Today, MacOS X has made Apple the world’s largest Unix workstation manufacturer while Microsoft advertises (but can’t yet deliver) a reinvented Pick OS for the Internet age. As someone like Dave Barry might say, you couldn’t make this stuff up on a bet.
The Challenge Apple Faces in Enterprise Computing
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
>>Raskin’s words from twenty five years ago don’t need a lot of change to describe Microsoft’s impending Mono, WinFX, WinFS and related technologies
Doesn’t he mean .NET instead of Mono? Mono is Novell/Ximian’s technology.
since i own a powerbook im more understanding os x.
the fact is i still couldnt see any light for os x future.
ipod/itunes is a success
The problem with IBM, Novell, and Apple is that they did not partner. Apple needs to partner with Novell. They need each other. Apple is the only Commercial OS out there for the desktop besides windows. Apple could use eDirectory on Xserve, and run it on IBM big iron machines.
a while back the catcall used to be “nobody ever got fired from buying IBM”.
although I agree with the author that IT personnel’s “expertise” is often questionable, most of the time it’s simply a matter of the experts being out-decisioned by their management.
anyway I’m a little more hopeful that Apple will eventually burst into the enterprise if nothing else through the advertising generated by its very successful products; for now it’s iPod/iTMS, but xServe, xRAID, xSAN is what IT and management will be observing as well as the (long-term) success of projects like Virginia Tech…
…it’s just a matter of time!
IT doesn’t work that way: Apple and Novell will partner when somebody needs them to do just what you suggest, before then it’s a waste of resources to implement something that who knows might or might not buy.
A product exists and has some degree of success when there’s a market for it, not the other way around.
This isn’t shareware!
So, explain “Longhorn,” then.
notice the speed of development of os x in the past 3-5 years. 10.0 was a proof of concept really. 10.2 was quit usable. it wasn’t until 10.3 that apple had an solid platform; fast, stable, flexible, many innovations. if they continue progress at this pace, 10.4 and 10.5 should be enterprise class.
they keep folding in open source developments, many of which are made for enterprise usage. i think the flexibility of os x/unix/open source will be a key factor.
written by mac supporters for mac supporters
“decision-makers are usually too far behind the technology curve to recognize its value” ….its value being the Mac.
here is some sarcasm: over the last 20 odd years technology people of all ilks have just been a band of poor loser geeks buying first windows boxes, novell networks, unix big iron, …..and now more and more windows desktops, windows servers and networks, unix big iron, and linux in the data center. over the same time frame the mac has seen a nearly constant decline in its market share because of the ignorance of the whole world.
makes you wonder how any business of any size gets any work done or how anyone makes any profit.
i guess the world will be saved when they finally get it through their thick skulls that Macs will save the day.
meanwhile we hold out hope as the whole worlds standard of living goes up and productivity measures continue to skyrocket.
So, explain “Longhorn,” then.
the way I interpret Redmond’s strategy is mind control.
In order for them to stay a monopoly is to constantly convince people that they know what the future holds, the direction it’ll take and what users want and that they’re the only people that can develop the proper software.
The enlightened call these tactics FUD and vaporware, just watch the announcements they’ll make right after MWDC.
But seriously, operating systems need to keep developers informed on their future advancements since an OS on its own does not a platform make.
With Apple we’ve been pampered to expect solid products to be released more or less on time, and Apple always informs its community of whatever new technologies they’ve developed so that they can take full advantage of them– this is hardly creating new markets– all such new technologies are meant to help improve faster adoption by whichever IT industry.
Longhorn on the other hand, looks more half-way between an R&D project and science fiction to be seriously considered MS’s next OS release. I suspect the IT industry wants and expects Microsoft’s operating systems to follow a much slower development lifecycle… they don’t like having to constantly upgrade.
The impression I get is that they’ve realised they can only go so far with Win32/WinNT and so they want to start over again, giving us all plenty of advance notice in the meantime.
Apple has always managed to pull off these migration paths (68k to PPC, MacOS 9 to Mac OS X) with far greater ease than Microsoft (Windows 3.1 to Windows95/NT to WindowsME/2000 to …).
have I answered your question? (I fell I’ve gone off on a tangent)
written by mac supporters for mac supporters
and you’re just trolling.
the pattern I’ve been seeing in the last couple of years is Apple trying very hard to shake off the misconceptions that people have about their computers, namely:
– Macs are toys.
– Macs are expensive.
– Macs are incompatible.
– Macs are dwindling, Apple is doomed.
since first impressions are the hardest to shake, Apple is doing the right thing in trying to do away with the above:
by being very successful with the iPod and iTMS, they’re getting recognition in the brand name.
by spreading their stores across America (I live in Europe, btw), they’re trying to get better visibility.
by introducing new products that don’t belong to their traditional markets (xServe, etc.), they’re trying to prove that the Mac is not necessarily a niche comodity.
only time will tell if Apple will be successful, in the meantime the Mac fanatics will have to be indulgent with the usual trolls that have been singing the same old tune for the last twenty five years… declining market share
Dan,
Re: “The problem with IBM, Novell, and Apple is that they did not partner. Apple needs to partner with Novell. They need each other. Apple is the only Commercial OS out there for the desktop besides windows. Apple could use eDirectory on Xserve, and run it on IBM big iron machines.”
I don’t see why you think Apple needs to partner with Novell? Apple’s OSX only is made to run on their hardware and I can’t see them changing their marketing even if it makes sense to you and me. Novell which purchased SUSE (SUSE LINUX) also already works closely with IBM to distribute both Server and Desktop distros to consumers. Where IBM used to only sell systems with RedHat LINUX or Windows there is now SUSE LINUX as an option too.
As for the comment that Apple has the only commercial OS for the desktop besides Windows that makes completely no sense. What about LINUX distros such as SUSE LINUX Personal/Professional and SUSE LINUX Desktop? Novell also offers other tools such as Ximian Desktop 2 with Red Carpet Enterprise for companies. There are other LINUX distros that are tailored for the desktop so I don’t understand why you think Apple and Microsoft are the only companies to do this. I’m new to LINUX and still found it easy enough to install and run SUSE LINUX after transitioning from a Windows environment.
os x was many years late after being in development for something along the lines of 15 years. when it shipped as a retail product many (mac fans included) will argue it was still beta software and remained so until the release of os x 10.2.
when the g4 was announced it ended up shipping late and with cpus clocked lower than what apple had originally announced.
the g5 shipped late and has had no speed increase in nearly 11 months from the day steve jobs said we would see 3ghz g5’s (end of June 2004 is his due date) in less than a years time.
several of the imac lines shipped late….
fact is many in tech dont meet their expected ship dates, whether you speak of hardware, software, or games or whatever.
xp is 2.5 yrs old and the next major revision to the ms os line is already in alpha. beta is due in 2005 (3.5 yrs out from the release of the previous os) and the final code is expected in 2006. the roadmap has been out for some time but is revised. ms tries to be as clear as possible about its roadmaps but it is not an exact science nor is it for anyone.
just one of the reasons ms is more successful in the enterprise is they do clearly lay out plans whereas apple is all about secrecy and last minute surprise marketing events that are used to create buzz for apple– not a working roadmap for enterprise planners.
meanwhile ms has an os that not all have migrated to. they need not rush the next release if the adoption rate of the current os has not been close to universal. fact is xp works and is fine for enterprise and enterprise doesnt want to fork out upgrade fees on an annual basis if what is in place is getting the job done.
nt of the mid to late 90s was installed in huge numbers across the enterprise and was not changed until windows 2000 other than a whole series of service packs. xp likewise has had one major service pack and service pack 2 is due within about 2 months.
enterprise servers from ms have been stellar successes for them and continue to grow market share at unix’s expense.
ms development environment likewise has undergone a sea change in the last few years with a whole new language and toolset that has laid the groundwork for longhorn.
prognosticators have much to yap about but if ms takes its time and creates the powerful os that is the likely successor to xp and it also incorporates better security, the computing world can look to the utter demise of the Mac and continued shrinking sales of proprietary Unix….see Sun.
despite all of ms shortcomings (security being the main one), they have continued to grow market share in the desktop space and in the datacenter with their server oses. patience on ms part to release the best os possible at the next turn can only but benefit them in market share—even if their current profits and sales are hit but the lack of buzz a new os release creates.
but the fact remains, ms has many millions of users to migrate off nt4 and win2k servers to win2k3 and many more millions of desktop users to move off 98, ME, and 2k to XP. ms sales will remain strong as long as that upgrading continues…see ms last quarter sales figures to see how strong that upgrading is.
app announcing that their next os release will be “shown” at a developer conference is not a roadmap. enterprise is not interested in marketing buzz, they want as solid of a roadmap as can be reasonably created for them. apple doesnt provide one.
“only time will tell if Apple will be successful, in the meantime the Mac fanatics will have to be indulgent with the usual trolls that have been singing the same old tune for the last twenty five years… declining market share”
the mac is 20 yrs old and before that apple was considered to make toys for kids, hobbyists, and schools. in 1985 apple for a brief time had the highest stock valuation of any public company in the world. since then, it has been a near constant quarter to quarter decline in their market share. their sales today are half what they were in the early 90’s pre-Windows 95 release.
though apple has survived and many have not, that is no reason to be enthusiastic. apples stock though up over the last year is still trading at about 1/3 of its value from about 3 years ago.
time is telling: market share goes down quarter by quarter, sales of their pro machines are not meeting expectations, their core markets like design and edu have seen continued declines as well.
time will not see apple make any serious inroads in the enterprise by bringing out xserves and raid arrays. many competitors have been selling similar or better products for many years.
their major marketing campaigns of selling music players and pop music to teenagers will likewise win them no favor in the business space. ms gets no further credibility in enterprise by selling xbox’s and all the resultant marketing that goes along with that.
to think ipods will help apple sell xserves is kinda silly.
hope springs eternal i guess.
This article has a nice incorrect vision of the past. Interesting how he mentions that Unix wasn’t “on the horizons” of professionals in 1979 and then goes on to describe xenix promises in the same year. (Xenix was based on SVR4, not “system 7”).
Now, the basic concept of the article is flawed. The author first states the MacXL was much more advanced than comparable PC-offerings from IBM (and rightly so) but then goes on to argue that Xserve compares similarily to todays x86-servers. While I think that the Xserve is an amazing piece of kit which I’d love to have in my server room (if I had one
it’s not leaps and bounds better than other 1U-servers.
The IT business enviroment of today is completely different to 1985 as well so I’m not sure what the author is getting at. However, I think that the Xserve has a fairly good chance of succeeding in the long run, especially if you factor in the complete package wtih Xgrid, Xraid etc. If you could build a complete IT infrastructure from the ground up for any given type of corporation, i think that Apple’s Xserve-concept would do extremely well.
I will probably get flamed for saying this but I really think that MacOS X Server combines the relative user friendliness of Windows with the power of Unix. I guess I sound like I’ve been reading to many Apple ads but in my personal experience, it’s really like that.
And as someone has already stated, the article is written with the underlying idea that Macs are the benchmark and always extremely ahead of their time, the misunderstood genius, so to speak.
I still have to say that I wouldn’t trade my Powerbook 12″ RevA for any other computer in the world except maybe a newer powerbook =)
You can go on for hours as to why Apple never made it in the enterprise, but at this point you have to wonder what benefits there are to enterprises adopting the Mac NOW.
– Single vendor for hardware is not something most CIOs want to deal with. Particularly one that has had quality issues and has been known to orphan platforms. Strike one.
– Declining base of ISVs. Strike two.
– Windows is already in the enterprise and the staff to manage Windows networks is already trained and in place. Strike three.
Three strikes, Apple’s out.
I know some of you disagreed with my Apple and Novell Comment.
The linux desktop does not have the refinment of the OS X desktop. However, Apple does not have the mindshare for servers that Novell and Linux have. Apple does not have a large supply of “Certified Engineers”. It would be a good combination because it would be a “best of bread” solution. Great desktop and great server software. Why should Novell and Apple waste resources making another respective OS? They don’t have the resources to waste.
I am saying that if they want to win, they have to “gang up” againced MS. They keep loosing because they compete alone.
>> If you could build a complete IT infrastructure from the ground up for any given type of corporation, i think that Apple’s Xserve-concept would do extremely well.
How many companies are doing this? The newest major IT shops to spring up in the last ten years are the big web services (Google, Yahoo) who don’t just want access to the full source of their OS, they NEED it, because NO VENDOR has EVER dealt with or designed for their specific needs. This is why Google and Yahoo run custom kernels.
For the people that want off-the-shelf, they are already running OS400 or Windows Server or something that has been established and understood (not to be confused with bug-free).
Once again, what server farm manager wants to be locked in to a single hardware vendor? I have watched the ‘vendor of choice’ in many major installations change numerous times. When you are buying 5000 machines, you do competitive bidding. You can’t do that when there is one vendor.
Apple won’t disclose how many G5s are being sold because the sad truth is that even the Mac faithful has been slow to adopt a system that starts out at a base price of $1800 and goes way up for tricked out systems.
Of course Jobs has seen the writing on the wall. Apple is going to morph into a digital media company over time. The next big coup for Apple will be to do to digital video what they did to digital audio. iPod sales are up 900% while Mac sales are so-so with declining share. Don’t think this fact has escaped the Apple brass.
dual opteron machines aren’t exactly cheap either you know, which is a much closer comparison to the dual g5 cpu than throwing a $1800 figure for the base machine around.
every quarter apple tells us exactly how many powermacs they are selling
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/04/14/unitsales/?lsrc=mcrs…
they sold 174,000 last quarter and their own goal was 200,000. down 19% from the previous quarter amidst a pc growth rate of 16% quarter to quarter.
they sold a lot of ipods though.
G5 sales have been much slower than anticipated. I think they only moved 170,000 when they were shooting for 200,000. The problem with the G5 is ot price, but in who needs that kind of power. Many graphic artist, the bulk of Apples Pro clients, don’t need that kind of power. Photoshop runs just fine on a dual 1.25 Ghz G4. The only people who need that kind of speed are your filmmakers, editors, sciencetist, etc. Oddly enough, that exactly where you see Apple gaining marketshare. I would also assume that’s where the bulk of the G5 sales have gone.
I’m a filmmaker. In the past 3 years I’ve seen an almost 180 with production companies buying habits. everybody I know has started to dump or phase out their Wintel machines for Mac gear. Apple is making very big strides in the film world. I would also guess that university science departments are also warming up to mac…atleast according to Apples quartly results.
On the enterprise front..I don’t see much changing. Apple doesn’t have any mindshare, and business’ are notoriously slow and reluctant to change. I think Apple needs to start with the small to medium size business clients and move from there. Maybe the should partner with American Express, UPS, and other companies that cater to small/medium business’. I’m also sure a couple of ads in business publication would hurt either.
“the mac is 20 yrs old and before that apple was considered to make toys for kids, hobbyists, and schools. in 1985 apple for a brief time had the highest stock valuation of any public company in the world. since then, it has been a near constant quarter to quarter decline in their market share. their sales today are half what they were in the early 90’s pre-Windows 95 release.”
WHAT?!!!!
Apples Sales are over 10 times what they were during that era. You’re assuming that the market hasn’t grown since that time… It has dramatically. If Apple had 30% of the market then, they had 30% of a relatively small market.
If they have 7% install base and 3% market share today, its because the market has grown dramatically since then. A smaller percentage of a large pie is larger than a larger percentage of a small pie.
The market share decline that everybody on this site consistently eludes to is not Apple’s market slowing down… Its Windows market speeding up. For some reason, you people never seem to grasp this.
“The market share decline that everybody on this site consistently eludes to is not Apple’s market slowing down… Its Windows market speeding up. For some reason, you people never seem to grasp this.”
TRUE. However, that is still bad news.
“Declining base of ISVs. Strike two.”
No, it is not. It is growing dramatically. Quark stalling or Adobe dropping two or three failed products does not make a dwindling ISV base.
Bringing Oracle, Sybase, HP, more DAW developers, more 3D developers, more SciTech develoeprs, more open source developers, more Java developers into the OS X market is the real truth.
Growing ISV base.
i guess you want some figures
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/NSD/AAPL/FY2003.pdf
apples total sales as of last yr were down to where they were in 1999.
in 2000 their stock hit its all time high of $75.19
in the last yr it has been as low as $12.72 and is at $26.18 today….1/3 of its all time best.
some stats:
most recent quarter apple sold 749,000 macs
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/04/14/unitsales/?lsrc=mcrs…
4th quarter of 1998 apple sold 834,000 macs
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-SECText&T…
all four quarters of 1999 apple sold
772,000 905,000 827,000 and 944,000 respectively
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-SECText&T…
when jobs returned and launched the imac which had phenomenal sales apple was at 5% current shipping computer marketshare and he said they would hit 10% within 5 years. apples computer shipments today add to 1.8% of the world total. he was way off, the original bondi imac did very well but did not stop the decline of apple. their sales have gone down in the last 5 years versus their own figures and
versus the world market they have weakened even further.
as for:
“the mac is 20 yrs old and before that apple was considered to make toys for kids, hobbyists, and schools. in 1985 apple for a brief time had the highest stock valuation of any public company in the world. since then, it has been a near constant quarter to quarter decline in their market share. their sales today are half what they were in the early 90’s pre-Windows 95 release.”
a decline in market share has nothing to do with unit sales per se. likewise the comment about sales being half of what they were in early 90s does not refer to units but to sales…I meant dollar figures. apple is at $6 billion in annual sales today and in 1997 apple had sales of $8 billion. in 1982 they were the first personal computer company to reach $1 billion in sales (ms hit $1 billion in annual sales in 1990). in 1996 apple hit its peak of $11 billion in sales…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=1998&month=…
so for the last 2 years apple has been at half of their all time high in sales…they are slightly over 50% now.
the figures don’t lie and with enough looking we can pull it all up off the net but to some degree i am just going off my memory.
apple percentages as compared to the overall world pc market look even worse. their market share is in a steep decline. as this relates to the theme of this thread, apple has virtually no hope in the enterprise. at this point they can hope to be a niche player in high end scientific or film work like a sgi, though since sgi has shrunk massively over the last so many years as well and has dramatically lost profitability, that does not bode well for apple either. selling a few hundred thousand expensive and proprietary workstations does not look like a very good model for profitability.
You ever notice how articles like this can never really tell you how everyone else is ‘wrong’ or why a company like apple really lost out in the enterprise (can you say they didn’t know how to compete!?) ?
Of course not. Articles like this just make the platform and its users look worse as they rehash the same thing over and over “Oh everyone was WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! I tell you!”
This thing reads like a pity party, not something worthy of OS News.
apple has been selling servers for over a decade and has failed at gaining any traction in business the whole time
http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&page=server
they have had some luck in design shops requiring server services and in mac/edu environments.
now that even edu is dropping apple in droves, their server future looks all that much worse.
especially when the products ship late and don’t get cpu updates for a 10+ months at a time…. http://www.macnn.com/news/23741
“…the 256 MB IBM PC/AT…”
Damn, no wonder the 1MB MacXL lost out…
For corporate and enterprise willing to spend more dollars on IT support than spend just a few more dollars on better equipped machines is plain and simple insanity. You have Mac at the top end, Windows at the middle, and Linux at the bottom of the spending spree of TCO. Though the Mac’s initial cost is a more expensive venture, it definitely pays for itself in the long term when you’re not spending an obscene amount of money on IT support that could have been avoided completely if the bean counters would have calculated costs properly.
Linux gives a better TCO than Windows in the sense that it’s a cheaper alternative and for general purpose computing deployments, it just makes better sense to go that route. Microsoft’s horrible track record involving security and unreliability makes it a financial disaster waiting to happen for its customers of today and tomorrow.
Like they say; you get what you pay for!
“in 2000 their stock hit its all time high of $75.19
in the last yr it has been as low as $12.72 and is at $26.18 today….1/3 of its all time best.”
And? 2000 was the pick of the boom. They are now at a 4 year high. MS was halved during the same time frame and has been moving sideways now for 3 years.
All of your figures are very skewed… You are pointing to 96-98, a period when even Apple was surprised by their successes to now, a transitional period with manufacturing issues. If you look at Apple longterm, everyone will see spikes and declines, per each quarter and over longer periods of time. You still haven’t shown that the userbase has declined substantially.
“at this point they can hope to be a niche player in high end scientific or film work like a sgi, though since sgi has shrunk massively over the last so many years as well and has dramatically lost profitability, that does not bode well for apple either.”
But Apple hasn’t shrunk massively (they’ve expanded) and they haven’t dramatically lost profitability (they are wealthier now than ever before despite the inflated valuations of the interent boom) so your analogy completely fails, doesn’t it?
though apple has survived and many have not, that is no reason to be enthusiastic. apples stock though up over the last year is still trading at about 1/3 of its value from about 3 years ago.
What are you guys talking about? What’s with this stock fetish? Almost EVERY tech stock price was 3 times as high three years ago. Don’t you guys remember the tech bubble burst? You think Qualcomm is doing bad nowadays because in 2001 its stock price was $700/share and now it’s $65/share? Gimme a break.. focus on profitability, revenue, and innovation. Let’s get away from FUD statistics like market share, MHz, and stock price.
“But Apple hasn’t shrunk massively (they’ve expanded) and they haven’t dramatically lost profitability (they are wealthier now than ever before despite the inflated valuations of the interent boom) so your analogy completely fails, doesn’t it?”
thats why every biz article you see about apple is about their continuing slide in market share. i was wrong it wasnt 96 that they booked the 11 billion in sales, it was 1995. so 9 yrs later they are appoximately half the size and they now sell more software and other accessories and have retail stores and a much expanded online store. they garner less and less revenue from selling macs. apple is not wealthier, they are valued at one third of what they were just 4 years ago….what do you think a stock price is?
i call having your total sales dollars halved and your company valued at one third of what it once was as being a MASSIVE decline.
“…the 256 MB IBM PC/AT…”
Damn, no wonder the 1MB MacXL lost out…
Yeah the whole article is full of screwy mistakes like this. MS rolling out Mono is another one. I wasn’t aware that MS made Mono.
You find all these mistakes and you gotta wonder if this guy has a clue at all. He can’t even get the companies and products right let alone remember the specs of the systems.
…your company valued at one third of what it once was as being a MASSIVE decline.
Once again, stock price isn’t a factor. You would think Microsoft is doing about the same as Apple considering their stock price is about equal.
share is just one part of the equation
you then have to count the shares. ms market capitalization is probably 20 times what apples is.
they have 15 times the cash alone.
if you arent aware of these things you would do well to ask and not make such odd comments.
I don’t mean to flame but is there a large all Apple enterprise shop outside of Apple? I know of small firms (graphic arts, print shops, and a law office) that are all mac, and small departments of large firms that are all Mac but are there any firms with lets say at least 250 users running all Mac? Has any one ever actually done a study? Maybe Macs do have lower TCO but I have never seen any numbers from a reputable source.
I personally like Apple and I am sure they will be around for a long. They have a good product but like a few others have brought up on this board their marketing strategy probably wont win in the enterprise.
Though the Mac’s initial cost is a more expensive venture, it definitely pays for itself in the long term when you’re not spending an obscene amount of money on IT support…
Actually, Apple also charges substantial support costs for the XServe if you need more than basic assistance:
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/xservesupport.html
even Motorola, the company that has fabricated the majority of CPUs for Apple for the last decade runs Microsoft products on x86 hardware.
See this
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/mn20581/cs_motorola.ms…
they manage 65,000 computers with Windows.
IBM likewise uses Windows on its desktops and laptops for its employees.
They both try to make money selling CPUs to Apple but they both know what really works for their own productivity and best TCO.
Now that is the enterprise.
IBM likewise uses Windows on its desktops and laptops for its employees.
Actually, IBM has been deploying Linux in-house via a slow migration path to get away from Windows entirely.
you are from the same area as me, I guess I will need to use a distinguishing name from on.
anyway, of IBMs several hundred thousand Windows desktops and laptops, how many have been migrated to Linux?
Do you have any links for us that detail IBMs efforts?
“if you arent aware of these things you would do well to ask and not make such odd comments.”
He made the comment because it is just as ludicrous as yours. He wasn’t serious. By your own arguments, Apple has grown over 50% in the past year alone (stock price), and Microsoft has been stagnant for 3 years, zero growth.
“thats why every biz article you see about apple is about their continuing slide in market share.”
Maybe it’s because you read retarded articles. I see few good articles discussing this as the most important thing at the moment.
Have you noticed that about 10 new investment firms have initiated coverage on Apple in the past year, when previously they had stayed away for the pas 15 years?
“i was wrong it wasnt 96 that they booked the 11 billion in sales, it was 1995.”
Yeah, and did you notice that they only had 424 million in income and 303 million in debt. Now they have ZERO debt and they made 63 million in profit in a single quarter. Last year they made 69 million all year… And in 200 they had 786 million in income (almsot twice as much as when you are claiming Apple peaked)…. so what.
“so 9 yrs later they are appoximately half the size and they now sell more software and other accessories and have retail stores and a much expanded online store. they garner less and less revenue from selling macs.”
No, they have expanded in staff, in assets, in R&D, in products, in cash reserves… they have eliminated debt. They are not half the size.
“apple is not wealthier, they are valued at one third of what they were just 4 years ago….what do you think a stock price is?”
Yes, they are. What do you think a stock price is? A stock price is the perceived value of a company; it is not real. If the market artificially inflates Apple to an 18 billion dollar company in less than a year and then it crashes down in less than a month, do you really think it was worth 18 billion?
There cash reserves have remained about fized. They have eliminated debt. They have increased revenue year-over-year. They have increased profits. They have physically grown the company larger.
“call having your total sales dollars halved and your company valued at one third of what it once was as being a MASSIVE decline.”
Once was? What kind of logic is that? As I said above, why not just look at the last year and say they’ve grown by 80%? It’s just as arbitrary and meaningless.
The point being… You are acting as if we don’t know what we are talking about, but we do. Apple is stronger now than it was in 95. Maybe you still don’t believe it, btu ask anyone: do you think Apple is better off now than they were in 1995, and I bet the answer will be pretty clear.
You’re a funny guy, by the way.
Do you have any links for us that detail IBMs efforts?
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13485
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,…
If you could build a complete IT infrastructure from the ground up for any given type of corporation, i think that Apple’s Xserve-concept would do extremely well.
1. Apple have no answer to Exchange. This alone puts them out of the market for providing a “complete solution”.
2. Apple have no answer to Terminal Services (both the software _and_ hardware aspects).
3. Xserves, while nice machines, are comparitively quite expensive, particularly if you want more than a very basic level of support.
1. Apple have no answer to Exchange.
Not having Exchange is a good thing. There are many other commercial/OSS solutions than Exchange.. and a lot less buggy and exploitable.
Not having Exchange is a good thing.
Not to a business that wants/needs the functionality it provides.
There are many other commercial/OSS solutions than Exchange.. and a lot less buggy and exploitable.
Name some. Preferably ones that a) work on OS X and b) don’t require in-depth unix knowledge and experience to install and maintain.
Name some. Preferably ones that a) work on OS X and b) don’t require in-depth unix knowledge and experience to install and maintain.
I’ll just name one, and that’s plenty:
http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/
a) it works on plenty of OSes, including Mac OS X and
b) that’s stupid:
– maintenance and administration of this magnitude does require in-depth knowledge.
– installation: if unix make files frighten you… oh forget it.
“sarcasm” but since everything’s so easy on Windows, I wonder how can there possibly be so many viruses, vulnerabilities, hacks and exploits on the net…”/sarcasm”
“3. Xserves, while nice machines, are comparitively quite expensive, particularly if you want more than a very basic level of support.”
Should consultants charge less when consulting Mac customers?
Apple should partner with Novell or IBM and get Groupwise or Lotus Notes. They need commercial applications that people recognize.