Microsoft Barring Many of its Employees from Buying Apple Products with Company Funds?

[Geminist]

Isn't this about the SMSG group, i.e. client facing group?

It hurts the reputation of any company for turning up to a client meeting spotting a competitor's product. For example the MS employee turning up to meet a telco and is using an Android or iPhone.

 

[lhan16]

uh oh... there goes about 80% of mac sales....

 

[bruinsrme]

when I worked at Intel, I don't seem to recall seeing ANY AMD desktop or laptops.

 

[minimo3]

I would imagine that Apple would have a similar policy of not using corporate funds to buy Windows PC for employees (except for those working on iTunes/Quicktime/Safari for Windows). Why is this even news?

 

[NorEaster]

ms is going thru a bad phase i would say, lack of vision and non sense leadership of great ballmer

Stop being so biased....this is a reasonable request. Think about it: if you owned your own company, you most likely wouldn't want your employees to use COMPANY money to buy products from competitors.

The "let's bash everything that isn't Apple" mentality some posters have is really ignorant.

 

[GenesisST]

It might blow your mind that the best way is often with Apple products.

It depends, janitors have a hard time cleaning up those pesky .DS_Store files everywhere...

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

People seem to have forgotten that Macs run windows just fine, though.

Nobody has forgotten. Although desktop virtualization, i.e. Parallels or VMware Fusion, is fantastic technology allowing Windows and Linux partitions to run at boot or through coherence -- many businesses opt out. Reasons vary, from introducing yet another layer of technology to license and support to security issues and honoring vendor licensing agreements. Cloud technology is also in the mix these days, allowing centralization of business resources and manpower, remote management, offsite storage/recovery, etc.

I mention all this because the context here is business use where all those concerns and others come in to play compared to a less strict set of concerns and requirements for personal use of said technologies.

I'm also pointing out that Microsoft's policy is more than just big brother or marketing.

 

[iSee]

I don't blame them. Maintenance and just purchasing Apple products costs way too much. Company funds should be used wisely on products that get the job done the best way, not the trendyish way.

You're assuming that the main differences between Apple products and competing Microsoft-based ones are price and trendiness (higher for Apple in both cases).

That's certainly arguable when it comes to desktops and laptops. Not so much when comparing Windows phones to iPhones. And what competing tablets "get the job done" better or cheaper than the iPad?

 

[mikefla]

What a mess! Not surprised at all, Microsoft has no innovation, they continue to produce crap, their windows OS continues to be made in India. Have you seen their latest OS, looks like a tablet OS. I have made a career supporting their garbage and I can't wait for the day when I support Apple products instead. Unfortunately Microsoft refuses to bring in innovative people and invest in the US that is why they continue to produce nothing but crap.

-Mike

 

[NorEaster]

I agree. Companies should do competitive analysis. If a graphics designer at Microsoft works more effectively on a Mac/PC/Linux/Whatever then they should use what makes them most productive.

Microsoft is really good at copying and has been financially successful from doing so. They need to buy Apple products for copying too.

And I guess Apple has never copied anything either (notifications in iOS anyone?), right? Sheesh... some posters are so blindly biased it's unreal.

 

[DBDukes]

Wow. Where to begin. Not with Microsoft, but with some of the comments here.

Microsoft did a smart thing. And, it's unfortunate they had to do that, but they did it because people are, well, people.

Any large corporation has issues with some people abusing company resources, whether it's spending all day surfing the Web, padding expense reports, showing up late and leaving early, or a number of other things.

Microsoft has a Macintosh Business Unit (MBU) that can still buy the necessary Apple products that Microsoft will support, whether Macs, iPads, or whatever. That hasn't changed, if you read the article.

From the article, I'm picking up that Microsoft wasn't restricting Apple purchases from other areas of the business (that is, areas other than the MBU), until now. And, they still aren't restricting 55% of the company, which means a lot more than the MBU can still purchase Apple products.

I gather that with the (at the time of the memo) imminent launch of the iPad, Microsoft was concerned about employees purchasing devices that wouldn't be needed for company business. Rather than react and spend a lot of time and resources trying to ensure that funds are wisely spent, they nipped it in the bud.

There's nothing wrong with what Microsoft did. The problem is employees that will spend money unnecessarily. That's not a Microsoft problem. All large companies have that problem.

 

[ncaissie]

You know things are bad when you have to force employees to not buy your competitors products with company money.

Would you? If you say yes then I say BS.

"Microsoft Barring Many of its Employees from Buying Apple Products with Company Funds?"
Why shouldn't they? It makes total sense. If it was Apple stopping their employees (Which probably happens) from buying MS or Android devices you would be all for it.

 

[NightFlight]

Wow, after reading through the comments I find it shocking how many people didn't either:

1. Read the article
2. Understand the article

It makes perfect sense that Microsoft doesn't want their employees buying Apple products with COMPANY money. My company wouldn't let me purchase another competitors product unless it was for research purposes. It doesn't say anywhere in the article that they can't buy the products with their own money, their "rights" aren't being violated.

The business unit that handles all Mac development still has their Macs, obviously. You can also be sure that there are a few other Macs throughout Microsoft as well.

EDIT: Wow, there really is some blind hate for anything non-Apple here. You guys need to get out more. A few of my co-workers have WP7 phones, and there are quite a few things that I like more about that OS than iOS. Just because it is Apple doesn't mean that it does EVERYTHING better than everyone else.

 

[jonnysods]

Wirelessly posted

Just let them use Bootcamp. They have to buy a windows license.

 

[samcraig]

Here's why it makes perfect sense re: execs, marketing, and any employees who do business outside of the office...

Remember when this photo appeared and everyone here laughed at the HP exec who uses a Mac? I think the photo appeared here too. Point is - Microsoft (whether or not they build computers) doesn't want or need to promote the competition because Apple isn't just about computers - it's also about iOS and OSX.

So again I say - this is not surprising and not even news. It just makes sense.

 

[kycophpd]

SIMPLE - Build products that your employees want to buy and there is no problem.

 

[ct2k7]

SIMPLE - Build products that your employees want to buy and there is no problem.

Microsoft is about software, not hardware, and their software pretty much dominates.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Did anyone in this thread read the article?

 

[DeathChill]

Odd that he never once went to where the Start menu used to be isn't it? He spends most of his time where the volume and clock used to be. Mighty strange that a veteran Windows user would do that. I can only image how lost he'd be the first time he used iOS or OSX.

Here's a video of him using OS X for the first time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeeOkHjV7nM

I haven't watched either video yet. I suppose I shall later.

 

[Digitalclips]

When Microsoft's Alain Crozier was contacted for further clarifications on Microsofts barring of Apple purchases:

"No comment.

Sent from my iPad"

Brilliant!

 

[thekev]

Now this is funny enough, so what if the ms employees likes apple stuff, it is good, they are barring their rights essentially, not cool ms, either be good or follow the race

HA HA HA! LOLOL! this is hilarious!

I'm not sure if you guys understand that they didn't ban Apple products. They banned using company funds to purchase them. It's a more common practice than you might realize.

That's somewhat irrational IMO. It's an ego thing, obviously. If a product is creating a more fluid and efficient workflow, it shouldn't matter. Ridiculous, if this is true...

It's not ridiculous. They can still buy an iphone if they want one. It's just saying that MS will not pick up the tab feeding direct competition. It's not that uncommon as long to favor your own products when a functional solution is available. Apple didn't use Xserves as they weren't up to the task. They do make use of Macs in their stores.

Makes sense. But still, what's it going to say when MS employees get caught at conventions toting iPhones? That given the option, an MS employee would rather pay for their own iPhone than be stuck with a free craptastic WinMo POS? Now that's what's funny...

Again.. nowhere does it say they're prohibiting this. It says they'd have to buy their own, and they can afford it if they want it.

 

[ghostface147]

Not a big deal. Microsoft is in the right for this situation.

 

[dukeblue91]

Wow, after reading through the comments I find it shocking how many people didn't either:

1. Read the article
2. Understand the article

Not me, I didn't find it shocking at all.
I quite expected it.

 

[Konrad9]

You know things are bad when you have to force employees to not buy your competitors products with company money.

It must be pretty bad since Gates has donated tens of billions of dollars to charity and Jobs never donated a dime.

 

[lucasmonger]

Too much credit to Microsoft

I guess that memo didn't exist in 1997 when Microsoft bailed Apple out to the tune of $150 million. People forget that we probably wouldn't have iAnything without Microsoft.

I think you're giving too much credit to Microsoft. The $150M investment was really a detent, Apple will stop suing Microsoft for infringing on their user interface, and Microsoft would develop a decent MS Office for Mac, thus helping remove some antitrust issues if Apple were to disappear. Internally at Apple, they were no longer trying to become the dominant computer vendor. What Apple did with that money was all Steve Jobs and company, not Microsoft... iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air... While everyone was wondering how Apple was going to gain marketshare in the PC world, Steve Jobs was coming up with new markets to sidestep the need for a Windows computer. The transformation away from PowerPC to Intel chips where Apple was maintaining a secret version of Mac OS X for Intel was genius. The introduction of the iDevices over the last decade were legendary. Steve Ballmer continues to appear like a bumbling idiot to the tech world. I predict someday Microsoft will just be a company with no software developers, only a team of lawyers to sue and collect royalties on mimicking the look and feel of MS Office and Halo of software written by others.