30 Years of the Mac: An MSP Perspective

It’s hard to believe the Apple Mac has reached its 30^th birthday, and it’s a fact that probably makes plenty of people feel rather old!

The Apple Mac has undoubtedly had its ups and downs, but has largely remained a desirable piece of kit in its myriad forms over the years. While it was long seen the choice of creative professionals, in recent years it’s also become the machine of choice for micro-entrepreneurs, students, and those who simply wish to pose in Starbucks behind the large, illuminated MacBook logo.

While the Apple Mac market share still lags far behind that of windows laptops and desktops, it does continue to gain ground. Meanwhile, Apple enjoy tremendous financial success. It would take a true pessimist to believe that the coming years won’t bring a continual flow of more good news.

So what does all this mean to you as an MSP? Here are some things to think about:

People WANT Macs

One thing that Apple has managed to (mostly) get right over the years is product desirability. While committed Apple-haters will surely disagree, it’s hard to argue that 28” slim iMacs and Retina display MacBook Pros aren’t rather stylish and appealing.

This desirability leads to them turning up at customer sites. When a group of directors all treat themselves to a trip to the Apple store on the company, you should be ready to help them do all the things they want to do on their new Macs – this will quite possibly include installing Windows as a virtual machine!

The great news here is that basic Apple integration training is really inexpensive, and can all be done online.

The new Mac Pro is ready

Apple came dangerously close to alienating their faithful creative users by only providing superficial updates to the Mac Pro line for several years.

They redeemed themselves last year by bringing out the new Mac Pro, which after delivery delays is finally beginning to appear on store shelves.

Whether you think the new Mac Pro is a thing of beauty or something that looks like a shiny trashcan is largely irrelevant. Clients are going to buy them, and want help with them – so be there to provide it.

Mixed networks are going to increase

It’s widely considered that Microsoft “did a Vista” with Windows 8, and with XP support being withdrawn in just a few months, many companies are going to have to decide how to replace their machines.

With many cloud-services being largely platform-independent, Macs are an option now, so it’s not unreasonable to suggest that they will tempt people. Even Microsoft’s own Office 365 runs OK on a Mac.

So there’s another reason for you and your staff to do that Mac integration training.

Nobody knows what form Apple Macs will take in another 30 years. Perhaps people will wear them by then! Whatever happens, there’s little reason to believe the household name is going anywhere anytime soon.