:: Deepquest ::

What Apple is looking for? New clients or market shares? Which quiet diferent approach. Apple annouced the 20 years of Apple, we all expected a new revolution but it wasn’t here (yet). G5 Xserve are late, talking about big companies switching there not much. Xserve are nice, a good value but… Did you see much of them in shops? Where to get one? I got Xserve from the AppleStore but there’re always some delays. Production is still a problem with Apple. Do you remember when Ti powerbooks where released, the time we had to wait to get one?

You want new computers, new servers, or softwares you want it now.

The other problems is the approach of the Xserve: you want one, you must use a mac to administer it. I know there are some 3rd parties tools such as [url=http://www.webmin.com/index.html]webmin[/url] that allow you to control some features or even SSH. It’s difficult for companies to switch to OSX, not for the price or performances but for one reason, because you force IT to do major change. Companies with old windows history can switch without problems, they’ll find great features same as windows offer, and even more sometimes. I have on customers site with few Xserve with [url=http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/open_directory.html] opendirectory[/url] setup windows workstations, it just works.

What about the [url=http://www.apple.com/business/] Business tab[/url] of apple.com? Are the Small Business the only target from Apple?It’s even worst in [url=http://www.apple.com/fr/smallbusiness/solutions/]Apple’s France site[/url] only 4 kinds of business are displayed: healthcare, architects, lawyer and real estate. Even the french pr news sucks, in US they have the [url=http://www.apple.com/hardware/video/virginiatech/] Virginia Tech cluster[/url] in France we have wifi access with [url=http://www.apple.com/fr/hotnews/articles/jean_baptiste/]airport in a restaurant[/url]. Wow great!! There’re many potential switchers out there! You can’t imagine how many IT guys still think that Apple can’t interact with other computers. I like the [url=http://www.apple.com/ipod/ads/]Ipod[/url] adds played in US and Europe are really cool but will a $299 geek toys (that I love) will be the economic futur of Apple instead of $5000 Xserve, Xserve Raid?
Apple is still to much focus on B2C, instead of B2B.