It makes awfully good business sense and iDevice toting business users are loudly demanding for it to happen. But poor Steve Jobs must be turning in his grave at the recent turn of events.
Just this week, this famous pair of frienemies, IBM and Apple announced that they would work together to capture the enterprise market, with 100 business apps that are (at last!) compatible with Apple devices.
At a glance, a partnership between the two seems unthinkable. Both had fought tooth and nail for dominance in the early days of personal computing. Before Microsoft, IBM was at the receiving end of Jobs’ ridicule during interviews and during Apple ads. Jobs famously even gave IBM the finger; a photo of this was uploaded to the Internet years later.
Funnily, this recent 100 business apps project, isn’t IBM’s and Apple’s first rodeo together; they worked together to try produce an interactive CD-ROM and then later to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture.
Maybe it had seemed like a good idea for them to partner up in the 90s.
Over a decade later, they are doing it again, and this time there are business implications as well as well; on-site service for Apple products and even packaged service offerings with iPhones and iPads included, would be delivered by IBM.
*gasp*
Cook’s Apple may not be anything like Jobs’ Apple which had been elevated to cult-like status during the latter’s ‘reign.’
This is not such a bad thing.
As an IT person, I can breathe a sigh of relief at what IBM and Apple are doing together, because now perhaps, Apple will play well in other non-Apple environments.
And this just means less headache for corporate IT.
IT BYTES BACK! says: Business talks louder than any teeth gnashing and hand-wringing the hordes of Steve Jobs’ fans who are now collectively thinking, “This wouldn’t have happened under Steve!”, can make.
