Guest post by After years of mixed signals, Apple has apparently opened the kimono on its enterprise intentions, announcing a “Mac in the Enterprise” campaign to help large businesses integrate Macs, iPhones, and iPads into their IT ecosystems, InfoWorld reports. “Apple’s Mac focus here is particularly striking, unlike that on the iPhone, which has already made obvious inroads in the enterprise market thanks to Apple’s delivery of business-class management capabilities. By contrast, the Mac’s presence in the business world has been remarkably understated – despite the fact that the Mac population therein reportedly doubled between 2006 and 2008 and looks to grow even more this year.”
Gee, Steve, that’s great that you want to make a commitment to the Enterprise market. Our ecosystem includes limited server room space, and rack mounting. Why did you kill the XServe, and what are you going to do to replace it? Running a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro is NOT an adequate or acceptable substitute. The Mac Mini is too small capability-wise, and the Mac Pro is too big physically. If you want to let us install OS X on non-Mac VM hosts, or license OS X Server to run on somebody else’s hardware… or make a new 1U server… *then* we’re in Business. Until then, please remember that “Enterprise” entails a large number of people who sit in their offices at their keyboards all day long, so fancy “Enterprise” phone-and-tablet management, no matter how impressive, will not catch our attention.
Oh, and one more thing, Steve. You know what we hate most of all in the Enterprise market? Uncertainty.
Speak for yourself, the thing I hate most of all in the Enterprise market is all the Holodeck malfunctions…
You know what I hate most about the enterprise customers – their constant demand that their 30 year old application works flawlessly with the latest and greatest hardware. Stop being a fucking cheapskate and treat your IT infrastructure like a piece of machinery that makes money rather than a burden that you simply don’t have the slightest clue about.
It ain’t limited to just “enterprise” customers. Teachers are just as bad. You’d be amazed how many times a year we get asked why they can’t use MS Works 3.0 anymore, or even DOS-based gradebooks.
On the flip side, it’s sickening how many times companies introduce deliberate incompatibilities one version to the next (like MS Office file formats).
I think it is even more sickening when companies tell developers for years to stop using a particular deprecated API/Framework or to move to a new development tool then suddenly there is a change, compatibility is broken and you have wankers inundate this forum whining that their application called “Wedgy-Bum Express Pro” isn’t working after they’ve upgraded to a new version or installed a service pack.
How many times did Apple tell developers to move to XCode? how many times every year and multiple times during the year did they tell developers to move to XCode and were caught off guard when it came the switch to Intel? how many times have developers been told that they need to start migrating their applications to Cocoa and yet we have idiots who call themselves ‘developers’ ignore this tsunami of advice believing they know better than the Apple engineers.
I agree with you regarding teachers – been there done that and sure as hell happy I’m not back in the IT industry. I swear some of these ‘arm chair IT experts’ who work in non-IT areas don’t have the slightest clue. Just as I am not going to second guess a construction engineer of 20 years experience I sure as heck wouldn’t second guess an IT expert of 20 years if I was a non-IT orientated person. Trust the expert and when it doubt get a second opinion – don’t assume because you have a degree in something that makes you an expert in all areas (aka the MENSA syndrome).
Monkey see, monkey do. Apple itself STILL hasn’t moved several high-profile applications to Cocoa, so calling out other developers is hypocritical.
In all fairness, Apple is in a better position to decide when an app needs porting. A third party not porting their apps is in danger. They don’t know if/when Apple is going to pull the rag under their feet. Apple, on the other hand, knows if they have 3 months or 5 years to port and can make a more educated decision. This gives them a small unfair advantage, but makes their move more understandable.
Apple’s worst move, in this regard, has got to be the 64-bit Carbon bait and switch.
You tend to find that Apple when they develop a new API they’ll use their own ‘in house’ applications along with operating system components to put it to some real world sue before putting it out to the public. There needs to be constant attention by third party developers about the direction of Apple – if Apple replaces QuickDraw with Quartz you don’t want 4-5 years before updating your code base – you do it immediately even if you don’t activate the code because of performance penalties at the current moment in time. Even if there are features missing then gradually start writing code now, maintain the old code so that when the API is feature complete it is possible to make the switch over rather then suddenly start writing code once the API is feature complete.
I agree the transition to 64bit was cocked up where they should have just come straight out that they’re not going to provide 64bit Carbon but with that being said Apple hardly made it a secret that it preferred developers to move to Cocoa ASAP for the sake of long term future proofing. Back when Cocoa was first developed it was designed as a bridge between Classic and Mac OS X native – that alone should have been a hint that it was training wheels but not something one should rely on forever.
What evidence do you have that there hasn’t been piecemeal migration? If you actually read what I posted in other posts on this story I have clearly stated that businesses need to do gradual migrations rather than waiting till the last minute. When it comes to Apple, for all we know Apple could have been doing a gradual migration for the last couple of years but you haven’t noticed it – moving to Cocoa hardly results in a massive sign appearing each time an application loads with series of can-can dancers singing, “this is a Cocoa app which makes it not crap thus makes the migration away from Carbon a complete wrap”.
Edited 2011-01-08 01:07 UTC
The real problem is that IT does’t really have control over IT. Decisions are made by managers, despite IT objections and then it’s up to IT to maintain it.
What I hate the most about enterprise IT is that no one writes any documentation of, if they do write it, then it’s unmaintained, outdated and wrong.
The norm is that there’s always a few machines that no one knows what they do or why they are doing it, but chaos will come if you shut them down. Which is in itself a risk, because you wouldn’t know how to bring them up again.
But the lack of documentation comes out of the fact that management don’t have the slightest clue about IT – not even the most basic abstract understanding of what is required when writing software. The net result is you have unrealistic time lines being set by management with the IT department going hell for leather cutting corners to make the unrealistic deadline. But this goes back to my biggest complaint about management being the fact that very few are promoted to such positions based on a meritocratic system of the best rising to the top – it tends to be the ‘old boys club’ patting each others backs because they know each other from the country club or because of some wanker-laden ‘secret society’ they were in at university.
But the lack of documentation comes out of the fact that management don’t have the slightest clue about IT – not even the most basic abstract understanding of what is required when writing software. The net result is you have unrealistic time lines being set by management with the
You are so out of touch with reality, that it actually makes me question whether you are a professional to start with.
In a vast majority of enterprises IT is not a revenue generating segment of the enterprise. Quite the opposite, it is a cost of doing busines and as such there is an inherent tendency to keep that cost as low as possible.
As for the viability of Apple in the enterprise, already said it, it is a joke.
Edited 2011-01-07 16:38 UTC
Holy shitballs – computers in a company are a contributing factor to the business process of making money; it is no different than the widget machine that makes widgets; it is one component of the whole – that the whole organisation moves to a particular target, which in this case is profit, and thus all the components are needed for the smooth functioning of the organisation. Using your logic you should get rid of the legal department, accounting, marketing etc. because they don’t directly create profits but you would never do that because they’re part of the bureaucracy necessary to facilitate the creation of profit.
If you’re going to talk about ‘cost’ of doing business, how about slashing management pay to no more than $200,000 per year, sell off the private jets, no more expensive lunches and dinners, and no more corporate credit cards. Sorry, improvements in IT roll onto improvements in productivity meaning more widgets can be built with the same or less personal but compare that to the all the crap that management spend on themselves that contribute NOTHING to the bottom line. I am only left wondering whether it is a case of luddites running a company than a concerted effort to keep costs under control.
Edited 2011-01-08 00:56 UTC
You know what I hate? Idealistic geeks who have never held an enterprise admin position in their lives, yet do nothing except pontificate about how enterprise IT “should” be done. Stick to your coding, and leave the actual running of datacenters to us.
This has to be THE best joke I’ve heard in a long time
Allowing VMWare and Citrix to virtualize OS X Server would eliminate the XServe problem almost entirely. The only place where that doesn’t work are high work load servers running full tilt all the time. For stuff like SQL, mail, authentication, web, application, etc. servers, virtualization is fantastic.