[Swordmaker]

Article claiming Macs will not be in enterprise for a long time—PING!

Macs in Business Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Psycho_Bunny]

"The new software, due out later this year, will connect Macs to Outlook e-mail systems running Microsoft Exchange"

What? I have the the Marketing department Macs at my work on my Exchange servers now.

[Gaffer]

Apple made that one critical mistake a couple of decades or so ago and now, no matter what they do, they won't supplant the PC in its current form in business; it is too entrenched, and users (companies) aren't going to spend that kind of capital to retool, period. The only thing that could force this kind of change is Mr. Change, Obama. He'd start by "iMac'ing" up the Federal Government. Of course, Johnny Apple will have to pony up some serious skin in that game.

Apple's best route to top-tier is through the portables, like iPhone 3G. If they ever get a rote-perfect voice command process to replace the stinkin' little touch keyboards, PCs are dinosaurs in a lot of business uses.

[hugorand]

Now that Macs are Intel-based, you can run Windows virtually very easily alongside Mac OS X and avoid all of the enterprise issues only PCs can handle currently.

[6SJ7]

And Apple computers are popular with small and medium-sized businesses with skeletal technical staffs.

And there is the problem, at least for major corporations with bloated PC support staff; they look at the Mac as a job killer... for them. You don't need a bunch of PC professionals constantly patching, fixing, and tweaking machines if your office runs with Macs.

[martin_fierro]

Snow Leopard

The French/Canadian guy who referenced it during a keynote at WWDC '09 kept calling it "Esnowwe Lehporrd'". < |:)~

[antiRepublicrat]

Beyond the cost, the network tools for managing complex combinations of servers, desktops and notebooks and storage devices often are kept track of using technologies such as Microsoft's Active Directory.

Huh? Active Directory is just Microsoft's implementation of the standard LDAP/Kerberos that comes with OS X. Add to that many standard management features of OS X Server that equal or better cost-added features from Microsoft. And add to that Apple's other management features are less expensive.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Business PCs are half the cost of any Apple machines."

Sigh. That canard again.

My business ThinkPad is a high-end, workstation-class laptop. It cost about $3200, fully loaded. My personal Macbook Pro is a high-end, workstation-class laptop, fully loaded. It cost about $3200 and requires far less support--as in zero support--versus my ThinkPad which needs attention frequently due to Windows' tendency to pick up contagions (despite costly and performance-sapping precautions), fragment its disk, etc., not to mention the havoc every other Windows Update seems to cause. Oh, and by the way, my Macbook Pro has a Windows "Boot Camp" partition. I can boot into Windows when I need to, or I can run my boot camp Windows installation as a virtual machine using VMWare Fusion. Slick! And my Mac has six desktop spaces that I can flick between with a keystroke. Windows has nothing like it, and it's a huge productivity enhancer. And if I have a question or a problem, I can make a face-to-face appointment with a well-trained, English-speaking expert at the Apple Store and get answers for free, or repairs very reasonably (we just rebuilt my son's well-used PowerBook for $319-- new logic board, display, hard disk, and it runs like new.) And on and on.

There is no question: the purchase cost of a Mac is comparable to the cost of an equivalent Windows machine, and the overall costs are significantly less. The author has just watched too many silly, inaccurate Microsoft commercials and is too lazy to do any research on his own.