When it comes to priorities, we at AtAT place the welfare of our faithful viewers above all else (except for perhaps television, baked goods, and fried food). That's why we're a little hesitant to tell you that Apple may finally be trying to expand its market horizons and tackle the lucrative business market. Whereas most of you may consider that terrific news for the Mac's future as a viable and well-rounded platform, others may be reaching for the Maalox right about now, preparing for another spectacular failure.

Most of the latter group probably recall Apple's last half-hearted and tremendously ineffectual push to get the Mac perceived as a business computer; back in 1994 or so, when the first Power Macs were still shiny and new, Apple actually spent some time marketing them as, blandly enough, "The Business Macintosh." Needless to say, while small businesses were (and are) often perfectly happy running things on Macs, big businesses ignored Apple's pleas completely. Macs, after all, were still toys, and incapable of running big, serious applications that the enterprise market deemed all-important. (You know, ones running in DOS with archaic text-based interfaces and two-digit year fields that would crater in the year 2000.)

Since then, Apple's backed away from big business like Roger Ebert recoils from any movie starring Pauly Shore. The company has sought refuge in its core markets of education, consumer purchases, and content creation, adopting the attitude that if the business market wants to buy a few iMacs to put on the receptionists' desks, great, but no way would Apple actively court the enterprise market so soon after getting burned. Now, though, it looks like the healing period may be drawing to a close. Apple's shift from bright candy colors to Graphite and more muted tones was the first sign that Steve and the gang were starting to consider selling to the suits again. And now Apple's just issued a press release stating that Oracle has finally certified the Mac client for its E-Business Suite; it's running on Mac OS 9 right now, and will be certified for Mac OS X sometime next year.

Don't get super-excited about Oracle writing Mac applications, though-- the E-Business Suite is "a full suite of Web- and Java-based applications," so it wasn't exactly a tough porting job; heck, it should have been fully cross-platform from the start. Still, we're glad that Steve was finally able to get his bestest buddy Larry Ellison to improve Oracle's support for the Mac. Granted, this doesn't mean Apple's charging at the enterprise market with both guns a-blazing, especially since the press release makes it clear that the company's still targeting "small business." But it is a logical step in a dangerous-- though potentially incredibly rewarding-- direction. Once Mac OS X is out, its Unix guts may make Apple's products more attractive to the enterprise folks. From there, Apple could conceivably rework the iMac concept slightly and sell cheap, thin-client bMacs that NetBoot off of Mac OS X servers and run Microsoft Office, Oracle applications, etc. Let's just hope that next time around the strategy is more successful than "The Business Macintosh." Maybe we should buy Maalox stock now...