"Apple is the next Microsoft"

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

Even then, I've heard that is changing due to businesses bending to the prevalence of iOS among employees (Apple to take 11% of global enterprise market by 2015 thanks to iPhone 'halo effect').

I've never understood the BYOD fervor amongst employees. "Yay! I get to use my device for company business. Can I pay for all the office equipment also? Please."

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I can understand your creating a straw man over the course of a discussion. Nearly everyone slips from time to time. What I can't understand is your choosing to become an assembly line of straw men.

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

And I can say the same thing about you. Remember post #141?

Yes, let's look at post #141. Here's the entire thing:

It's important to differentiate between Jobs' talents and successes, his failings and limitations, and his moral ambiguity. All three aspects are not interchangeably bad or good.

Hans' point is merely logical: Jobs would have found other creative people to galvanize, bully, steal from and improve upon. Those same creative people would likely not have found another Jobs. To say so is no more a trivialization of those people's talents than it is a justification for Jobs' tendency toward mystification, hype and dictatorial self-assertion. Despite all that, he was good at some important things.

The man was a gifted organizer, salesman and conceptual simplifier. He might be dead, but (even if he annoyed you beyond patience) to discount his gifts is to fail to recognize and possibly absorb the strengths of a former rival. It's easy to see how Guy Kawasaki might have learned from Jobs but eventually decided to work for Google.

To whom am I attributing questionable arguments in that post? It was a post that tried to establish context for Hans' position (with which I clearly agreed), which is why I addressed positions that I thought could be unfair -- not because people had voiced them, but because the context could invite them to.

That you should have taken exception to that post was initially baffling to me -- but less so now that I know there might be a communication issue (see below).

And in post #144: I didn't say that the screen size needed fixing. I don't believe in the idea that there must be only one screen size. I was pointing out the lack of variety, which is good for maximizing profits, but not good for the consumer.

Your point was understood. There seems to be some sort of disconnect between us re mutually understood terms.

Here's an example: By fixed screen size, I meant a screen size that is fixed, i.e., a size that does not change. It was a paraphrase of your idea that consumers should not simply be offered a single screen size -- an idea with which I have always agreed.

If we misunderstood one another on that minor point, then I wonder how clearly we've understood each other in the past several posts.

[pl001]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

I've never understood the BYOD fervor amongst employees. "Yay! I get to use my device for company business. Can I pay for all the office equipment also? Please."

It's going to get worse. I know of a major midwest university's long-term telecom plans which call for personal cell phones to be used for business. Employees won't get a company phone at all, they will get a VoIP app to put on their personal phones for inter-office calling.

It's not implemented yet, but they have decided to not update their current outdated legacy infrastructure and devices to full VoIP because of this. In their words, they are "skipping" that step.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by pl001

It's going to get worse. I know of a major midwest university's long-term telecom plans which call for personal cell phones to be used for business. Employees won't get a company phone at all, they will get a VoIP app to put on their personal phones for inter-office calling.

It's not implemented yet, but they have decided to not update their current outdated legacy infrastructure and devices to full VoIP because of this. In their words, they are "skipping" that step.

While there is clearly a downside that not all users appreciate at first, there are advantages. You don't have to carry/maintain extra devices, you get to deduct part of your expenses from your taxes, you are already familiar with your devices operation, you don't have to wait until your company sees fit/can afford to buy a device for you.

The most significant downside I've seen is when a company (or, most often, government) decides to allow BYOD, but has such strict policies, that the device is basically not yours anymore. The can track or restrict your personal activity, wipe your devices remotely, etc.

ApK

[shalym]

Originally Posted by pl001

It's going to get worse. I know of a major midwest university's long-term telecom plans which call for personal cell phones to be used for business. Employees won't get a company phone at all, they will get a VoIP app to put on their personal phones for inter-office calling.

It's not implemented yet, but they have decided to not update their current outdated legacy infrastructure and devices to full VoIP because of this. In their words, they are "skipping" that step.

Actually, I know of a few companies that are already doing this. Employees get money added to their paycheck every week as a technology allowance to be used to help pay for their cell phone bill, and in some cases their home internet as well. I would much rather have this, as it allows me to carry just one cell phone. Why would you want to have to carry two phones? Or do you have just the one for work?

Shari

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by jbjb

In the deeply technical environment in which I work, Windows and OSX are about equally represented, making up about a third each, with the other third mostly a combination of free Unix-ish OSes - principally Linux with some others such as FreeBSD etc. Of those, the one that causes by far the most pain in terms of playing well with the others is Windows.
/JB

I suspect that the environment you work in is not representative of the overall market. As I see it, Apple sells mainly to private users, not professional environments.

Anyway, my point still holds. Apple cannot afford to not 'get on' with Windows. Windows can ignore Apple all it wants. It's not a level playing-field. Windows is massively dominant on the personal computer world.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by David Munch

Not surprising. The file system is 21 years old, and really due for a replacement. Heck, even Microsoft tried to make a replacement for it 6 years ago with Vista. Why would Apple at waste time to support a random file system it will never need? OS X has supported SMB for 7 years anyway, meaning that writing files to NTFS network drives is not a problem anyway.

I attempted to copy a file from a new Mac laptop to laptop running Windows 7. All pretty up-to-date software and hardware. The Mac user was frustrated at the perceived limitation of her new hardware. Maybe she won't buy Mac again because of it. That is why Apple need to support NTFS.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by pl001

It's going to get worse. I know of a major midwest university's long-term telecom plans which call for personal cell phones to be used for business. Employees won't get a company phone at all, they will get a VoIP app to put on their personal phones for inter-office calling.

Originally Posted by ApK

While there is clearly a downside that not all users appreciate at first, there are advantages. You don't have to carry/maintain extra devices, you get to deduct part of your expenses from your taxes, you are already familiar with your devices operation, you don't have to wait until your company sees fit/can afford to buy a device for you.

What about people like me who don't use smartphones? I use an old school flip phone.

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I suspect that the environment you work in is not representative of the overall market. As I see it, Apple sells mainly to private users, not professional environments.

My experience has been that, despite your assertion that "if money is not an issue and you don't understand computers and you like shiny things, Apple is for you", the more technically expert the user, the more likely they are to use OSX. My non-technical friends use Windows almost exclusively, but amongst technical colleagues there's a much higher fraction using OSX.

Anyway, my point still holds. Apple cannot afford to not 'get on' with Windows. Windows can ignore Apple all it wants. It's not a level playing-field. Windows is massively dominant on the personal computer world.

I'm not disputing Windows' dominance, but pointing that out is not the same as saying that Apple's OS "famously doesn't get on with the greater outside-world of other OSes". That's a technical assertion about the interoperability of the OS, not a market dominance one. My experience is that OSX actually works very well in a mixed-OS environment, certainly better than Windows.

/JB

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I attempted to copy a file from a new Mac laptop to laptop running Windows 7. All pretty up-to-date software and hardware. The Mac user was frustrated at the perceived limitation of her new hardware. Maybe she won't buy Mac again because of it. That is why Apple need to support NTFS.

So an NTFS formatted USB stick was the only way you could find to do the transfer?

You couldn't send the file over the network? Use a differently formatted USB stick (most USB sticks are shipped formatted as FAT32 or exFAT)?

/JB

[pl001]

Originally Posted by shalym

Actually, I know of a few companies that are already doing this. Employees get money added to their paycheck every week as a technology allowance to be used to help pay for their cell phone bill, and in some cases their home internet as well. I would much rather have this, as it allows me to carry just one cell phone. Why would you want to have to carry two phones? Or do you have just the one for work?

Shari

Like ApK mentioned, when the company locks down your personal phone is when you want to have two. Bloated enterprise apps that take control of your device.

And this particular school doesn't plan on paying for the service, it will be a condition of employment.

Right now my company gives me a stipend which after payroll taxes pays for about 60% of my cell phone costs. A requirement to receive my stipend is that I install a resource-sucking mess of an email/calendar client to integrate with our Exchange servers. That app also gives them the ability to monitor, lock down, and wipe my phone.

[frahse]

I remember when it was cool to have a company pager.

Sometimes we would work out codes to substitute for the return phone number that were messages in themselves.