Re: [Fed-Talk] Problems with Keychain/AF WebMail/CAC Or the endless trials of getting Macs to work with Smartcards
Re: [Fed-Talk] Problems with Keychain/AF WebMail/CAC Or the endless trials of getting Macs to work with Smartcards
- Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] Problems with Keychain/AF WebMail/CAC Or the endless trials of getting Macs to work with Smartcards
- From: Amanda Walker <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:08:27 -0400
On May 31, 2007, at 3:12 AM, Boyd Fletcher wrote:
Finally, if Apple wants to be respected in DOD as a serious technology
provider then its needs to stop treating DOD users as a bunch of
individuals and instead look at DOD as the largest IT user in the
world - by
a very large margin. MS learned this, why can't Apple.
I don't think it's a matter of "can't". I think it's a matter of
"won't".
Apple doesn't want to sell to large IT users. Where it's in the
enterprise and government markets at all, it's by accident. Even
things like XServe RAID and Xsan are aimed at individual scientists
or workgroups, not enterprise or government use. Shawn and the other
Apple Federal folks do a great job trying to compensate for this, as
do some other isolated islands within Apple, but overall Apple
actively resists getting into these markets.
From discussions with Apple management over the years (going back to
1984 when I was working in higher ed and ran into the same problems),
it's pretty clear to me that this is intentional.
1) Enterprise customers should not have to provide a credit card
number to
get a laptop fixed. [...]
2) Enterprise customers should not have to send their laptop in
BEFORE a
replacement units arrives. [...]
3) Enterprise customers don't like surprises. [...]
Based on prior experience, this will not change. Apple does not have
a support organization per se--they have consumer call centers and
repair services, and they have developer technical support, but
they're just not equipped for enterprise customers. And Steve likes
his surprises. Apple's marketing position is completely oriented
towards individuals and novelty, not moving high volume and
predictability.
Apple really needs to rethink how it shares enterprise technology
(laptops, desktops, servers, storage - not the consumer stuff like
appletv,
ipod,iphone ) roadmap with enterprise customers.
Apple does not have enterprise technology. Even the servers and
storage are aimed at workgroups at best: video editing and such, not
data centers.
More's the pity, because they have the technical ability to really
place boots to posteriors if they decided they wanted to be in that
business. But so far, it gets lip service at best.
Amanda Walker
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