Is it a little frosty in Hell this morning?

I know its certainly cold enough here in #gigatownporirua, as you’ve probably picked up already I’m a fairly unreconstructed Apple fanboy, its an obsession stretching all the way back to otago University in the 80’s.

Believe it or not its actually been something that has served me quite well over the years, partly because to survive Apple had to sort out the real trends in ICT and make them work for its customers (that is before they started setting the trends) and also because they are a fascinating company to watch.

I’ve become a fan of Apple’s early days, when they were ‘The Pirates of Silicon Valley” along with others like a young Microsoft and Larry Ellison’s Oracle. My own tee-shirt evangelism has been inspired by reading ‘Guy Kawasaki’ who evangelised the original Macintosh and is now a tech guru in his own right.

One of the things he talked about getting right was having a big enemy and for Apple it was IBM, not as many would imagine Microsoft (in fact Microsoft was a big part of the success of the Mac!).

So that makes this weeks news rather poignant, IBM and Apple are in a partnership that will probably define enterprise ICT in the mobile era.

This is not like their past dalliances where IBM briefly made mac clones under Gil Amelio or the fact that Mac’s ran on IBM PowerPC chips for a decade, no this is IBM giving Apple the keys to the corporate suite with IBM’s blessing.

I remember the times when you’d look out over a sea of Windows laptops at a conference, spot a Mac and smile at a fellow member of your tribe. Now its the other way round, last week at KANZ & nethui Apple was everywhere.

This news has caused shares in Blackberry to tank even further and it’ll be interesting to see what else happens.

From a TUANZ perspective it show that Apple will be ‘dug in’ in the high end of town for the foreseeable future, although I think we’ll see Google trying to match this somehow.

But my other reflection is on the concept of a big enemy, for most of TUANZ’s existence that was easy, it was Telecom.

And what an enemy they were, it was easy to rally everybody else against them and a vital role played by TUANZ was being the conduit for new ideas and regulatory concepts.

Competition was a radical concept and feisty challengers nibbled away at the bohemoth, slowly change was yielded in something that resembled  a World War 1 style war of attrition.

Today’s battles are more complex, the skirmishes are subtle and the alliances are more complex.

Do we have big enemies anymore?…