Apple Poaching Enterprise Sales Staff From Research in Motion | Hacker News Reader

Apple Poaching Enterprise Sales Staff From Research in Motion

macrumors.com

20 pointsdavidedicillo25 comments

Unless and until there's a fundamental philosophy change at Apple, I don't see them being successful in the enterprise market. I'm in education, and we're a fairly flexible-yet-enterprise-y place, and we've constantly been burnt by Apple's lack of exposed forward planning (even when we spend literally millions of dollars with them annually).

I'll believe Apple is seriously interested in the enterprise market when there's a docking port on the MacBook. Either that, or they'll hoodwink everyone into doing what we were told before: buy a laptop and a desktop for people, and sync between the two.

So enterprise means a macbook docking port?

I don't know how you'd get that from what I wrote. I don't know how to respond without repeating myself, as nothing in your post indicates where I lost you.

Fundamentally the problem is a "lack of exposed forward planning". I'll believe they're interested when they have a docking station as an effective means of switching between desktop use and laptop use and stop suggesting that people spend 60%-70% more in hardware alone per person by purchasing both a laptop and desktop.

Either that, or they'll manage to get their philosophy so engrained that immediate cost is trumped by some other value proposition.

You can buy a docking port for your Macbook.

http://www.bookendzdocks.com/Docking_Stations-Docking_Statio...

Thanks for sharing the link. I'm familiar with all the major 3rd party options. That's not the same as plopping an HP into a docking brick, and no one I know that's used both thinks it's remotely comparable. Just getting the ports lined up correctly each time led one of our techs to abandon the whole effort.

There are also Henge Docks: http://hengedocks.com/

Cinema Display, keyboard, mouse. That's three plugs into the side of the MacBook (MagSafe, DisplayPort, USB). Not a challenging task.

If a Cinema Display is too much money, then a combination of extra AC adapter, third party display, keyboard and mouse takes exactly as much work.

I don't understand who even buys docks. There's no challenge involved in setting up a MacBook for desktop use without one.

EDIT: Heh, actually looking at the Henge docks now...those are real pretty. I can understand docks as a cable management or aesthetic tool, but not as a necessity.

> "then a combination of extra AC adapter, third party display, keyboard and mouse takes exactly as much work."

And is completely contrary to the Apple way of doing things. Macs "just work" - plug in an external monitor and it automatically selects the right color profile and sets your resolution. It also remembers the difference between your home and office monitors - it's vastly superior to Windows in this way, where one has to constantly remind Windows what the native resolution should be. Not challenging, but annoying as hell.

So is un/plugging in a bunch of wires whenever you leave or return to your desk. A dock is one of those things that is right up Apple's philosophical alley: something that takes away several annoying-yet-not-difficult tasks and instead makes it just disappear.

A dock is another ungainly, awkward piece of technology that would serve only to replace standard ports with one proprietary port that you use to get access to standard ports.

Most users don't dock. Most users I know that own docs don't dock. Actually, I don't think I know anyone who's ever used a dock, except when their laptop didn't have enough ports on it because they had to make room for the dock connector.

If you look at Apple's offerings, there's very little that one would need a dock for most of the time. Bluetooth mouse, bluetooth keyboard, wifi networking. For the average iMac installation, the only cable you need is the power cable. Likewise with my Macbook Pro, the only cables I ever plug in are power and ethernet, and the latter only when I need to do large file transfers.

Docks don't work, people don't use them, and it's just an awkward workaround to a problem that should be solved elegantly.

A good dock is an elegant and useful piece of technology. Everyone I work with uses them. I have two external monitors, four USB devices, and a headset connected to mine. Expecting users to plug and unplug that many devices every time is just stupid.

Are you using VGA? My crappy XP work computer remembers my resolution and calibration when plugging the monitor in through DVI.

To be honest, the bluetooth thing is actually amazing--I tend to lose or break the little dongles when moving around. Now the mouse is just a mouse, not a mouse+stuff.

Not surprising, as iOS is their major growth industry and Blackberry is the entrenched (and soon to be former courtesy of Android/iOS) player in that market.

On the Mac side of things, they're cutting back on enterprise sales (witness the death of the Xserve) and pushing most of the contact information for smaller customers to the retail business people.

I have only seen + heard the opposite about Apple cutting back on enterprise sales of any kind. (Up until two-ish years ago, they made very little outreach to enterprise at all, just because they don't do roadmaps, don't have special support for "enterprise," etc.) Your retail-business theory is what I thought of as Apple's old strategy.

They just engaged Unisys to support and infiltrate the enterprise (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-25/apple-enlists-unisy...)

I'm not saying your interpretation of the Xserve discontinuation is wrong, just that i hadn't seen anybody with that interpretation before, and i'd love to hear more.

My sources are in Apple Retail, and from what I can piece together, Apple's enterprise sales is truly becoming that - going after Fortune 500 companies, when previously if you had more than 50-100 people and/or computers you were fair game for the enterprise department. Thus, their enterprise department is shrinking, but becoming more focused.

In the past, there was a lot of poaching of deals between departments within Apple - retail would make a deal for >30 machines with an organization, only to have Enterprise call the customer up (they share CRM) and offer the exact same deal with a price below what Retail was allowed to discount.

It's an internal org chart change, as far as I can tell. Why have dedicated enterprise reps in a phone center somewhere that can't have a face-to-face interaction with the customer, when in a lot of areas there's a retail store that can provide that, and get halo sales to employees, etc.

Apple can't succeed in the Enterprise market the way RIM does unless they do two things:

- Make a cheap iPhone. Something companys can hand out to their employees for $200 a piece.

- Make a iPhone with a physical keyboard.

I can't really see them doing any of that, but who knows for sure.

I agree broadly with your point, but I fail to see why a physical keyboard is important except to a very small subset of users. Swype handles all the text input I need, and does so about 20%-30% faster than my physical keyboard.

Now, this is on a first generation Motorola Droid. I have seen some students that are pretty wicked fast on their Blackberry. We haven't 'raced' yet. Maybe it's just a bad keyboard design on the Droid?

Do you post HN comments using your touchscreen? If not, why not?

I've done the keyboard smartphone thing, and the touchscreen smartphone thing (incl. swype with the latter). I prefer a real keyboard overwhelmingly -- even a miserable keyboard like on the HTC Dream -- and I know I'm far from alone.

When someone sends me an email or a text requiring a response, honestly it is a sad, defeated feeling when I have to respond on the touchscreen keyboard.

I know I'm hardly alone with this: iPhone toting friends and peers tend not to author any content on their device beyond the occasional "lol" or "brb" type response (you know instantly that they're hacking it on the screen), whereas others with Blackberry devices or physical keyboards...I often can't tell from their response whether they are at their desk or remote because they don't artificially abbreviate their comments.

I'm sure there are non-typists or those of few words who are completely satisfied without a keyboard. Most others simply accept it.

Have you used Swype? It's a touchscreen keyboard, but works in a very different way. Since your not physically lifting your finger you can really plow through words really quickly. Much faster than I ever could with a blackberry style Keyboard for me at least.

My work no longer requires me to fly off to places on a nearly weekly basis and spending so much more time at my desk makes a big impact on the number of emails I write from my Blackberry, and therefore my speed. But back when I was using it a lot, I did a test and was able to write on it at 80wpm, which is pretty impressive.

Except that I do 50% of my emails and know many others who do exactly the same or more (and these are not short emails) from their iPhones. People who lived on their blackberries live on their iPhones or Android touchscreen phones. While it might be a problem for some for most it hasn't been one.

While it might be a problem for some for most it hasn't been one.

iPhone users live on with a touchscreen keyboard because they have no choice. Most Blackberry users never migrated to the iPhone for that reason. Android users were caught in a temporary world where every Android maker tried to be like the iPhone, with the terrible choice of the onscreen keyboard, but thankfully that period is quickly passing, with great devices like the G2 / Desire Z and the Galaxy S Pro.

I've talked to a lot of people who use iPhones, and none of them would switch to a hardware keyboard if given the chance.

Touchscreen keyboards work better than physical ones (the keys are larger), they're better for anyone typing more than one language (accents are easy, different keyboard layouts are possible at all). The touch keyboard isn't there when you don't need it, leading either to an increase in screen space (vs. RIM's offerings) or a more practical physical design (without slider mechanisms that tend to be awkward, get damaged, or make the phone bulkier).

I had no problem typing on an iPhone the first day I ever encountered one. The first day I laid hands on a blackberry, it took me minutes to get a single sentence out, because the keys are so tiny and packed close together.

The key to effective touchscreen typing is to trust the autocorrect (and to have good autocorrect in the first place). My typing speed skyrocketed when I learned that if I just kept typing, the iPhone would be right 90% of the time, and the other 10% is easy to fix.

Look, I don't mean to go all John Gruber here, but a good portion of iPhone users wouldn't want anything changed...until it's actually changed at which point it's the most obvious, most important thing in the world.

If Apple came out with a slider version of the iPhone tomorrow, I suspect there would be a rapid, but remarkably quiet, appreciation of hardware keyboards among many iPhone faithful.

Mileage will definitely vary. I know people who absolutely love their onscreen keyboard. They do tend to be people who actually type very little though, so it's perfect for them.

It's interesting that you mentioned onscreen keyboards giving you a increase in screen space -- yeah, when you don't need to type anything. When you do, suddenly 80% of your screen is all keyboard.

It depends on your definition of success. If it means IT buying the iPhone, you're right. It will be a while. But if it means employees buying their iPhone, and connecting it to company mail servers, the past two years show enterprise success happening at a fast pace. One also can't discount the VIP rule. The VIP rule is that the company will buy VIPs whatever device they want. Some years it was a Nokia, now it's iPads + iPhones.

IBM added iPhone support to Lotus Notes Traveller in the last release. It provides mobile access to Lotus Notes/Domino mail, calendar, and directory. That removed a barrier to adoption for many enterprises. Several of our executives are using it now with good results. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/notes/traveler...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com