Apple seems to be making progress in the enterprise environment, according to InfoWorld, which has a series of articles dubbed “Apple Unpeeled.”
One article, ” Mac marks the enterprise,” says that Mac OS X poses a challenge to Windows and Linux.
“Apple began shipping OS X on new Macs,” the article says. “Six months later, at the O’Reilly Peer-to-Peer and Web Services conference, it was clear that a sea change was under way. The open-source geeks who flock to these events were flouting Microsoft not with PC notebooks running Linux, but with PowerBooks running OS X. Displayed on their gorgeous Aqua screens was the Mac’s newest and most unlikely killer app: SSH, the secure shell, in all its 80-column, 25-line splendor.”
Windows and Linux users are finding Mac OS X “a pleasant and productive working environment” and one’s that’s “eminently manageable thanks to its unique heritage,” the article says. Despite its Unix roots, Mac OS X makes end-user administration cleaner and simpler than the classic Mac OS ever did, according to InfoWorld. And with Samba, WebDAV, LDAP and a host of other standards-based integration technologies, “it’s ready to go to work side-by-side with Windows,” the article adds.
InfoWorld also praises the Sherlock 3, iChat and Rendezvous. The article’s executive summary of Mac OS X says it “combines the power and flexibility of Unix with Apple’s classy end-user sensibility” and is “a stunning achievement that creates new options for the agile enterprise.”
A second article, ” Apple’s road less traveled,” explains why Apple’s software may be better suited to the enterprise than ever before. It looks at the benefits of the Xserve rackmount server and Mac OS X 10.2 (“Jaguar”). The article interviews a business that has gone with Apple’s server technology, as well as an analyst who doesn’t think Apple will make long-term headway into the enterprise niche.
An InfoWorld analysis, ” Too big for its niches,” is an opinion piece that offers a point/counterpoint to the previous stories. The columnists, P.J. Connolly and Tom Yager, debate the virtues of the Xserve and Mac OS X Server.
Moving away from a straight enterprise focus, the “Apple Unpeeled” series includes an interview, ” Apple on the move,” Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing; Avie Tevanian, senior vice president of Software Engineering; and Ken Bereskin, director of Mac OS Product Marketing. Though there’s not much new info the Apple execs do talk about Web services, open standards, Bluetooth, Rendezvous, collaborative environments and more. Schiller does note that Apple is “very committed to the Power PC” and that “education is the soul of Apple.”
The “Apple Unpeeled” series also includes a look at Apple and Bluetooth, an iPod review, and an Xserve-Jaguar review.