Apple should take credit as greatest PC
pioneer
Brian Megitt, Cheadle, Cheshire
You note in the 15 August issue of Computer Weekly that IBM
changed the world when it launched the first PC.
At the time, IBM was playing catch-up with its competitors. ICL
and DEC, for example, had both launched ranges of personal
computers that used the C/PM operating system. The only real
difference was that IBM had failed to create an OS to support its
new hardware. It is therefore arguable that Microsoft changed the
world 25 years ago with MS/Dos.
I would suggest that the real change to world computing came in
1984 when the Apple Macintosh was launched. This revealed a
personal computer that could do things unheard of in the C/PM or
MS/Dos worlds. It broke the tradition of the command line and
opened computing to a much wider world, possibly enforcing the term
"personal computer" in a way that the IBM box did not. And just to
enforce its independence, Microsoft wrote Word and Excel for the
Mac.
I also noted your limited coverage on page 20 of the preview of
Apple's next major update to Mac OS X, Leopard. Your only comment
was that it would feature Bootcamp software.
The release offers much more than Bootcamp, which is just one
way of running Windows on a Mac, and is available now for use with
the Tiger OS.
With possibly less than 50% of its features revealed at the
developers' conference, it is already looking light years ahead of
Microsoft's next offering, which appears to be reducing in features
while taking more time to reach the marketplace.
Business-led approach is key to ITIL
benefits
Paul Whitlock, Plan-Net
Helen Beckett's article "Toolkit for a common approach"
(Computer Weekly, 8 August) presents a credible case for ITIL
having come of age, yet how many organisations still offer poor
service based on reactive helpdesks, haphazard change management
and irrelevant service level agreements?
There is no doubt that ITIL has a lot to offer organisations.
But to date the main beneficiaries of this best practice
methodology have been the software suppliers. Too many firms have
undertaken a six-month review process to attain nothing more than a
£60,000 bill.
ITIL, as commonly approached, is over engineered for effective
implementation into 95% of organisations and, in its vanilla form,
is not fit for purpose despite worthy intentions, organisations are
still failing to match deliverables to the real needs of the
business.
If organisations are to bridge the chasm between business and
IT, some ITIL myths need to be dispelled. There is simply no need
for complex, resource-intensive and expensive ITIL projects that
address all of the 11 disciplines.
Instead, organisations need to take a business-led approach that
focuses on the key areas of pain - such as service desk, incident,
change, configuration and service level management - to deliver a
tailored, relevant and cost-effective service across the
business.
Who will need skills once IT is
industrialised?
Chetan Bhatt
I share the concerns of Peter Skyte of the Amicus union about
the threat to skills investment as a result of the influx of IT
workers from abroad (Computerweekly.com, 2 August), but maybe he
should see a possible silver lining to this cloud.
The buzzword increasingly being bandied about in IT is
"industrialisation", and as the vision of IT leaders today is
steadily realised and more and more workers become locked down into
mundane, repetitive jobs, which I assume are characteristic of
traditional manufacturing industries, perhaps it will become easier
for Amicus to recruit and organise among IT workers.
Obviously this vision is not one that will inspire bright,
ambitious young graduates to seek a career in IT, but then maybe
our problem is that we have too many clever people for the level of
work available, and not too few. Perhaps we need more of the sort
of people who are happy to do assembly-line work. Hence, for an
industrial union such as Amicus, there should only be increasing
opportunities to expand membership and influence as IT becomes more
industrialised.
How many are training to fill their skills
gaps?
Alan Prescott
So the latest report from E-Skills UK says that the percentage
of firms reporting skills gaps has increased (Computer Weekly, 8
August).
Perhaps E-Skills would like to go back to these companies and
report on how many of them actually provide training in order to
fill those gaps.
Answer back
Do you have a fresh take on someone's opinion on this page, or
something to say about a Computer Weekly article? E-mail
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk.
Please include a daytime phone number.
Vote for your IT greats
Who have been the most influential people in IT in the past 40
years? The greatest organisations? The best hardware and software
technologies? As part of Computer Weekly’s 40th anniversary
celebrations, we are asking our readers who and what has really
made a difference?
Vote now at:
www.computerweekly.com/ITgreats