Don’t look now, but that iPhone-toting intern is eyeing your corner office!
You see them in the elevator with their shiny white earbuds. You hear them gabbing by the espresso cart while thumbing through their Instagram feeds. They’re the new crop of iPhone-toting corporate interns, and they’re out to take your job!
Not right away, of course. But eventually, somewhere down the line, when you’ve checked-in your last MDM code update and handed over your server room key card, they’ll be there. Watching. Waiting for their turn to "run the IT show". And if the author of a recently published article on the future of OS technology is to be believed, those interns will be dancing on the grave of the legacy Windows and Linux systems they just ripped and replaced with -- you guessed it -- Apple iOS.
These Gen Y/Z/Millennials, the thinking goes, grew up with Apple. Their first taste of the online world came through an iPhone or iPad (or, in rare cases, a Mac). It’s the only "operating system" they’ve ever known, and as they take the reins from us desktop computing obsessed Gen-Xers, they’ll want to reshape the IT landscape in their own, Cupertino-inspired image. And that means out with the Windows and Linux systems, and in with an iOS-centric IT platform.
It’s the ultimate revenge for the late Steve Jobs (RIP), a man who once dreamed of conquering the business world but had to settle for hawking Beatles catalog tracks until his consumer ship finally came in. In fact, some believe this was his master plan all along: Forget the Gen-Xers and their clumsy Windows desktops and laptops and instead go after the next wave. Take a page out of the Phillip Morris playbook and get them hooked on Apple tech while they’re young, then reap the rewards when the new generation comes into its own.
Apologies to Mr. Jobs’ ghost, but "it just ain’t gonna happen".
For starters, those wet-behind-the-ears interns will quickly learn why us old hands continue to actively use and rely on Windows and Linux. They’ll discover just how hard it is to manage and deploy enterprise scale applications across a toy operating system like iOS. And they’ll come to appreciate the depth and sophistication that is baked into the legacy infrastructure systems keeping the company they’re interning for afloat (and their hope of an eventual paycheck alive).
Now, it would be one thing if Apple were actively pursuing the enterprise by creating products and services that made us Gen-Xers sit up and take notice. However, as the much ballyhooed iPad "Pro" event showed, Apple doesn’t understand the enterprise any better today than it did when Mr. Jobs was still stalking the halls of One Infinite Loop, bringing his own interns to tears with his caustic persona.
Bottom Line: Sorry, Mr. Intern, but your dreams of ripping and replacing our legacy systems with your iOS toy box will soon be dashed upon the harsh rocks of life in real-word IT. Time to grow up and embrace the Windows/Linux way. Because these systems aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
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