From the Department of Strange Bedfellows

Robert McMillan, reporting for the WSJ:

International Business Machines Corp. and Apple Inc. used to be bitter rivals, but lately they have been spending quality time together. More than 100 IBM employees occupy Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., campus helping build iPhone and iPad apps for IBM customers such as Citigroup Inc., Sprint Corp. and Japan Post Holdings Co.

Things are looking different inside IBM, too. Once a company of blue suits, Wintel personal computers and BlackBerrys, Big Blue is on track to become the world’s largest corporate user of MacBooks. On Wednesday, the company began to apply lessons it has learned, introducing a service intended to help other companies adopt Macs.

Every time I think about this growing partnership between Apple and IBM, I think of this photo. I’ll bet you know exactly what photo I’m talking about, too.

I don’t know if this IBM partnership in and of itself is a big deal, but I think the general trend toward MacBooks being the de facto standard laptop for any sort of professional use, across all fields, is a huge deal.

Back in 2007 I doubted the iPhone would ever gain traction in “the enterprise”. But for it to happen with the Mac? Unimaginable. Everyone knows new product markets move quickly. What I take away from the Mac’s continuing growth is that it’s worth remembering that even established markets can change in fundamental ways. It’s human nature to be blind to changes like this until after they’ve happened.

Update: Darth provides an updated photo for 2015.

★ Wednesday, 5 August 2015