> From: Donald Keenan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I never see macs in a retail or office setting.
I see them all the time, but admittedly I'm looking for them. :) My wife's doctor is all-Mac. At the nearest mall to me, there is an "Apartment Hunter" office that's all-iMac, and a model train shop that runs off a lone iMac. Nearby, there's a musician's supply store that uses a mix of iMacs and PCs. Certainly PCs dominate the business world, but Macs are not unknown in "regular" businesses and indeed should be a LOT more popular with small businesses than they are. This is an area where Apple could grow their market quite substantially if they can find the right approach to fight the FUD. > There certainly must be > far fewer apps in the business world that can be run on the mac OS. As far as "general purpose" business apps go, I don't think that's true at all. Most of the major accounting and Office type apps aimed at small and medium business either have a Mac version or it's on the way (example Quickbooks, MS Office, Oracle, MySQL). I'm going to ignore "enterprise" level and large business computing because that's a whole 'nother ball of wax, and an area where the Mac is clearly deficient but catching up fast. As far as I can tell the main "hobble" to Macs being more widely accepted in small/med business is fourfold: 1. Fear of being "different." Businesses do not like to "think different," they like to "think Dilbert." Macs represent a change, and a fun-looking change at that. This gets a lot of frowns from boring-fart business types. 2. Access. This database of SHEER EVIL from MS is for no fathomable reason dominant on the PC side (mostly it's due to the fact that once you design a database in Access there's no way you are going to successfully move it to anything else EVER without major pain, so most people don't bother). There's NO WAY Microsoft is ever going to port this, so this is big handicap unless Apple can fight the power with a better product that's 100% Access compatible. 3. Compatibility myth. You can tell a PC person that MS Office for Mac and MS Office for PC are 100% compatible all you like -- they'll never believe you. 4. IT directory job security. You have to understand that IT people WANT the system to be incomprehensible, hard to use and crash-prone -- it guarantees them high salaries, job security and power/intimidation over you! Macs can't give IT directors what they want, so they HATE them with the burning passion of a thousand suns. > I was thinking about this the other day and thought to myself, > would it even be possible/practical to run a business using a mac. For anything less than large company/enterprise level, I'd say certainly it is -- and what's more the Mac platform is far cheaper in terms of TCO and ROI, but again you'll never get evil IT directors to believe this. > I > know I've seen a program called MYOB (I think?), but I would think > one's > back would be up against the wall if one tried to go it alone for the > long term with the mac OS in business. Or? Not really. Let's face it: most small/med businesses primarily use Office, Oracle/MySQL and Quickbooks. All three are available for the Mac, and 100% compatible file-wise with their PC counterpart. So what's the difference between a PC laptop and a TiBook -- lack of a good Solitaire game installed by default? > I definitely see the niche of publishing and especially video/film and > audio work as still being mac oriented. Those "niches" are worth several billion dollars a year. You also forgot education (where Apple is still by far the #1 brand name and largest installed base), science (where Apple holds about a 50% marketshare), servers (where OS X is rapidly coming up the ranks) and several other "niche" markets like that. > But when it comes to data sharing in the business world, can anyone > comment on how viable cross platform B2B work > is? There are certainly areas where the Mac falls way short. Until very recently VPN networking was a right PITA, for example. There are fewer choices of software products available for Mac in areas such as accounting (although I would argue that the number of QUALITY choices is about the same). But again, every business owner I know who uses Macs calls them *without fail* their "secret weapon" against their competitors, because Macs don't suffer from virus plagues, are much more reliable, don't get hacked into, staff find them easy to use and quick to pick up, and the software tends to be of a much higher standard. Now that we're getting into the UNIX market, all kinds of possibilities are opening up. _Chas_ Come to ... The CHASbah! http://thechasbah.blogspot.com **Go see BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE. It may change your life.** -- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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