Apple Offers Solution to IT Roadmap Complaints

daria42 writes "Apple has admitted that enterprise IT users complain a lot about not being able to find out what its product roadmap is ahead of time. The Apple answer to this problem? Sign a non-disclosure agreement and go to Apple's annual worldwide developer conference, to be held in August this year in San Francisco. IT users can apparently get plans of Apple's roadmap up to 18 months ahead."

Vagueness

[FuturePastNow]

Despite the NDA I imagine this will be very, very skimpy on details. Something like, "In six months, we'll be using the 3Ghz dual-core processors, in twelve months we'll be using the 3.5Ghz quad-core processors." Hell, Intel's roadmaps already give us most of the details of Apple's future products (everything except size and shape).

It'll leak anyway.

Re:Vagueness

[IntlHarvester]

(everything except size and shape).

And Price.

You can bet there will be no juicy information such as "We plan to have a expandible minitower on the market for $800 in 2007. So don't buy a PowerMac unless you *really* need it!!". Instead you'll get the standard Intel roadmap which anyone can read on the Inqurier.

I think this is really to molify institutional concerns about the Intel switchover -- It happened so fast, I imagine that quite a few shops that couldn't manage budgets/planning quickly enough. One day they were selling iMac G5s and the next day they weren't, and too bad if you were using Photoshop or something.

Re:Vagueness

[dushkin]

Apple always keeps its products uber-secret no matter what, Palm likes to do similar things. Gotta love this fruit company :P Things DO leak, but when they leak it's generally two weeks before the thing is released.. And usually you can't even tell what it is, like this "Ultra-Portable" device Apple allegedly wants to make. It could be a new iPod, or it could be a new MacBook [Pro]. So unless you signed an agreement with them, chances are you won't exactly know what Apple is trying to do. And when you do know, you're gonna have to keep it secret or else the Apple Police will follow you home and kill your dog.

Re:Vagueness

[hey!]

I imagine that most IT guys aren't interested in hardware speed. They're more interested in software and interoperability. You don't want to roll out software and training programs to find out they've been dropped/updated/replaced. You don't want to buy hardware or software add ons for Apples if Apple is going to make them obsolete.

Re:On the other hand

[TheGreek]

There are various proposed reasons, from technologies that affect XNU they want to announce at a later date, to the anti-piracy stuff you comment upon. Until Apple makes a real, public, statement one way or another, it's not really justified to say anything other than "As of now, XNU for Intel is proprietary." It's not absolutely certain it's the pirates that "caused" this.

It's not absolutely certain, no.

Here's what is certain, though:

1) xnu was, at one point, open for both Intel and PPC.
2) Downloading it was listed as a step in some guides for getting Mac OS X to work on non-Apple Intel hardware.
3) Intel xnu is no longer open, PPC xnu is.

You don't have to be Kreskin to figure this one out.

Enterprise hypocracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA: "Our target markets are corporate, they want to be able to plan two years ahead, sometimes three years ahead," he said, pointing out such customers wanted him to look into his crystal ball and predict vendor roadmaps over that time.

Companies buy cheap, problem-prone Windows PCs to capture short-term savings, instead of paying a little more initially for Macs and reaping years of savings via lower support costs. And then these same companies turn around and criticize Apple for not "allowing" them to plan long-term? That makes me laugh.

These guys like to say that they think long-term, but they're full of it. They focus on quarter-to-quarter, and that's it-- maybe 6 months ahead, tops. And what kind of roadmap do you really need for IT? "Here's a new machine. In 2-3 years, when you're ready to replace it, we'll offer faster (and probably cheaper) ones."

And what about when you have a vendor who can't stick to their roadmap, like, oh, I don't know-- Microsoft? How many "long term" plans has Vista's constant slippage completely hosed? How much corporate money was pissed away on Software Assurance agreements that expired before Microsoft could even produce the assured software?

The whole "Apple is too secretive" argument is just a bunch of horse crap. Corporate IT doesn't like Macs because you don't need a giant support staff and a huge budget when you have computers that (relative to Windows PCs) don't break.

Re:Jeez...

[gsfprez]

i often bag on how bac Windows 3.11 is to Mac bashers who's last Mac experience was a Mac Classic back in high school.

I mean, if their understanding of the Mac platform is "it uses all proprietary hardware, you have to buy special ethernet cables for it, and you can't just hook it into a Windows network", then why can't i go back and talk about their OS in a similar timeframe of obsolesence?