It cannot be denied that Apple, which has long been a ghost in the mainstream corporate infrastructure, has begun casting a shadow as several corporate customers look at Mac platforms as a realistic alternative to Windows as well as Linux. With more and more customers having a successful experience, usage of the Mac is said to have doubled in the last year.

Apple is constantly upgrading in order to meet the demands of their growing user base.

The latest entry into Apple’s growing list of corporate customers is Axel Springer, the German newspaper publisher, who is said to be replacing all their PCs with the complete range of Apple’s products, including MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac mini as well as Mac Pro desktops. The transition is said to take place over a period of five years on about 12,000 PCs. According to Heise Online, the German magazine, Axel Springer is Apple’s second largest client after Google.

Things are changing for the Mac in the corporate scenario. Google lets its employees use what they wish to run; either the Mac, Windows or Linux. IBM too has been experimenting with Macs.

With the increase in Mac users, especially Mac notebook users, there are five companies that formed an alliance to promote the Mac to corporate customers. These companies are Parallels, Group Logic, Atempo, Centrify and LANrev. These companies concentrate on the technology between the Mac OS X and Windows. They realize that many people think that the Mac is harder to use and support, and they intend on educating corporate users about the ease of use of the Mac.

Since most corporations are already using Windows, the major issue for those that are planning on using the Mac in an environment almost exclusively Windows, is what the potential shift to the Macs entails; whether they should have two teams, one supporting the Windows and the other supporting the Mac. Most users are also concerned that the software will be different or that it may not be possible to share files with other PC users. People wonder about the differences in using the Macintosh operating system and Windows. (more…)

The much awaited iPhone 3G has arrived and is considered a huge hit, going by the 1 million handsets sold in the first three days.

According to Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, the new iPhone 3G is off to a great start all around the world, when compared to their original iPhone that had taken 74 days to sell the first 1 million handsets.

However, the huge demand caused unexpected technical difficulties across the U.S. and Europe. Some of the buyers in the U.S. were unable to use their new handsets for many hours after purchasing them, due to the iTunes store grinding to a halt under the burden of the huge number of requests.

These problems are attributed to the unprecedented demand that was not anticipated.

Analysts at RBC Capital Markets are of the opinion that the low price and the demand, along with the distribution across 22 countries and 28 mobile operators may be the cause of issues that caused frustration to buyers, due to limited stock.

They also feel that the target of selling 5.1 million iPhone 3Gs throughout the world, during the third quarter of 2008 will be met by Apple. They are confident that Apple is highly likely to meet its long-term target of launching the 3G handsets in 70 countries and selling about 14 million iPhones in the next year.

As has been mentioned in our previous pre-release article, the iPhone 3G comes in two forms, 8GB and 16GB, with either white or black back. The front is black for both. The 16GB model is available in both these colors, while the 8GB is available only in black and it appears as if most people appear to like the black much more.

The iPhone 3G, bearing a slightly tweaked design, is almost identical to the old iPhone, except may be for a slight difference in the thickness. The old one was 0.46 inches thick, while the new 3G is 0.48 inches; however this is not a visible difference because Apple has slightly refined the shape at the back. The backside seems thinner than the old iPhone when held in hand, in spite of being slightly thicker. The metal back is now in plastic making it look better, less slippery, provides better signal strength and reduces the weight of the iPhone by 2g too without making it feel cheap or shallow. The Wi-Fi reception also seems to be a bit better. (more…)