Fwd: Article: Apple's Next Big Conquest: Business

The problem is Apple is trying to change the way enterprises work. People are more willing to adopt new and what I feel to be gimmicky products like an iPad for example. I still see no real reason why anyone HAS to have one over lets say a 11" MBA. Enterprises don't change fast, in fact it takes years to change a little. Apple is trying to make us all do 180's on Steves command and that won't happen in the enterprise world. Nobody is trying to look cool just get the job done.

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Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

Well, we could start a religious, or at least philosophical war over this.

Suffice it to say, Apple is going down the path that the "traditional" IT department is dead. It (like mainframes and terminals) was a product of the times - most of the workforce of the 80's and 90's did not grow up with computers in the home, and you needed to lock down/babysit/enforce things to get productivity from the workers.

Contrast that to the workforce today. One of the reasons why the Fortune 50 company I consult for went down the Mac path is that they realized that recent college grads were going to push back on being handed a 3-4 year old Dell/HP Windows laptop that literally took 15 minutes to boot up, was locked down so tight, et. al.

IT consumerization is a trend you'll be hearing more and more about in the future. It's the way Apple itself works (Apple IS&T is incredibly small compared to other companies their size) and pretty much the way college campuses work (you buy your Mac or PC laptop, here's how to get it on the network and access everything/be able to do what you need to). As the workforce becomes more technology-educated/aware, the need for traditional IT diminishes.

If you move away from the "image machines, lock down, help desk" mentality towards more of the "thin-imaging, support documents, self/community-support" model, employees take responsibility for their technology and are more empowered (and IT departments do get smaller but hopefully less stressed). I realize this does not work for everyone, but I've been involved in this model for a couple of years and it does work. The consumer/end-user centric App Store is another step in this direction.

Interesting views on the iPad. IMHO, it's really on its way to becoming the appliance that replaces the computer. The average computer, even with a windowed interface, is too complex for some people (i.e. the people who can't self-support - we all have examples of them at our workplaces). I can't think of a great analogy; best would maybe the computer is like the VCR, and the iPad/tablet is like a DVD. Most people had issues with their VCR's (how many left the clocks flashing 12:00 because they never figured out to set them?). They could watch movies but never record. Here comes the DVD, stick it in and go, it's more limited (can't record, so no 12:00 flashing) but it does what people want and is much smaller/thinner/easier.

So, too is the iPad. Anyone who has used iOS 5 sees a bigger picture of where Apple is taking this. The "computing device as appliance" model is coming, folks. How many people understand the filesystem concept/where to store files? That's been abstracted, using databases to keep track of files. Using specific apps to do certain tasks, rather than depending upon swiss army knife (Office, Creative Suite) applications. With iCloud, if you lose your iPad (you have NO idea of the prevalence of lost/forgotten/stolen laptops among senior execs in a big company), you can just buy a new one and restore. End users shouldn't have to think about backup, or where they saved files.

Apple is pushing the future, and driving technology forward. It's what they've done and done well for the last 10+ years, and why they've become successful. Losing the legacy ports, the floppy drive, the optical drive, all steps forward on this path. Sometimes there is momentary pain during the transition periods (PPC->Intel, App Store) but in a year or two we'll get past the pain and the experience will be better for it.

Hang on, it's gonna be a wild ride.

--Robert

Robert, This is an FYI in case users want admin rights...

For those who have clients who want an AD user as the admin, please keep in mind that the system keeps a stub of the admin user at the base level, so if you use the attached script read on... To clear this you need a dscl command to clean the admin group.... (attached).

But a login hook that allows the user (1st AD user to log in) to become an admin gives the user the ability to control the machine and completes the Apple circle.

If any of these scripts are beyond you, you have my email address.