Apple's chance to grow as half a billion Windows 7 PCs hit EOL:
The company's enterprise credentials continue to extend. At a recent Apple-focused enterprise IT event, we encountered opinion and statistics to reinforce this point.
The point being that support for Apple technologies has become a human resources issue, and that people entering the workshop will choose to use that company's technologies if they can.
This is prompting some of the world's most influential enterprise firms to offer that choice to their employees.
Beyond HR considerations, IBM CIO Fletcher Previn points out multiple advantages Cupertino's computers offer, not least in terms of net promoter score, user experience and the actual costs of management, upgrade and support.
[...] The positive upswell in support for Apple's systems comes as around 417,000,000 Windows 7 devices (a big chunk of all Windows PCs currently in use worldwide) are about to experience Microsoft terminating support on January 14, 2020.
It's a relatively safe assumption to think that at least some tens of thousands of these PCs could now be replaced by an iPad, or even a Mac.
Why wouldn't some of these migrate to Apple's platforms, when Microsoft's fee-based extended support package costs up to $200 per device?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @11:53PM (6 children)
Apple desktop shit is so locked down and fucked compared to what it was 10 years ago
that even Linux on the desktop is preferable.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Sunday January 12 2020, @05:42AM (5 children)
As much as I agree with you and your sentiment...
Corporations love everything being locked down so that users can only do what they allow. While a minus in my humble opinion, this makes corporate management drool.
The only thing that would give corporations pause is the super high cost to buy apple hardware... Yet, I expect that this is only a problem for small to medium businesses on a tight budget; for larger corporations the money is a drop in the bucket especially if they can get lower support costs.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 12 2020, @08:05AM
You can lock down the users on Linux too. The difference is that the administrator on Linux has full control.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @08:39PM (3 children)
"super high cost"? Mercedes vs Kia is super high cost. A machine that maybe costs $500 over a competitor is a piddling amount to pay for usability, especially when a corporate slave will use it the next five years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @09:54PM (2 children)
For large corporation, scale that by a few thousand users... umm no it is not insignificant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:29PM (1 child)
Yes it is. Compared to the cost of maintaining an employee (user), $500 per user over 5 years is a drop in the bucket.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday January 13 2020, @11:03PM
And for a company with 1,000 users you are then speaking of an immediate outlay of $500,000 that you will amortize over 5 years. No, that's not a drop in the bucket even for a 1,000 employee company. $1,000,000 versus $1,500,000 is quite an increase.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @11:54PM (10 children)
That's not how Apple revived and made a bank. Why would Apple want to be the walmart of PC industry?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 12 2020, @12:06AM
Apple was a footnote in the desktop sector back when and they're still one now. They're making their fat wads of cash on phones, tablets, and the app store.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 12 2020, @12:10AM (7 children)
Says who? Why the fuck would a PC user replace their laptop or desktop with a fucking iPad? That statement is so anencephalic it sounds like something Joe Biden's mushy brain would blurt out. PC users are going to stay with 7 and 8 until they're forced to upgrade to 10 at gunpoint, and Macs aren't gonna be a part of the equation to that crowd. The only people who will run macs in the future are the ones who are running them right now, because being a consumerist whore is somehow "artsy" and that apple on that machine means that you are into progressive environmentalism -- like Volkswagen -- and totally not supportive of Chinese slave-labor and suicide nets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @12:29AM
Says who? Not me, you drunk fuck.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:17AM
Well, Macs weren't part of the equation for me. Too expensive. However, I did find myself getting a new PC last year and I got it with Win 10. I have Win 7 that I could have put on it but I chose not to. So, for me, no gunpoint needed. I held off though, for a long time. Thought about going to Linux, I've been there before, but things just work for me and at this point in time I like to play games and relax. Or, make music and I've a ton of software and hardware that may or may not work on Linux and I don't care, right now, to find out if it does. I lost my privacy when I got a loyalty card for a supermarket. When I bought a Samsung phone. When I stepped outside my house. When my friend tagged me in a oic put on facebook. Win 10 is the least of my worries and for this old fool, it works.
Now for an extreme example of my lack of knowledge: The whole systemd thing kind of made it a no go for me right now as well and compatibility issues with software and hardware (not that I think Windows software running under Linux is a god given right or anything). It's not something I wish to wade through.
So, for some of us, Win 10 it is...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @06:48AM
Sorry to hear about your recent gayness. Not.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:03PM (3 children)
Umm it is actually getting pretty popular in my neck of the woods. Activity based work place is getting very popular in my organization. Folks work from home or any floor in any office, we have quite a few in the city. So everyone have to carry their laptops constantly. We all get issued a medium range laptop that's about 2+kg, lugging that around, especially in our over loaded public transport is pretty shit nowadays.
I'm contemplating a surface or ipad as it is much lighter. I can attach it to our giant LCDs at work or at home - all my dev environments & tools are cloud based. Office productivity is cloud based, I can still do my powerpoint presos from the ipad/surface. Quite a lot of my colleagues have already switched.
Our organization is global, so for me I have meetings all through the day with the UK, North america, asia at different times and will always need a device to share docs and notes, etc. The laptop is really weighing on me and I ain't no young grasshopper anymore.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:28PM (1 child)
You sound like one of those 80 year-old pants-shitting globalist board members who needs to either retire or fuck off and die already.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday January 12 2020, @11:45PM
Hah if only I can afford to do so - still putting kids through school unfortunately.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @08:17PM
"I'm contemplating a surface or ipad as it is much lighter." ... "all my dev environments & tools are cloud based. Office productivity is cloud based, I can still do my powerpoint presos from the ipad/surface."
omg, what a fucking fag!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @12:52AM
I thoght Apple was the Oracle of the PC industry?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @12:37AM (8 children)
When I worked for them, I got an ancient RS/6000 AIX box, 20 MHz POWER1, because we were the Unix team.
Then, when they forced everybody onto Bloatus Notes they placed an Aptiva running Windoze (additionally) on everybody's desk who wanted one. Just for fucking email.
I used the shitty AIX front end until I taught myself enough Bloatus Notes scripting to forward all incoming mail to my old vnet (Mainframe based, but forwarded into pine on my machine) email.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @12:42AM (4 children)
AIX, the vogon poetry of unix.
Now they run redhat.
My condolence to Linux. Let's fight the good fight till ...
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:05AM
I think that's systemd.
There it is.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:58AM (1 child)
Pretty much, it even includes a Windoze-like registry that controls a lot of operation. SystemD is an exercise in minimalism in comparison.
At least they own it. I wonder which parts of their Unices they will kill off. Keep the Linux kernel, or the AIX kernel? Keep SystemD or the ODM?
Linux isn't lost yet. And aren't a lot of us old-timers used to fighting for Linux in the 90s?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:33PM
It hasn't lost, but it's sitting in its corner reeling and bleeding because it's gone back to the old days where people who know it have to spend 4 hours getting even a basic installation to work through fiddling. With modern Linux installs you're wasting so much time fiddling just for basic functionality that it's not worth the hassle anymore unless you're paid to fiddle with it all day.
Jews ruined it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @02:47AM
...the fat lady sings?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @04:31AM (1 child)
Pine is ok,
but Pine Is Not Elm.
I wrote some of that ancient AIX code when we were moving away from the AS/400. I had six RS/6000s doing distributed tasking on work I was forbidden to discuss outside the office. We didn't have email -- security risk.
At home, I ran OS/2 until IBM killed it.
Today, all my real work happens on OSX Snow Leopard on a 2009 Mac Pro (isolated, not network connected. I have a highly customized Linux DMZ for that -- not systemd. Absolutely not.) I can do this because I work for myself and I know how computers work under the hood.
Windows peaked with version 7. It's all been downhill since then.
Look, it's simple. The OS just needs to be as basic as possible and get out of the way do you can do your work without having to be bothered. Linux has the right idea, but it's too rough around the edges and the software I use doesn't run there. OSX is very much like Linux under the UI if you give it a root user account, and the UI is clean, polished and comfortable. It's the better product. Oh, by the way, Apple can just go to hell with all their newfangled cables. Data transfer isn't that hard. They're only changing it so they can make more money off the cable sales.
As far as I'm concerned, modern OS's peaked with Snow Leopard. Sure, there's a few things I like better in the newer versions, but there's far more things they changed I find bothersome. No OS is secure, so stop pretending they ever can be. (stuxnet, for example). Why do you think they have to update the OS every three days? New attack vectors, that's why. Just wall it off. Use a sacrificial machine for communications with the outside world and wipe and reinstall it a few times a year -- like changing the oil in your car of the air filters in your house. I transfer files using 32 GB SD cards. It's just like the old floppy drives, but bigger and smaller at the same time. Sure, it's less convenient, but I probably have far more control over my security than you do too.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:37PM
Linux was great, and Ubuntu lead the way. Then some Jews decided that the adoption of Ubuntu, being a free product, would have killed their big moneymakers and would have dropped the value of that lucrative Microsoft and Apple stock in their portfolios and trillions of offshore dark-money.
So they killed Linux by returning it to difficulty and usability in much the same way they are trying to kill free speech and deprive Americans of their own constitutional rights.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:52AM
You could avoid Lotta Snots at IBM if you wanted. I did for years, you just had to keep a 3270 emulator around to do the stuff via 1970s mainframe code that they'd barely managed to make partially work some of the time on Snots.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:01AM (6 children)
Linux to Explode in users as Half a Billion Windows 7 PCs Hit EOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @02:10AM (4 children)
What, will the botnets install Linux?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @05:14AM (3 children)
Given that the Average Joe (and Jane) out there consider a computer as another commodity like a toaster or microwave oven, the chances of THEM waking up and moving to Linux are near zero. They most likely scenario is that they might proceed down one or more of these paths:
* do nothing and run Win7 until something goes badly wrong - hardware dies or software fails (or is hacked)
* allow some upgrade to Win10
* toss the old machine, get a new one from the Big Box down the road
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @05:26AM
And...
Find out Windows 10 doesn't work with their printer/scanner/motherboard/ or something else. And that it took 2 days to install and now takes 30 minutes to finish booting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @05:40AM
I have a 2011 system with Win7. It will be tossed eventually, but as long as it still works, I don't care.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday January 14 2020, @03:31AM
My present machine, WIN7, is quite sufficient.
But I know the internet coding standards will change.
Just like they have before.
And refuse to talk to my older browser.
So, I plan to just get a big WalMart ONN Android tablet, and load it with a 128 GB TF card, the latest browser of the day and lots of download / file transfer capabilities, and use it look at the net, much like I would use tongs to pick up and examine things, knowing some of the things I pick up may be very sticky or toxic.
That way I delegate the risk to something much easier to clean.
I can't stop Internet businesses from mixing code and data, but I can first download the whole shebang and examine it to see what's in it before I run it.
Even if I don't catch the bomb, my main machines are air-gapped, and all the malware can do is give itself away by waking up Wireshark as it bleats out trying to connect to something not in my domain.
I can run my stuff far more secure than, say, a corporate system. For me, a systems breach could wipe out a weekend of personal time that I would really rather use for something else, or create a paperwork mess that takes me years to sort out, but on a corporate system, it's just a bullet point on an interoffice memo. Nobody loses their vacation. Nobody loses their golden parachute, even if people die. Given the rewards for diligence, vs the rewards for foolhardiness, can't really why things are as fscked up as they are.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:55AM
I've actually moved several of my friends&family support network to Ubuntu. I gave them the choice of Windows 10 and Ubuntu and they said they wanted to stay with Windows, so could I install the Ubuntu thing for them please.
I'm not making that up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:47AM
What were their gains after Vista? Or Metro UI? Seems like they made Desktop Linux worse each time (e.g. "let's give desktops a phone UI too just like Microsoft" or worse).
It's so bad I suspect the people involved in Desktop Linux are actually secretly sabotaging it...
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday January 12 2020, @04:24PM
So much truth is out that should be used to make better decisions, so many insights about privacy, and what the internet is, and it has come out rapidly over the last 3 years. Affecting both microsoft and apple, and both having a lot to do with foreign companies, spyware, spy agencies, spy companies, backdoors, cracks, weaponized planted zero days.
The entire premise of this article is that this is a supply/demand and marketing proposition, 'how can apple convince microsoft they are better at privacy or usability'. The game is already over, once a part of your company is directly associated with a spy agency, your privacy game is concluded in any meaningful sense. NSO group did that to apple. Azure is now Unit 8200.
Game Over. No Thank You for Playing Apple and Microsoft, your equipment not only spies on people in a constitutionally treacherous way, it sends it to foreign countries, and this is espionage, and so not only are you spying on yourself, you are enabling the spying on everyone in your vicinity, for a foreign country. How is that not treason?
How are you not a traitor to your country just for having this software in your house? No matter what country you are in? The cathedral for your software behemoth blob was moved to a different country under the cover of shadows(and trumpco tweets).
It is as if the sum total of privacy information available to people determining who to trust has changed exponentially in the last 3 years, and so the infomation and processes people developed for the preceding 10 years were made obsolete without them knowing. And people like me have zero chance of being heard at a rate meaningful enough to alter the reality of the situation, entire populations are being disenfranchised and enslaved and studied like lab rats, and they are like tldr. What was that about political rights being a requirement of liberty? Let the academics sort it out, netflix and chill here we go. Oh look kesha has new facepaint.
For most people affected it is like every few days on NPR on the way to work there is something about a data leak, and they hear some senators give a soundbite about what needs to be done, and some eff lawyer jumping up and down screaming for a 45 second soundbite, and then memory hole.
To operate technology, facts are important to your safety. Consider the boeing 737, the engineers are calling it a clown plane, but how many people are going to fly it? Probably almost all of them. They trust simply because CNN has never reported any crashes, yet, that they are still running with the herd. Their trust is entirely misplaced. People are going to have a bad time.
But it is the difference between a river where you have not seen a crocodile ever, and a river where you have defininitely seen one in there.
Those are two very different rivers, at least to the catcher in the rye.
https://archive.is/xPOYX [archive.is] gmail 2020 whaaa
https://archive.is/Eu1Z4 [archive.is] my best explanation for the danger of trumpco
https://archive.is/Rdbj9 [archive.is] (this one is kinda out of context(or is it) but i just made it and think its hilarious lol)
https://archive.is/2dt6H [archive.is] i have trouble with overton windows if you havent noticed...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @05:16PM
Yeah like my parents are going to run out and buy 2k worth of equipment! No they bought the cheapest PC they could find that worked for them.
They use it to surf the net and quickbooks once a year.
Also just run the win10 upgrade util. It still works. Used it a couple of weeks ago on a win7 box. Saved my parents about 500 bucks. Also gave them my old win10 laptop and they are happy. MOST people do not need to go buy new hardware every couple of years. I even gave them an iPad a few years ago. They do not even know where it is. They literally do not care about it.