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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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The U.S. Army yesterday announced that several top officials in its technology command visited Apple's Cupertino headquarters earlier this month to begin a dialogue as the Army seeks to take advantage of both Apple's products and engineering ideas to help satisfy its needs.
Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, Research, Development and Engineering Command commanding general and key members of his staff traveled to Apple headquarters March 5.

Apple officials gave the Army group tours of its laboratories and other facilities and talked about some examples of where the military is already using Apple technology. The Army's research and development command is evaluating commercial hand-held solutions such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, iMac, and MacBook platforms.

"The Army is moving away from big-green-box solutions and toward those that will adapt along with our warfighters on the battlefield," Justice said.
In particular, the Army has been looking at how cellular technologies can be leveraged on a tactical basis on the battlefield to assist troops in their endeavors. According to Army representatives, the military is looking to take advantage of Apple's reputation for building intuitive devices and software that require little training to operate and to not only take advantage of Apple's existing efforts but also apply lessons learned by Apple to the Army's own development projects.

The U.S. Army has increasingly been incorporating Macs into its systems as it seeks to diversify its platforms in the face of growing cybersecurity threats. As a high-volume customer with specific technological needs, it also represents an important potential partner for Apple as it strives to continue its sales and earnings growth.

Article Link: U.S. Army Officials Visit Apple Campus as Agency Weighs Purchasing and Development Plans
 

amac4me

macrumors 65816
Apr 26, 2005
1,303
0
I'm all for more agencies adopting Macs! Heck, one day we might be able to classify them as switchers :D
 

theheadguy

macrumors 65816
Apr 26, 2005
1,156
1,385
california
The military and the Army has had a "dialogue" with Apple for years... pretty much every project involving a piece of field equipment has gone to another manufacturer because of durability concerns.
This is absolutely correct.

Hmmm... increasing their fashion sense in case Don't Ask Don't Tell is repealed?
I guess that puts you in the same category as those you are making fun of.
 

MattWylde

macrumors regular
Sep 17, 2009
162
0
Are you people seriously applauding this? What a waste of our tax dollars!! I do contracts with the Navy every single day and I know that the technology that they have will not be benefited by the use of iPad/iPod/iPhone. The military does not offer wi-fi to their staff on base. Everything is hard wired and the conduit is sealed with a tamper proof silicon. The Government is very very particular about their SIPRnet (as they call it). Without wi-fi, what use is the iPad for the military other than to give them a little treat and waste our tax dollars? They already have mobile equipment in the vehicles that is far superior to Apple's products.
 

Truffy

macrumors 6502a
Nick Justice

An interesting combination, not least because, at least in British slang, 'nick' means both 'steal' and 'prison'. So 'nick justice' could be either imprisonment for stealing, or punishment between prisoners. :D
 

justflie

macrumors 6502a
Nov 29, 2005
888
1
Red Sox Nation
Are you people seriously applauding this? What a waste of our tax dollars!! I do contracts with the Navy every single day and I know that the technology that they have will not be benefited by the use of iPad/iPod/iPhone. The military does not offer wi-fi to their staff on base. Everything is hard wired and the conduit is sealed with a tamper proof silicon. The Government is very very particular about their SIPRnet (as they call it). Without wi-fi, what use is the iPad for the military other than to give them a little treat and waste our tax dollars? They already have mobile equipment in the vehicles that is far superior to Apple's products.

You can't assume this will be used for SIPR. What about all the unclassified computers and devices? Our base has been fiddling around with some wifi lately. I don't know if we'll actually get it (doubt it) but it's a possibility.
 

IPPlanMan

macrumors 6502
Dec 25, 2009
365
1,483
Awesome!

Nick Justice sounds like Nick Fury's cousin! :D

This brings "There's an app for that" to a whole new level... Go Army!:cool:
 

djdole

macrumors regular
Aug 21, 2007
162
0
I'm all for more agencies adopting Macs! Heck, one day we might be able to classify them as switchers :D

You do understand that it's not that they're adopting them as their primary system for day to day use, but rather they're purchasing more because (with the slight increase in popularity of the OSX platform) they have to be able to counter said OSX threats.
They're mirroring the increased OSX hacker population. This isn't really anything for any Apple fanboi to be proud of.

Someone recently said Windows is a house with bars in a bad neighborhood and OSX being a house without locks in the country.
That being true, the FBI is just reacting in the expected manner to the increasing the number of criminals in the country (due to the increased number of country houses).
 

KershMan

macrumors 6502
Feb 10, 2003
262
0
VA, USA
You can't assume this will be used for SIPR. What about all the unclassified computers and devices? Our base has been fiddling around with some wifi lately. I don't know if we'll actually get it (doubt it) but it's a possibility.

And the Army in particular has been working on real, secure, Wi-Fi for years. Their intent is to have very hardened, approved, encryption to deliver secure data over a Wi-Fi type network to get data into mobile devices.
 

albusseverus

macrumors 6502a
Nov 28, 2007
744
154
Let's hope some military money goes toward improving Macs and iPhones for civilians, too.

I wonder if Apple will tell the army what a great 3G provider AT&T are?
 

acurafan

macrumors 6502a
Sep 16, 2008
615
0
that's great. now delta force can each carry 5 iphones - one for each task!! and 5 chargers for each phone after they last 10 minutes on the app - in addition to their 70lbs of gear. :D
 

Joe The Dragon

macrumors 65816
Jul 26, 2006
1,023
474
They're going to realize that the existing machines they have- or Windows machines that can be had for much cheaper- are quite capable of handling any non-classified activity without switching to new hardware.

So wants stopping apple from added drivers to osx to run on what ever hardware that the army has? Or letting them have custom systems or having the use dells / hp / who ever with mac os x?
 
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