AppleInsider Staff
Apple launched a redesigned Mac in Business webpage on Wednesday to better target its growing presence in enterprise, highlighting corporate success stories, a special section detailing its partnership with IBM and reworked marketing literature focusing on individual productivity apps.
It's "a brand new day for business," Apple boldly claims at the top of its new business-oriented Mac In a special section near the top of the Mac in Business webpage, Apple cites statistics IBM recently presented at the JAMF User Conference in October, saying only 5 percent of users need phone support, compared to 40 percent for Windows boxes. According to Fletcher Previn, IBM's VP of Workplace-as-a-Service, the recent Mac rollout saves the company an average $270 per machine over Windows devices in deployment and security costs.
Apple goes on to say IBM currently has more than 130,000 Macs in circulation. IBM officials in July said they expect up to hand out 50,000 MacBooks to employees by 2015, with a total Mac count hovering between 150,000 and 200,000 once the program is complete.
Along with IBM's section, Apple pitches four main categories on its Mac in Business webpage, touting hardware and software benefits, compatibility with iOS devices, OS X platform features and ease of deployment. Interspersed throughout the page are endorsements from IT chiefs working at CDM Group and iVenturesHealth, Kelly Services and SAP.
Apple is pushing hard in the enterprise solutions space as it looks to expand beyond a saturated consumer market. During an interview in September, CEO Tim Cook said enterprise sales brought in $25 billion over the prior 12 months, amounting to 14 percent of Apple's revenue for the trailing year.
Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
Christine McKee
Andrew O'Hara
18 Comments
Just looks like meat-free marketing fluff to me. My Macs in Business questions: how do you keep a Mac from barfing resource forks on a Linux Samba server? Is there any way to keep from havindpg double and triple entries for all contacts and calendar appointments? Can the calendar app be less annoying when connecting to gmail hosted accounts? Will preview suck again next OS update?
i love the operating system, and I likely need to break down and rent Office 365 to get Outlook, but Apple really needs to sort out some very annoying enterprise bugs.
The issue that they need to resolve for business is the remote desktop connection based on VNC right now. They should license the Microsoft RDP protocol and implement a much more performant remote desktop application. On the same network I have Remote Desktop running to another machine (which may be running slower because the monitor is turned off and therefore OS X stops using the GPU if I read right in the forums) -- and it starts out slower.... and the longer I am connected the slower it gets (if I leave it connected for a day the delay gets up to several seconds).... on a gigabit connection.
I would prefer they change it to not "mirror" the current screen but to throw up a remote desktop and login of a separate session (which would allow multiple concurrent login sessions -- already built into the OS) -- similar to how MS RDP works (except MS locks the computer to the one logging in remotely).
I have to remote into a box (Windows) for my current workplace 12 timezones away, if it were a Mac - it would be brutal.
It looks like Apple and/or IBM is taking Enterprise much more seriously this time around. Thank God.
Meanwhile Microsoft is still busy picking lint out of their collective belly buttons. Thank God.
They will need a decent Mac Mini upgrade. Much more polishing on OSX El Capitan to even let Enterprise Consider it. Windows 10 on PC is still a much better choice at the moment.