Apple releases new... everything

[sdedalus83]

Where Apple did have considerable interest followed by catastrophic failure were the server and HPC markets.  I see that happening with workstations as well if the current Mac Pro is an indication of how they plan to approach that market in the future.  Neither pixar nor the most retarded of affluent mac fanatics are big enough to justify continued production.

[bloody000]

In my eyes, two things are keeping Apple out of the enterprise market:

1. No cheapass computer to be bought en masse for employees. The Mac mini comes closest, but is still about $300 or $400 more expensive than the $200 and $300 junkboxes Dell will sell them.
2. Companies are unwilling to rewrite their inhouse software. So many companies make extensive use of custom-built in-house software. This wouldn't be bad, except this software is typically written hundreds of times worse than your average consumer application and leans on very specific parts of Windows - we're talking legacy code that should have been axed years ago. Sometimes these applications even require IE 5 or 6 to run.

So even if Apple did try to cater to that market, it wouldn't do them all that much good since these companies won't want to pay someone to rewrite their software. Apple would not only have to match or best Dell, etc in the cost sector but also have to pay the company or offer some other huge incentive to get them to even --consider-- switching.

And now you see why Apple has little interest in enterprise.

Also, keep in mind that despite the state of the economy and Apple's lackluster marketing, consumer marketshare is still slowly shifting towards Macs. At this point, Apple has approx. 10% of the entire internet-using population, up from 5-6% a few years ago.

Point 1: machines for employees are dumb terminals of modern era. they have to be cheap.
Point 2: That doesn't stop people from using solutions from Red Hat/Novell/whatever. Using doesn't mean switching. Badly written crap is badly written crap, what makes you think that if they were using RHEL all along they would have better code? and don't give me that "but they use RHEL they must be smart enough to not hire some fail-filled college students"

*that's mio from k-on!

[furuoshiki]

Bloody000 - Off topic but Dude your avatar looks like a girl that has the psychic power to give herself orgasms on command. Almost like Carrie anime-style. What series or website is it from?

Either way all of this sounds really fucked up. I mean Legacy applications are out of my ballpark to begin with but I can't think of a reason why companies would try and create software that can't change with the times...Is it all to protect patents or something? I think the money saved from migrating to more efficient modules or standards would outweigh the costs you lose in the rewriting and migration process.

Besides won't Windows 7 have an XP mode anyways? That should make firms happy.

[flaresignal]

Either way all of this sounds really fucked up. I mean Legacy applications are out of my ballpark to begin with but I can't think of a reason why companies would try and create software that can't change with the times...Is it all to protect patents or something? I think the money saved from migrating to more efficient modules or standards would outweigh the costs you lose in the rewriting and migration process.

The applications were probably written on a "get it working first, future-proof it later" principle, instead of anything deliberately nefarious. Once there's enough weight behind a legacy app, migrating to something different (or rewriting) becomes a pain because some behaviors aren't exactly the same, or there's too much data and too many users to make a smooth transition.

[furuoshiki]

Beginning to sound a lot like American politics to me

[iindigo]

I could be wrong on this, but to me, the smart option would be to program in-house applications in something completely cross-platform or something close to it... you know, Java, Perl, Python, etc... I doubt it would even cost much more, since Java is almost considered baseline programmer knowledge these days (a lot of colleges teach it first) and doing so would ensure that your company wouldn't be tied down to any one platform.

[furuoshiki]

This incites me to believe they are doing it to protect some sort of archaic and useless intellectual property, the explanation flare signal gives makes sense but i still can't add up the motivation behind using a non-standard programming language to create an important program that will house data that might need to be migrated.

[bloody000]

I could be wrong on this, but to me, the smart option would be to program in-house applications in something completely cross-platform or something close to it... you know, Java, Perl, Python, etc... I doubt it would even cost much more, since Java is almost considered baseline programmer knowledge these days (a lot of colleges teach it first) and doing so would ensure that your company wouldn't be tied down to any one platform.

And that isn't happening 90% of the time. Why? because kid just want to get paid. ok here's your program, it works. who cares it may not work in the future. he doesn't need to support it anyway. this was when the company was small, they don't have much requirements and wanted to save costs.
And in the next decade there will be all sort of patches, hacks, workarounds and add-ons. they will do this until it cannot be made to work. then they will rewrite it.

[iindigo]

I could be wrong on this, but to me, the smart option would be to program in-house applications in something completely cross-platform or something close to it... you know, Java, Perl, Python, etc... I doubt it would even cost much more, since Java is almost considered baseline programmer knowledge these days (a lot of colleges teach it first) and doing so would ensure that your company wouldn't be tied down to any one platform.

And that isn't happening 90% of the time. Why? because kid just want to get paid. ok here's your program, it works. who cares it may not work in the future. he doesn't need to support it anyway.

I'm saying that the company employing the programmer should demand nothing less than cross-platform. Throwing a job out and saying "make it work" without any sort of standards or guidelines is a recipe for disaster.

[bloody000]

I could be wrong on this, but to me, the smart option would be to program in-house applications in something completely cross-platform or something close to it... you know, Java, Perl, Python, etc... I doubt it would even cost much more, since Java is almost considered baseline programmer knowledge these days (a lot of colleges teach it first) and doing so would ensure that your company wouldn't be tied down to any one platform.

And that isn't happening 90% of the time. Why? because kid just want to get paid. ok here's your program, it works. who cares it may not work in the future. he doesn't need to support it anyway.

I'm saying that the company employing the programmer should demand nothing less than cross-platform. Throwing a job out and saying "make it work" without any sort of standards or guidelines is a recipe for disaster.

I was edting the post. you can read it again now.

[molbjerg]

Come on... You don't understand how legacy apps come to exist? A business needs a solution as close to immediately as possible working in their office. This was 10 years ago, they couldn't give a shit about it only working on windows. So they lazy cost-cutting programming of the software comes to rely upon external features, then they're stuck (sort of). Obviously people don't go "w00t im writing software that won't work in 2 years", and it's a good thing that MS doesn't remove all legacy support otherwise many critical business applications would fail.

As for writing things in java........... riiiiight.

And saying that all companies should demand nothing less than cross platform? Toddle. The only reason you even think in cross-platform terms is because you're a mac fanboy, business is all about windows. Full stop. With linux a possibility. And as for coding to be cross-platform - guess what that takes? MORE MONEY.

[furuoshiki]

And that isn't happening 90% of the time. Why? because kid just want to get paid. ok here's your program, it works. who cares it may not work in the future. he doesn't need to support it anyway. this was when the company was small, they don't have much requirements and wanted to save costs.
And in the next decade there will be all sort of patches, hacks, workarounds and add-ons. they will do this until it cannot be made to work. then they will rewrite it.

Dude no this is called long-term customer relations, if anything it was intentional that the programs were written to not evolve and be inept with future developments. This is like me giving a  12 year old kid a "free" complementary baseball mitt knowing that in 2 years he would have grown out of it and will have to buy a new one from me again, only I have already conned him into believing that I should be the one he gets his new mitt from and not some other seller.

As for using things until they are practically broken down into dust, that is us Americans for you. We don't resolve continual issues until it becomes crisis management which is why half of our major banks and firms have collapsed in less that ONE FUCKING YEAR. I don't see any European companies doing this retarded shit in the technology sector, or at least I haven't heard of it. When decision time came the marketing manager probably opted to take "Whiz Kid's accounting storm database application" in place of a majorly known app because it was the quicker and cheaper option. Well now that quicker and cheaper option doesn't work, and the data can't be extracted and your entire firm has been fucked in the butt cheeks. Whiz kid doesn't write software anymore because he is rich and retired off of fucking firms desperate for quick and easy solutions. Game over.

Also@Molbjerg - It is totally not in Microsoft's best interest to fuck around with dropping legacy support. That shouldn't even be a joke! The business sector is their stronghold that they cannot afford to lose to apple or any other potential competitor.

Also cross platform solutions are inevitable. There is no point in for example developing a website that makes people create new accounts every single fucking time. Now this is why there is Google account log-ins on blogspot and youtube to prevent that cumbersome issue of having to create numerous fucking accounts for each website you are a member of. Now that might be a slightly tangential example but you should be able to get the point. In this age where resources and currency are both scarce consolidation is of prime consideration. This means typing up loose ends and not having applications that don't work in a universal fashion with enhanced connectivity and easy data migration.

[mgz]

I could be wrong on this, but to me, the smart option would be to program in-house applications in something completely cross-platform or something close to it... you know, Java, Perl, Python, etc... I doubt it would even cost much more, since Java is almost considered baseline programmer knowledge these days (a lot of colleges teach it first) and doing so would ensure that your company wouldn't be tied down to any one platform.

problem being these companies also want the cheapest and fastest way to do what they want, demanding cross platform compatibility will drive the cost of that software through the roof.

If i am paying 50k dollars for someone to make me software that i need, and it costs 100k to do the same thing but it works on more computers but it doesnt matter because i have 150$ dells for every computer in my company

[iindigo]

Thing is, though, that Java programmers are, from what I understand, a dime a dozen. It wouldn't cost them any more to get their software written in say, Java [client side situations] or PHP [server side] than it would to hire some VB or ASP jockey, and it has the added benefit of futureproofing. If the company decides to adopt Redhat Linux instead of just taking whatever MS shoves down their throats, for example, they would be able to transition nearly seamlessly.

[sdedalus83]

You don't hire vb.net programmers for the knd of task you are talking about.  Almost every in-house program I've seen has been built on top of Access with a vb interface.  They're all heavily dependent on whichever version of Access they were built upon, take a relatively short time to code, and are a bitch to port to new versions of Access, let alone anything else.  You don't see that kind of software built from the ground up because it costs far less, in money, time, and manpower, to use existing commercial products as a base.  Of course this generalization is limited to smaller companies with little connection to the tech world, but it's a very large group of companies.

[iindigo]

Still, it's not a very smart choice. It's like choosing to live off of 99¢ McDonalds burgers for the next 10 years because they're cheaper than healthy food. You might save money and effort now, but it's gonna catch up to you at one point or another.

[sdedalus83]

These are small companies desperately trying to keep up.  Most of them can't afford experienced programmers, let alone software architects and business model analysts.  When the current system can no longer handle the workload, they do everything possible to keep the old system useful while adding the needed functionality. Attempting to see ten years into the future and hiring a development team to move everything to portable, self developed software would be suicidal.  That's why there are thousands of companies out there which are contracted to design specialized software.  Do you really think those companies have any interest in portability, accurate documentation, and clean code?  Hell no!  They do what they have to do to keep their customers coming back, rather than trying to go it alone or moving to the competition.

[furuoshiki]

Still, it's not a very smart choice. It's like choosing to live off of 99¢ McDonalds burgers for the next 10 years because they're cheaper than healthy food. You might save money and effort now, but it's gonna catch up to you at one point or another.

Exactly.

These are small companies desperately trying to keep up.  Most of them can't afford experienced programmers, let alone software architects and business model analysts. 

PLAY HARD OR GO HOME. If you can't play the entire game there is no point in playing to begin with because your weaknesses will just become a problem later on. When taking out business loans this cost is supposed to be factored in. If the bank won't give you a loan that is large enough to buffer the impact of having to upgrade software that is necessary, maybe it's time to re-think your business plan.

When the current system can no longer handle the workload, they do everything possible to keep the old system useful while adding the needed functionality. Attempting to see ten years into the future and hiring a development team to move everything to portable, self developed software would be suicidal.

Yet for an emerging company that seeks to be competitive...IT ACTUALLY IS VITAL. Many economic theorists say this is the weakest point in capitalism, planning for the long-term. YET FIRMS DO IT ALL THE TIME. It can be done but SACRIFICES must be made. If you can't make those sacrifices then why start a business to begin with when it will clearly fail later on due to this inability to look towards the future? If the solution cannot be provided by the market then government has no choice but to intervene.

That's why there are thousands of companies out there which are contracted to design specialized software. 

AKA fly-by-night firms. Here today gone tomorrow. That isn't very re-assuring to me as a small business owner. I need accountability.

Do you really think those companies have any interest in portability, accurate documentation, and clean code?  Hell no!  They do what they have to do to keep their customers coming back, rather than trying to go it alone or moving to the competition.

If business consumers are dumb enough to agree with a company who takes the cheapest option and not the SUREST option this degrades consumer confidence in that sector in the long-run. In the B2B sector loss of confidence is potentially FATAL. B2B sector relies almost EXCLUSIVELY on long-term relationships and constant renegotiation of terms. Many IT developments assist the B2B sector, enable it's growth and growing confidence. With no IT support, the B2B sector becomes an epic fail, costs rise again and logistics innovations we consider the status quo becomes a problem again, similar to the days before automated sourcing and telecommunications advancement. This is a key problem with American firms today. Take away confidence in the market and you are fucked. When the B2B sector fails, the end-consumer (us) gets to hear the fat lady sing and we get fucked in our own pockets. Just look around us right now. Banks are just now regaining confidence IN EACH OTHER. Miraculously. Maybe it's because I guess if they don't loosen up credit, no one will be able to buy anything that they want or NEED.

[mgz]

Still, it's not a very smart choice. It's like choosing to live off of 99¢ McDonalds burgers for the next 10 years because they're cheaper than healthy food. You might save money and effort now, but it's gonna catch up to you at one point or another.

Exactly.

These are small companies desperately trying to keep up.  Most of them can't afford experienced programmers, let alone software architects and business model analysts. 

PLAY HARD OR GO HOME. If you can't play the entire game there is no point in playing to begin with because your weaknesses will just become a problem later on. When taking out business loans this cost is supposed to be factored in. If the bank won't give you a loan that is large enough to buffer the impact of having to upgrade software that is necessary, maybe it's time to re-think your business plan.

When the current system can no longer handle the workload, they do everything possible to keep the old system useful while adding the needed functionality. Attempting to see ten years into the future and hiring a development team to move everything to portable, self developed software would be suicidal.

Yet for an emerging company that seeks to be competitive...IT ACTUALLY IS VITAL. Many economic theorists say this is the weakest point in capitalism, planning for the long-term. YET FIRMS DO IT ALL THE TIME. It can be done but SACRIFICES must be made. If you can't make those sacrifices then why start a business to begin with when it will clearly fail later on due to this inability to look towards the future? If the solution cannot be provided by the market then government has no choice but to intervene.

That's why there are thousands of companies out there which are contracted to design specialized software. 

AKA fly-by-night firms. Here today gone tomorrow. That isn't very re-assuring to me as a small business owner. I need accountability.

Do you really think those companies have any interest in portability, accurate documentation, and clean code?  Hell no!  They do what they have to do to keep their customers coming back, rather than trying to go it alone or moving to the competition.

If customers are dumb enough to agree with a company who takes the cheapest option and not the SUREST option this degrades consumer confidence. This is a key problem with American firms today. Take away confidence in the market and you are fucked. Just look around us right now. Banks are just now regaining confidence. Miraculously. Maybe it's because I guess if they don't loosen up credit, no one will be able to buy anything.

Most of those answers and good and fine to say and "believe in" but when you are talking about the difference of tens of thousands of dollars for one piece of software, lets say it costs 10k for your 1 software that does what you want for 4 or 5 years.

You pay 2 or 3 times as much but it works on 8 different operating systems for 7 or 8 years. Do you really care if it does what you need it to for as long as you need it to.

Its like saying HEY LETS GO SPEND 50K ON A NICE BMW OR LEXUS, when all you can afford is a 2001 toyota corolla that costs a fraction of the price and might have 3k worth of problems over then next 4 years but you know what it still = less then the brand new car that had zero problems

[sdedalus83]

Try more along the lines of 10k for a custom access application vs 200k a year on labor costs for the same app, vs 2 million a year on labor to build it from the ground up.  Both Gallup and UPS used a lot of custom software for which they contracted out to specialty development houses.  Small companies rarely even have that luxury.