Re: I tried to use Apple for business
"Of course, that would require updating the laptop/desktop lineup, fixing a whole bunch of we-dont-this oversights in their OS offerings. And, actually being responsive, rather than bossy."
Honestly, I don't think they're really philosophically capable. Almost everything Apple does is incompatible with enterprise, from their approach to security (walled garden is utterly at odds with everyone else's security assumptions) to their incredibly restrictive hardware lineup (4 models will clearly cover every possible business use case for everything ever) to their utter refusal to play nice with any other vendor's hardware or software. The problem is, these aspects are the cornerstone of their very successful consumer straight jacket strategy of 'trapping' people in the Apple ecosystem - breaking out of that would risk the goose that lays the golden eggs to attempt to chisel a space in a market where Microsoft still has overwhelming monopoly power (and, let's be honest, just a much better basket of mature products).
Just last year, we trialed 1 user on a Macbook Pro. It lasted just two weeks before the user demanded we bootcamp it into Windows... and since under bootcamp it positively insisted on needing 50% CPU use even when idling, we eventually abandoned the device and moved the user onto a Specter x360. All complaints immediately stopped. And this was from a user who LIKES Apple devices and had volunteered for the trial; he couldn't understand why it seemed so good at home and yet sucked so unbelievably badly in the work environment. (I suspect that we'd see exactly the same thing if we tried pushing them onto Linux, too, which is one of the reasons why it's so hard to take the 'I put my 90-year old mum on Mint and now she's perfectly happy' crowd seriously).
As DougS says, I very much doubt Apple will be trying for any serious infrastructure role on this - it's more likely to be a response to several serious vendors looking at Windows Phone for enterprise solutions. The rapid sell-out of the HP Elite might have rattled them a little, since high-end exec phones have been Apple's back yard for most of the last ten years and literally no-one was expecting WP to amount to anything ever again. Some careful positioning of iOS as a comprehensive enterprise solution, rather than the existing, somewhat complacent 'oh, everyone's just going to use it so why bother trying' approach is probably warranted.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
