HUH?

Here's an article that talks about OS X being used in businesses. They're talking stats like a whopping SEVENTEEN percent of employees in companies with 250 employees, were running Mac OS X on their desktop computers at work. In really large corporations, with 10,000 employees, it's 21 percent.

The article goes on to speculate that it may be that these companies simply used OS X to replace existing UNIX infrastructures. And it then shows how many companies surveyed used OS X server, and it's a respectable 9-14%

This was fascinating too:

quote:

Linux users also represent a big pool of potential switchers, according to the report.

This must be some species of Linux user that I've never met.

Anyway, these are impressive statistics. Too bad I don't trust "market research firms" as far as I can throw them, but nonetheless I'm stunned. You coulda knocked me over with a feather. Apple computers in corporate America? Personally, I've seen a grand total of ZERO Macs there, but hey, I could be on the wrong coast. Could it be that Apple's strategy to make an operating system AS FUCKING CONFUSING AND DIFFICULT TO USE AS WINDOWS has paid off? Shows what I know, maybe people ARE chimps and retards, lol.

Seventeen percent of employees in businesses with 250 employees or more use OS X? And with businesses employing 10,000 or more the figure is, "21 percent of employees used Mac OS X on their desktop work computer"? Can those figures be correct?

Although the report says nothing about hardware it leads one to assume that 17% and 21% of those employees using OS X "on their desktop work computers" must be using Macintoshes to run the OS. Does this mean that 21% in these large businesses use Macintoshes and, because Windows cannot be an installed OS on these computers, they do not use Windows? "21 percent of employees used Mac OS X on their desktop work computer"? When did this happen? Has Microsoft heard about this?

It doesn't sound right. How can this be so and Apple still only own only 2% of marketshare as it does? Where are these OS X using companies? Is this report based on a market survey of companies only in the immediate Cupertino area? Does that 21% of larger companies include Apple Computer itself where it's employees are using OS X nearly at 100% and the other four large companies surveyed don't use it at all?

Those companies with 10,000 or more employees where "21 percent of employees used Mac OS X on their desktop work computer" are certainly large enough to be well known -- what are their names? Where are they located?

In my industry nobody uses Macs or OS X. Only once in the last decade has any customer asked for a version of our software that could run on a Macintosh. This despite the fact that many of our customer's customers are universities and hospitals which, in the past, were traditional Apple strongholds. Most of my customers are only barely aware that Apple still sells computers.

It doesn't matter to me if OS X does or does not make inroads into businesses, but something seems wrong with these startling figures. There must be some key piece of information left out of the report whereby the figures make sense. I suppose if one department in a company such as the Advertising Dept. installs a single Mac OS X server for its own use one could say that any employee in the company that has accesses to the server is using "Mac OS X on their desktop work computer" anytime that employee pulls a product brochure PDF to send to a customer. Something.

What am I missing here? Have I missed something in the article whereby its implications make sense?

I said the same thing to myself: what am I missing here? I'm sitting here with my jaw hanging open... that the ONE place I never expected to see Macs, in the biz market... is suddenly friggin' LOADED with them? Huh?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would make macs more popular in business than in their INTENDED digikid/casual use market! How can that be?

I think the missing puzzle piece is, prior to OS X, how many UNIX boxes were there in business? And is this shift a result of swapping expensive UNIX systems out for cheaper OS X systems that RUN UNIX... and then maybe charming the biz users with iTunes to the point where they use Mac desktops?? I really don't know. I'm grasping at straws here.

If this is true, it's amazingly huge news for Apple. It dwarfs the Intel switch news. And I'd be really curious to see how that plays out in corporate America now that Macs are accounting for so many business systems.

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The percentage of Apple's market share has been consistent in reports from many different sources. I don't see how you can suddenly have a "use" statistic 8 or 10 times the market share.

This seems awfully broad:

quote:

The report found that in businesses with 250 employees or more, 17 percent of the employees were running Mac OS X on their desktop computer at work.

That simply can't be true across the board. Maybe SOME businesses, at best.

This is just one report, and I'm skeptical. I don't know who that "Jupiter Research" is. Maybe a division of Steveco International Reality Distortion, Inc.