I was browsing the apple website and stumbled across an article about how Xerox was using Apple technology to reduce their service costs to their customrers. One of Xerox's high end products is a printer called DocuPrint. DocuPrint is an extremely fast printer that can spit out bound copies of large documents. For example, it can print and bind the entire work of Shakespeare in 20 minutes. Like most copy machines, the DocuPrint copier breaks down occasionally and since it is such a sophisticated machine, it is hard to fix. Xerox has service technicians that can report to all DocuPrint sites relativelty quickly. The problem that Xerox encounters is when a servie technician cannot fix the problem. When this happens, a more qualified technician needs to be sent out to the site. The article talks about how some of these technicians will travel for days and fix the problem in less than an hour. This stans to be very inefficient. Xerox looked to use of the Apple iChat AV application to solve this problem. The qualified tyechnicians can view the machine through the iSight and tell the lower level technician how to fix it. It saves a lot of time and money.
In my opinion, this seems like a marketing campaign for Apple. They are making a public statement on how useful Apple technology can be. This is an attempt to make Apple look more business friendly. The business world is dominated by systems running Microsoft's Windows. In recent years, Apple has a lead a marketing to campaign targeted at households. Their commercials make Macs look easy and fun to use in the home. This is one way that Apple is trying to expand their business base. If businesses begin to use more Apple products, Apple can potentially overtake the market share in the business computer industry. Apple wants the competitve advantage in business world that is predominantly Microsoft.
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3 comments:
I have been using macs for many years now, even before I got my college laptop, and it is astounding how many advantages macs have over PCs. Although PCs still dominate the corporate market-share, Apple has been growing exponentially in the past few years and I think its only a matter of time before Apple becomes the dominant name in the computer industry. Whether it is simple video communication, ease of operation, or the ability to run Microsoft and Apple operating systems concurrently on a Mac, it is clear that businesses have a lot to gain from the adoption of these computers in the workplace.
On the other hand, I have been using PC's and working in the Windows environment for the majority of my life. Yes, Steve Jobs did invent the computer. However, a genius by the name of Bill Gates perfected it. He did this with an operating system known as Windows, which is made for PCs. You argue about Mac's market share growing exponentially. What is exponential is the amount of market share that PCs and windows have over Macs and OSX. Understand that why Macs win in spyware, viruses, and security is because of that tiny market share. If it were as popular as windows, those problems would be just as prevalent. Also, there is a massive amount more software available (including work related) for PCs. Less software= disadvantages for the user. (might I add that PC's can use almost any Apple program as well.) Businesses are always concerned about price. Why would a business pay $2000 for a shiny silver "wide 15inch" powerbook with a 1 ghz processor? You could get double the performance out of your mediocre Dell or HP with half the price tag. So aside from the fancy and trendy advertising campaigns that Mac has painted in all of our minds, businesses must look at the real advantages when it comes to their computers.
I think that the collaboration between Apple and Xerox was a very smart move. There are many benefits to this partnership, but I agree that the most beneficial aspect is the amount of time and money will be saved by the technicians in order to fix the necessary jobs. I have never used the iSight program, but I have used programs that are very similar and find them interesting and practical. In regards to this article, this software will save the technician both time and money; but in a more broad sense, programs similar to the iSight will cut costs on many peoples phone bills. Any students who are studying abroad would benefit from such a program because it is extremely expensive and inconvenient to make long-distance phone calls back to the United States. Instead, the student can just go on their computer and physically see and hear the person they are connected to.
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