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I’m Joining Apple, I Swallowed The Silver Pill

Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Apple | Posted on 01-04-2008

UPDATE:  This post was posted on April 1st, and thusly is an April Fools post as is the follow up post.  Maybe the phone calls and emails will stop now. 🙂

Today publicly, I am announcing for the first time that I will be going to work for Apple Computer.  It is no doubt monumental news that I’ve been holding back until the final contracts and NDAs were signed.  This evening everything was finally settled.

You are probably wondering what in the Wide Wide World of Sports is going on!  What would Apple want with someone who refers to himself in the third person as The Elder?  It turns out a lot. 

Apple for years has been trying to break into the Enterprise, slowly and secretly.  Sure they are known for building end-user devices but the company has realized they can only convince about 5-7% of the population to switch to Apple products.  There are countless rogue Apple computers throughout corporate America that are breaking through silos and mindless thinking but it isn’t enough.  A top down approach must be taken.  If Apple is going to fully embrace the enterprise they are going to need someone who has not only used their products, but someone that also knows the competition as well as how corporate America thinks. 

As a result I will be heading up their iPrise division at Apple.  This division will be solely responsible for getting Apple products into the enterprise and fulfilling the destiny of the underlying BSD operating system. 

In my new role, I will be working with the XCode product teams to fully port Mono to Mac OS X to make sure the majority of existing .Net applications run flawlessly on the Apple platform.  Apple realizes just like Novell there is a large investment in .Net technologies and this move is imperative to make sure existing applications can be used on Apple products.  This is going to be very tough so please be patient as I breakthrough new ground between Steve Jobs and businesses throughout America.  Apple has always been secretive about products and SDKs so it is going to be a very tough, long, and rigorous process.  Please be patient.

New products will also be released to help enterprises everywhere.  A few of the first things planned is to replace some existing technologies with Apple specific ones.  Here are a few items on the list.

  1. iTalk – This will replace BizTalk Server, services and message platforms. 
  2. iHibernate – An easy to use ORM mapping platform.
  3. iNet – The Mono .Net replacement for Mac OS X.
  4. iWeb – An Asp.Net MVC framework built using Mono.
  5. iLight – A WPF / Silverlight implementation for Mac OS X.
  6. i* – Anything else that is missing.

In the end I have no doubt we’ll prevail.

Comments (8)

you’ll be hearing from our lawyers, once we’re done with the iphone hacks who want to deploy unlicensed apps. and that devfish guy.

Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes. My iPhone and new Macbook Pro are on their way.

@Letterle, Yes there are still things under NDA that I can’t talk about….

I’ll be sorry to see you go. Keith, you’re a great asset to any community. I hope Apple uses you to your greatest potential. Fly free little bird… fly free…

Do you get a free iPhone? Might be worth it… 😉

I’m surprised you didn’t mention Mac OS 2008 Enterprise Edition Ultimate codenamed ‘iServe’… or is that still under NDA?

Congrats…I think this is an awesome career move! It is quite noble of you to take such a pay cut!

You almost had me until “iPrise.”

Almost that is…

hmmm, think we should check back tomorrow? Things can change quickly this time of year.

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