Jim Lundy » Apple

My Twitter Post about Apple Mac Support in the Enterprise

Jim Lundy — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:25:45 +0000

I asked a question on Twitter yesterday: Does your Enterprise Support Macs or Frown on them. I got some interesting responses that are posted below:

@JimLundy Windows PCs are the minority @ our company

Are Apple Macs supported in your enterprise or frowned on…. (via @JimLundy) Not frowned upon (a few around, incl my MBP. Not promo’d, tho

@JimLundy they are not supported. But 1/3 of IT are running on Macs. Everyone in the company seems to want one though Soon enough…

@JimLundy Macs at Cisco they are community supported.

@JimLundy (Macs are) SUPPORTED! WORD.

I found the response that IT are allowed to have them but users are not very amusing.

What is your enterprise stance on Macs? Are users clamoring for them? They sure seem to be out here in Silicon Valley.

You can follow me on Twitter: Jim_Lundy

Changing of the Guard at Apple and Microsoft

Jim Lundy — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:38:07 +0000

There is lots of concern for Apple CEO Steve Jobs health at this point and I wish him all the best. It brings to mind all the stuff that went on last year at Microsoft, a year in which there was a considerable amount of public farewells for its founder Bill Gates.

Much has been written about Bill and recent articles have asked if Ray Ozzie is up for taking over the helm as the technology visionary at Microsoft. Time will tell.

One often under reported event that happened at Microsoft last year was the near simultaneous departure of Jeff Raikes, who ran the highly successful Microsoft Office franchise. Jeff is not going far, since he will now be running the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as its CEO. Jeff was a true leader at Microsoft and I’m sure he is missed.

Apple has an internationally known celebrity in Steve Jobs. He is the rock star and Apple’s stock price moves with news on his health. However, there are a bevy of competent executives that have been with him at Apple for many years. They don’t get the exposure, but they sure have delivered some great products lately.

Fast forward to today and you wonder which firm has done more innovation. iTunes was ingenious for what it did for music distribution and the iPods and now the iTouch and iPhone have set standards for design that many are trying to match. Microsoft has many successes to point to, the latest being its growing SharePoint business.

Both firms have had challenges to deal with over the years. Innovation is one area that is a constant challenge to firms that are no longer start-ups. That is the challenge for Apple and Microsoft: making sure that they don’t miss the next big shift in technology. Being a publicly traded company doesn’t make it any easier, as the pressure of delivering the numbers often may force a decision to be made on an investment that later might be regretted. In fact, today’s Wall Street Journal chronicles Microsoft’s misses in Search.

The bottom line is that Apple and Microsoft will continue onward and upward with or without their founders. No matter who is at the helm, matching growth rates of yesteryear will be a formidable challenge at both companies.

Apple’s Sneak Attack on the Enterprise

Jim Lundy — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:08:55 +0000

It has not gotten much press attention, but Apple has quietly started running seminars around the country that focus on using Macs in the enterprise. The events are being held in 18 different US Cities.

Is the Mac showing up more in enterprises? Slowly and quietly is my assessment. Mainly, it is the 30% of users who are opting to use their own machine which increasingly is a Mac. In a telling development, many of the developers showing up at conferences in Silicon Valley have Macbooks….

So, there is a quiet shift going on. Don’t expect IT departments to jump from XP to iMacs, but employees are doing that and doing it every day. Apple still has a long way to go on their support agreements and that may be one of the changes that needs to happen in order for them to get back into enterprises.

Change in Silicon Valley

Jim Lundy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:07:44 +0000

Since moving back to the Valley over 3 months ago, it has become quite apparent that there has been some big changes going on for a while now. I am not talking about any of the recent elections, I’m talking about the notebooks that people show up with at all types of conferences. I’m talking about Apple Notebooks.

Users have voted and Apple appears to be winning the war of the laptop that conference attendees bring with them to events in Silicon Valley.

I myself got tired of being a virus technician on the weekends and at the end of 2006 I migrated the family to Macs. That said, my corporate PC is a Windows based laptop. However, today I made the leap, one that Analyst Steve Prentice made earlier in the year.

Yes, I went out and purchased one of those new Aluminum Mac Laptops. So far it does everything it is supposed to: work quietly and efficiently and allow me to do work without the OS getting in the way. I like the new design and the display.

I’ll have more to share about this journey and I look forward to all the hot new presentations I will create with Apple Keynote 08. Keynote is being used more and more for high level presentation work. It was used to create some of the cool presentations that were shared at the recent Salesforce.com User Event, Dreamforce.

So, you can say that while today I’m a PC, tomorrow I will be a Mac….developing.