On the heels of Apple"s introduction of the two-way, 2GHz, G5 Xserve; the 3.5TB capacity Xserve RAID; and Xgrid technology, one might think that Apple was interested in the greater enterprise and, therefore, that the greater enterprise might be interested in Apple. But if you take Apple at its word, the company has no long-term strategy of aiming its products beyond its traditional markets. That message was repeated every which way I posed the question to Jon Rubinstein, Apple"s senior vice president of hardware engineering, when we sat down at the 2004 Macworld Conference & Expo.
In the context of an Xserve road map, I asked Rubinstein whether Apple built products with a target audience in mind. The answer was no. "It was our customers who asked us to build these products," Rubinstein said. It seems video editors in particular wanted more performance, he added. I pointed out that Apple does appear to be ramping up its server line. Rubinstein responded that the company is being "pushed" by its customers to build them. Those pesky video editors again, I suppose. I asked him whether Apple wanted to increase its sales beyond the entertainment industry and the education market. This time, one of the executives in the room, Alex Grossman, director of hardware storage, jumped in and said it would be nice to make some "opportunistic sales."