5 ms·

They tried, but it's just not their DNA. Apple isn't a B2B enterprise company, they're a B2C consumer company that, as a side effect of their consumer success,

They tried, but it's just not their DNA. Apple isn't a B2B enterprise company, they're a B2C consumer company that, as a side effect of their consumer success, ended up with a decent number of devices in enterprises. But they know they can't, and don't want to try, to win against the big entrenched enterprise players. https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-apple-had-to-kill-the-xserve/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-apple-had-to-kill-the-xser...

secabeen 6y ago
Yeah, they certainly don't have the right DNA on the hardware side. On the software side, they've been working a lot more closely with JAMF recently, and there's quite a bit of enterprise support in the MDM space there.
- mintone 6y ago
  Can confirm with this, when we approached Apple on MDM they all but opened an account for us with JAMF.
- mrpippy 6y ago
  They also bought Fleetsmith recently
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Apple Remote Desktop is a pretty neglected app but it’s fantastically good. It’s got so many features that make remote administration so very good.
ketamine__ 6y ago
Am I wrong to think there are workloads that can only be run on Mac? Seems like a competitive advantage.
- Macha 6y ago
  The only workloads that can only be run on a mac are those which are Apple specific, such as building/testing iOS apps.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Anything that requires Xcode to build. Depending on what's being built, if you're developing a cross-platform or Mac app, you might need a Mac somewhere in your pipeline. Unfortunately, Apple makes it somewhat uneconomical to use Macs in small bursts, as their license requires that Macs are leased for at least 24 hours.
yholio 6y ago
Tldr, they live on expensive hardware that is well marketed and has polished software attractive to consumers.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Neither hardware costs nor marketing is an issue for Apple in the B2B space. Plenty of successful B2B hardware costs more and has tons of marketing fluff. The reason Apple doesn't do well B2B is nothing about their technology or marketing, it is likely all about their business operations. Apple is notorious for driving their own product-development lifecycle with heavy priority on their own design language. This is completely the opposite of how B2B sales work, where it is not uncommon for some development cycles to be dictated directly by a few (or even one) customer. I can't see Apple playing well with these expectations.
  - macintux 6y ago
    > This is completely the opposite of how B2B sales work, where it is not uncommon for some development cycles to be dictated directly by a few (or even one) customer. Development and sales (and support). Look at how many SKUs competing laptop manufacturers have because enterprises will specify some combination of ports and memory and CPU, and if the manufacturer doesn't have that particular combination, there will be no sale. (Having said that: it's not obvious to me whether this is still as much of an issue as it used to be.)
ghaff 6y ago
Interestingly, AWS and Google weren't really B2B plays initially either. But AWS in particular recognized that if AWS was to be as successful as they had ambitions for, the were going to have to hire an enterprise sales force and do other things related to supporting enterprises. Apple toyed with becoming more enterprisey at various times but their ultimate success came mostly from BYOD and enterprises proving Mac options because that's what many of their employees wanted. They do have business sales but it's still more of a pull than a push thing.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  Apple is still a very small and (relatively) focused company compared to the others.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    That is also true. Buy I think they also recognized that they didn't really need to cater to enterprises to any significant degree in order to sell to them directly or indirectly. And in a way that probably wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago when probably most employees took the IT-managed PC they were given and lived with it.
    - filmgirlcw 6y ago
      Exactly. Apple benefited tremendously, especially after the Intel transition, from executives and younger employees showing up to the workplace with a shiny new MacBook Pro and just expecting it to work on the network. It started with those two groups and once IT found a way to support turn systems — or at least get them on the network/give them access to the file share — Apple didn’t need to do a lot of the glad handing for enterprise sales. If the CEO wants to use his Mac at work, IT will capitulate. And that in turn dovetailed with the broader BYOD movement with computers and phones. Now, Xserve didn’t work for a lot of reasons, but Apple exited the server market, and even stopped making the Server variant of macOS (even though it was just a handful of utilities at the end), largely because I think it realized two things: 1. It could never truly compete with Linux (and to a lesser degree, IIS) without making significant tradeoffs that are anathema to Apple (lowering prices significantly, giving up usage control, and decoupling vertically integrated hardware/software). 2. The cost of truly making a B2B play would require resource investments and commitments into an area Apple doesn’t need to care about and that would come at the expense of areas that are both more profitable and less of a PITA. Apple is the richest company in the world and amongst the most profitable tech companies, why would they bother with enterprise when they can allow partners to deal with the integration side and focus on doing their stuff their way. (There is one notable instance where Apple embraced enterprise, and that was when Apple added Exchange support in iPhone OS and admittedly, this was a huge deal and was ultimately a fatal blow to Blackberry. But it’s the exception that almost proves the rule. Apple added support for Exchange but left it up to others to figure out the broader MDM situations.) Having said all that, I have always been surprised Apple hasn’t offered some sort of build/test service themselves and integrated it into TestFlight. It could be a driver for the all-important services revenue (in my imagination, the annual developer fee would cover a certain number of build minutes a month and then additional minutes would cost money). I have to think that such a solution is either in the works or that Apple looked at the support challenges and just decided to let other people do it at scale for them. The thing is that much of the cloud is very much a commodity and Apple has successfully made its products and services anything but a commodity.
breatheoften 6y ago
I think their cloud play _will_ be B2C driven. I predict they will build customer-facing 'cloud-powered features' where 'third party app code' can run on the apple cloud infrastructure 'on behalf' of a particular apple customer. They will present a utility computing model to customers -- where each customer sees 'cloud-computing usage charges' displayed by app. Ultimately, the cloud-compute/cloud-storage charges will tie back to the customer associated usage costs for storage or some other abstract usage based model of for cloud resource costs. "Apple Cloud: build features for apple customers using usage-metered cloud resources -- with the customer paying for the usage charges they incur."

secabeen 6y ago

Yeah, they certainly don't have the right DNA on the hardware side. On the software side, they've been working a lot more closely with JAMF recently, and there's quite a bit of enterprise support in the MDM space there.

mintone 6y ago
Can confirm with this, when we approached Apple on MDM they all but opened an account for us with JAMF.
mrpippy 6y ago
They also bought Fleetsmith recently
lostlogin 6y ago
Apple Remote Desktop is a pretty neglected app but it’s fantastically good. It’s got so many features that make remote administration so very good.

ketamine__ 6y ago

Am I wrong to think there are workloads that can only be run on Mac? Seems like a competitive advantage.

Macha 6y ago
The only workloads that can only be run on a mac are those which are Apple specific, such as building/testing iOS apps.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Anything that requires Xcode to build. Depending on what's being built, if you're developing a cross-platform or Mac app, you might need a Mac somewhere in your pipeline. Unfortunately, Apple makes it somewhat uneconomical to use Macs in small bursts, as their license requires that Macs are leased for at least 24 hours.

yholio 6y ago

Tldr, they live on expensive hardware that is well marketed and has polished software attractive to consumers.

kube-system 6y ago
Neither hardware costs nor marketing is an issue for Apple in the B2B space. Plenty of successful B2B hardware costs more and has tons of marketing fluff. The reason Apple doesn't do well B2B is nothing about their technology or marketing, it is likely all about their business operations. Apple is notorious for driving their own product-development lifecycle with heavy priority on their own design language. This is completely the opposite of how B2B sales work, where it is not uncommon for some development cycles to be dictated directly by a few (or even one) customer. I can't see Apple playing well with these expectations.
- macintux 6y ago
  > This is completely the opposite of how B2B sales work, where it is not uncommon for some development cycles to be dictated directly by a few (or even one) customer. Development and sales (and support). Look at how many SKUs competing laptop manufacturers have because enterprises will specify some combination of ports and memory and CPU, and if the manufacturer doesn't have that particular combination, there will be no sale. (Having said that: it's not obvious to me whether this is still as much of an issue as it used to be.)

ghaff 6y ago

Interestingly, AWS and Google weren't really B2B plays initially either. But AWS in particular recognized that if AWS was to be as successful as they had ambitions for, the were going to have to hire an enterprise sales force and do other things related to supporting enterprises. Apple toyed with becoming more enterprisey at various times but their ultimate success came mostly from BYOD and enterprises proving Mac options because that's what many of their employees wanted. They do have business sales but it's still more of a pull than a push thing.

madeofpalk 6y ago
Apple is still a very small and (relatively) focused company compared to the others.
- ghaff 6y ago
  That is also true. Buy I think they also recognized that they didn't really need to cater to enterprises to any significant degree in order to sell to them directly or indirectly. And in a way that probably wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago when probably most employees took the IT-managed PC they were given and lived with it.
  - filmgirlcw 6y ago
    Exactly. Apple benefited tremendously, especially after the Intel transition, from executives and younger employees showing up to the workplace with a shiny new MacBook Pro and just expecting it to work on the network. It started with those two groups and once IT found a way to support turn systems — or at least get them on the network/give them access to the file share — Apple didn’t need to do a lot of the glad handing for enterprise sales. If the CEO wants to use his Mac at work, IT will capitulate. And that in turn dovetailed with the broader BYOD movement with computers and phones. Now, Xserve didn’t work for a lot of reasons, but Apple exited the server market, and even stopped making the Server variant of macOS (even though it was just a handful of utilities at the end), largely because I think it realized two things: 1. It could never truly compete with Linux (and to a lesser degree, IIS) without making significant tradeoffs that are anathema to Apple (lowering prices significantly, giving up usage control, and decoupling vertically integrated hardware/software). 2. The cost of truly making a B2B play would require resource investments and commitments into an area Apple doesn’t need to care about and that would come at the expense of areas that are both more profitable and less of a PITA. Apple is the richest company in the world and amongst the most profitable tech companies, why would they bother with enterprise when they can allow partners to deal with the integration side and focus on doing their stuff their way. (There is one notable instance where Apple embraced enterprise, and that was when Apple added Exchange support in iPhone OS and admittedly, this was a huge deal and was ultimately a fatal blow to Blackberry. But it’s the exception that almost proves the rule. Apple added support for Exchange but left it up to others to figure out the broader MDM situations.) Having said all that, I have always been surprised Apple hasn’t offered some sort of build/test service themselves and integrated it into TestFlight. It could be a driver for the all-important services revenue (in my imagination, the annual developer fee would cover a certain number of build minutes a month and then additional minutes would cost money). I have to think that such a solution is either in the works or that Apple looked at the support challenges and just decided to let other people do it at scale for them. The thing is that much of the cloud is very much a commodity and Apple has successfully made its products and services anything but a commodity.

breatheoften 6y ago

I think their cloud play _will_ be B2C driven. I predict they will build customer-facing 'cloud-powered features' where 'third party app code' can run on the apple cloud infrastructure 'on behalf' of a particular apple customer. They will present a utility computing model to customers -- where each customer sees 'cloud-computing usage charges' displayed by app. Ultimately, the cloud-compute/cloud-storage charges will tie back to the customer associated usage costs for storage or some other abstract usage based model of for cloud resource costs. "Apple Cloud: build features for apple customers using usage-metered cloud resources -- with the customer paying for the usage charges they incur."