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12/14/2007, 4:25pm, EST

Friday, December 14th

Enterprise will stifle Apple's creativity

Apple's entrance into the business world could be a mistake, and it may render the creativity of the company who all but thrives on it sterile, according to Marketcircle CEO, Alykhan Jetha. He argues that the placid nature of an enterprise company is just the thing that will stifle the company's creative process, having to adhere to years-old practices and old standards. A great deal of Microsoft's time is spent adapting its software to be backwards compatible with antiquated office equipment, and says that it's "a ball and chain that will render Apple as 'just another tech company' should it decide to chase the enterprise market."

"The irony in all of this, is that Apple is actually getting into the enterprise" writes Jetha in his blog. "This trend is driven by the users who first experience Apple's ease of use via an iPod or increasingly via an iPhone, who then take a very small risk and buy a Mac."

Jetha reminisces how bottom-rung employees were typically the ones to insist on bringing Macs into the offices, only to be denied by management or IT. Now, because of Apple's use of Intel chips, aggressive marketing campaigns, and peripheral innovation, upper level executives are demanding Mac computers be in to practice at large firms.

Jetha cautions Apple in its approach to large business, saying that "you can't innovate when you cater to dinosaurs."


Filed under: industry, enterprise, Apple
Other story tags: Marketcircle, creativity

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They do need reigned in
0
12/14, 4:54pm, EST
Apple entering the business market might be good. Too many times changes to the OS are arbitrary and break otherwise functioning applications. They have no road map for the future, making IT purchases hard and more difficult to plan purchases months and years out. I'm a big Apple fan, but dumb changes to OSX make me mad. If they had to consider business users a little more, we might have some more stability in things. Take the dock folder/stack fiasco... should have been avoided. Major beta testing on a corporate level could weed out errors like the file-copy-deletion bug when a volume was dropped.
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Please.
0
12/14, 5:10pm, EST
The idea that you can't be innovative if you're tied to business would certainly be a surprise to companies like HP, AMEX, Herman Miller, every advertising agency and above all IBM, whose end-to-end business strategy services that tie their hardware and software solutions to creating novel solutions is a fantastic example of thinking outside the box and serving your business clients' best progressive interests. Just because Microsoft chooses to imbue itself with the most conservative business model in decades is no reason to think it has to be done that way.
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Pssst....
0
12/14, 5:13pm, EST
Doesn't marketcircle make exclusively business software exclusively for OSX? Is this guy really willing to you-know-what where he eats?

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Baloney
0
12/14, 5:34pm, EST
First, it is Microsoft's incompatibility that causes the vast vast majority of their and anyone in a mixed environments problems. Nothing works unless its all M$ and then it really doesn't work as advertised and requires massive amounts of redundant hardware and intervention to keep the rubber bands fresh and replace the band-aids. Standards based systems are getting better and better at playing together nicely. Apple pulls some silly proprietary crap and some short-sighted mickey mouse crap but their hardware is A-OK even the servers and server software are happy network campers and even talk M$ pretty darn well. System software is very compatible through several versions so upgrades are voluntary. It will only get better and it will cost a lot less both in the closet and on the desktop for hardware, software and support. Check any of the TCO calcualtions, a new dead stock iMac is a viable five to seven year machine in 95% of the market.

Second, do you think any of the lead developers at Apple would be put to work writing drivers for old crap? They might hire it out but the skunk works is already working on stuff several years out. This guy is full of it.
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Ironic...
0
12/14, 5:36pm, EST
...Market Circle was the one company that allowed me to salvage my contact data from ACT! for Mac which was summarily & disappointingly abandoned by Symantec (I will never license their software again) & sold by Apple back in the powertalk days - I have much praise for the Market Circle guys - but legacy compatibility & data access is essential for many businesses - finding a balance may be the challenge...

Perhaps the problem is more with the corporations that ransom users by design (Intuit?) with locked in proprietary formats - competitive design with more open & transferable standards for data may be the best of both worlds ?
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not true
0
12/14, 5:37pm, EST
No, at big companies such as SAIC, there are many execs that uses Macs. MBP + 30" Cinema Display is a great combo.

A great deal of Microsoft's time is spent adopting MS office 2007 to what? The MS Office default setting with full features is not backwards compatible.
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I don't see the rational?
0
12/14, 5:55pm, EST
I don't see the rational of entering business makes you non-creative. Maybe Microsoft went that route but Apple isn't going to and never will. Why can't you be creative even though you support business? Doesn't make any sense at all. Everyone knows why Apple is where they are today. It's all about creativity and thinking out the whole deal not just part of it. A complete package that is easy to use. I think business could use a great deal of creativity right now and Apple has the means to do it.
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re: they do need to ....
0
12/14, 6:09pm, EST
"ake the dock folder/stack fiasco... should have been avoided"

There is no dock folder/stack fiasco - it's all in the heads of a few mac geeks on message boards. For me, and everyone I've talked to, stacks are much more useful than a simple menu. You can't click and drag files out of a hierarchical menu.

Not only that, if you prefer the old way, there are several freeware solutions to bring it back.

Also, In terms of the enterprise, this isn't even a consideration. It's not like Windows has extensive configurable hierarchical menus in the task bar.
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I don't agree.
0
12/14, 9:11pm, EST
I'm an Apple Consultant. The companies that I'm working with who are going Mac aren't managed conventionally. The tend to be hip and current. The don't employ the kind of I.T. guys who can't handle change.
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re: hayesk
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12/14, 10:15pm, EST
"There is no dock folder/stack fiasco - it's all in the heads of a few mac geeks on message boards."

In your dreams. I know dozens of people who have not upgraded to Leopard because of the dock folder/stack issue. If you use your Mac in certain ways, you can't just abandon your file system without taking a big hit in productivity.

Now that there are some third-party solutions, many who have waited are checking them out, and we'll see how good the 'solutions' work. But that's two months of waiting so far.

For most people, the forced stacks with their non-sensical dock icons didn't prevent them from upgrading, but there've been a lot of people complaining about it, including the best-known Mac writers.

I'm glad stacks works for you - have fun with it. You don't speak for everyone, though.
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