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Enterprise CTO Switches to Mac OS X
louismg writes "BlueArc CTO Geoff Barrall, using a PC day in and day out, found things becoming progressively more difficult as they increased in complexity. After one final straw, he sought out an alternative, and switched to Mac OS X -- in a corporate environment. His column, titled 'Rethink Before You Reinstall' documents the challenges facing Mac OS X in enterprise, and how he has changed his views." We've not had a switcher/MS-bashing/Apple rules/etc. article in a little while, so here you are.
Either that, or he really enjoys using Outlook under Classic... which, if he has to use any calendars from an Exchange server, would be his only option. At least, until summer, when there will supposedly be a new version of Entourage with Exchange integration (I'm not holding my breath. I'm betting fall, at the earliest.)
Prepare to be burninated!
...if he'd switched over his entire company or consultancy. It's not news that you can "fit in" to (and even "stand out" from) a corporate PC IT environment, I did it for years at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).
Indeed, when I worked at AC -- an actively Mac-hostile environment that in 1998 was forcing its DTP people to give up their Macs -- I found everything worked BETTER for Macs (we could access printers and file servers far more easily and reliably than could PC users). None of this is new or OSX related (there are new buzzwords to be compliant with is all).
What really annoyed me then and continues to annoy me now is that people standardise on the wrong things: platforms instead of protocols. Indeed, often vendors instead of protocols. "You can buy any computer solution you want, as long as it's from Compaq." But, we can't use Macs because "that would lock us in to a single vendor".
I like how he is careful not to mention specific products or brands when he is making negative remarks, but with positive comments, he clearly indicates the application or OS. Does anyone have the balls to stand up to Microsoft?
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
I figure he probably knew enough to install Windows, which honestly a trained monkey could do nowadays, but not enough to try Linux - so he went with his other major alternative, a Mac. Though honestly, RH8 is probably easier to install than Windows XP. I mean, really. I figure the guy just really, really had a few grand to blow and really, really wanted an excuse to buy a Mac. ;)
Prepare to be burninated!
_Your_ problem may be that he's using a Microsoft product, but that's not what _his_ problem was.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Let me get this straight, there is a person... that exists... who is using a Mac? I can see why this is such an important news item! If you'll excuse me I must go turn on my TV to see if my regularly scheduled program is being interupted as we speak!
We've not had a switcher/MS-bashing/Apple rules/etc. article in a little while, so here you are.
Either you're being sarcastic, or you haven't been reading the replies in every Apple related article lately...
Powerpoint pure and simple. Linux has absolutely nothing that works with Powerpoint simply and effectively. At least on a Mac he can use a current version of Office, or if he's really adventurous, he could use Keynote.
Also, by being on a Mac he has access to the most stable and feature rich graphics apps on the planet. (yes, I know all the same apps are available for Windows, but they tend to be flakier on that side of the fence.) Linux just doesn't cut the mustard yet when it comes to graphics.
Pooty tweet
It's nice to see Apple winning the "top down" revolution. I can only hope, as a sysadmin, that Apple's OS X will continue to make inroads into the corporate sector. It is easy to administer, robust, stable--and best of all, works as advertised.
I don't know how many times I've been burned by Windows products that just don't work right. I don't know how many times I've had to deal with stupid Windows problems and kludge together a solution. I'm tired of wasting my time with the same non-issues over and over again. I know I'm not the only one.
Apple's mistake back in the 90's was to try winning a "bottom up" revolution. Giving their computers to school districts, in theory was a great idea; it produced people who were used to using Apple computers would go buy Apple, or use it at work. Apple made a simple product that worked well, but was stigmatized as a "toy."
It wasn't Microsoft, but rather IBM won that battle by using a "top down" revolution. Appealing to the execs/technophiles in an organization. Making the PC seem more "professional," or technically advanced. Microsoft has been riding on that IBM wave ever since. But they've shot themselves in the foot more times than I can count.
It's nice to see the tables turned: Microsoft's "Jolly Rancher" OS keeps trying to "dumb-down" bad engineering with more annoying wizards, more annoying popups, and more annoying "security" features that just make working with it impossible.
While Microsoft attempts to win a "bottom up" revolution with candy-colors and glitz, Apple has made a real, rock solid OS that can be used by anyone. While Microsoft alienates more and more corporate customers, Apple is selling comparably priced corporate systems to their PC counterparts.
More proof that Microsoft's greatest nemisis is Microsoft.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
As a systems admin who recently switched to Apple, I thought that this story might be worthy of forwarding to my boss. Unfortunately the article doesn't address anything of particular interest.
For technical people, the reasons we use our computers go beyond simply writing Word documents or opening Excel spreadsheets. The average clod in a company though doesn't care what their hardware is, what their operating system is, they just want to know that Office is there.
Therefore an article that simply talks about how Office works on a non-PC platform is nothing worth getting a boner over. If he'd spoken about Keynote, addresses the advantages of an open file format, spoken about how his company had developed software to write customized presentations based on info pulled live from their database or something - hooray. Perhaps he could have mentioned how easy it is to produce PDF versions of pretty much anything - which in this cross-platform era is a good thing since your document will look the same anywhere. I think my point is understood by this stage.
Me thinks that this whole article is a way to get people to his company's website.
The install is one thing, but usability is quite another.
Don't get me wrong, my desktop at home is runs Debian, but anymore, when I need to get something done, I just don't have the time to spend reading a man page, a howto, googling newsgroups, buying an O'reilly book and then getting things running the way I want.
When I want to get things done, I use my Apple laptop.
I hope that Linux will someday get to the point that Mac OS X has (yes, I've used Red Hat 8 and Mandrake 9). Until then, there's no question in my mind what I'll choose.
And as my 6 year old nephew might say, "Peeka-Mac, I choose YOU!"
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
[...]nothing that would lead anybody to think I'm using anything other than a regular PC. No blue screens [...]
:)
Isn't that a contradiction?
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Your missing the point that it is a different product. They don't even really resemble each other. I recently switched to the Mac platform and to my surprise and dismay Office v.X is an excellent product. If they can ever get OpenOffice a Quartz GUI I'll switch. Till then it's Office v.X.
The Mac Business Unit at MS is like a complete different company too, not the status quo.
I think it much more likely that he meant he's reinstalled Windows in all its variations many times over the past years.
.plist files (created in xml) instead of registry entries and the .plist files are in the bundle. What is also in the bundle is the executable code and the application strings for as many languages as you like.
There is a difference between running a complex program on Mac OS X and on Windows. Windows throws DLL files in various places along with registry entries. Apple has bundles which are double click to open the app inside directories. Apple bundles use
Most apps can just be dragged around between disks and continue to function just fine because all their components are moved with a single icon drag and their location stays the same relative to the base location of the bundle directory.
All in all, it's an elegant solution and eliminates a lot of DLL hell.
No problems with it in a corporate env. I use it daily.
__joel
Pray tell, what Windows OS offers the equivalent to Mac OS X bundles?
Is this guy trying to get Apple to notice him and include him in "CEO Switcher" ads?
If you're going to use a Mac, why use all Microsoft software on it? Heck, I don't even use MS Office on my Windows box!
And what's with the "blue screen" comments? Like most Slashdotters, I don't like Microsoft - but to suggest that Windows has problems with "blue screens" is, like, so 1999.
One other observation: Apple uses the "blue screen" thing as part of their FUD on Windows. But isn't it funny how most of their users are still using Mac OS 9.x, which is far less stable than WinXP?
He says: "Over the next week I threw everything at it I could think of", and then mentions Office and a VPN connection.
Well, maybe I have more imagination, but here's three that I am having trouble with, right now, today:
- Video conferencing software that will interop with what everyone else uses, since not everyone else uses a Mac, much as I'd like that to be;
- wireless "cell" modem connectivity--there's stuff out there that has "unsupport", but if Verizon works with Macs, why don't they just say so?
- Gigabit ethernet pci cards for older G4s. Lots of options as lokng as you like Asante--which I personally do, but my manager wants more price and performance choices, and I can only offer one solution.
Now, I'm the biggest fan-boy of Macs that you'll find--but I sure wish they had better third party hardware, and software, support. This last week, as a new Mac IT guy in a mostly PC office, I have learned alot about why Macs only have a fraction of the market. To pay more, per machine, but to have it capable of less, is inexcusable--and will need to be fixed before Apple sees too many more CTOs like Geoff Barrall.(Although certainly, the more CTOs like Geoff, the more likely third-party support is going to happen. He is the guy talking to vendors, and they'll take his request for Mac support more seriously than they'll take mine. Hey, Geoff, how about asking Verzion to support Macs!)
--
$tar -xvf
XP is better than what came before, but just last week I had to spend an hour troubleshooting and finally reinstalling Outlook XP on my girlfriend's brand-new Vaio. After 6 weeks of working fine Outlook just refused to open, no matter how many times you "repaired" it. No software/hardware changes to the setup, just 6 weeks of turn it on in the AM, check email all day, and turn it off at night. If this is enough to break Outlook in a little over a month, then someone at Microsoft (still) isn't doing their job.
For a point of comparison, my PowerBook G4 has been running OS X 10.1->10.2.4 since July '01 (across several network environments), and I haven't had to reinstall anything. Just 2 data points, but ones I find telling.
Office v.X uses a different codebase and is developed by a different team than Office for Windows. They share a common file format, basic interface aspects, and featureset, but they are very different beasts.
For example, installation of Office X means dragging its application folder from the install CD to your hard drive. The first time you launch an office app, it installs the few support files it needs. If any of these support files get broken or lost, they will be automatically reinstalled the next time an office app is run.
You do need to run an installer to install "extras" like Equation Editor, Clip Art, and extra Office Assistants (ooh! ooh! hurt me more!), but for most users installation is literally drag-and-drop.
I pay no attention to PC prices, but everything I've heard recently says that current PowerBooks beat the PC laptops in both features and price. Perhaps the iBooks, too, but I'm not certain.
In any case, your 2 cheap PC's would probably be light on extra features, like high speed Ethernet, wireless networking, FireWire ports, and so forth.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
One thing I really liked about this article was that, possibly for the first time out of the many switcher articles I recall, the writer doesn't confuse his ignorance of a platform's abilities with limitations of that platform's abilities.
I was shocked that he actually bothered to learn how to set up NFS on a mac without spending at least a paragraph or two whining about how long it took him, or that he had to download some 3rd party software if he wanted to configure it with a GUI. Most 'switchers' probably wouldn't have even figured it out before they wrote their article, and instead would have complained "macs can't do NFS", propagating FUD, just because they don't know how.
As for the rest, yes, it isn't really all that radical. For the most part he just uses the same Microsoft apps on a different platform. However if you look at it realistically, that's what alot of businesspeople have to do to get by.
Sure, he could have tried Keynote and/or OpenOffice, perhaps some time in the future he will. Berating him for using basically the same software package he's allways used isn't very realistic.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
I'm so tired of hearing that PC's are cheaper. THEY ARE! but who cares. You get what you pay for. Give me a break. You nerds afraid to pay a little more for a computer that you sit in front of for 14 hours per day. Who cares is a Mac is $1500 while a PC is $600. You buy one every year, spend the extra money and get something cool. You guys act like you have no money... live a little!!!
I'd also second that overall the article wasn't that informative. It also is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is true that many switchers switch because of problems with Windows that isn't really Window's fault. (i.e. comparing Window98 with OSX and ignoring XP) By the same measure you can find on many forums people who have a bad Mac experience which isn't typical of the platform. No problem except when they then judge the whole platform in terms of one bad behaving application, bad memory, or a bad motherboard. It often seems most comparisons are emotional ones based upon one bad experience. Fair comparisons are all too rare.
I should also add that, even as a OSX lover, there are crossplatform problems. I find the browser in OSX for browsing Windows shares rather weak. It misses many servers. Yes many of those problems are Microsoft's fault and not Apple's or Samba's. But they are there. Work arounds are needed. (And yes I know that some of those problems even appear in mixed Windows networks) Many programs, such as Illustrator, often have problem saving to Windows shares for reasons no one is quite sure of. Further compatibility between file formats isn't 100%. Exporting presentations from Keynote to Powerpoint doesn't always work, for instance, and often screws up PDFs and the like.
It is much better now than it was in the past. However there is also a lot more work to do. Hopefully better Outlook compatibility is coming (either from Microsoft or Apple). Most people expect Apple to come out with an Office killer this year as well. We'll see.
Is anyone else thinking that this guy could have had one of his IT people build a laptop/desktop with linux based stuff (free and open) for this? Without shelling out top dollar for an Apple laptop?
What do you think the fully loaded per hour cost of an IT guy is? How much time is he going to spend configuring a system that going to the CTO? That's hundreds of dollars. That besides the fact that Apple laptops aren't unreasonable expensive by Dell, Compaq... standards.
First off, Apple notebooks aren't much more expensive than PC notebooks, especially since most PC notebooks force you to buy the MS license anyway. In fact, Apple's high end notebooks are way cheaper than IBM/HP/Toshiba high end notebooks. Secondly, what makes you think his IT people know anything about linux, or that they have the time to do this? Third, just because the initial cost of linux is zero, doesn't mean it's free. It takes time to install/configure/learn/etc and often time is more valuable than money, especially for a CTO. Finally, KDE/GNOME and OpenOffice + Evolution are not even close to OSX and Office for X. If you put the KDE/GNOME laptop and the Apple laptop in front of a non-technical user and give them a month to play around with both, Apple would win hands down.
Please do me a favour and don't get a Mac, because you might like it, and we Mac zealots rely on the fact that Mac-haters are weenies like you.
Actually that's been changing. Prices are dropping frequently across all Apple lines as the economy sags. They even released a single CPU PowerMac again to lower the price a bit. Most users would be happy with an iMac. The desktops are really intended for professionals who can afford it and also want to be able to upgrade it. You can't upgrade the video card or use a SCSI drive in an iMac.
I actually bought a PowerMac G4 Dual 1Ghz MDD a few months ago. Why would I want to spend that much? I had bought a PowerBookG4 550Mhz a few more months before it. I fell in love with the platform and I wanted a highend desktop with DVD burner and dual 17" flat screens. It's been an absolute joy! Worth every damn penny too! Plenty fast enough. In fact, I would say it feels faster than any PC I've used and I've used the top of the line Pentium and even a Dual AMD. Speed to me is not how fast the CPU clock runs or how quick a Window draws it's pixels but how fast I get my work done. Reliability and satisfaction are much more important then if it's a couple seconds faster!
Basically the system and/or software configuration files got corrupted. I re-installed the OS twice, but later after reading through some resource documentation found that their is a 'repair' directory that has fresh copies of these files so you don't have to re-install the OS (just the applications because the settings are flaked after this). Luckliy it hasn't happened for a while, but I can' say that anything like this has ever happened with my PowerBook.
OSx is a fine OS, but its not the end all - be all. If Office is the problem use something else, like 602Suite or StarOffice or OpenOffice, but don't blame windows for it.
Windows might have caused the problem with Office that he had ... both you and him could be right though ... thats the problem with debugging those problems you just don't know what caused them most of the times. As for using something else ... how could he? His entire company and customers use office, just because he had problems you think others are going to change? With the exception of inline Word created images (which I personaly hate), Office v.X works fine with Office 2k/XP documents generated on the Windows counterpart.
As far as I can tell he made the right decision to get where we wanted to be (working wiithout constant problems not caused by himself) without affecting any other person in his environment.
I'm sorry but this is not quite true. Your commentary struck me as odd, so I decided to test it myself (as I am tied to a Win 200 machine). I moved the "Microsoft Office" folder from the "C:\Program Files\" folder to another one in drive C. This is what happens every time I launch the programs directly from the "Microsoft Office\Office" folder:
Excel: "An error occurred and this feature is not functioning properly. Would you like to repair this feature now?". If I say yes, it asks me for the Office installers. As I don't have the installers at hand, I am forced to cancel the "installation", after several error dialogs. Afterwards, (or if I say I don't want to "repair this feature"), things appear to work correctly (I haven't checked everything, though).
PowerPoint: It launches without a problem, but the first time I use a menu command the installer dialog appears. I am also unable to open templates.
Word: The dialog appears when launching, as with Excel.
Access, Outlook: I don't use them so I don't really care.
The shortcuts in the Start menu, the launch bar, and the desktop invoke the installer dialog and don't launch the application if the dialog is cancelled.
We can argue that the programs anyway appear to be operative after dismissing all the dialogs, and that everything will probably be corrected by running the installer from the CD. But this is a far cry from what MacOS X (apparently) offers: they can (apparently) simply move their directory to a CD-R or a FireWire disk (or an iPod) and the first time the programs are run they heal themselves automatically.
There is even a story of a kid pirating MS Office from a display Mac in a store by copying it to his iPod. Some tech reporter saw him, I think.
PS: I returned the directory to its location and (thank God) everything returned to normal.
The point is that his $2500 ThinkPad didn't work and his $2500 PowerBook does. It's not that he's enjoyed reliable Microsoft-based computing for years and suddenly something's gone wrong and he should just get a newer version of MS Windows. He mentions that he doesn't want to do that again. Your answer is "more Microsoft" and that's the answer he specificially didn't trust because they've failed him too many times.
The reason he's writing an article is obviously because he himself was somewhat surprised at how easy it was to do all the things he wanted to do with an Apple system. He just moved from DOS to Mac+UNIX almost overnight and it was easy and he is better off in every way. Even the Microsoft software is better on the Mac, and you can admin it, because it's not soup.
I've used MS Windows, Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X extensively, and the standards are just higher on the Mac. The software is backed up by the hardware guarantee. You get no guarantees at all with MS Windows so no wonder it doesn't work, and all your other software runs on that and is made less valuable.
> Windows DLL Hell is caused by STUPID installers that
> overwrite system DLLS with older (or broken) versions.
No no no. You're making excuses for Microsoft again. If you go and look at how this works on Mac OS X you will understand that you look foolish defending Microsoft on this. It is night and day how it is done right on the Mac and it is completely fucked on Windows. You can't excuse it in 2003.
Listen, all you have to do to break a Windows app is move or rename it. That is outrageous to a Mac user. It's like if I told you not to move a picture file to another disk or it won't be viewable. I rename apps that have ridiculous names, like "Adobe® Photoshop® 7.0" I change to "Photoshop" and it works just fine. There are exceptions to the Panacea I'm describing, but the vast majority of the time, if an application is somewhere that the system can discover it (local storage, network storage, anything the user can access) then it will run. That's it. End of story 99% of the time.
It's not that Mac applications heal themselves if moved. It's that they are self-contained inside one icon.
Imagine if every time you saved a text document it had to be in Documents/Text Documents/ and if you moved it out of there the system wouldn't open it. That's what MS Windows applications looks like to Mac users. A Mac application is as self-contained as you would expect a JPEG image to be, so it doesn't break when it's moved.
Breaking when moved is sort of a de facto copy-restriction method on MS Windows, so no wonder they haven't fixed it yet. Less control for the user, more for Microsoft.
Why do you doubt that? I'm using Outlook 2001 in Classic right now. In a corporate enviroment, and so is everyone around me in this very room. We are looking forward to an Exchange-enabled Entourage though.
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
This is going to be horribly unpopular in this thread, but I couldn't resist. One major change in design with the new .NET languages and framework is to get away from all the grief caused by the registry and system-wide DLLs. In fact, with a pure .NET application, you no longer have to run a setup.exe installer, but can simply XCopy the folder onto the client's hard drive.
Don't get me wrong, I still prefer OS X to XP, but in this instance it would seem like MS is somewhat responding to people's frustrations and bringing things back to the simplicity of installing a DOS application.
I went to a friend who had an Apple Macintosh PowerBook and asked if I could borrow it
Does Apple have his friend on commission? Or is he just incredibly wealthy and lends out laptops like a cup of sugar?
Yeah, if only Microsoft had the resources they'd make a reliable, flexible OS. Can I just Paypal them a donation?