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According to the numbers, Apple's greatest success in 2007, was perhaps in business, where it nearly matched Vista's adoption. However, analysts have been less than complementary of its accomplishments.  (Source: Forrester Research)
Despite massive gains in business, OS X still is much maligned by business analysts

In the consumer market, Apple's publicity machine is firing on all cylinders.  Despite the occasional piece of bad publicity, the media tracks Apple's every product move with a zealousness bordering on obsession (and readers follow it with an equal zest).  Apple's modest gains in the PC market and minor gains consumer operating systems market are well publicized.  Furthermore, among consumers, Apple's brand is extremely well-received and is considered synonymous with creativity and innovation.

Why does Apple do so well with the consumer?  Well much of it lies in its marketing genius (or investment).  From the iPod commercials featuring the trendiest music, to the comic “Mac Guy, PC Guy” commercials, Apple knows how to market to the majority.  Apple isn't necessarily looking to win over the tech followers, like many readers on this site, it’s looking to win over your sister, your mom, your dad -- and it’s doing a good job in most cases.

However, Apple has one big flaw that happens to be coupled to perhaps its largest success story of last year.  Apple simply has no respect from business analysts as a serious business solution.  Analyst opinions of Apple in the consumer market versus the business market are night and day.  However, is Apple doing badly in the business market?

Not at all; in fact, it turns out that Apple went from nearly no market share in the business industry, to 4.2 percent.  To put this in perspective Vista was only able to eke out a 6.3 percent market share despite its heavy business marketing and dominant position.  So do those numbers indicate a Mac OS close to tying a Microsoft OS?  Why hasn't this been the front page news of every tech column (especially when OS X's nearly insignificant consumer market gains were heavily reported)?

The reason is despite the success, analysts have dismissed it and these analysts frequently drive what is reported in the tech news, more than some would like to admit.  And the analysts just don't like Apple's business efforts.  Says Forrester analyst Thomas Mendel:

While 2007 was a big year for Apple, with its enterprise share growing threefold to 4.2 percent, uptake remains limited to enthusiasts and small workgroups. IT departments crave standardization, and Macs pose too many problems for IT departments. The verdict for enterprise-focused vendors is clear: Unless your market is a niche business group, Windows is the only desktop you need support.

However many of Forrester's points are largely inaccurate in terms of the business market (though they might be a bit more applicable, actually, to the consumer market).  With solutions such as the Mac Mini, Apple actually has some relatively affordable offerings, in terms of basic business machines and can often beat competitor's business solutions on price.  Another leveled criticism is that Macs are proprietary.  Actually in terms of many "openness" fields such as web support, Apple is strongest supporters of universal standards. 

Lastly, another frequent criticism is proprietary software.  While this can be very true for the consumer industry (lack of gaming support), in the business industry Apple often has as much or more software.  In fields such as content creation, it’s no secret that Apple has a number of outstanding software products.   Perhaps the most universally useful business software -- Microsoft Office -- is near-fully implemented on Macs, thanks to an unlikely partnership with Microsoft.

Part of the blame for the situation rests with Apple.  While making great marketing efforts in the consumer industry, Jobs and his team's business marketing efforts are virtually non-existent.  The consume buzz appears to be driving the new business success, as Apple sure isn't.  And likely thanks in part to Apple's poor job marketing itself, business analysts remain unimpressed.

While devices like the iPhone have won Apple a small measure of begrudging respect among business analysts, it is unlikely that their approval will change overnight.  It will take a combination of actual effort from Apple's market, and a less biased analysis from analysts to eventually give Apple more of a chance. 

In market analysis the one thing you can usually trust is hard numbers. When it comes to sales data it seems that analysts should be cheering Apple's business efforts, and perhaps jeering its consumer OS efforts, where gains have been much more lackluster.  Unfortunately, they appear to be doing the opposite.

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You forgot SECURITY
By aju on 4/17/2008 11:45:05 AM , Rating: 5
As noted at the last CanSecWest show, Macs are serious security risks (lookup your own dailytech articles). A Mac was seriously compromised within the first few minutes of the contest. As the article states, “Put a Mac up against a serious attack, and it drops like a stone.” The Vista and Ubuntu boxes survived an entire day of hacking without cracking. Apple has a history of getting embarrassed at hacker events. It is that history if insecurity that makes them suspect at best in an enterprise environment.




RE: You forgot SECURITY
By MDE on 4/17/2008 11:57:48 AM , Rating: 5
The Mac actually lasted a full day and wasn't hacked until they were allowed to visit a web page on it that exploited a vulnerability in Safari.

I've got to wonder what the point of this article is though, it's really nothing more than a blog posting lauding the merits of running Macs in a business environment. Sounds like somebody wants the boss to switch. :P


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By Locutus465 on 4/17/2008 12:03:32 PM , Rating: 2
And that some how is a good thing? Vista lasted a lot longer than that, still Flash being able to open a hole in vista was not desireable. Hopefully microsoft is looking into ways to close that kind of hole.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By MDE on 4/17/2008 12:14:57 PM , Rating: 2
It's not a good thing smart guy, I was pointing out an error the previous comment. ALL three machines survived the first day of that competition. The Mac went down on day 2, PC on day 3 and Linux didn't. Also, holes in third-party software aren't Microsoft's (or Apple's) problem, in this case it's Adobe's. Apple only recently fixed the hole in Safari, which had to be about a month turnaround. Microsoft would have been burned at the stake for moving so slowly.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By Time Lynn on 4/17/2008 12:30:29 PM , Rating: 3
Out side of sensationalistic journalism no one is really worried about these security vulnerabilities. A software language expert who already knows flaws in the code finding security vulnerabilities within a contest is completely different from a computer being attacked in the wild.

Actually exploiting this vulnerability is another matter. Thus far none of these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By jimbojimbo on 4/17/2008 12:41:25 PM , Rating: 4
The best exploits are those that are undetected. Besides if one person can do it there's got to be someone among the billions of people on the planet that can also do it.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By mikefarinha on 4/17/2008 12:56:50 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
ALL three machines survived the first day of that competition.


All three machines 'survived' the first day because the prize money, $20,000, was less than half of what a passive exploit would go for on the open market. Not a single person gave a serious try on the first day.

However on the second day the Mac went down in mere minutes.
The third day people were expecting vista to go down early but it lasted most of the day before a third party hole got exploited. It was also mentioned that the same exploit exists in all three platforms.

The organizer of the event said that Linux lasted all three days due to nothing more than a lack of interest.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By bhieb on 4/17/2008 1:34:33 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
I've got to wonder what the point of this article is though, it's really nothing more than a blog posting lauding the merits of running Macs in a business environment.


And incorrectly at that.

This line is utter BS and Jason knows it (or should).

quote:
Perhaps the most universally useful business software -- Microsoft Office -- is fully implemented on Macs, thanks to an unlikely partnership with Microsoft.


Yes the mac has office, but without VBA support it is crap for business. Poll any IT guy in here, and see how many excel or access DB's are on their network with custom VBA. Office for the mac is fine for my mom, but it is castrated and worthless for business without VBA support. Admittedly this is probably more of a MS issue than Apple, but it sucks nonetheless.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By kelmon on 4/18/2008 7:17:46 AM , Rating: 2
I'd disagree with this statement because the assumption is that you NEED VBA to use Office at work, which is incorrect. I entirely agree that VBA support is required for some people, particularly anyone working in an accounts office with Excel, but that doesn't cover everyone and it certainly doesn't cover my team. As far as I am concerned, the lack of full support for MS Exchange in Entourage remains the biggest issue with the new version of Office as this is what I was really waiting for. The lack of VBA support just garnered a shrug of the shoulders.

With respect to the VBA issue, please see this blog post for a really excellent overview of why VBA wasn't implemented in Office:mac 2008 (http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-good... The upshot is that it would have taken an additional 2-years to do just to port the VBA support from Office:mac 2004.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By retrospooty on 4/17/2008 12:00:10 PM , Rating: 3
That and matching Vista in business is NOT an accomplishment. Neither Mac nor Vista will ever be a major factor in business systems. Its pretty clear enterprises are sticking with XP until the next OS release.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By 306maxi on 4/17/2008 12:38:25 PM , Rating: 3
I don't think that's true at all. As soon as businesses can be sure that all their software can run on Vista they'll move because Vista will of course get support for a longer time. A lot of companies took aaaaages to move to XP. The company I used to work for took till 2006 to move to XP. The same thing is happening with Vista and people misconstrue this as a sign that Vista is crap or something.....

It's not that. It's the fact that businesses want everything to work before they move over. The same thing will happen with every new Windows OS that comes out as it has happened with every version of windows that has previously come out in the past.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By tallguywithglasseson on 4/17/2008 1:05:19 PM , Rating: 4
That's a good point. To use the parent's example, most businesses probably will stick with XP until the next version of Windows (Windows 7) comes out -- at which point they'll probably be switching to Vista.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By retrospooty on 4/17/2008 1:45:00 PM , Rating: 2
Not really... There are an incredible amount of corporate systems still using win2000. Support means little to nothing, as IT depts never call MS for support on desktop issues (servers yes, but not desktops).

There is no compelling advantage to usse Vista in an office environment, none at all, therefore the cost and more importantly hastle to upgrade the OS is just not worth it. Even new systems that come in as Vista are being images back to XP so that internal support isnt an issue. Expect that to continue long avter XP support stops. Vista will grow a bit in business, but never be massively adopted like XP was. The next gen is what everyone is waiting for.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By darkpaw on 4/17/2008 1:56:34 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
Not really... There are an incredible amount of corporate systems still using win2000. Support means little to nothing, as IT depts never call MS for support on desktop issues (servers yes, but not desktops).


Ah, they don't care about "mainstream" (aka technical) support. They do care about the extended report (i.e. security patches). I'd really be suprised any 2000 is still in use after 2010 when extended support ends for the system.

As long as security holes are still getting patched, if the OS meets the business requirements thats fine. After security patches end, there is very little reason to keep an OS around, then it becomes more of a vulnerability they anything.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By retrospooty on 4/17/2008 2:05:52 PM , Rating: 2
Point taken... Some care about security patches, not all... But Win2000 has been out of circulation for a long time, for extended support to end in 2010 is not an issue. XP will be around even longer.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By mcmilljb on 4/18/2008 2:49:09 AM , Rating: 2
Actually some people will get smart and relocate them to virtual machines, where they can be protected some more. People worried about one machine for that "special" software should just consider a virtual machine and then just move on. Need to keep Win2K and old access database? just vritualize it on a Vista machine. I think that is what we will see more and more, while main user desktops will upgrade as soon as their applications are Vista compliant.


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By darkpaw on 4/18/2008 10:17:19 AM , Rating: 2
Just because it's virtualized, doesn't mean it isn't a threat. There have already been several vulnerabilities that allow taking over hosts or other virtual machines from a comprimised virtual guest and there will be more.

Virtualization != Security


RE: You forgot SECURITY
By 306maxi on 4/17/2008 3:59:05 PM