The Mac is turning into a more attractive option for businesses, according to Jason Levitt of InformationWeek. In an online story, the writer said, “after years of being either a thorn in the side of IT departments or ignored entirely as a second-class desktop operating system, the Macintosh is finally getting the software support it needs from Microsoft and, ironically, Apple.”
So what’s changed things? Mac OS X, which brings much-needed input/output performance to the Mac desktop, along with the memory-management and multitasking benefits of a Unixlike operating system, opines Levitt. And Microsoft’s upcoming release of Outlook 2001 for the Mac “puts the Mac for the first time at functional parity and interoperability with Outlook for Windows on the corporate desktop.” This, along with October’s release of Office 2001 for Mac OS X makes the Mac a more viable business desktop than it’s ever been, Levitt said.
Other applications that should appeal to those in the corporate world are Mac OS X Server and Lotus Notes 5.0, he added. Apple has been quiet about the future of Mac OS X Server, but according to sources at the company, Mac OS X Server, with all the graphical user interface and core operating system updates from the client version, will ship sometime soon after March 24, Levitt writes. The writer also takes the controversial position that Apple should port Mac OS X to Wintel hardware.
“With the price points on commodity PC hardware close to half of comparable Apple hardware, it would seem that only die-hard Apple shops might consider buying into Mac OS X Server running on PowerPC boxes, which makes one wonder why Apple doesn’t revitalize its previous strategy to port Mac OS X to PC hardware.”