Archive for February 11th, 2010

Mad ? … or Mad as Hell?

February 11, 2010

People are a bit testy these days.  Here are the numbers.

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Rasmussen Reports: 75% Are Angry At Government’s Current Policies, February 08, 2010 

Voters are madder than ever at the current policies of the federal government.

  • 75% of likely voters now say they are at least somewhat angry at the government’s current policies … 45% are Very Angry
  • 19% now say they’re not very or not at all angry at the government’s policies … 8% say they’re not angry at all 
  • 60% think that neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today.
  • Male voters are definitely angrier than women.
  • Voters earning $60,000 to $100,000 per year are more frustrated than those in any other income group.
  • 89% of Republicans are angry with the government’s current policies … 61% of Democrats share that anger
  • Older voters and higher-income voters share that believe most strongly that the current political leaders don’t have a good handle on what is needed today. .
  • Most voters oppose the now-seemingly-derailed health care plan  … and they continue to have very mixed feelings about the $787-billion economic stimulus plan.
  • 59% of voters believe cutting taxes is better than increasing government spending as a job-creation tool, but 72% expect the nation’s elected politicians to increase spending instead.
  • Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

Voters have consistently said for months that they have more confidence in their own economic judgment than that of either the president or Congress.

Full report:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/february_2010/75_are_angry_at_government_s_current_policies

Take an Apple to work ?

February 11, 2010

Takeaway: Apple is a favorite at home, and many Mac Heads are now demanding their favorite computers in the workplace.

So far, Apple has turned a blind eye to the corporate customer. Perhaps this is because team Jobs worries that the buttoned-up behemoths would taint its sexy consumer brand.

That said, the recent introduction of the iPad reminds us that the consumer may soon become maxed out with Mac gear and the corporate client may become more critical to boosting Apple’s bottom line. Could a clever multiple target strategy help Apple have its cake and eat it too?
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Excerpt from itbusiness.ca, “The enterprise opportunity Apple doesn’t want you to know about” by Jeff Jedras, February 8, 2010.
 
There probably isn’t a week that goes by without an enterprise IT manager hearing one of their users lament “why can’t I have one of those cool iMacs instead of this boring, grey PC?” It’s enough to make even the strongest IT manager run for the hills.

While IT had a list of tried and true answers to bar Apple for many years – cost of support, compatibility with Windows networks, cost of acquisition – those barriers have been coming down, one by one. New management tools make managing mixed networks simple. You can even run Windows on a Mac device, and the increased reliability of an Apple machine can net-out the marginal difference in acquisition cost.

So, increasingly, there is a stronger and stronger case to be made for bringing Apple into the enterprise market. The question is, is the enterprise a market that the fiercely consumer-focused company even wants to go after?

On that question, the jury is out. Apple declined several requests to be interviewed for this feature.

The enterprise is certainly an untapped market for Apple. According to a November, 2009 report from Forrester Research on Enterprise Platform Trends, enterprise Mac OS use was at just four per cent in June 2009, up from one per cent when Forrester first began tracking the statistic in 2006.
Edit by BHC
Full Article:
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=56341&cid=6

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