When she noticed I was looking at a 500 GB Time Capsule, she asked me if I was part of a small business. In casual conversation I discovered that she had been a coder (in C and C++) - and yet she hadn’t graduated yet to the Apple Genius Bar. However I was waylaid by one of Apple’s shop assistants (or as Apple calls them, Personal Shopping Specialists), whose name was Anna. Over the weekend I went into an Apple Store to buy a cable and came out with both a cable and an Apple Time Capsule in my hands. It sounds very sober, doesn’t it? But actually it’s not a very sober way to look at things. Indeed, according to reports, Apple has tripled the market for the iPhone with the recent deals it has made - making the world’s best known phone available to a subscriber base of over 450 million people. And in harmony with that, Apple is also stalking the telco world, stitching new iPhone deals with wireless carriers. Apple may have stolen the music market with the iPod, but the video market is going to be a much rougher competition. Taking a broad perspective, perhaps the most important current focus for Apple is to gain firmer control of the home entertainment market. So now the door is open for Apple in many organizations. The “compatibility objection” was put to bed.
#Microsoft silverlight for mac hoopla issues mac#
The corporate resistance to the Mac began to dissolve when it became possible to run both Windows XP and OS X on a Mac, using VMware ( VMW ) or Parallels. Enthusiasm for the Mac is clearly skyrocketing in consumerland (click here and here if you want more details) so it’s clear where the pressure is coming from. There’s no mystery to why this is happening.
These figures are 3 times higher than they were a year ago. If you want further statistical confirmation, in the same survey Changewave found that corporate buying intentions for the Mac are currently at 7% of companies (for laptops) and 6% (for desktops).
And note that pretty soon, the Windows XP option will disappear from this table. It’s difficult to read these figures without concluding that Apple will have a role to play in the corporation - not particularly because OS X is so good, but because Vista has failed so badly. It included the figures shown in the table below, relating to corporate users' satisfaction of with different OSes. ChangeWave, a research company that regularly surveys both the consumer and business market published some thought-provoking research at the beginning of April. It doesn’t matter much though, even if Apple isn’t so hot to trot, it is going to be dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the business computing market. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. Our DNA is as a consumer company - for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. Steve Jobs definitively announced as much to Apple staff a few years ago, when he emphasized that “Apple is a consumer electronics company.” He reinforced this message in March of this year saying: In theory, Apple has no interest at all in business computing.
Business workers are particularly covetous of Mac laptops, because they are both a computing device and a status symbol - especially the new razor thin MacBook Airs. This has moved beyond the marketing departments and graphical design shops, where Macs were always part of the scenery. Last week, Business Week published an article on Apple’s ( NASDAQ: AAPL) potential in the business market - making the point that business staff are frequently requesting Macs rather than PCs.
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