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Survey: Macs cost notably less to support than Windows PCs

iPhoneExpert — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:18:00 +0000

Macs are often the black sheep in the many enterprise environments which have been dominated by Windows for nearly two decades, but the growing consumerization of IT is slowly changing that perception. Though Macs often have a higher up-front price than many business-class PCs, Macs are usually believed to have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to lower support costs. A recent survey of IT professionals in large enterprise environments that have a mix of Macs and PCs overwhelmingly agree that Macs cost less than PCs to support.

The Enterprise Desktop Alliance, which seeks to make it easier to integrate Macs in Windows-centric IT deployments, surveyed IT admins from companies that made large deployments, including universities and government agencies. Responses included in EDA’s analysis include those from environments with a mix of Macs and PCs that had a total of 50 servers or over 100 Macs.

A majority of respondents said that Macs cost less in terms of time spent troubleshooting, user training, help desk calls, and system configuration. Admins generally agreed that costs related to software licensing and supporting infrastructure were the same between the two platforms.

Two-thirds of those managing mixed environments plan to increase the number of Macs deployed in 2010. Twenty-nine percent cited lower TCO as a “key reason” for deploying Macs. Almost half cited lower TCO, ease of support, or a combination of the two as leading factors in Mac adoption. User preference and increased productivity were considered important factors as well.

“As?a?greater?percentage?of?enterprise?applications?become?OS-neutral, the cost to support a?more?diverse?hardware?and?OS?mix?will?decrease, making Macs a more viable choice?for?a?greater?number?of?users?who?continue?to demand them,” noted Michael Silver, vice?president?and?research?director?at Gartner, in a recent report on PC trends. Macs tend to be popular among C-level execs, as well as with those in creative departments and developers (especially cross-platform developers).

Apple has historically done little to actively develop a traditional strategy to target enterprise deployment. Instead, the company tends to focus on consumers first, and lets individuals drive enterprise demand for its computers and mobile devices. It does, though, make continual small improvements that make it easier to integrate Macs, iPhones, and soon iPads into many corporate environments.

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Wall Street Journal, NPR to Open iPad-Only Websites

iPhoneExpert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:19:17 +0000

At least two major news media outlets aren’t going to let the iPad’s lack of Flash support keep owners of Apple’s latest creation away from their content. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and National Public Radio (NPR) are working on iPad-specific versions of their websites, set to launch next month alongside the official ship date of the iPad.

The websites will launch automatically whenever someone navigates to either NPR.org or WSJ.com, and will replace the standard sites, both of which feature pretty significant quantities of Flash content. Peter Kafka at MediaMemo also notes that this workaround ensures that iPad owners will be able to access content from the two news sources without the organizations having to rush out a dedicated iPad application.

According to Kafka, NPR is in the process of developing such an application, but it won’t necessarily be ready in time for the iPad’s launch. Also, having two options available for iPad owners means that no matter what a customer’s preference, they should be able to access all of NPR’s content. Just after the device hits the streets, consumer frenzy will probably be at its most heady, so anyone ready to go on day one stands to benefit the most by way of picking up new readers and/or customers.

The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is doing something along the same lines, although it will be more sound and fury than substance. While NPR’s site is getting a complete overhaul, the WSJ will have a Flash-free front page, but if you start delving deeper into content, you’ll run into those annoying little mystery Lego icons. The WSJ and other sites using this tactic will likely wait and see how popular the iPad actually becomes before devoting many resources to a full-scale conversion.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro:

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etc: Droid sales were a hair faster than the original iPhone in its first 74 days, but the Nexus One was far slower. Analytics firm Flurry credits this largely to consumer perception and demand.

iPhoneExpert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:32:37 +0000

Droid sales were a hair faster than the original iPhone in its first 74 days, but the Nexus One was far slower. Analytics firm Flurry credits this largely to consumer perception and demand.

Read More:
Flurry

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Read the original: etc: Droid sales were a hair faster than the original iPhone in its first 74 days, but the Nexus One was far slower. Analytics firm Flurry credits this largely to consumer perception and demand.

Keyboard dock, other iPad accessories will be MIA on April 3

iPhoneExpert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:56:00 +0000

National iPad Day is just over two weeks away, but when April 3 rolls around, ?iPad owners won’t be able to get most of the accessories that were touted to go along with the device. As noted by Electronista, the iPad keyboard dock and USB power adapter have both been pushed back until May, after even the 3G model of the iPad is set to be released.

During the introduction of the iPad on January 27, the keyboard dock was the accessory that got some major attention from Apple-watchers. After all, it’s the “cheapest” and simplest way to do text entry on the iPad without typing on the touchscreen itself. However, the delay doesn’t mean WiFi iPad owners will be prevented from entering mass amounts of text until May—the regular (non-keyboard) dock is still set to ship on April 3, and iPad users can pair their devices with a bluetooth keyboard for text input if they so desire. (The dock connector to VGA adapter is also still on schedule for early April.)

The only other accessory that is currently MIA is the Camera Connection Kit. Announced at the iPad event, the kit is meant to allow users to read SD cards and other USB devices through the 30-pin connector. The kit remains on Apple’s spec page for the iPad but is nowhere to be found in the online store.

The inability to buy certain accessories to go along with their shiny new toy will undoubtedly disappoint some iPad buyers. Some have tried to analyze what these accessory delays could mean, but we’re going to chalk it up to poor coordination among manufacturers.

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BlackBerry to Lose More Ground to iPhone, Android: Survey

iPhoneExpert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:25:28 +0000

A new survey by research firm Crowd Science brings bad news for BlackBerry maker RIM, and some good news for Apple. The company that comes out best of all, though, is Google, whose Android operating system seems poised to see some major growth in the near future.

The survey, which Crowd Science performs semi-annually, addresses smartphone brand loyalty. This time around, it found that iPhone and Android customers were well satisfied with their choice of smartphone, but that BlackBerry is hemorrhaging users badly to both of those primary competitors.

A little over 90 percent of both iPhone and Android smartphone owners plan to stay with that OS when they purchase their next device, while nearly 40 percent of BlackBerry owners said they would opt for an iPhone next time around, and 34 percent said they’d go with Android instead of a RIM device.

It’s bad news for the Waterloo-based BlackBerry maker, and this latest survey shows that Apple isn’t exclusively to blame for the company’s steady decline. According to Crowd Science CEO John Martin:

These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone. Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.

For me, the real surprise is not that many are dissatisfied with RIM, which seems to have done very little but make incremental cosmetic upgrades with its devices over the last couple of years, but that Android is nearly matching the iPhone in terms of consumer awareness and desire.

Apple still has the advantage in terms of who its customers are and what kind of money they’re willing to spend, and on what, though. iPhone owners tend to be slightly older and more affluent, and are much more likely to buy paid applications compared to other smartphone users. Android owners skew younger and less affluent, and accordingly are much less likely to spend money on paid applications. They do download more free apps than any other user group, though.

Finally, the Nexus One is making a big splash, even if it isn’t selling in droves. Android awareness in general jumped six percentage points to 66 percent since the last survey period, and 32 percent of BlackBerry owners would swap their current devices for a Nexus One right away, given the chance. That number jumps to 60 percent for users of smartphones not made by Apple or BlackBerry.

While RIM is the company that should really be scared by the results of this survey, Apple shouldn’t exactly be patting themselves on the back, either. Android is making steady gains, especially among current smartphone users, and they seem to have scored a special place in the hearts of young consumers, which, when combined with the 90 percent plus brand loyalty result, could pay off huge going forward.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: Surveying the Mobile App Store Landscape

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BlackBerry to Lose More Ground to iPhone, Android: Survey

iPhoneExpert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:25:28 +0000

These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone. Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: Surveying the Mobile App Store Landscape

Read the original: BlackBerry to Lose More Ground to iPhone, Android: Survey

Sponsor post: LogMeIn Pro2 for Mac Is Here

iPhone — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:00:42 +0000

In case you havent seen our banners — above this post, to the right of it and down along the bottom of the page — or noticed the custom wallpaper, its worth repeating:

Pro2 for Mac is here!

Were so excited we even made a little video about it. So if youre the type of person that wants to go anywhere and do anything, at anytime, without worrying that youre leaving something behind — if you want to be free to be you — try Pro2 free, today.

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etc: If you’re annoyed when clicking on links for music and apps in the iTunes Store auto-launches iTunes, check out this tutorial to keep those links in your browser.

iPhoneExpert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:40:26 +0000

If you’re annoyed when clicking on links for music and apps in the iTunes Store auto-launches iTunes, check out this tutorial to keep those links in your browser.

Read More:
The Apple Blog, previous Ars coverage

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Continued here: etc: If you’re annoyed when clicking on links for music and apps in the iTunes Store auto-launches iTunes, check out this tutorial to keep those links in your browser.

How-To: Create a Custom User Template in Snow Leopard

iPhone — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:57:02 +0000

Setting up your OS to your liking can be an art for some. What if you need to set up Snow Leopard to present every user with the same look and settings? By following these steps you can have every user who logs into the machine receive the same look, feel and preferences that you desire. What we’ll be doing is creating a new user, setting it up to look how we want, then copying the settings so every new user will get those preferences.

Setting Everything Up

Login under your admin account and open up Accounts pane in System Preferences.
Click the + to create a new Standard user.
As an example, we’ll use the nametestuser.
Log off and log back in as testuser.
Set everything up the way you want. I customized the Dock, Safari’s home page and the Finder preferences.
When you are done customizing, log off the testuser account.

Copying the Files

Login under your admin account.
Navigate to the /System/Library folder in Finder.
Right-click on the User Template folder and choose Get info.
By default, you cannot browse this folder. Change the permissions so Everyone has Read & Write permissions.
Now we can open up the User Template folder & copy the English.lproj folder to your desktop. This will be our backup copy in case we want to restore it back.
Open up Terminal and navigate to the User Template folder.
cd /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj
Copy the testuser folder over, which will replace the defaults. You may get errors about some files that can’t be replaced. I haven’t seen it cause any issues though.
sudo cp -R ~testuser/* .
sudo cp -R ~testuser/.* .
Change the permissions for the User Template folder back so everyone has No Access again.

Test it Out

Create a new user to verify everything worked. I used the name testuser2.
Log off as admin and log back in as testuser2.
You will now see your customized settings. These will be used for all new users created on the system from this point on.

Conclusion

To put everything back the way it was, log in as admin and copy the English.lproj backup file on your desktop back to the /System/Library/User Template folder.

If you have a lab of Macs but aren’t using Open Directory, this is a nice solution to maintain some control over the OS presentation. This change will only affect new users. It has no effect on existing users, so keep that in mind. If you start getting constant requests for more customizations similar to this, setup a Snow Leopard Server and start using Workgroup Manager. The changes can be much easier to implement but the Server solution has a larger price-tag for that convenience.

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Mac, iPod sales grow once again in February

iPhoneExpert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:40:50 +0000

Mac sales were up 43 percent year over year during the month of February, according to a note from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. As seen by?Apple Insider,?Munster forecasts that Apple will reach somewhere between 2.8 and 2.9 million sales in the March 2010 quarter, a number slightly above most Wall Street estimates.

Similarly, iPod sales saw positive growth in both January and February, with a five and 10 percent increases respectively. February marks only the second month since October of 2008 that iPod sales have seen year-over-year growth, as the sales of traditional iPod models have been steadily (and expectedly) decreasing while Apple ramps up the hype on the iPod touch. This strategy has been working, as Apple reported in a recent earnings call that it had seen 100 percent growth in iPod touch sales year over year.?

With estimated iPad sales looking impressive already, it would come as no surprise if Apple saw decent overall sales numbers for the month of March. ?However, whether or not the iPad will eventually pilfer sales from Apple’s portable line and cut into overall margins remains to be seen.?

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iPhoneRevealed.com

Survey: Macs cost notably less to support than Windows PCs

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etc: Droid sales were a hair faster than the original iPhone in its first 74 days, but the Nexus One was far slower. Analytics firm Flurry credits this largely to consumer perception and demand.

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Keyboard dock, other iPad accessories will be MIA on April 3

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BlackBerry to Lose More Ground to iPhone, Android: Survey

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BlackBerry to Lose More Ground to iPhone, Android: Survey

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Sponsor post: LogMeIn Pro2 for Mac Is Here

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etc: If you’re annoyed when clicking on links for music and apps in the iTunes Store auto-launches iTunes, check out this tutorial to keep those links in your browser.

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How-To: Create a Custom User Template in Snow Leopard

Setting Everything Up

Copying the Files

Test it Out

Conclusion

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Mac, iPod sales grow once again in February

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