Clue me if you will
Can someone give me a clue how roughly 60% of computer sales is to corporations, when almost all existing and recent corporations have already bought machines for every server room, and worker-bee desktop within their campus'?? Also there was a major slowdown; actually no buying from hardly any corporations in the last 2-3 years, when minor cpu/pci/hdd upgrades where only needed. Just like most home buyers until this last 15 months jump in games outside the home console market.
I believe Apple selling the OS to a company can help them - in due time when a major drop happens and maintains a drop or drops faster. Not to Sony though. They can design, implement new ideas, and selling products much faster - in the computer area - than Apple. SONY is still a better worldwide known name when it comes to computers, and consumer electronics than Apple - even with the huge growth of the iPod.
Although I hate even seeing white earbuds, and white iPods - I'm buying the U2 model soon myself, I have to admit that it has helped Apple grow tremendously. I still think Apple should pull out whatever rabbit their saving now, before any drop in the ipod craze starts. Also glad Jobs called it the iPod music community; rings a lot better for those whom still perceive it as a fad - mostly windows pc users.
On Mr. Dell's part. That sounds like a not so smart move to make. We must remember that many people still arent ready for a Mac, they just want a computer to check email and play Doom or UT# whatever. Most dont want to be creative or productive in anyway, nor see the computer as capable an outlet for their creativity. Maybe its due to the fact that most people buy computers brand by what they use with work, their still worker-bees working at home on a PC from their day at work. Dell would have to crunch and research demand before even offering OS X if they could. If it didnt take off, then it would be a failure to both Dell and Apple.
If Apple sold the OS then they might as well be a direct competitor to MS. At that point, they have no control on how their OS would work with other machines. They'd have to spend huge amounts of R&D for standardization and building solid partnerships to put this into effect. Dell thinks, the recent OS X on Intel chips is another step closer to OS X being on any Intel clone machine. Apple still doesnt have the resources for world scale advertising, nor the huge OS X things that corporations need.
Working with RIM BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Web Interface. Good Technologies' GoodLink Enterprise Server/Sync. Competition also now with Microsoft's PushEmail support - rumors of it not being completely secure, what else is new - for Server 2003 SP2. Wireless synchronization of wireless handheld devices. (although I hope that the recent browser work with Nokia is a sign of Series60 support of Symbian OS work to come). Assisting corporations for proprietory porting of database, email, administration security & accessibility to "switch" to the Apple OS! Maybe Apple could get partnership help from Oracle, SAP and others. But THIS, everything I mentioned in this paragraph, is what Apple is currently lacking in order to take MS head-on, on a OS vs OS marketshare fight. This is the basics that corporations are relying on. Open Source projects need to be more robust, and offer as many features as proprietory offerings in order to be considered competitive on a implementation & cost scale. Thats my humble opinion. Most of you Mac-heads are administrators, know a lot more than I do, but I hope you understand where I'm coming from.
cheers.
