§ Tight lips lose Apple business
Though I realize that they’re not perfect and that there is plenty of room for improvement, I do love Apple’s products. That said, they have some stupid practices. Being tight lipped about every aspect of products in development is one of them, and today it cost them 18 laptop purchases and guaranteed that there wouldn’t be any other purchases from where I work.
The MacBook that was purchased for testing went over like a dream. The Support Services Manager loved it and was interested in everything I showed him about OS X. A few of the Techs already own Macs at home and were the ones who initiated the process of looking into Apple as something they could use at work. A triple boot Mac/Windows/Linux solution was perfect for what they needed. They could have everything.
But Apple had to go and be stupid.
The main issue is driver support for Vista. For the purchase of the laptops to go through they needed to know what the driver support timeline for Vista was. Apple wouldn’t say. Since these were going into the tech department and would have very wide roles, including on site service, the driver support and reassurance of ongoing active development of Bootcamp and its associated drivers were crucial to the purchase. But Apple wouldn’t comment on a development timeline.
They’re giving up the chance to break into a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner because they don’t want to just say what the development timeline is on drivers. Call me naive, but that’s just downright stupid. I really think that the initial 18 laptop purchase would have just been the start of it. The more people around here would have used the machines the more they would have liked them and the more the stigma of ‘the other OS’ would fade away.
Dumb move, Apple. Dumb move.
Postscript
The only good thing coming from this is that I now inherit the test machine. So I’m gonna get to use a decked out MacBook Pro at work. Really decked out – I don’t think they left an upgrade option unfilled when they ordered it. Finally I won’t have to duck and weave back and forth between my PC Desktop and personal Mac Laptop to get work done efficiently.
Tagged as: apple bootcamp drivers it lost macbook pro purchase sale stupid
