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."

This is the only way... and still won't work.

[ZxCv]

Obviously, with as many rabid fans as Apple has, releasing a roadmap without an NDA would most certainly not work.

And yet, even with the NDA, like the only other post so far said, it will get leaked.

Apple just can't win here.

On the other hand

[ronanbear]

Microsoft announced Vista years ago and all its features. Sometimes not knowing what's gonna happen is better than relying on incorrect information.

Apple are deliberately quiet about future products both from a marketing perspective and because it makes them a leaner, more responsive company. They can suddenly release software like Aperture and Bootcamp out of the blue when its ready and the time is right for them.

Jeez...

[__aajqwr7439]

In addition, he said, Apple's previous operating system, Mac OS 9, had a reputation for instability that was still around, despite the newer Mac OS X's strong stability record.

They're almost as bad as the people who still can't stop talking about how bad Windows ME was. And did we mention that we're holding off on Vista because Microsoft Bob had a reputation for being CPU-intensive?

If you're going to hold a grudge, why not go back a decade when you're already halfway there?

DN

Apple doesn't get the enterprise

[caseih]

Having used Apple's enterprise hardware and software (OS X Server and XServe) for three years, I can tell you that Apple just doesn't get the enterprise. They are either unwilling or unable to treat enterprise customers any differently than their average consumer customer. Only recently has Apple even set up a special support mechanism for their enterprise customers. Previous to this point, when you called up apple with a server problem you would never get anyone on the phone that understood servers. One time I called up to get a drive replaced on warranty. The drive (in a RAID-5 array) had not failed, but the yellow warning light had come on, indicating that a failure was likely. After describing the situation to the support rep, he asked me if I had put the disk back in to see if it would go back to a green light. I was flabbergasted. I gently told him that no, I could not do that. This was a mission-critical server and that once the disk had even so much as blinked, it had to be replaced (I had already inserted the spare at that point). I was unable to get the service rep to budge, so I had to escalate the issue through our local education rep and finally got the warranty replacement.

Other major issues we have had stem from the fact that Apple wants us to reboot our computer every couple of weeks. Uptime longer than a month or so is impossible with Apple. We've told our Apple reps that this is unacceptable but they've said we just have to live with the fact that Apple focuses on consumers mainly and for them a reboot is acceptable for almost every update. If you though Microsoft Windows was bad about reboots in the past, Apple is worse.

Finally, despite Apple using Open Source as a marketing point, and despite the fact that Apple bundles a lot of OSS with their OS, Apple is not an Open Source company in any form. Their bundles of OSS are done in way that makes it impossible to recompile or replace components yourself. For example, although they ship OpenLDAP, it is deeply integrated into other Apple components and you cannot fix bugs yourself or upgrade the OpenLDAP component (much of the source is there, but it is not buildable). We ran into some very nasty bugs in Panther server with the hacks they did to OpenLDAP. Bugs that would completely deadlock the server every week and require a hard reset. It took us a year of fighting with Apple to get them to acknowledge that there was a bug. And this was only after another customer spend weeks building a script that would hammer the server and illustrate the bug. Apple finally released a fix for this in 10.3.6 or 7 I think, after it had been reported back at 10.3.3, about a year earlier. And of course by this time, Apple's engineers were hard at work on Tiger, so they didn't really even want to go back and touch panther again. Right about the time Apple released Tiger Server, I complained about some chronic NFS file locking problems in Panther Server (10.3.9) to Apple and they said simply, just upgrade to Tiger. I told them that wasn't possible as it was a production server and I couldn't upgrade it midstream like that, but in Apple's eyes, I'm out of luck. Running OS X server is a bit like trying to run Fedora Core on a server. Apple just doesn't want to support any OS version longer than a year or two. I'm finally getting ready to roll out a Tiger server box (my 3 year cycle on the panther server is about up) as it fixes numerous issues I've been having, but it is not a trivial migration. Plus I've heard a lot of reports that Samba just doesn't work under load on Tiger Server. So that really leaves me in a bit of a bind.

Fortunately we're about to replace the main file server and we're taking bids from other vendors. Right now we're looking at some new Apple RAID arrays, because the price is right, but we're not going to be running OS X server at all. It will definitely be linux on a Dell or HP server. Also Sun is pricing out some hardware that is a whole grade above Apple's RAID at a price that nearly matches Apple's

Re:I've been to WWDC

[MojoStan]

more of a "we will release a desktop using the Intel Core 2 Duo 3.4 GHz within a month of it shipping in December, at the $1000 price point, that is expandable."

I bet that's a product IT people (and many others) have wanted since the introduction of the iMac and the "blue and white" PowerMac G3. A simple desktop without a freakin' integrated monitor and maybe 2-3 expansion slots. A simple desktop that's NOT a $2000+ workstation. Not an underpowered, non-expandable mini with notebook parts. Not an overpriced cube. Without monitor, priced about the same or less than an iMac.

I bet such a desktop would have outsold the iMac by a very large margin. Instead, Mac desktop buyers have been mostly limited to (1) a non-expandable, all-in-one desktop with limited upgrade options and (2) a big expensive workstation that's overkill for most buyers. Recently Mac buyers have been given the option to buy a mini that's as unpowerful and non-expandable as a low-end notebook.

One example that would outsell the iMac: Small (not mini) desktop or microtower with G965 chipset, Core 2 Duo or Conroe-based Celeron, 2-3 PCIe/PCI slots, next-gen Intel integrated graphics with DVI/HDMI, PCIe x16 graphics slot, standard 5.25" optical drive bay. Over the next five years, a desktop like that can be upgraded to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, LED-backlit LCD with HDCP, AirPort nTense (802.11n), or 2TB hard drive WITHOUT having a bunch of peripherals and power supplies scattered around the computer.