More than 300 IT executives and dozens of vendors met to talk about midmarket solutions at the Midsize Enterprise Summit.
ChannelWeb picked 15 common beliefs about Microsoft and gave channel partners the opportunity to explain why they're more fiction than fact.
ChannelWeb visited Tech Data's headquarters for a strategy update and was given a behind-the-scenes tour of how the distributor operates.
Global cell powerhouse Vodafone, world's largest cellular carrier by revenue, announced on Tuesday that it has entered into a deal with Apple to sell iPhones in ten countries.
"Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network," Vodafone said in a statement.
Also on Tuesday, Italian carrier Telecom Italia said it would also be selling the iPhone.
The deals mark the end of Apple's exclusive carrier arrangements, which is speculated on the blogosphere to come from lackluster European sales as customers waited for the 3G version's release this summer and were put off by the iPhones steep price tag.
"We have long held the view that iPhone deals have been over-hyped and are not a reason to rush to change one's earnings estimates," said Mark James, analyst at Collins Stewart, told Reuters. "If the product begins to be sold by multiple operators, the main winners are likely to be the vendor, distributors and consumers."
Apple has contracted with British carrier O2 and Deutsche Telekom in Germany so Vodafone will not sell the iPhone in Britain and Germany. In the U.S., only AT&T is authorized to sell the iPhone.
No one actually seems to know.
In the wake of the world's discovery earlier this week of its Open Mac, a white-box PC that can allegedly run Apple's Leopard OS X operating system, violating Apple's user agreement and potentially provoking its wrath, system builder Psystar has left a mysterious trail in what's become a cat-and-mouse hunt for the origins of the Miami-based company and whether it actually exists in the first place.
The morning after reports of the Open Mac surfaced, the computer's name had changed to Open Computer.
Then people started digging and found the company had seemingly materialized out of thin air last weekend even though the domain name had been registered back in 2000, according to published reports.
Reporters from a variety of publications made inquiries and some attempted to find the company at the address listed on its Website. However, they say that in the past week the address has changed several times, prompting Psystar to post on its Website:
"We're in the process of moving to a new location which is now listed on our contact page. The first new address posted (10481) was in error and our correct address is 10475 NW 28th Street. PSYSTAR was, prior to this past week, not ready to handle the enormous production capacity demanded by the online community. Due to the incredible response we have now expanded to a larger commercial unit to handle the supplies and assembly of Open Computers."
While I'm not familiar with the Miami market, last time I checked it took longer than 24 hours to acquire commercial real estate.
The company also claims its merchant gateway stopped taking orders yesterday and that further orders of the Open Computer would be processed by Paypal:
"Midday yesterday our store was not receiving any orders. This was due to the fact that our merchant gateway, Powerpay, dropped the ball on us and refused to process any more transactions from our company. We have reverted to Paypal until we can find a high-volume merchant. Apparently Powerpay was not ready to handle the community's demand for Open Computing," reads Psystar's site.
Psystar also says that because of unexpectedly high demand, customers would currently wait 10 to 12 days for an Open Computer, prompting rumors that the company, whose Web presence just recently emerged, is actually a one-man at-home shop with a good idea run amok or a scam.
While Psystar's online store carries products from other vendors, including Cisco, its terms of service, to which buyers must agree to complete online orders, tell users this:
"When you purchase an OpenMac you understand that you are not purchasing a computer made by Apple Computers, Inc. You understand that Apple Computers does not support the OpenMac in any capacity and that they may not approve of your usage of the OpenMac. In the same token Psystar does not guarantee that each and every program and feature will not operate correctly as the OpenMac is not supported by Apple Computers. Psystar does not support the OS X operating system. All copies of OS X sold by Psystar are legitimately licensed and purchased from Apple Computers and are not pirated in any way. Psystar does not guarantee that any of your peripherals, Apple-related or not, will function correctly. Psystar will not be responsible for your usage of the OpenMac in any way."
Buyer beware?
System builders think the answer is likely the latter, yet either way, Psystar's David attempts to slay Apple's not-quite-Goliath remains something to which software giant Microsoft should pay close attention.
Yesterday Psystar announced that it had created a $399 Mac clone that would run Apple's OS X Leopard with a few minor tweaks, and within hours the site was flooded and spent most of yesterday offline. Today, Psystar is still advertising its machine, although since yesterday it has dropped the name Open Mac for the hopefully less-offensive-to-Apple Open Computer.
For its part, Psystar thinks that Apple's refusal to allow other hardware vendors to run its operating system is monopolistic, the system builder told Information Week, and its willing to challenge any action Apple takes to stop it from selling the Open Computer.
Todd Swank, vice president of marketing for system builder Nor-Tech, Burnsville, Minn., said he thinks Psystar's attempt to create a chink in Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple's armor is not likely to succeed in launching a machine that runs Apple's proprietary operating system.
"It would be shocking to me if Apple let that happen. They don't want to be a software manufacturer, they want to be the complete solution," Swank said.
Apple says using its OS Leopard on non-Apple hardware violates its user agreement.
"I can't imagine Apple allowing anybody to do that. Its so antithetical to their marketing strategy," he said. "But it's very interesting. Microsoft is going to have to take a real close look at that, because Microsoft really has their eye on Apple," Swank said.
Microsoft, he said, has had a lock on the operating system market for along time, and Linux doesn't have as strong an organization backing it as Apple is.
"We're a great partner with Microsoft. They're one of our biggest partners and help us in a lot of ways," Swank said. "They take as good care of our company s anyone else out there, but of course competition is always good for people that are in the channel. It would definitely be interesting. Do I believe its going to happen? Not any time soon, but its interesting."
By late morning on Monday, however, Psystar's Website was down, leading to speculation about whether Apple had put a stop to the Miami-based IT consulting company's efforts to sell the product it's calling the Open Mac, built from standard PC components.
Psystar's Website did not load on repeated attempts after 11 a.m. on Monday.
According to the Web rumor site Mac Rumors, the Psystar Mac-clone includes a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of DDR2 667 memory, integrated Intel GMA 950 Graphics, 20x DVD+/-R drive, 4 USB ports and a 250 GB 7200 RMP drive.
Psystar offers upgrades of components, including a GeForce 8600 GT 512 MB graphics card for an additional $155.
With "minimal patching," Psystar claims that the machine will run Apple's Leopard OS Leopard, but it does ship with the OS pre-installed. "With the EFI V8 emulator it is possible to install Leopard's kernel straight from the DVD that you purchased at the Apple store barring the addition of a few drivers to ensure that everything boots and runs smoothly," Psystar claims.
"Readers should note that these claims have not been independently verified, so this should not seen as an endorsement of this product. However, the technology appears to be derived from the osx86project, which has allowed hobbyists to install Mac OS X on their non-Apple PCs," Mac Rumors cautioned.
Using Apple's Leopard OS on non-Apple hardware is prohibited by Apple's user agreement.
John Nack, Senior Product Manager for Photoshop applications with Adobe wrote on his blog, John Nack on Adobe, that the company won't be coming out with the software for Mac, but that doesn't mean Adobe is abandoning the Apple platform.
Rather, Nack writes, that its because of Apple's decision to abandon its development of Mac OS X's 64-bit Carbon API and go instead with the "Cocoa" platform.
Nack writes:
"As we wrapped up Photoshop CS3, our plan was to ship 64-bit versions of the next version of Photoshop for both Mac and Windows. On the Mac Photoshop (like the rest of the Creative Suite, not to mention applications like Apple's Final Cut Pro and iTunes) relies on Apple's Carbon technology," Nack wrote. "Apple's OS team was busy enabling a 64-bit version of Carbon, a prerequisite for letting Carbon-based apps run 64-bit-native.
"At the WWDC show last June, however, Adobe & other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon," he added. "This means that we'll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa."
Adobe has as a result been changing course to develop the next version of Photoshop for Mac, but Nack writes it will take longer than anticipated and a change of that magnitude won't be ready by v 4.0.
"Adobe has been taking prompt, pragmatic steps to enable 64-bit Photoshop as quickly as possible on both Mac and Windows. It's a great feature, not a magic bullet, and we're delivering the functionality as quickly as each platform permits," Nack writes.
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