabyte of xRaid storage for less?
Big corporations are really stupid when it comes to IT purchases. They waste money on software and hardware. They buy software like SAP, Siebel, Oracle, Weblogic and have the time they have no clue how many licenses they even need or are using.
bryanyeager: I wouldn’t exactly call the creative or graphic arts industry “non-enterprise”. more and more of those companies are getting into digital asset management and a number of other server-intensive, enterprise solutions to add to their businesses. and what’s running a lot of these services? Xserve. most Xinet installs run on an Xserve (and run very well), as well as a slew of other solutions. remember, xinet not only serves companies, but (very large, very important) clients as well.
with the decline in AppleTalk use and prevalence of SAMBA (for file serving) and CUPS (for printing), running Mac servers to serve both Macs and PCs is as easy as ever.