The Misinformation Police™ is the place to go for permanent employment. Back in June, Peter Cohen in CIO headlined: Apple: Mac OS X Installed User Base Tripled In 2 Years. Tripled? What Cohen is referring to is Phil Schiller at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).
Schiller produced a chart showing the number of actual active Mac OS X users from 2002 – 2007. By the end of 2007 Apple counted about 25 million active Mac OS X users. In the past two years, there’s been a “huge spike” of new users, according to Schiller, and Apple has seen the user base grow from 25 million to near 75 million users today, in 2009.
The problem with that, of course, is that it is dead wrong. Macs have not tripled the user base in two years. Schiller was referring to OS X, which runs on both the iPhone and iPod touch, not Mac OS X.
Tom Kaneshige of CIO repeats the same misinformation in an article picked up by Macworld, which should know better.
Even though Mac OS X installed user base has tripled in the last two years, from 25 million to nearly 75 million, the number of Macs in the enterprise still represents a paltry sum because they’re costly and not easy to support.
Again, dead wrong. Mac OS X’s user base is approximately 25-million, and OS X in the iPod touch and iPhone represents the other 50-million.
Kaneshige brings up a good point about Macs in the enterprise. Who else was surprised by OS X Snow Leopard’s August release?
Mac engineers and software developers are not given enough advance notice to certify Apple products; they get their hands on new Apple products along with everyone else, as part of Apple’s “secrecy” marketing strategy to create mystery and excitement around new releases.
Perhaps so, but were those same enterprise CIOs and engineers going to put Snow Leopard into their enterprise immediately upon release? Do they deploy the latest Windows version immediately after it’s release? Of course not.
To be fair, the vast majority of Mac apps have a green check mark by their names, meaning that they run on Snow Leopard without any problems. But there are some significant enterprise-type apps experiencing glitches.
To be fair, is this really an issue of concern among CIOs? Do they immediately deploy the latest version of any major operating system in use in their enterprise? Not likely. So, some in the enterprise may want to delay Snow Leopard’s implementation. What happens anyway?
For the Mac engineer who doesn’t plan on upgrading to Snow Leopard, this decision will likely be met with considerable resistance from Mac users throughout the company. Top execs might challenge the decision or install Snow Leopard on their own.
Money quote from a Mac engineer:
One of the challenges for integrating Apple products in a corporate environment is this must-upgrade-now culture.
Italics mine. Somehow that’s Apple’s fault.