One sometimes wonders why Apple products (compared to Dell and Microsoft) aren’t in the workplace more.
One very good reason is that it’s not all that easy finding out what exactly Apple offers for business and enterprise without doing some digging first. Apple simply does not make it easy to find this information.
As of this writing:
Apple.com has no link on the home page that goes directly to the biz/enterprise offerings whatsoever. The biz stuff is literally buried. You have to click on "Mac" first, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the next page, then click "Small Business" or "IT Pro". You have to know to do this.
Microsoft.com has two links directly placed on the home page, "For Business" and "For IT Professionals".
RedHat.com, obviously designed for business first, has biz stuff plastered all over their home page.
Let’s go back to Apple for a moment.
When you see the product and solution offerings Apple has, you say to yourself "Wow! Look at all this biz stuff! Cool! Apple isn’t just iPods and iPhones!"
Seriously speaking, Apple has got some serious goods.
Unfortunately it’s buried behind iPhones, iTunes, iThis, iThat, iTheOtherThing.
Does Apple purposely not want new biz and enterprise to find them? Why is the IT stuff so buried on their own site? I understand that it may not be Apple’s primary focus to concentrate on enterprise, but wouldn’t it make sense to let people know it exists without hunting for it?
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The technology and applications used by MS and Linux distros are so complex, buggy and outright poorly designed that were I Apple I wouldn’t want to be associated with that garbage, either. How many IT people do you have working for your company just trying to make all that trash work?
When people get fed up with it–as they seem to be doing…in droves–and when businesses follow, they will go to Apple without Apple having to go to them.
THINK DIFFERENT.
Go to http://www.apple.com There is a search box in the upper right hand corner. Type business or small business in the box.
I tried it and only got as far as busi (typing pretty fast) before answera popped up.
Happy New Year, and welcome to 2008 A.G. (Anno Google)
As Steve Jobs used to say, “One more thing…”
A few years ago, I was helping a friend build a website using Microsoft’s SQLServer and .ASP – two products I was completely unfamiliar with. My friend had a MSDN subscription complete with a knowledge base on DVD. I found that I couldn’t find anything on the DVD, and concluded it was because I didn’t think like a MicroSoftie.
After a while, I gave up on MSDN and just searched for answers on the web. I found it interesting that the best answers were not on Microsoft related websites. My friend swears by MSDN, so we held a race. He would search for help on MSDN while I used Google. I won 10 out of 10.
I believe Google has made site maps style homepages obsolete. I find things quicker using search on websites like Apple, Oracle, Amazon, eBay, Sears, etc. than by navigating through a tree of links.
Contrast this with a website like Dell, which attempts to qualify customers right away. Try and find an advertised consumer special after telling the site you are a small business.
It’s simple really. Apple doesn’t care much about the business that it would get from enterprise customers.
It won’t chase them away, but it won’t cater directly or advertise to them.
Business customers don’t like to pay Apple’s prices. Most of the time they want cheap PCs that are configured as cheaply as possible; with the bare minimum in order to run their in-house customized applications and MS Office with Exchange. They don’t want iLife, they don’t want any iThing. And they expect a price decrease for everything they remove from the default configuration.
Apple doesn’t do that.
If business wants to buy Apple’s product the way they are, then Apple will sell to them. If Apple puts business on its front page, then business will expect the same customization service it can get from the likes of DELL and HP.
It would be fairly detrimental to the Apple image to start displaying business-end PCs widely. After all, iLife is in, and work is boring, right?
The problem that faces Apple because of this is that if they ever DO decide to get into the business sector, it will be an extremely slow move no matter how hard they push it. They’ve solidified their image with the Mac vs PC commercials and the general attitudes of the Mac fanbase so much already, that to reverse it would be – well – inefficient at best.
The other thought is relating to what John said. The business end doesn’t want to pay a premium. I differ from his opinion here, though. Known fact: PCs can be configured to a much higher spec than a Mac for a much lower price. Repairs are also significantly cheaper, because proprietary components are not generally a huge problem in the open PC parts market. This has to be one of the most inescapable reasons why PCs will stay where they are so far as business is concerned.
Sorry Mac. You’ve got your toys, they’ve got their spreadsheets.
I’ll be buying my wife a new computer to use for the days she works from home. I’ll be spending about $350, and getting Windows XP with it.
Personally, I have 3 Mac, which I use for work. I have 2 PCs as well, but I design and publish, and, having started out quite some time ago on a PC, most of the industry uses Macs. It’s not a proprietary thing, either – they work better. Call a professional printer and ask if they’d rather have files from a PC or a Mac – even if the software is the same on both.
However, I’m also looking at buying another PC… I want Flight Simulator to run better, and they don’t make it for Mac. I can get a system that will run it pretty well for about $500, and I already have a monitor, keyboard, etc.
A Mac will run it, but only after a pretty steep purchase price plus some Windows software.
No, Macs are not meant for businesses that don’t deal in creative work. If you’re doing 3D stuff you’re in good shape on a PC, but for pretty much everything else, Macs are standard.
If you look at the number of creative firms against non-creative (let’s just call them boring..) businesses – like, oh, accounting – I bet you’ll find that there’s just about 7% of them… like Apple’s market saturation.
I’ll use the tools I need. Call Macs toys all you like – then, walk into a bookstore, and know that 95% of what you’re looking at was designed and produced on one.
I run a design studio and I have 2 Macs and 2 PCs, which are used for work. PCs are just as accurate, if you use colour calibration (which design studio doesn’t?). And a non-colour corrected Mac is just as bad as a PC, I’d say.
It used to be that Macs had the lead in design, especially publishing, but these days they have pretty much abandoned that market segment. It’s either over-specced Mac Pros or non-upgradable iMacs. No dice. Now, if they gave us a mid-tower for the price of an iMac…
Plus, to run a business entirely on Macs would make the start up costs excruciatingly high. For some functions — like admin and sales — a Mac is unnecessary; you’re in an office to do work, not get distracted by pretty eye-candy and 100 useless widgets. So my admin staff gets a Linux box and the sales manager gets a Windows XP box to run Excel and Powerpoint; I got both machines (complete with monitor, keyboard and mouse) for the price of a Mac Mini without any doodads.
Why would you even want to buy Apple for business?
Just buy some (much cheaper) PCs, load them with your favorite flavor of Linux (I recommend Ubuntu), get the Windows refund if you want for even more saved money, and you are good to go.
I have more than a few friends that have Macs. Trust me, a lot of Mac software is at best a ripoff of and at worst pretty crippled compared to what you can get for free in Linux. If you miss Macs that much, go ahead and theme the Linux installs to look like Tiger or Leopard too.
“Why would you even want to buy Apple for business?”
Why would you even want to drive a Porsche?
“Trust me, a lot of Mac software is at best a ripoff of and at worst pretty crippled compared to what you can get for free in Linux.”
Yeah, like Pixel. Adobe soooo ripped that off.
My hammer is better than your hammer.
The bottom line for business is cost and reliability. XP is relatively reliable…face it Mac fans. Computers must also be customizable and Apples generally are not.
Given that, PC’s win.
Wow! People are still replying to this. Why did I check the notify me box?
One more one more thing… Apple’s website has always been very well organized. Try typing the URL http://www.apple.com/business in your browser and see what you get.