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

miles01110 said:
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.
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The Government, I mean serious government, with big purchasing power gets great deals on Mac's better than you think and competitive to the high end systems you might get from Dell etc
 
thefourthpope said:
+1

"warfighters"...ugh.
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I disagree.

Whether you like the military or you don't, if we want them to survive on the battlefield it's important that they have the best equipment possible. If in some case that were an Apple product, all the more power to them if they want to buy it.
 
miles01110 said:
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.
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Absolutely correct. Unless you have a specialized workflow (ie in certain S&T positions), the vast majority of work is done within MS Office. Doesn't exactly require a workstation.

That being said, our biggest problem is the hardware differentiation. As a result, the software is a horrid mess because the "security" crap that's on all of our machines interacts with the configurations differently. People are used to blue screens popping up every now and then. Everything gets so bogged down. It's horrid. Would I recommend that everyone switch to a Mac? No. It would take far too long to teach all of the tech illiterate what to do. It would be nice to have as an option for "the rest of us." 😎 The relatively small amount of hardware customization possible would help IT a bit too.
 
Um, the iPhone/touch (and most likely the iPad) is just barely sturdy enough for the urban dweller, I can not see it out in a battle field. 😕

In my opinion, they should just buy OSX.

mac*jedi*g said:
The title of this article should be:

Mac goes to WAR😡
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1. Just because Apple is selling to the military doesn't mean it supports war.
2. "Mac" is not going to war with anyone.
3. What about all the other companies that supply stuff to the military? The military uses BIC pens and eats Nabisco products, does that mean the newspapers headlines should be "BIC and Nabisco go to WAR 😡" too?
 
Apple hasn't dipped its toe in the ruggedized computer business, has it? That's bound to be one aspect of army interest.

But perhaps computing devices that survive going to school with students should already be considered ruggedized.
 
MattWylde said:
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.
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Yeah, I'm going to have to call you on this. If you really worked with the navy, you would have been aware of this Terra Soft and Lockheed put xserves in US Subs and that the military and intelligence community has a long history with macs and NextStep computers.

Previous versions of OS X had lockdown instructions written by the NSA for high security clearance environments and the iPhone has been in testing by the Army for some time now. Non-jailbroken iPhones are really hard to crack with the latest firmware through remote exploits.
 
MattWylde said:
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.
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And who says the army is going to be using apple's products? It's entirely possible that what the army is seeking is a way to use apple's development team for their own needs rather than using apple's existing products, that would be just about as good. Apple designed UAVs anyone? 😀
 
MattWylde said:
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.
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You do contracts everyday with the Navy? This is the Army!
 
djdole said:
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).
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What a bunch of crap.
 
MattWylde said:
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.
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Every officer I know has a gov't issued blackberry. The iphone and ipad don't necessarily need wifi to be of value.
 
Wirelessly posted (SAMSUNG-SGH-A821/1.0 SHP/VPP/R5 NetFront/3.4 SMM-MMS/1.2.0 profile/MIDP-2.0 configuration/CLDC-1.1)

New iPhone, now available on black, white or camo
 
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