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These days and probably for the past 30 years or so, companies want nothing but cheap in up front costs. If they wanted good hardware, mainframes would still be selling very well, much more than now.
Selling enterprise software or hardware means paid lunches and dinners to steakhouses, 3-24 months sales cycles, multiple free workshops or demos or presentations. This all costs anywhere from $10K to even millions of $ plus sales teams and internal training, marketing, management and other overhead.
In the consumer market, there’s probably a lot fewer overheads.
I can’t think of any successful, non-consumer facing product that Apple has ever built - it’s not even clear it’s in their DNA. The closest I can think of is Xcode cloud.
Also most companies have already opted their employees into using Macs so that’s something that sells itself with very little sales prowess from Apple’s side.
Apple used to have some enterprise hardware products, like the XServe (rackmount Mac.) They also had Mac OS Server. They must've had a reason to stop.
Seems pretty clear, in hindsight. Microsoft won the enterprise "stack" by bringing Active Directory and the Office products to Mac. They were blatantly willing to go cross-platform, which meant Windows Server would be a sure choice for expanding companies that wanted to pay extra to ignore compatibility (and even then, neither MacOS Server nor Windows Server were that good of an idea). So if Apple couldn't win the in…
Mac is growing as well, probably 20% yoy for my place. They probably have the best security and compliance story in the business.
They have a model that prints money. Getting deeper means sales teams skimming 20%.
As for the on-premise workstation market, this is long rumored to be shrinking, leaving the Dell-HP-Lenovo (DHL) triad to the spoils for Linux or Windows on commercial PCs. That dominance yields when remote / BYOD enters the fray (as Microsoft 365 and Google Docs run nearly anywhere).
We were an enterprise customer of Apple. We deployed Xserves in production. Xserve RAIDS. Really cool stuff. We even had an inside enterprise account team.
Steve Jobs simply did not want to do enterprise. He personally told everyone this, including the enterprise team. He always wanted Apple to be a consumer company.
Apple did not want to support enterprise customers for 5+ years. They discontinued parts and support for Xserve and other things way too early for enterprise customers. Dell, IBM, etc., supports their enterprise hardware easily for 5 years and even longer. We bought piles of drives and other parts whenever we could once Apple told us support was being discontinued.
Dell, Lenovo, and others have onsite support for repairs, especially for enterprise servers. Same day and even 4-hours onsite repairs. Apple wanted you to go to an Apple store or in mail it in, even for clear recall items. This is a complete nightmare for enterprise. Wiping drives before going to a store or mailing it, ugh. Dell, etc., a tech shows up, replaces a motherboard in 5 minutes while you watch and done.
I’m not saying I’m a fan of Dell or they are perfect. However, they are an enterprise company that Apple never even tried to match in the slightest.
If you didn’t have the support of Steve Jobs on anything then you didn’t do it. I’m sure that legacy has continued regarding enterprise. I think it’s a okay. Apple doesn’t need to do enterprise.
They are. I work for a big enterprise… we probably have $25M of iOS devices. Apple is a huge supplier, through the channel. Mac is growing as well, probably 20% yoy for my place. They probably have the best security and compliance story in the business. They have a model that prints money. Getting deeper means sales teams skimming 20%.
Verizon or AT&T could do the same thing for you, whether it’s iOS or Android. It’s a consumer device that happens to be used by employees.