Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Enterprise, Cult of Mac, Apple
MacBook Pros used in business setting causes surprise
Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek writes today about his shock at seeing MacBook Pros used at a business meeting. Macs, he says, are a rarity in his world, which is a festival of Dells, Thinkpads and other PCs.
Hesseldahl relates his experience where a person's MacBook Pro caught the eye of some HP execs. "That notebook you've got there is a challenge to us," CEO Mark Hurd reportedly said. He promised to send someone down to see the MacBook owner to talk about HP notebooks and had some business cards dropped off.
MacBooks might not be de rigeur in Wall Street financial circles, but I'm surprised at how surprised Hesseldahl and the HP folk were to see people actually using them in work-related situations. Maybe these PC-folk just need to get out more.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ben said 6:06PM on 12-12-2006
I use a MacBook Pro for work...they are almost ready for primetime. The thing they are missing is real business support. When my fan went out I had to ship my mac to apple to get it fix and I was without it for 3 days. Thats just not going to fly at large companies that are used to Dell and Thinkpad onsite support where a tech shows up and opens up your laptop on site and replaces the parts for you right then.
Reply
Mark Stull said 6:22PM on 12-12-2006
That is BS, they are totally ready for work. My security teams exclusively uses macs. I use a 17 inch Macbook Pro and I will never go back to windows or dell or any of that substandard crap again. Life is too short.
I am more productive because I use my mac at work. A windows system requires constant care and feeding. spyware, adware, malware, blue screen of death, ect ad nauseum.
Reply
kevin said 6:26PM on 12-12-2006
mark, why did you decide on the 17-inch model and not something smaller? just curious
Reply
Tush said 6:39PM on 12-12-2006
I can't speak for Mark, but the reason I have a 17-incher is that I wanted something with ample screen-estate for photo/video/designing work while still being able to carry it around. I guess a good description would be "desktop replacement".
Reply
Brett said 8:37PM on 12-12-2006
Our clients are often envious of our stylish aluminum goodness. Meanwhile, they're stuck using nasty-looking Thinkpads and boring Dells. I've been doing my best to spread the subversive word among our pharma clients.
Sad thing is, we've worked for Genentech for over 10 years and they started out Mac, then switched to PCs. They are supposedly going to switch back, but I haven't seen any evidence of that so far among the business drones (maybe among the scientists). Art Levinson is on the frickin' Apple board. With him and Scott Cook as friends of Apple, who needs enemies?
Reply
Troy McClure SF said 7:48PM on 12-12-2006
I was pleasantly surprised at a Kaiser Permanente branding class when the teacher pulled out a Powerbook for her presentation.
I keep asking for an iMac at my own desk, but they keep saying no. Bummer.
Reply
kevin said 6:54PM on 12-12-2006
why not just get an external display then for home use and carry around something small?
Reply
John from Buffalo said 7:04PM on 12-12-2006
I use a 17" iMac in a 39 out of 40 PC work shot. #40 is me, and #41 is going to be a Wyse thin client starting on Monday. PCs are all the rage, but they are all the hate for people that have to manage them.
Macs rock.
Reply
Bryan Bartow said 6:59PM on 12-12-2006
I'm not surprised at the reaction at all. I once showed up to a meeting at Dell with an HP TabletPC and my client looked at me like I had just run over her cat. Some people have a hard time accepting that anyone for any reason might not want to use their products.
Reply
michel said 7:14PM on 12-12-2006
I use mac at my work, besides my colleagues using windows or linux.
I also have a macbook pro , using it in meetings stuffs.
some people are puzzled because there are morons or just clueless, but most people totally don't care.
many students (I'm working for an university) are crazy seeing the macs. sometimes jealous ,
sometimes nasty (windows is beter, windows do that, windows is the only one thing to love , they say, even when I said _nothing_ , I swear ! , people tells me what they love ONLY because they saw my computer, but I swear I do not say anything before)
sometimes amaaAAaAazed by the "beautifuuuul" computer (or screen) or interface ...
often they don't care
sometimes it's a mac user, happy to see a mac at work. (it justify their choice, I suppose)
well, at the end of day, it's funny to see people.
Reply
Richard Hinkel said 7:56PM on 12-12-2006
I had a similar situation at a school district. It was like the Apple computer was a serious threat to the status quo. I was told by a "higher up" that the Apple couldn't do anything that the district standard Dell could do. Amazingly, there is a significant population of individuals who find Apple computers threatening. Go figure....
Reply
Gand said 7:26PM on 12-12-2006
I quote last 3 lines: ""My problem isn't with HP notebooks," she said. "It's with Microsoft." Concern about viruses, spyware and the many hours of lost productivity that derives from them was the reason for her choice."
Reply
Mark Stull said 7:51PM on 12-12-2006
I picked the 17 because this macbook pro is my desktop, the screen is incredible, plenty of resolution and the weight does not bother me one bit.
I usually have 10 things or more open at once, so I really need the screen real estate.
Reply
Brent Anderson said 7:59PM on 12-12-2006
It's hilarious when I go to work with my Macbook. My work setting is pretty informal and when we have meetings, we usually need to swap files or demo our software for each other. We moved offices and when a PC user couldn't get on the network to send me something, I quickly fired up a computer-to-computer network and turned on windows sharing. My boss insisted that I restart my computer "just to be safe." After transferring the file a few seconds later, all I could do was etch the look on his face into my brain so I could laugh over it later. That look of confusion/I-wish-my-pc-did-that/next-time-we'll-leave-the-notebooks-at-home that you see whenever your mac just does something with zero hand-holding.
Reply
Reg said 8:04PM on 12-12-2006
I think having MacBook/Pro for business use, or any use is a no brainer.
Even if your company requires running custom Windows software, with the Boot Camp option your MBP *is* a PC. The latest drivers even have a right-click trackpad (click with two fingers on the trackpad = right-click).
Or Parallels... you can have the nasty, virus prone Windows all nicely insulated in its own window. That's the way I like it: treat Windows as just another app like a browser.
Look at it this way: now that they have gone Intel, a Mac can either be a Mac, or it can be a PC. It can either run Mac OS X, or it can run Windows. Or it can do both at the same time.
A PC can be a PC and it can run Windows.
Reply
Gerry said 8:21PM on 12-12-2006
My company just got a few new Macbook Pros. When I brought mine into a client meeting (full of Thinkpads) they were all quite surprised that I was using a Mac. They all commented that it was very nice and the "fanciest toy". During a break they asked me about all of the Mac features that other notebooks didn't have and were quite impressed and seemingly jealous.
The real kicker (and I know you all are going to trash me for this) is that we primarily use the MBP with Windows. Some of the people knew that Windows ran, but they were impressed that all of the features worked in Windows as well. Now in my defense here is why we're doing that:
-we needed to get new portable machines quickly, and the short list was Lenovo/IBM, Dell or Apple
-no one is opposed the to Mac OS X, etc, but we needed to be running with something we were all familiar with and quick (had only a few days to setup full environment)
-Apple came out to be the best bang for the buck, Dell was close but many people had really bad experiences with Dell machines, and we didn't want constant repair even if the technician visited us
-no one here was a full Mac user and we weren't familiar with many things, so having a pretty machine that we didn't know how to fully use while visiting a client would have been more embarrassing than 'wth? mac with windows??'
and in the end we will eventually move to Mac OS on the machines in at least an alternative environment, but for now, it's Windows.
Reply
Drupa said 8:30PM on 12-12-2006
Just finished four days of an annual meeting of risk analysis professionals in Baltimore and was pleased to see 4 of 16 laptops at the council meeting were macs. Two of the display booths were using macs to showcase their products. Several macs were using our hotspot near the registration desk. I understand science is friendly to macs, but this was statistically significant in that macs were clearly present in double digit percentages.
Noteworthy were the numbers of 12" powerbooks present. I hope apple is addressing this segment .
Reply
rajiv said 9:35PM on 12-12-2006
I use a Macbook Pro at work. I can do everything I need to do plus do more - like run the MAMP stack, a CRM and a CMS, encrypted disk partition, and open-office.
(I wish Mail.app will support Exchange server)
I spend almost $500K on services to protect us from all the Windows vulnerabilities! We have 3,999 Windows based machines and 1 Mac!
Reply
jason said 9:16PM on 12-12-2006
I use macs exclusively for work, as does the team of associates working for me. We do this for many reasons, most important is security, second is we cant lose time due to virii/spyware/adware/etc.. and third, they all use macs because I do.
LOL.
Reply
sundoggy said 9:45PM on 12-12-2006
I work for the big networking company, and Macs were outlawed for almost 10 years, unless you brought your own and dealt with the headaches of no tech support. Now, the company has changed its ways and gives employees the choice. All it takes is a manager approval (if you need one--the first to adopt Macs were the C-level execs, and then the devleopers, and then the sales engineers, and now you're seeing them all over the place). Not so surprising really. You will see more of this. My 2007 prediction:-)
Reply