Boot Camp: For once, it's not all about us

I understand most of the standard reactions to Apple's Boot Camp announcement -- the yawn of the Windows faithful, the why-would-we-want-to? of the Mac true believers, the yow!-let's-buy-AAPL from Wall Street. And I understand why reporters and pundits who are writing for corporate IT audiences are trying to find a connection between Boot Camp and big IT shops.

What I don't understand is why some folks seem to think this is Apple's attempt to break into The Enterprise. Or, alternatively, how this is another demonstration of how clueless Apple is about The Enterprise.

It's not cluelessness. And it's not about The Enterprise.

Let's go over this one more time: APPLE WILL NEVER TAKE OVER "THE ENTERPRISE" -- if by "The Enterprise" you mean tens of millions of desktop computers in corporate America.

Why not? Because enterprise desktops are a commodity market. Beige boxes are a commodity, a lowest-bid item. They're all pretty much alike, so price is the only differentiator. Want to play in that market? You'll be trying to squeeze your margins tighter than Dell and HP and Lenovo. Good luck.

Apple isn't interested in commodity markets. Apple sells beauty, and comfort, and great design -- but never rock-bottom pricing.

So Macs are mid-market and luxury items, but never commodities. They sell to individuals and smaller businesses. They sell to corporate departments that need apps that work best on Macs, and to users who have control over their computing environment.

But they're simply too expensive to be on every desktop in a Fortune 100 company. Apple will never make the lowest bid for thousands of desktops.

Is this because Apple doesn't understand how to compete in the corporate desktop market? Go back and reread the last few paragraphs. APPLE DOESN'T LOVE US. WE'RE NOT APPLE'S FAVORITE MARKET. This is a marketing decision, a business strategy, OK? Apple has decided not to work the low end. Apple wants to be Nordstrom, not Wal-Mart. Now that the iPod has revived Apple, it doesn't want to go the way of Compaq, eMachines and other commodity-PC makers that couldn't squeeze quite hard enough.

That means the enterprise desktop isn't the center of Apple's universe. Likely it never will be. Which is OK -- for Apple, for its users, for Wall Street.

Apparently, it's just a problem for reporters and pundits whose universe is the enterprise desktop. Then I guess it must be a little hard to understand.