Apple → Re: Why Apple must come out with iPhone

I love apple to death but I don't think I'd wanna buy a $500 phone... :x

Well lets see. You wanna have a $ 200 phone that is dumb, a $ 300 iPod, and not have a recorder, a movie recorder, a presentation tool, a keyboard.

Plus when you are out you are either unable to surf or later efficiently sync.

You do not want to have access to your doctor numbers or family numbers or addresses or your own companies price lists when you are out.

As Sprint says in their ad: hamstrung.

No.

Yes, it costs money. But imagine the productivity.

Forget that.

Let me sell it in reverse:

Bill Gates: "Yeah you my engineer. Grab an Ipod from one of my 80% of people in the Microsoft campus. Yeah one of those with the color screen. Add to it a radio, wifi, BT, keyboard. Make it look like a Treo 650 or a Sony 910. Make it completely compatible with our operating system. It will be the standard 'portable computer'. Steve Jobs already did the packaging, the ease of use, the storage, color, all we have to do is borrow from the phone companies."

Engineer: "yeah but MS software sucks for a small device. It crashes, it is not stable, it is slow, and it needs to be written so that it is intuitive and easy."

Gates: "Like I told you, steal all the concepts from the Apple software. Thank God Apple did not do it I'd kill myself if Apple sold 10 million portable communicator iPods. It would make them the standard in a market that will be the largest market of all: the portable, personal device."

Well lets point out the MANY flaws in your proposal. First off I don't know what company you work in "top management" for, but they sound completely and utterly different then the billion dollar multinational companies i've worked for (Texaco, QVC, Comcast)

No paradigm shift especially based around a phone is going to get a billion dollar company to replace their PC's with Macs. NO SENSIBLE company is going to pay for the redevelopment costs of all our internal applications to work on Macs. Switching to Macs and scrapping all the PC's does nothing but waste money and in no way will increase revenues.

Next, why would a iPhone entice anyone to buy a Mac? I know TONS of people with Ipods...not one of them has wanted to get a Mac because of the Ipod.

You state "The elegant sync between the iPhone and the bosses' G5 would be the beginning of a tidal wave of conversions away from the PCs"

So wait...is Apple going to intentionally cripple the iPhone so that it does not elegantly sync with the PC? Are they going to make the iPhone Mac only which would make sure that barely anyone was interested in it from the start.

Look at the Ipod when it first came out, people loved the way it looked etc, but since it was Mac only people didn't like it enough to go buy a mac. As soon as the Ipod was windows compatible (and it syncs just as elegantly in windows as it does on a Mac...in fact my ipod actually has higher sustained transfer speeds via my desktops firewire then it does via my G4 Powerbooks...) it begun to sell in large amounts.

What your expecting to happen is beyond me. A smartphone no matter how revolutionary is not going to cause a CEO of a company...especially a publically owned/traded company to scrap their whole PC infrastructure and start over.

You also state "Say Donald Trump got the iPhone. He would then get a Mac"...why would he get a Mac? If his iPhone works perfectly well with his PC what on earth would make him want a Mac? You fail to address these issues. Plus once he got a Mac why would his entire organization use Macs?

P.S. Both Donald Trump and Mark Burnett use G4 17" powerbooks, yet I don't see the rest of their corporations using entirely Macs for the simple reason that THERE IS NO REASON FOR THEM TO SWITCH EVERYONE TO MACS!!!!!

Also the comment of your that I directly quoted at the beginning of my post is asinine and shows that you don't have much experience with smartphones running windows mobile as the windows smartphone devices i've used have been stable, fast, and easy to use.

I won't bother going into detail about the fact that both my Powerbook and Ipod have crashed/frozen more then some Microsoft "powered" devices....

Your idea of an iPhone is nice, but the notion that it would begin some sort of massive corporate switchover is incredibly flawed and if your really in top management i'd love to know what company you work for that just has a cpl millions dollars budgeted to doing a complete switchover for what is essentially NO REASON

Don't get me wrong. I love my Ipod, I love my powerbook and prefer it over any PC laptop on the market, but just like a company it is cost prohibitive for me to just scrap my PC and make my desktop a macintosh also...especially when I factor in that I use many apps on my desktop which will not run on a Mac

"I love my powerbook and prefer it over any PC laptop on the market, but just like a company it is cost prohibitive for me to just scrap my PC and make my desktop a macintosh also"

OK I make $ 480,000 a year and cannot tell you what company I'm with. I am an MIT Engineer and MIT MBA.

You cannot afford a G5.

So really, you cannot put yourself in the shoes of an executive. Not with your income.

Now there is nothing wrong with being broke or young or on a budget. I'm talking about the internal workings inside the brains of Vice Presidents here. I am not talking about the average person here making $ 30K a year.

The average worker in my company makes $ 90,000. It is a high tech company. If they get a $ 1000 PC or a $ 1000 MAC it does not matter. We do have a couple of vertical products here, and there would be rewrite fees.

But productivity is a much more important issue than hardware and software costs. Of course the MIS manager cannot appreciate that. He needs top management to tell him: Bruce, we know it is expensive, but we think personal productivity will be higher with the Apples. They are simply a pleasure to use.

I know you think some magical Linear Programming Optimization program runs high end decisions at a top management level. Watch the Apprentice. The higher the organization level, the more subjective decisions become. At that level the productivity of the employee is more important than the MIS budget.

5 years ago a computer was $ 5000. Today it is $ 500. The hardware is not the issue now. The issue is easy of use, that "fun" component, all those subtle things that make us read this forum.

If you were to ask a young person if they wanted a MAC or a PC for their first computer, 90% would pick a MAC. The thing is they get a PC from Best Buy.

Yes, Apple has to overcome the inertia of the PC world. An iPod/iPhone combination would make the connection in people's minds. Of course the iPhone, like the iPod has to work in both platforms. But even a casual user would know in their gut where all that elegance/ease of use came from.

You keep repeating if a company would change "all their hardware"...companies continuosly replace hardware, and I bet you the division that changes first to MAC will show productivity improvements.

Yes, top management is subjective. Yes your tirade is an ad for Gates. And yes people look at the iPhone and the MAC of the boss.

As the boss walks around the company he wonders why he has the MAC and his best men don't. Leadership secrets from Atila the Hun. Great book. All are looking at the boss and emulating.

The Apple revolution is here. Steve Jobs knows it, he's fought all this way and never has he had it so close.

at some point surely they got around to telling you that they're called Macs and not MACs

Mac == computer.
MAC == Media Access Control

Just so this doesnt get too far off topic, I can tell you right now that any iphone that a business executive might use would have three very big questions associated with it:

1. Does it sync well with Outlook?
2. Does it sync well with Outlook?
3. Does it sync well with Outlook?

Look, I'm one of these mid-level MIS managers you dont seem to be too hot on. I work for a Fortune 50 company.

If the CEO came up one day and said "Hey, lets change out our entire enterprise IT architecture because this new cell-phone I got is really neat", how well do you think that would go over? I mean, really.

Decisions dont get made unless there's a business justification can be made like that. the ROI has to be considered, as well as the migration costs. As an MIT-educated guy with a MBA, I know you know all this.

Let's cite a few of your more interesting lines:Up until the wonderful world of the Mac mini, you weren't getting a $1000 Mac that could compete with a $1000 PC. And my favorite part of your whole post is the "there would be rewrite fees". Switching an entire company over from PC to Mac would cost your company well into seven figures.Clearly you have little to no experience in the corporate world. The bottom line is cost. Employees bitch right and left because they have inferior tools and lousy software, which CLEARLY inhibits productivity. And no one in management gives a rat's patoot if you enjoy using your computer.Using TV reality shows to back up your arguments shreds your credibility.Again, you're not at work to have fun. You're at work to work.Unless they want to play Counterstrike.Most casual users dont care.I'd like to see you justify why a dept. had to lay out $25,000 for a new Imagiscope (or whatever proprietary hardware device) simply because the current one didnt work with Mac.How very propaganda-esque.

LOL, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I can afford a G5 easily, but why would I? What can a G5 do that my curent PC and G4 Powerbook can't? Nothing other then prohibit me from running some apps that I have that are PC only. What I meant when I said it was "cost prohibitive" for me to replace my PC with a Mac I wasn't saying that I could afford it, merely that the costs of me switching to one (which would be in excess of $6,000 dollars once I go out and rebuy all my software)...now what does that $6,000 bucks spent do for me? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It doesn't make my work go any faster, it doesn't save me time, it certainly doesn't save me money...so whats my incentive..because it's pretty? I can buy a pretty case for my PC for less then 6,000 if I so choose...

Of course you can't tell us what company your with...because you choose not too. I don't know of a single company that prohibits employees from letting others know they work there, but anyway lets once again point out your flaws.

"But productivity is a much more important issue than hardware and software costs"

Yes, but a MAC DOES NOT INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY!!!! What do you fail to understand about that? In fact with all the switching out of hardware, rewriting internal applications that are PC only, etc, etc you have actually DECREASED productivity.

The fact that you just said "Watch the Apprentice. The higher the organization level, the more subjective decisions become. At that level the productivity of the employee is more important than the MIS budget." is beyond ridiculous.

I have met and talked to both Mark Burnett and Donald Trump (Hence how I know they both use G4 17" Powerbooks) In fact to satisfy your telling me to "watch the apprentice", I was there during one of the challenges being filmed, hence how I met Mr Trump and Mr Burnett.

If you think the apprentice is an accurate representation of how a company is run then I begin to highly doubt your salary and credentials.

"If you were to ask a young person if they wanted a MAC or a PC for their first computer, 90% would pick a MAC. The thing is they get a PC from Best Buy."

What young people are you talking to? I live in the center of a college town of over 30,000 students and live adjacent to the campus, students walk by my door every day and you know what I see the majority of them carrying? Computer bags with the word "DELL" emblazoned right on the side. When I goto the coffeeshops around here some of which offer free WiFi access I RARELY see Mac's...all you see are PC's. This is not because the student's parents just blindly went out and bought them a PC, it's because the student WANTED a pc. You also don't take into the account that most young people like to play games on their computer, that IMMEDIATELY rules out a Mac. Mac's are not for gamers, this is known world round, it's an indisputable fact that the large majority of games DO NOT run on Mac.

Also to cover some bases in case you bring up the end user/company installing a program such as Virtual PC to access their PC only applications...Well not only did you just lower productivity due to having to open another interface, wait for the guest OS to load etc etc, but you also greatly sacrificed system stability that supposedly made you switch to Mac in the first place.

I'd love to know where your pulled the 90% figure from since all that shows is that you have an insane love of Mac and you think young kids share the same.

"Yes, Apple has to overcome the inertia of the PC world. An iPod/iPhone combination would make the connection in people's minds. Of course the iPhone, like the iPod has to work in both platforms. But even a casual user would know in their gut where all that elegance/ease of use came from."

Wrong once again, a casual user might know where the elegance came from, but wtf do they care as long as it works elegantly with their current equipment? You FAIL to understand this, which shows me you are completely out of touch with the average consumer.

I already stated both Mark Burnett and Donald Trump use Mac's...So tell me oh wise one, why is it the rest of their corporations do not? In fact Trump had other people with him who were also carrying laptops...not one of them was a Mac. Tell me, why did Trump not immediately go out and buy them Macs? Oh thats right THERE IS NO FRIGGIN REASON FOR HIM TO SWITCH THEM!!!!!!

You have yet to name ONE way in which a department full of Mac's will show any increased productivity versus a department of PC's. Don't try and bring up "less crashes, less maintenance" because that is completely subjective and Mac's crash just like a PC does.

Also in a corporate environment PC's are maintained by staff, they usually all have the same programs on them, employees aren't constantly installing/uninstalling programs/drivers/etc therefore the majority of reasons for a crash are greatly reduced.

Everyone has given you very VALID reasons why a company won't up and switch to Mac, but you have yet to give ONE VALID reason why a company would.

Mac's are becoming nicer/smaller and more people want them for this reason, but lets not kid ourselves into believing there is any sort of revolution on the way cause there is not and there never will be a mass migration to Mac.

Also the cheapest mac currently available...the Mac Mini...is actually MORE expensive then alot of smaller PC's and doesn't run as fast with it's stock config. The fact that Apple includes only 256MB of ram in all thier stock mini configs shows that they are intentionally forcing users to upgrade to their insanely inflated ram prices (Explain to me why Apple attempts to charge me 200+ dollars for ram that I can buy for 60 bucks elsewhere and that works exactly the same?)

Probably a good idea. I'd hate to see their stock tank from your postings here.

Your attitude is, frankly, insulting. I realize that "upper management" doesn't care. So be it. I can also say the just because "upper management" has a new and nifty toy, uses it, and perhaps even has a productivity increase, that there will suddenly be a paradigm shift in the way IT within an organization does business.

But to think that your position, income, etc. makes "lower" employees slavishly want to follow your every stylistic whim is silly at best, if not just plain pompous. You claim to have a position of great authority and responsibility yet you come off as having the subtlety and nuance of a hyperactive third-grader armed with a megaphone and a (small) sledgehammer. Your position is high and mighty, but your attitude about it should not be. Learn humility. Listening is a gooood thing.

Personally, I'm just a grunt and even I know the type of revolutions you imply that iPhones would create do not take place in companies, or at least within companies that will maintain any hope of long-term viability.

As has already been eloquently said by others in this thread, yes there is top-down management, but it's never instantaneous, and doesn't happen in the monkey see-monkey do way you indicate. Furthermore, any IT manager / VP / executive worth his salt isn't going to be bullied by some guy with a slightly better parking space and a shinier Porsche because of a phone. PUH-LEASE. If anything, the responsible manager will take it under consideration, do due diligence, and provide a cost/benefit analysis, which would show the obvious: changing the enterprise due to a gadget is not worth it.

And any person, like yourself, in "upper management" would hope that their IT folks had the good sense to do this. But like I said, I'm just a lowly low-paid grunt, so what do I know? I'm happy that you make more than ten times what I do. Congratulations. You should be very very proud that you are able to do so much with so little actual knowledge of how things really work.

Heck, if doing what the CEO did was what everyone in the corporation should do, then there would be a LOT more private jets in the air. A lot more stretched Mercedes-Benzes, too.

Now, if you were talking about a slow progression toward Macs because Apple offered a superior product (we know they do) AND there was the type of software available that businesses needed (there likely is) AND users would adapt to the change instantly (not bloody likely) AND corporate IT departments changed courses like the breeze (think glacier) THEN and ONLY THEN I might agree with you. Somewhat.

There's not a single product in the universe, much less a phone, that can be the catalyst for that much change.