Slashdot Mirror
Recommend Apple, Lose Your Job?
rocketjam writes "While examining whether outsourcing tech work to India is really cost-effective, Robert X. Cringely takes a look at the old conspiracy theory that IT doesn't recommend Apple solutions because they need less support, thus endangering IT professionals' job security." Cringely argues: "Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department's job."
And for years to come, you can always just add more RAM or upgrade the CPU(s) in the Linux box. "Upgrade time" for the Mac means buying a whole new X-Serve. Once the hardware for the Linux box becomes too impractical to upgrade, it's flexibility will allow you to use it in some other fashion, like a thrid tier firewall or as a database server for some small intranet need, or just the box that runs your help desk ticket system.
I thought this was obvious.
My friend is a teacher at Cleveland Schools. He reccommended to students that they get an Apple computer, because they give discounts to students, and inner city, and employees of the government. Some company sent a cease-and-decist letter to him.
..somebody in India starves because of lack of tech support calls.
Please. Think of the Indians. Buy PC.
So this is kind of like "Nobody ever lost their job for buying IBM"?
Nobody ever kept their job for buying Apple.
Has a nice ring to it, I can see it on the adverts now.
Look at politicians. They promise to do things that will create jobs. (Like creating jobs is a good thing.) They complain about things the other guy did that made the country lose jobs. And people vote for them.
Cheap Trick said it best: "I want you to want me."
as I mentioned in a response to Bob.
It's an issue of comfort.
Everyone is comfortable with windows, even if they don't like it.
Many admins are comfortable with Linux/Unix. It's what has gotten the job done for years.
I have used lots of different operating systems, CPM/TRSDOS/OS-2/VMS/Unix/Windows but have
NEVER used a Mac, so I'm not comfortable recommending it. I expect it to be very different
from the CLI world I'm used to.
In order for me to get comfortable, I'd have to play with it. If MacOS ran on PC hardware,
I would consider setting up a partition to boot it, but that's not the case. It's expensive
to learn, and I have no incentive.
Robert
--- If it's worth doing, it's worth doing in Perl!
In Soviet Russia, your job loses YOU!
apple.
No one evar got fired for buying Micro$oft!1
There is no god
Most tech companies are busy outsourcing jobs to India and other countries where labor is available for the fraction of the price. Most companies want to save money, and firing support people isn't why they don't choose Apple. They don't choose Apple because Apple has a monopoly on Apple hardware, and gets to set the firm prices. You can basically find an IBM compatible PC in any price range these days, and if you don't want to, you don't even need to put Windows on it.
Anyone who buys into this 'conspiracy theory' has had their brain fried by the Apple reality distortion ray gun. Here are a couple reasons why the company I work for has never, and probably will never, consider Macs:
cost
Check gotapex? or techbargains and you'll see Dell P4's for $400-500 bucks. Seriously, what Mac can compare?
software
AutoCAD? GIS apps? Engineering apps? (Canvas doesn't count. Get real.)
Those hip, trendy commercials don't help either. I want a box to crunch numbers, not to make a fashion statement.
In case the site get slashdotted, or you can't get there from where you sit, here's a mirror.
This argument makes the assumption that IT is ever properly staffed in the first place. IT people almost universally want to lessen their workload so it falls more in line with their actual [underfunded] workload capacity!
Used to work as a contractor for a major pizza company that used to be in Kansas. They were an entire Macintosh place, had systems for about 700 - 1000 users I think it was.
Then a large soda company bought them and felt that 'they all needed to be the same' even though the Microsoft Offices the platforms ran worked together.
So, we went from the two of us supporting 700 - 1000 users to 18 people.
And the user populace was not happy. The standard rebuild time of a machine went from 'when they got new ones' to once a week. We had device driver issues, and SLAs of getting machines back up and running in two hours so we ended up just ghosting machines over and over to clear up whatever went wrong.
Weird.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I'm an applications admin. ClearCase and ClearQuest specifically. I also support a host of other engineering applications. Most of those apps were never and probably will never be ported to the Mac and I'm willing to bet that other engineering shops are in the same boat.
Sure, I figure that Macs might have a place in a business or accounting context but not for engineering. Anyone got a counter-example?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Every IT dept I've ever encountered was overburdened to start with. I can't imagine they would not want a break so they could attend to more important things than Windows crashes. Not only that, but the techs _hate_ dealing with this stuff.
Imagine how much money you could save your organization if you had the time to verify all backups and replace old, failure prone disk drives before they crash.
There is always more to do in IT.
What Amazing Fud, now all the Executives and Vice-Presidents are going to beleive this kind of fud and start asking why the company is still on the PC.
Why did Linux fail on the desktop?
sPh
Thats like comparing Apples to Oranges
That would explain why microsoft is doing so well...
only idiots will want to use it
I'm sure things have improved tremendously, but in the previous decade, Apple computers were a severe pain in the posterior to support in a large enviroment.
There's a lot of things about Appletalk that didn't scale well at all. I wasn't a member of the Mac support team, but oh, the stories I could tell... Oh, the hacks that were needed to get them onto the regular TCP/IP network...
If sysadmins aren't installing Macs now, maybe that's why. Maybe they are just afraid.
So how easy are they to integrate into a large network these days?
Self Interest is human nature. Are you REALLY going campaign for a product that will possibly help you meet your own economic demise?? Chances are no, especially if they clientel (sp?) are easily swayed and lack knowledge.
...I see a lot more jobs for NT/2000 positions...
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
This is more trollish than insightful. The XServe is exatly like any other rackmountable machine. The only difference is it has a different type of CPU and can run OS X. Nothing's keeping you from upgrading anything in the XServe either.
Heck, it even runs Linux. The parent is simply spouting old anti-Apple rhetoric.
I went absolutely nuts updating machines in my workplace for the MS Blaster worm. Take a look of one of my user's desktop for an example of why.
I have to say: updating these machines is a completely and utter waste of my time and skills but it definatly keeps me employed. My boss is so apathetic that he never wants to make changes. I've offered on several occasions of virus outbreaks in the company to switch everyone to mozilla mail so we'd stop getting those Lookout (Outlook) viruses. But no!
I swear if i ever own my own company, everyone will Linux dummy terminals or iMacs, etc -- something ease to remotely update and maintain.
- tristan
But if I was looking at the exact same comperable solutions, and I knew 1 would benefit the IT department vs. hurting the IT department's job security, I go with the one that is going to secure jobs to my hardworking co-workers (and I) ... The CEO makes more than all of us combined, We lost our coffee machine.. it's fair!
http://use.perl.org
Lol, that's about the truest thing I've read in a while.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
This is totally true. Take a look at small offices that don't have or can't afford an IT department and you'll see they normally use Macs. Why? Because if you have a company with 12 people running Macs you don't need an IT department. Look at Vice Magazine for an example of what I'm talking about. I'm moving into the realm of home business and you know I'll be making the switch. Then again, I'm in graphic arts and all the labs at my school are Mac labs.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
One word: AppleTalk ;)
;)
You don't know networking fear until you've seen: A Mac talking over an AirPort, connecting through an OpenBSD firewall to a samba mount on a linux server, then having your boss (who's doing all this) ask, "Why aren't the permissions set properly when I save this document? Can you fix that?"
TRUE story...
*shudder!*
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
First, I think Cringely is great. I mean who else would let us buy video tape of them having a nervous breakdown?
However, I think he's *WAY* off base here as to why Linux is being adopted faster than Apple. If I need a 64-way Linux machine, I can get it. If I need a cluster I can get it (off the shelf). If I want some funky hardware bit, I can get that as well.
My reason for not choosing Apple is vendor lock-in. If I can keep something that allows me to pick and choose parts from a wide variety of sources, I can build solutions that fit the need.
The one place where he might have a point is on the desktop, but I don't see a lot of Linux migration on the desktop. It's still Windows. People want Office even though they hate it.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Dear Father O'Day:
Thanks for your letter. Being Catholic myself, I know exactly what you're talking about! It has always been our plan here at Apple Computer Inc to revolutionize personal computing with our high-quality and highly gay products.
I'm happy to answer your letter by letting you know that YES we will be releasing an entire hLife ("homo-life") software line. You'll be able to recognize it in stores by the small stylized logo depicting a large cock entering a tight anus with an Apple logo on it. ("Suddenly it all comes together" indeed!).
Anyway, I hope you and other members of our community will join us on our mission, and purchase the exciting new hLife boxed set. Only the boxed set comes with translucent cock rings!
Sincerely,
Harry Rodman
Vice-president
Homosexual Liaison Services
Apple Computer, Inc.
Thanks for your letter. Being Catholic myself, I know exactly what you're talking about! It has always been our plan here at Apple Computer Inc to revolutionize personal computing with our high-quality and highly gay products.
I'm happy to answer your letter by letting you know that YES we will be releasing an entire hLife ("homo-life") software line. You'll be able to recognize it in stores by the small stylized logo depicting a large cock entering a tight anus with an Apple logo on it. ("Suddenly it all comes together" indeed!).
Anyway, I hope you and other members of our community will join us on our mission, and purchase the exciting new hLife boxed set. Only the boxed set comes with translucent cock rings!
Sincerely,
Harry Rodman
Vice-president
Homosexual Liaison Services
Apple Computer, Inc.
Linux is better documented and better supported by the user community for server applications than OS/X. I also prefer it to OS/X as an administrative workstation. Who wants to do administrative chores from a machine that only lets you open 1 terminal window at a time?
Sure, if you don't do anything with them.
I don't know about the rest of you, but the variety of Apple computers kept where I work cause proportionally far more trouble than other platforms.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
MacOS-X has a CLI - a C shell running in an ANSI terminal.
There is something to this. Our competition in a service type business have the strategy of making sure they get a call every month or so for equipment repair. And they do. Then if we go in, they don't need repairs for maybe a year or so. We are more expensive at one time, but less over time.
People recommend what they understand. Apple, although easy to use, is different. There is a perverse pleasure in knowing Windows. You have "Administrator" manuals that describe the hidden secrets. With Unix, you just read the configuration files.
Derek
His "Triumph of the Nerds" (now on DVD!)and "Nerds 2.0.1" are just fabulous. However, after watching his most recent effort ("Plane Crazy") I think he described himself with the title of that last production. This latest bit about Apple and IT pretty much ices it for me.
"I want a box to crunch numbers, not to make a fashion statement. "
Man are you stupid. Let me guess they're "too easy" too? Have you heard of FreeBSD? or MacOS X?
Macs are better than Linux and Windows.
End tutorial. Should all be familiar from there.
Sort of facetious, but, well, not really. Try it. Take a half hour out of your time. If it's not that easy, well, then you now know you're making the right decisions instead of wondering "if".
Linux only requires more geeks when the geeks don't know Linux.
IT doesn't switch because they don't know anything other then what they are running.
MacOS beats Windows handily in a lot of areas, but there are some things where it's not all there yet. Since not everything many businesses need is available for MacOS, they'd need to support two OSes, which would be much worse.
As an OS X user, I can say that I need my experience to keep the system running smoothly. A novice would still need help, I think. It's only a little better than Windows in that respect.
Now, if these semi-anual superworms don't stop, then I think it'll be more cost effective in the long run, but it's going to take a long time for that to get noticed.
Speaking of which... Is this a Software Update window that's just popped up? It is. Wow. A remote root exploit in OS X. I think I'll install that. Excuse me, this will require a reboot.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
sounds like something was wrong with your ghost image if your rebuild schedule was once a week :)
"Recommend Apple, Lose Your Job?" This statement is perfectly logic.
Cringely's close, but off the mark.
1) Pricing: Mac's are significantly more money. And if you thought the Microsoft OS costs were bad, looks at Apple's. OS X launched in 2001, and, if you were a 10.0 buyer, while 10.1 was a free upgrade, 10.2 wasn't, and 10.3 is coming fast! And from the end user perspective, these have all been largely mandatory upgrades -- many apps now won't work unless you are running 10.2, for example.
2) Usability. While there are a lot of things that work smoothly under OS X, there are still some issues, ESPECIALLY with Windows interoperability -- and any company of size is going to have a significant overlap. So you'd have to train IT folks (or hire new ones), and still have some userland issues.
Another serious concern for IT has been how quickly Apple has outdated machines. Didn't we just see today that a number of machines aren't going to have proper functionality? Again, this is on fairly new machinery! Concerns have to be that Apple is quickly going to invalidate the G3 and G4 (over the next 24-30 months).
Those are my thoughts as a fairly PHB who started using OS X on a TiBook back in 2001.
Steve
Until OSX came out, Windows *was* better.
I don't buy that. In fact, I think adopting linux would lead to an increase in needed support, because the average computer user knows nothing about linux. In fact, this has been one of the mantras of people trying to convince companies to jump on the open source bandwagon: give away your product for free, and make money on support.
Linux may be more stable (but on the other hand: my win2k never crashes either), but that doesn't really matter all that much. To most people the occasional crash is a fact of life. They press the reset button and continue working. You don't need support for that. Support is needed when your computer is completely messed up and/or needs (re)configuration. There, Windows and MacOS have linux beat hands down. Most average computer users can do minor tweaks of their Windows or MacOS box without requiring any help. Put them in front of a linux box, and they're completely lost.
IT organizations tend to mistakenly shoot for "standardization". This should *not* be the goal, because it is a fact that every job has a platform on which it is done best. Unfortunately, because IT departments want to pick one, they "standardize on Windows" because of the hype, the apparent low cost and its proliferation throughout the computing world.
I would recommend a mixture: buy Macs, buy Linux, buy Solaris and, indeed, buy Windows: *for the people whose jobs demand each type of machine*. Any IT organization that wants to standardize on a single platform, even one as versatile as the Mac, is guaranteeing that they will hinder someone's ability to get work done.
Examples: Mac for local networks and graphics artists, Linux for corporate mail and web and global server structure, Solaris/SPARC for Java developers and CAD, Windows for office types and...gamers? You get the idea.
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
I love the articles that start out as flamebait.
Anything else other than flamebait should be modded off-topic.
http://use.perl.org
I worked in IT on a co-op term and their internal policy was to always recommend the most expensive solution. Not only in initial cost, but also in total cost going forward.
That is why they replaced their Solaris file servers with NT: it would cost $40K up front and would mean that they would have to hire at least one more person to maintain them since the Solaris boxes pretty well ran themselves while NT isn't anywhere near that bullet-proof and constantly would require maintenance.
Don't forget G5s with 8 gigs RAM. What Linux box can do what G5s can for under 3k? Macs are cheaper too.
I think the article is exaggerating the extent both to which Mac solutions are easier to deploy and to which they would result in fewer hours being spent on IT.
There is no doubt that an XServe comes with many graphical administration tools that make certain jobs easier, as well as the stability of a UNIX-like system (in this case, a BSD system). I can attest to this, having run OS X Server on my desktop (!) for almost a year now.
However, your average corporation's need for IT solutions extends beyond "run Apache and a file server"; when it comes down to the custom solutions most enterprises demand, there will have to be a good deal of command-line tinkering and hard work no matter what platform you deploy it on. OS X Server certainly makes the more basic of server tasks simpler, but most companies will be doing more than just those.
In any case, I think the familiarity issue deserves highlighting, too. Macs have not traditionally existed in the server space; for years they were strictly either home machines or workstations; what servers Apple offerred were generally for synchronizing/managing small all-Mac networks. It takes any company time to move into a market space which they have normally kept far away from, and it's my guess ( and hope ) that as more IT administrators become familiar with OS X (the preexisting familiarity with UNIX systems will certainly aid this) Apple's server solutions will become more commonplace.
Why not Macs? You now have a stable Unix Environment that supports MS Office but what about the accounting applications? What about this app and that app. Just uprooting your computer infrastructure is a very expensive proposition. Also there is the issue of training your IT Staff to support an Apple network environment. Macs may be great platform but you still need some to support it. Remember MSCE are everywhere. It is harder to find someone to even touch a Mac. This should not stop people from investing in getting a Mac but it should you should do because it make sense for your company period.
Gnu For President 2004
Five Apple zealots teach a PC tech guy how to accessorize. Software? If it's name doesn't start with i, you don't need it. Processor speed? Oh puhleeze! As long as the box is a fabulous color, who cares?
I'm an Emergency Doctor...I never tell my patients to stop drinking, stop smoking, exercise, or get a checkup...I'm not going to mess with my income stream!
I'd expect nothing less from IT workers....
Macintosh systems are pretty easy to administer for individuals. It's also fairly easy to set up ad-hoc workgroups with Macintosh.
But that does not translate into easy administration of a large network of machines. The tools and support needed for administering large numbers of machines are completely different from those needed for individual machines or small workgroups.
Microsoft customers make the same mistake: they think that because XP Home Edition sort-of works out of the box, that networks of XP machines must be pretty easy to set up and administer, too.
Your best bet for reducing administration costs for large sites is still UNIX and Linux systems. It isn't perfect, and you require a skilled IT staff to be able to deal with it, but in the end, it's more effective than having to hire dozens of people fiddling with OS X or Windows machines like they were home computers.
And, no, Mac OS X does not qualify as a UNIX or Linux system for the purposes of administration because its administrative tools and configuration system is quite different from that found on UNIX machines and because many software packages on OS X require GUI interaction and even reboots for their installations.
piece of flame-bait bull-shit I have ever read. The fact that pc's have somewhat of a domination in the corporate-office-user world is that when you have to buy 10,000 machines at a time you want the most cost efficient systems available, and currently, Apple makes some of the most expensive personal computers on the market currently.
The other thing is that although Apples are great for design, they lack a lot of the inhouse-homebrewn software that a lot of companies use.
Lets look at a real-world situation. I work for a Realestate firm with about 100 employees. Everyone in the sales dept. uses a windows machine. Why? because we got a really good pricing from Dell (below $500 a System+Monitor, you cannot get a new G4-G5 with monitor for that). The sales staff, although not the most technically savy, require (read: use) a program called PhotoMapper which is a great yet simple program for aerial mapping and copying pasting into MS Word. Photomapper is NOT available for Apple, and without going into it, there is not another simple program that does what this one does as cleanly on a mac. sorry.
Now our Graphics and Marketing dept. uses macs. Why? Because we work with apps like photoshop, illustrator, quark, etc... we have a printer. However we also have a couple pc's for when we need to work with the CAD files we recieve for different buildings. for some reason the CAD programs just seem to run better on the pc's we have so we just kept it that way.
Maybe our IT dept. is just on the ball, but they don't care whether you have a PC or a MAC - they support and maintain both. Each system has its place and people always go with what they are comfortable with (sorry linux no one in the business world wants you for word processing or graphic design).
Ave Molech Setting
Really, the Apple Experience is nothing more than BSD on overrated, overpriced hardware with a Spiffy 'Not Really an X', X Server.
Why dont's this 'mac-o-files' just accept the fact that the x86, Itanium, and Opteron guys just don't like having proprietary hardware in our racks... and leave it at that.
The Geek in Black
I know my BCD's (when I'm Sober)
It strikes me as very funny to ask this question to a bunch of people at work who do nothing but read Slashdot all day (me included!).
I see a definite trend towards moving internal applications away from DOS terminals and towards web-based applications. To that effect, Macs are a great choice because they *do* require less maintenance than Windows, and you don't have to be afraid of viruses. Where I work the hardware guys are either crying from over-work, or they sit there and browse the web all day. It's very random. I'm not sure how a Mac fits into this equation.
Oh and show me Websphere running on an Xserve and we'll seriously consider one. Its half the price of our IBM servers that are slow as shit.
- Macs are not that expensive. What you get with a Mac makes up for slightly higher prices. They give you what you need without having to tack on lots of "extras."
- Macs can do everything you need. We use a mixed environment transparently. There is nothing I cannot do with a Mac that I want to do, nor am I prevented from interacting with Windows boxes or Linux boxes. It just works. Transparently.
- Macs don't waste your time. Every security update from Microsoft means the Windows guys are running around updating. The Mac guys just sit there and keep working. The Windows guys keep updating their virus software. The Mac guys just sit there and keep working. And although some people report problems with Apple hardware, and I respect those opinions since any hardware can go wrong, our uptime has been great.
As for the Linux guys, heh, they love Linux and take care of their boxes without any questions or issues coming up. Patch needed? They do it on their own time. Uptime? Forever. Problems? Nil.In short, don't believe those who say that you can't do things with Macs, or it causes problems interacting on the network, or the usual FUD. Although I'm sure there are specific instances where problems might occur on the edges, my real-world experience has shown that the Mac and Linux boxes are the ones that just work in my company. Any problems we have are with the Windows side. I can well believe that you need more IT staff to keep the Windows boxes going. There is very little you need to do to keep the alternatives going, and they interact just fine.
So if you love Window boxes, good for you. But if you hear the FUD about Macs not working well with others, I'm here to tell you that it's just not so.
can't stand it
Hopefully this was a one time slip, and not representative of his overall performance:
A very good friend of mine (one of Microsoft's major customers at the time) recommended to Redmond precisely the e-mail safeguards that would have made this week's problem impossible.
Unless I'm mistaken, msblast (or whatever you want to call it) doesn't spread by e-mail. Is he confusing 'e-mail' with 'the Internet', or did he not do his homework.
anyone else sick of his holier than thou, mentality? I swear, half the topics he talks about he has very little REAL knowledge about.
I mean, has he EVER even really worked in an IT dept? Give me a break, we would be really happy to provide solutions that require LESS support. That way, we can have more happy users, work on future projects and maybe even make the computing environment less stressful and more efficient and streamlined.
Cringely...go get yourself a real IT job, then maybe you'll know WTF you are talking about.
I dont think the vast majority of tech support places do this. Ive been working in various industries as tech support and have always recommended what I thought was best for the customer, whatever I would recommend for my mother or would buy myself. To some, especially in the graphics industry I always recommend the macs, even if theyre using linux. For many others who wouldnt take the headache of linux configuration and smaller software base, I recommend windows 2000.
Some people in college where I worked as tech support did ask about buying a mac. I told them its very robust and they'll love its working, but they'll have issues with software and had better go with IBM or Dell. They took my advice. I similarly have a few Dells at home and no Mac yet.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
...this notion is patently rediculous. Apples simply aren't recommended because - outside of professional graphics - there isn't a whole lot of narrow application programs available for the MacOS (that is, before OS X). Windows, on the other hand, has a tremendous library of applications for specifically targeted tasks. Take accounting for instance. You simply cannot get a professional grade accounting package like Great Plains or Business Works for the Mac.
That being said, it is no longer actually true. Now that Mac is 'nix based, there are a host of programs that were heretofore only available on Windows NT and Unix. I've been beating this drum for years, but now that MacOS is 'nix based, more applications will be ported to it because of the already established Linux and Unix user bases, and because of the popular application of PowerPC processors in scientific and business computing application. The consumer side is seeing rapid interest in Macs as well, and the only thing that is needed is for Apple to release the PowerPC as an open architecture.
But that's not why this assertion is patently false. It's patently false because - as any IT person knows - about 90% of the problems that arise with a computer are ESO (Equipment Superior to Operator) or OHS (Operator Head Space) errors. Granted, 50% of those problems were related to a deficiency with the PC, but an even moderately astute user knows to save their work and reboot, or shut down applications to reclaim memory. You could make the argument that because Mac's are easier to use, there will be less of these, but I can assure you that - having serviced an IT environment with 12 Macs, 5 Windows PC's, and 3 'nix PC's, there were more problems with the heavily used macs than with the hardly touched PC's.
A lot of large organizations are switching to linux. No flashy throbbing aqua/quartz/genie, just a plain theme such as gtk's "mist" and the crux window decoration makes a nice "corporate look" on the gnome desktop environment. Most of the large companies write their own inhouse software and linux's flexible base makes it cheaper to build on.
Think about the cost savings.
$200 for a linux workstation with open apps.
$1500 for a windows workstation with propeitry apps.
$3000 for a Mac work station with propeitry apps and hardware.
Now you can spend that $2800 saved on something useful.
Any consultant or consulting firm worth their salt knows that you don't recommend platforms in general. Instead, find the product that best suits the need of the client. This includes usability, learning curve, cost, features, etc. The fact of the matter is that rarely does one come across an area other than graphic design and multimedia where Apple offers the "best" solution. If a typical environment consists of 20 PC's and a couple of servers, I'm not going to recommend my client dump their investment in Intel hardware and buy a bunch of Apple machines, even if I'm looking for a graphic/multimedia system and regardless of how cool I think OS X is. Instead, I'll find something that doesn't require the user's learning a new platform (Mac OS X) and doesn't require as large an investment in new hardware.
..the IT department shouldn't be the people who decide what computers to buy. Hell, if I happened to work at an IT department I'd always buy the shittiest piece of shit there was on the market, just to give me some extra dough whenever available. If people complain you can just go "OK, that wasn't a good decision. I am not to blame: those who made the hardware and software are to blame!" and I move the company to slightly better products. I know, I'd probably be fired. There are probably a lot of people who do this and don't get fired.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
I'm writing to share a tragic little story.
I was working in an IT department I went to the boss and said lets buy some Macs. All of the sudden he went berserk, started flashing red, and he was all, like, Fired Fired Fired! And the whole job just disappeared. All of it. And it was a good job! I had to cram and get on unemployment really quickly. Needless to say, my next job wasn't nearly as good, and I blame that Mac for the job I got.
I'm sorry to inform everyone of this but when working for a store that did Apple tech support and Apple repairs along with PC repairs, I replaced more PAV boards in Imacs than I ever have replaced motherboards in PCs. I only worked there for 2 years and have been a tech for 10 and I still have yet to reach that apple mark.
I just set up a network (My Mac with my family's two PCs), and I decided to forgo all that and just install DAVE; easy Windows networking. However, other people probably just want it outa the box.
i think bob is missing something, until Mac OS Server 10.2 macs really weren't capable of doing everything a normal IT admin would need it to do. their AIX servers were great, but very un-mac like, their ASIP servers were great for serving Macs but nothing else. until OS X you couldn't run Apache on a mac server. this is the first time they've had a REAL serving OS.
sure, NOW an Xserve with OS X Server is price and performance competive and it's easier to maintain. but Apple has a decade of either lame performance, lame sever OS or too high pricing to erase from the minds of IT professionals. despite all of Apple's consumer "Mind Share" convincing an IT person to all of a sudden adopt a new product that used to suck isn't going to be easy.
that being said. OS X and an Xserve really is all that. people complaining that they're too expensive need to take a closer look.
I don't agree with everything in this rant, but I've said for years (since my first co-op in 1998) that IT was a self-supporting infrastructure, a fat one with no accountability. Nice to hear somebody else echo that.
Also, both XServes and Linux boxes make nice servers. Different strokes for different folks.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
I read the article, can some please point out where he actually shows any hard data. i didnt see any myself. Did i miss something or am i right in assuming he is one of those shady Mac Zealots.
"It takes just as many nerds to support 100 Linux boxes as 100 Windows boxes, yet Linux boxes are cheaper and can support more users."
How much crack was Mr Cringely smoking when he wrote this...? This doesn't even stand up to the "huh?" test. If they can support more users why do you need as many of them? Quite apart from the obvious fact that Linux boxes need less maintenance than Windows.
The argument that Macs are not considered because they are too low-maintenance to keep people in jobs could just as easily be applied to Linux. The real reason is that Macs are expensive, proprietary, and lock one into a single-vendor solution. Which is exactly what people are moving to Linux to get away from.
While OS-X seems to be pretty capable, it is still very new. Theoretically, although we can not use it for the compute servers, it could be used for things like DNS, web servers, etc. However, there is very little motivation to add another OS to do that, when the one we have settled on already is more than capable of the job.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -- Winston Churchill
The mouse on my Mac is defective. It appears to be missing a few buttons.
Yep, sort of like how your brain works, you dopey fuck.
Don't kid yourself. Technology choice is rarely, in any organisation, done for purely altruistic 'what's good for the company?' reasons.
Instead, the technology chosen is one of two choices:
1) What people are comfortable with. A lot of people want an easy, safe, predictable decision.
2) Resume fodder. What do the decision-makers want to add to their resumes? What's missing?
Analyse the average IT department's choices and one of those two is almost always the cause. Let's face it, most of us would also be guilty of these; picking what we're used to and what we think would be fun or useful to learn.
I think we all know that until a second button makes it onto the Mac mouse, they will never achieve corporate recognition. x86 platforms are up to 3 sometimes even 4(!) buttons. Forget the color, its the buttons that matter!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Users know windows. That is what they learn in school. This is what they have at home. This is what their friends have. You may think that teaching them to use a mac would be easy/cheap. You are wrong and you are not an IT person.
Try to teach anything something related to computers. They will come up with questions like "why can't I click that?", "What does that mean?".
Users haven't a single clue when it comes to computers. Its the same thing with cars: relatively intelligent people can't fix a simple thing on a car? Why is this? Familiarity. If you are using something you aren't very familiar with you won't be comfortable dealing/using it.
People don't choose mac's because they aren't as common. How do you become more common? Look more like windows. Why is linux catching on? Because they are trying to make the desktop look/feel more like windows.
And that's why I've always recommended Slackware, recompiled for HP PA-RISC. It doesn't let me keep my job, but at least several others have to be employed to sort out the mess I've made.
Now, if just everyone else would do equivalently stupid things, we might just get the economy back on track. Remember: if one person can do a job the easy way, many more people can do the same job in a more difficult way. As we approach the impossible, unemployment will be a matter of the past.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and see how my developer team of goldfish is coming along in porting Emacs to the VIC-20.
If this is in fact true, how would it be different than any other department? The Legal department recommending the strategy that best behooves the Legal department; the Marketing department making recommendations that behoove the Marketing department... It's made to sound like this is bad for IT departments to do when there might otherwise be no IT department. Why would an organization recommend their own demise?
You can apply it to entire industries as well. The Music industry making recommendations that behoove the Music industry; the Finance industry recommending things that benefit the Finance industry...
I think it's called 'enlightened self interest', or something like that.
recommend apple ... for what? a recreation of the office space beat the xerox machine? a paper weight?
ahahahaha recommend apple, that was good.
Take linux or mac admins, through them into having to admin a large windows environment and what happens? They suck.
If I had a dime for everytime a unix admin bitched about windows... it's funny. As a QA Manager, the problem is usually an admin who doesn't want to learn new tricks.
If I wanted a toilet seat cover I would have bought a Mac notebook.
If I wanted to pay twice as much and go half as fast I would have bought a G5.
If I wanted a "tv advertisement supercomputer" I would have bought a G4.
If I wanted to belong to a club where other fools who spent more, and who buy applications with silly names (usually include the word "MAC") meet I would buy a Mac.
But if I wanted a REAL machine to monitor network traffic, act as stateful packet inpection systems, hookup to a realworld business network, run many different versions of Linux real quick. then I definetly would NOT buy a Mac.
The reason that Apple only has a 5% penetration into the market place CANNOT all be blamed on IT managers fearing for their jobs!
Cringely argues: "Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department's job."
:( )
;)
This person obviously sees only part of the bigger picture. Supporting the hardware/software is part of the total cost of ownership. If a company deems it a better deal to purchase PCs over cost of support issues, then they'll be picked. Not to mention, most users have a PC at home. Why burden them with learning a different platform at the office?
Bottom line, you can go buy a new PC motherboard, sound card, video card, etc for a few bucks. Replacing Apple parts are a bit more expensive and harder to come by.
If Apple had wanted a larger share of the office market, they should have been there to compete for it all these years. Nothing against them, but they focused almost entirely on the home user market and photoshop crowd for the past ten years, leaving PCs for the miscellanious work. You don't get your hardware stocked in offices by being innovative, you do it by being consistent and monopolistic.(
This isn't a blanket assumption that PCs are the better answer for all office situations, but those are the reasons none of my shops have been Apple shops.
Please don't get all zealoty and mod happy, just an honest opinion from an honest joe who's set up more office networks than most. My karma is still recovering from the last time I posted to a Mac thread.
Would consist of Linux servers and Macs used as terminals. Why? You get the best of both worlds, cheap, fast networking apps with Linux and almost no need to muck about with users' PCs. As a practical example, I set up (in a school) a Linux server running netatalk and Samba, plus around 30 old Macs (MacOS 7.6.2) that would otherwise have been thrown away. There were 15 brand-spanking new PCs running Win2K on the network as well - all the kids could use their files on either platform as we had both set up with Office, and the file servers sharing from the same directory. I spent at least 3 times as much time fixing PC problems than I did Mac problems.
Add to that the fact that OSX is Unix, and therefore can be locked down very tightly (nothing worse than lusers being able to play) as well as natively supporting most, if not all, common file-sharing methods - Appletalk, NFS, (shudder) SMB - makes it a very attractive proposition for people like me who don't enjoy having to hold the hands of lusers. Even if they are fit Janice from Accounts...
And yes, I'm typing this from my iBook, going through my Linux firewall/proxy/web/file/database server...
first, i'd have to play with mac in non-critical settings to be familiar with the platform to form my own opinion and figure out the gotchas. now that's going to cost me around $1500. lotta money for playing around. (vs. $300-$400 for a system that'll run windows or linux etc.)
second, once i did bring up using macs instead of wintel for regular users. my boss scoffed at the idea. lesson here is: it's not up to me.
the reason i was successful with linux is i got the 'throwaway machines' after the office went thru a hardware upgrade. i then proceeded to wipe those machines clean, installed linux and has since been running file servers, print servers etc. so eventually i was able to convince buying hardware specifically for running linux. can't do that with a mac (start out with throw-away machines, that is) i even got a mosix cluster of older computers that they were ready to toss out.
so maybe there's more to the CLI than just pure nerd testosterone. evolutionary adoption? vs. the disruptive adoption that a mac would require.
Maybe the REAL reason IT doesn't recommend Apple is because:
1. They cost three times what a comparable PC does.
2. Less variety of software
3. Highly proprietary systems whose replacement parts can only be bought though Apple.
4. Most users are already experienced with Windows.
5. Not geared towards engineering/computational/production environments. All that leaves left is the art geeks.
Bottom line...I work for a relatively small company 50 employees, and if I deployed Apples here it would be an unmitigated disaster. Accounting, payroll, the software that controls our machines, etc would all be broken. Imagine what kind of problems a company several times larger than us would face. I don't buy this tinfoil hat ranting from Cringely. Apple is not getting a break not only for the reasons mentioned above, but because people already have a tremendous investment in existing infrastructure that they would have to scrap and start from scratch if they wanted Apples.
-R
this is complete bullshit. peopel recogmend what they know. I've worked as both a PC and a Mac tech, i like both platforms. but it depends on what you want to do (although that line is getting blured everyday now, 'specially with MacOS X{god bless 'em for Mac OS X!}). But as for tech support recomending stuff that makes have to work!!!!??! that is the absurd thing i have ever heard! Every Tech support person i know (here and over seas) are lazy ass mutha... i just talking 'bout tech support. and it goes agains the unwritten code of TS to recomend anything the makes us do more work than we have to. hell why do you think we recomend roatery phones for the cubes? so schumckos won't be able to call us to ask how to use the damn phones. And the only reason why Macs are not the drug of chioce in the Corporate world is becasue corporations go with the cheapest bid. and with the competition from the PC clone world PC will always have the lower bids. To bad Apple you make great products but you selfishness will guarentee that you will never be big in the corperate world.
Over 20 years ago I introduced the first personal computer to the organization, an Apple II. That was 1979. I started with Visicalc, the Data Factory, and a weird word processor called Zardax. Life was good. I added several more Apple II's for a couple of years. Ultimately, I stuck a CP/M card in the first Apple and used dBase II to automate payroll and accounts payable. Yeah, I had to move to III to get more than two tables, but the sucker ran for years. In fact, an Intel version STILL RUNS for another organization I gave it to. It's had a fifteen year run!
Then IBM came out. Apple competed with IBM head to head--same price. However, the clones came in under: $700 for an 8088. Then my mainframe vendor decided to do a backup system onto 5-1/4" floppies, and chose Intel. Then my service bureau changed from Hazeltine Modular One dumb terminals to an emulation package (3270, I think) -- based on Intel. The dye was cast. It was just a matter of time.
We didn't have much money, but the basic math was this: Buy two Intels or one Apple. My goal was to get a computer on the desk of every employee. I chose Intel for monetary reasons.
Now I have two PCs for every employee. Dell "sticks it to me" for $700 a PC with the O/S, a meg of RAM, and a ridiculously huge hard disk. But it's easy. I get office for $50 bucks a pop. The guys browse the web. They still telnet. They don't really need anything else. Maybe the Art Dept could use Macs, but I'll tell you what. They all run Pagemaker and Freehand, so what's the big deal?
Point: I started out a loyal Apple user. They had to work hard to get me to change to Intel. I resisted at first, but they finally won. I left, and neither I, nor my organization, will ever look back. It's really too bad. The quest for high margins and a bit of greed did Apple in, and THAT's why their market share ever dwindles. I'm really sorry, but I've gota business to run.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
A lot of low verbal scores on SATs around here.
/.'ers only see the brand of computer on their desk while it is packed up on a container ship along with the job they used to have.
This article was about outsourcing IT overseas and unnecessary cost layers. The conclusion was all about local talent using open source vs. proprietary tools being more efficient than outsourcing in general and particularly overseas -- a particularly strong argument to be made in the current economy. Obviously it is not just the CEOs and CIOs that cannot see the forest for the trees when even
I used to work for that same company .. but in a restaurant I have a similar story to that myself right down the road from where the company you used to work for is now, there lies a building of unspeakable evil wherein I worked with my current roomate for several years. The two of us did teh entire Mac phone in support for the nation within the first 90 days of sale and the paid support afterwards we had one mac to work off of between us and had to enter our calls in on the PCs. Well there were 2 of us and about 80 PC techs but here is the really interesting thing He and I averages 70-80 calls a day each the other side was lucky to handle 1/3 of that each. Nationally there were about the same number of trouble calls per machine ... but our calls to much less time.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
lose saycrud /. whore pts.
we're ok with that.
the lights are coming up (no pun intended).
the stars were quite visible for folks who almost never see them, last night.
you can pretend all you want. our advise is to be as far away from the walking dead contingent as possible, when the big flash occurs. you wouldn't want to get any of that evile on you.
as to the free unlimited energy plan, as the lights come up, more&more folks will stop being misled into sucking up more&more of the infant killing barrolls of crudeness, & learn that it's more than ok to use newclear power generated by natural (hydro, solar, etc...) methods. of course more information about not wasting anything/behaving less frivolously is bound to show up, here&there.
cyphering how many babies it costs for a barroll of crudeness, we've decided to cut back, a lot, on wasteful things like giving monIE to felons, to help them destroy the planet/population.
no matter. the #1 task is planet/population rescue. the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
the unlimited power (such as has never been seen before) is freely available to all, with the possible exception of the aforementioned walking dead.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive intentions/behaviours. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay no heed/monIE to the greed/fear based walking dead.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. it will be repaid by you/us. the Godless felons will not be available to make reparations.
pay attention. that's definitely affordable, plus you might develop skills which could prevent you from being misled any further by phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated misinformation.
good work so far. there's still much to be done. see you there. tell 'em robbIE.
Whatever the conventional wisdom or the Microsoft marketing message, Macs aren't dramatically more expensive to buy and on a Total Cost of Ownership basis they are probably cheaper.
Cool! Where are the numbers to support that? Probably isn't going to cut it.
Then a little later....
I am not claiming that every organization should throw out its PCs and replace them with Macs, but the numbers are pretty clear
You mean, those numbers that you didn't include? How are they clear? Once again, Probably isn't cutting it here.
Macs reduce IT head count while Linux probably increases IT head count, simple as that.
AS PROBABLY SIMPLE AS THAT!!
There's that probably word again! Ok, so it's obvious he's a Mac user. I'd probably take him a lot more seriously if there were a lot less probablies and a lot more proof and information. I'm PROBABLY going to stick with Linux for my IT needs for now.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
So this discussion is a tie-in to the zealot poll, right?
Know the whole world knows! All of us IT types are really all sitting around in a room filled with exotic dancers, pool tables, video games, and food. We don't really do anything. And it all gets so boring that we go LOOKING for systems to give us more work to do!
In reality, 99% of the IT people that I know would practically sell their left arm to have systems which required less of their time.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
This is all conjecture on Cringley's part. Who said Macs are half as easy to administer? And why does he expect us all to buy xServes since Apple has only been in the server market 1-2 years? Ok, we'll throw away our Suns/Compaqs/IBMs for your little newbie pizza box.
He's a Mac zealot and is off his rocker this time.
Mac OS X and 9 are not easier to use than Linux/Windows. I think many people erroneously think Macintosh is "easier to use" since they just give up on doing much with it. For me, "easier to use" means I can decide a task on my own, let's call it a "goal", and easily achieve this "goal" with my computer. This is why I prefer Linux or FreeBSD. I can achieve any goal I want. If someone else hasn't achieved it already I can achieve it for everyone. I've used OS 9 and OS X and I can state that achieving my goals was in many instances not even possible. /. and NOBODY has shown me a screen shot of their customized OS X. A good friend of mine went from Linux to OS X and I consider him very technical, he doesn't know how to do this. Can it be done? No, I don't think so. You can do it, great, reply with a howto, or email me kgb@submarinefund.com
I'll try it out post haste on my G4.
There are a couple dozen tasks like this that I've tried that I ended up with the answer "can't be done?"
Even with modest goals I couldn't achieve them. For example, I dont like the default "skin" and I want to change it.. I have NEVER seen someone do this, I've even posted this statement half a dozen times on
Ignoring the horrible hardware monopoly and the extremely overpriced and underpowered machines Apple sells, I can't recommend OS X to anyone since I have a VERY LOW expectation that they will be able to achieve their goals with it.
Of course the UI customization is one area that just irks me about Apple zealots. It's such a slick GUI. That's greeaattt... I hope you like it since you're stuck with it... I do think this is why a lot of people choose Linux over Win/Mac OS for control of customizations, with Mac or Win you're helpless, or dependent on shelling out $$$ for often buggy "skin" software...
It wasn't the only thing that couldn't be done with the Mac I have, but it's the one that bugs me the most and that I remember, since I moved on, back to my Linux box that does whatever I tell it, like a good penguin should..
wow, you CAN change your skin.. with aftermarket software ...It looks like it messed up most peoples OS X..
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
This article is so geared towards trolling that it's taken all the fun out of it. Krap.
Every company I've worked for had a bunch of poorly written custom apps from 1989 that had been hacked up periodically to make sure that they (sort of, but not really) still work on more recent versions of windows, and they're usually related to some ancient oracle server that no one knows how to change anymore. This stuff will never run on anything other than Windows - and it barely runs on Windows at that.
Then there are all of the Access db's that people use (Filemaker doesn't cut it if you need to redo all of the forms to make it work).
AppleTalk has been dead for 3 years... Apple didn't even write support into OS X until 10.1... Whats the deal over that?
Apple has remote admin tools Linux does not have. Apple includes software that PC manufacturers don't. There are no "activation codes" when admins rebuild machines. Macs completely integrate into PC networks (Samba is included with a full gui, or rather, a checkbox). You can buy an eMac for $700 new (places sell lots of refurbished ones for less). And $2000 for a 64 bit workstation is dirt cheap.
What is your peoples problem?
From the Article: Why would any company have port 135 open to the Internet?
Okay, that's stupid. I'm in a large company that has that blocked off 135 (and 80, and the ports for SQL Slammer and Spida, etc), but the worms still get in. Employees bring disks, CDs and memory sticks in and out of work. They remotely connect. They read Hotmail from work. There are many ways for this worm to get inside a big company. Closing port 135 doesn't help! It wouldn't surprise me to find out that most of the worms are let in by stupid techs who bypass the safties yet don't protect their own systems well enough.
This may be off-topic for the story, but hey, it was in the article! I expect a guy knowledgable enough to construct the above quoted sentence to know that shutting the port down at the firewall doesn't sovle the worm issue.
</rant>
Seriously, I recommend Macs all the time, but hardly anyone ever gets one.
I break it down any way you can think:
Mac is competitive on price.
Mac is super easy to use.
Mac is not where most viruses and worms are.
Mac looks better sitting in the rack.
Mac has all the software you need.
Mac runs Office and has all kinds of alternatives.
Mac runs BSD Unix-like OS, very similar to Linux but you can run photoshop on it.
Mac laptops kick ass and wireless network is about 10 times easier than that goofy card sticking out of your PCMCIA slot.
Nothing works. Folks say "wow, I didn't know Macs could XYZ" or "wow, only $999? I figured they were $4000 or something." or "WOW that's so easy!!" etc.etc.etc.etc.
Then, they DON'T BUY ONE!! It's bizarre. I ask them why and they say, "well I just decided to stick with Windows.."
ARGH! Why are people so afraid to try a different type of computer? What is it about apple that makes people so irrational!?
Gee... that wasn't a misleading headline at *all*... what is this FoxNews.com?
More comparing an Anus to Shit
I'm tired of hearing this. Last year I decided to try the Mac, with a 866MHz G4 Powerbook. Even with 768MB of RAM, the thing was sooo sloooow. I got to watch Chimera render web pages. Mac Mail was like molasses in January. Word couldn't keep up with my typing, and moving between cells in Excel was an exercise in patience.
I now have an IBM T40 (1.3GHz P-M, 512MB RAM) and this thing just smokes the Powerbook in everyday usage.
Virtually everywhere I've worked has avoided Apples like the plague except one ISP which still uses Apple Macs. The employees also get Compaq boxes (now HP) but these can be switched off if the person has a good memory of the inner workings MS Windows.
The Apples are remotely checked (Timbuktu) by a very small support staff. The x86 systems can be reformated and the OS re-installed by putting in a floppy and CD as it is not used for work. Note: they are not using MacOSX. In the time I was there, no virii, trojans, worms, etc.
Sure, now Macs are running Unix. But, before OSX, they had the strange OS where simple things were simple and hard things were impossible and there was absolutely nothing you could do to work around problems.
My IT department tried supporting the things, and it was not as simple as the marketing leads you to believe. Oh, sure, if you want to have a mac-only office, it's great. But, if you needed it to interoperate and share information with non Macs, you had extra software to load, configure, sometimes purchase. If you needed to print to anything other than an AppleTalk / EtherTalk printer, then you had the same problems.
We used page counting software for billing, and required print jobs to be submitted via lpr to a certain location. Not so easy as you might think.
Under MacOSX, a lot of that has changed considerably for the better. But, there are literally years of bad memories that system administrators have from dealing with yet another proprietary operating system that handheld you to the point of frustration. Not to mention having to deal with whiny Mac users who think the world is against them.
Been there. Done that. Had an Amiga. Loved it. Oh well...
So, yes, it's a new day, and now instead of competing with Windows on the network, it's competing with Linux and Windows. But, at least it has a chance to get some inroads.
Screw the extra buttons, go for a scrollwheel! My optical scrollwheel mouse died, and I'm using my backup Logitech WingMan balled non-scrolling mouse. Ugh. I _love_ the shape (best mouse shape EVAR), and I could live without an optical mouse, but no scrollwheel? That's just messed-up.
MS's Bluetooth mouse looks pretty sweet - I may wind up trying that.
I'm surprised with Apple being so concerned with design and such, that they haven't gone with an ergonomic keyboard layout yet. Very strange.
The author of this article is a complete idiot. He probably is a Mac user at home. he may never have worked in an IT organization.
Why are TI, Intel and Oracle so successfull with their India outsourcing? India is not just about people writing code. They are very smart people who architect, design and code.
So, we went from the two of us supporting 700 - 1000 users to 18 people.
And the user populace was not happy. The standard rebuild time of a machine went from 'when they got new ones' to once a week. We had device driver issues, and SLAs of getting machines back up and running in two hours so we ended up just ghosting machines over and over to clear up whatever went wrong.
i don't want this to sound like a personal attack, but that sounds like it's more your team's fault than windows'. we all know that windows has flaws, but if you protect the os from its users, it's not really that bad. an install of 700-1000 users really should be given the budget to purchase appropriate tools for their administrative needs.
i'm responsible for ~400 lab machines at uiuc, all running win2k, and with some file permissions and some software to automate software/hotfix installation and updates, we're to the point that our machines are rebuilt once a year. the only exceptions are hardware failures. i'm not trying to say i'm better than anyone else, just that weekly rebuilds are far from a necessary facet of a windows admin's life.
IT is like a priesthood. Only the priests understand the computers, so they have this absolute control over the decisions that upper managements makes. You think that the president has any clue what to do about IT? Hah.
So, yeah, IT people like Windows because it keeps them in a job. And Microsoft feeds right into this. Ever noticed how there's ALWAYS a workaround in Windows/Office/whatever? There's almost always some way to get the software to do what you want, even if it means hours of registry hacking or whatever. Microsoft probably makes sure that every bug in their database is resolved to at least "Workaround exists" status and then they ship it.
Linux is also happy for IT depts because it's infinitely configurable.
Apple, on the other hand, makes systems that are designed to NOT NEED ADMINSTRATORS. Thus, it follows that no system administrator will ever buy one.
THat's why apple doesn't have much chance of breaking into the corporate market, frankly.
simon
home page
I actually got to support Macintoshes in a large distribution, about 800 systems total spread out to 140 locations. Maybe 200 were located in the corporate headquarters in NYC and the rest were out in the boonies at various offices near colleges. I worked at this joint for a considerable period in the 94-96 time frame as the tech services mgr.
I am sure all my observations apply with System 9 still, but OSX is a different animal as noted.
Good points were:
Hardware was cookie-cutter - none of the 'video card of the month' crap you got from Gateway and sometimes from Dell. This made distributing software to the field very easy.
System software was relatively stable - much fewer patches than we experience today, or even then on Win31, OS releases were more frequent however (then, as today) - twice a year it seemed the OS would get a version bump. We would ignore most of them and do en masse upgrades when we thought there was justification.
Remote control utilities (mostly Timbuktu and Timbuktu/Remote) were workable and available. They were mostly constrained by bandwidth - was like a really bad VNC connection over a 14.4 modem. Which is quite a feat really, considering we couldn't afford nationwide frame relay. I'm sure you could SSH or VNC into Darwin/OSX so that issue is mostly moot now.
1st level support was easy to train. Kind of like desktop win32 people are today.
The users generally liked them.
Bad points were:
Hardware was unstable - lots of cracked cases, for one thing, but we also had issues with bad RAM and flaky SCSI drives. Diagnosing a flaky Macintosh HD back then, on System 7.0.1 or 7.5.3, was a bitch. You had disk first aid and hdsc setup, and then you had Norton disk doctor - frankly it was a lot easier on MS-DOS or Novell or even NT... macs pretty much suck for low level diagnostics. Most of the time we'd end up replacing the drive rather than messing too much with it. However, this cost shipping back and forth, probably $80 for a field machine. Cheaper than $700 or so to send a guy to Cincinnati out of NYC, but still sucked.
RAM problems were even worse - extension hell is probably a thing of the past with OSX - don't know much about that - but in general Macintoshes are less than forthcoming with error messages as befits their 'easy to use' reputation. Getting a lot of 'Type 0' errors? Who knows what the cause is...the diagnostic list of problems that could cause this is mindboggling. Generally, however, it meant that either the OS was hosed or the RAM was bad. So there is another $80 to ship, plus a facility is out of action for 2 or 3 days.
I'm sure that it is much easier with BSD/Darwin, since fsck and various other utilities are available. I'm also sure the hardware is just as prone to breakage - plastic clips, front panel bezels, hard disk carriers, you name it. Apple case designs have always been more towards pretty than functional, and they don't pack all that well in boxes when you are moving equipment around. A lot of noise has been made about Apple hardware being built to 'last'. I can testify it can still work 10 years out, but they obviously aren't geared towards building their equipment to be survivable in the field. I was really sad when a Quadra 950 got hosed - what a beautiful machine, and poor packing resulted in it getting bashed badly on the way back to NYC. A beige box would have had no problem most probably, and would be easily repairable to boot. That Q950 cost easily a grand to fix and had a plastic case with light metal shielding on the inside. Beige boxes are generally metal.
Serial ports sucked - moot point now with readily available networking and broadband but the RS-422 ports were missing a pin and therefore didn't do hardware handshaking (RTS/CTS) all that well.
The OS was flaky. It always has been unstable in the past, before OSX again. Another moot point perhaps, but there nonetheless. Note flaky in comparison with Windows NT 3.5 or Novell 3.1
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...and your beef is misplaced.
-- OR --
Damn! Troll got me again!
I think regarding OS X it is too soon to call. From what I see it is a very nice OS and those boxes are sweet to (albeit more expensive). In my opinion you should give at least 3 years for any changes to happen. And again like with Linux those changes will happen from ground up. Offer any CIO right now the option to switch to OS X and he will tell you that you are nutts. And he will tell you a lot of reasons. And I bet that half of those reasons will be bogus. But this is how things are in the real world. If on another hand you will tell you your sysadmin that you would like to have Mac in your office (and if he is reasonable guy, which is almost always true ;) ) I don't think he will object as long as your boss is Ok with it.
In my opinion Apple still feels a backlash from the years of MacOS 7.x. Which was a dog. I know that for sure because at my graduate school for some reason a lot of people liked Macs and for some strange reason I became a "support guy". Those were the days when your Mac crashed several times a day. And that was also a time when major fallout happen on a sofware vendors side. A lot of companies droped their support for Macs.
Another "perception"/legacy problem that came from those days (and I think that might still affect IT guys) was that Mac OS for a guy with unix or Windows background looked like a debilitating mess. Those days Apple was clearly behind in design and features (just remember TCP/IP implementation) plus they always targeted "creative" people. So for those "creative" people to be able to manage thier computer Apple came up with set of "metahpors" that were, to say the least, very unnatural for IT guys. So you had system extentions, control panels, prefernces and God knows what else. Every other program you install always would add something in your system folder. Then you had to get a programm that would hunt down conflicts between those extentions. Then you had to install "crush" analyzer that would freez your box even more often. And so on ad nauseum. So if you follow the logic of the article Mac OS was suppposed to be IT's bread and butter. In reality IT guys were running away from it like from leper.
Personally I am not Mac fanatic. But I think Apple has a good chance with it's current line of software and hardware if they combine that with more aggressive pricing they'll do great.
- Back off man. I am a scientist
Objection. The parent is out of order.
of course, that has been proved untrue (1:10 for windows and 1:40 for linux? something like that)
that guy is full of shit, the only reasons mac aren't more popular is their insane price tag (yes, they are far cheaper NOW than they were 10 years ago) and apple's lack of marketing. there's no conspiracy there, just plain mismanagement (or lack of money to do the Right Thing), but slapped with innacuracies. zealotry at its best
While I admit that the switch to a unix type OS did resolve many of the old problems, there are still many to be resolved.
The cost of the hardware is one. Since Apple runs a monopoly on its own hardware, you pay what Apple wants. Any money saved on support will be spent to hardware.
Not all programs run on them, or have an Apple equivalent. Your only 2 options are to either but a windows license and run virtual pc, or buy a pc. Many companies have custom made software packages. Why port them to new hardware and software when you can just buy a new PC or upgrade an old one?
You now need someone to support Apple hardware and software. An IT manager won't be satisfied with sitting on the phone with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of boxes needing to get fixed or upgraded. Either you need to train your people or hire more. There is another increase in cost.
Stupid people by Apples just like stupid people buy PCs. I used to work a bookstore that sold PCs and Apples. I can't tell you how many people bought an Apple simply because it came in that pretty case.
Upgrading an Apple is BS. You can add memory, but at a higher price when compared to PC. You can add a new processor, but unlike PCs you only have 1 or 2 options before Apple moves on. Apple is like Dell or Gateway. They make no money if their boxes can be upgraded for a long time. They'd rather you replace it.
The G5 is overkill by most standards, not to mention it's still damn expensive. G4's have a highly limited architecture when compared with PCs in a cost/benefit analysis. A PC will cost more to support but less to buy and upgrade. The addition of DDR memory was made by a marketing team. The 100MHz (or is it 133) front side bus can't use the extra memory bandwidth.
On short, there is no savings when a company switches to Apple. They save money in one area at the expense of money from a different area.
Mac will never be the company that Microsoft is economically. Microsoft happened to be there at the dot com boom. Mac happens to be here at the worst time. Their prices are so high now that not many can afford. Especially that most people are out of work or facing hardship. It's unfortunate but that's life.
It's as good as FreeBSD under the nice interface, and even better - Darwin runs on X86 hardware (or it used to, I seem to remember a story about the X86 Darwin team getting pissed off about something and pulling the project). It's not all that different from the BSD that birthed it though.
It's my experience that Mac's do not need to be upgraded in the workplace unless some new application requires it.
My experience has been to use Macs for MS Office and as multiple terminals. There was an MS Outlook server on x86 hardware and we even had WinNT through a Terminal Server right there on the Mac.
If someone need to have more than the 5 terminals and 3 windows open, all that was need was more memory. They would occasionally crash, but no work was ever lost. The computers were never hacked and any problems could be fixed remotely. If there was a major upgrade to an application and there were problems, Apple had technicians on standby 24/7.
Is it me or is Cringely a bloomin idiot? He starts off talking about outsourcing then Apple, then back to India. He states that using more Macs in the office would decrease TCO without giving any numbers or any statements to back up that opinion. And it isn't even his opinion! He got the idea from a reader, no less!
Macs reduce IT head count while Linux probably increases IT head count, simple as that.
I didn't come up with this very smart idea, it came from a reader.
Whomever gave this guy a pulpit needs to be shot. This guy obviously uses a Mac.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I run a small research team. Most of our machines are Linux, and I recently adquired 2 apple laptops.
WIth X11 running under OS X, I can safely run most of the Linux apps without too much trouble (thank you Fink project!)
Even though I enjoy the laptops, I am always worried that Apple is a nano-soft (mili-microsoft). They want very tight control, and they want money for almost everything.
There are several things that trouble me:
* They like to make things incompatible with themselves, forcing you to replace your hardware unless you are willing to live "in the past" (for instance, my SO could not believe she could not buy a new Apple screen for her G3 without first buying a cable adapter; aNother one, power adapters for the G3 powerbooks are the same output as the ones for the G4 and ibooks, but, surprise, the plugs are different).
* OS Control. Look at the previous story on the old G3 and OS X. Apple will not build a good OS for the old machines and instead decides to settle and "refund" the buyers of the OS. You have locked yourself into a single manufacturer/software provider, with (except for Linux, which is not totally supported in the new models) has no competition.
* Lack of software. Yes, you have Office, Adobe and this and that, but check the computer store and compare how many products just don't come for OS X (neither for Linux). Explorer is no longer coming to Apple, for instance, so what happens if Safari is started to be sold to the users by Apple?
* Lack of hardware drivers. I have a SCSI PCMCIA adapter. Useless under OS X. I have been thinking about the external USB sound "card" from Creative Labs, but its support is incomplete. Until recently my Cli'e was not supported.
Yes, their laptops are beautiful (I use one and I love it), but I fear apple.
P.S. I use an apple, but I am not an "apple user".
Anyone who delivers or maintains critical applications has to answer to people who don't get the nuances OS's.
Try to tell the head trader at a hedge fund you're going to deploy their new trading system on Macs. Or, explain to the CEO of a fortune 500 company that you're opting for Apple.
Love Macs or hate them perception is reality. And the perception is the Mac is not a credible business solution.
My company used all MicroCrash Windows machines and servers and everything. Then I sent out a memo recommending Linux for our workplace and, barring that, perhaps G4s with OSX (though I am not necessarily an Apple fan).
I promptly lost got a memo saying that I was fired. It was from some guy named Ballmer.
Jagoff.
Recommend apple, lose paradise!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Hey, I used to work for a company where we had about 200 PC users and 30 Mac users. The Mac users were self-supporting (they had to be--the IT dept had no Mac support resources), yet I still found myself helping out down in the Mac area on occasion. For PC support, we had: Me. We had a help-desk, but most of the help desk was dedicated to supporting our in-house order-entry and order-fulfillment applications. We had a phone admin/sysadmin responsible for Novell, I helped out some on Novell and Unix, and we had Unix admin work being done by our programmers.
Yet, in spite of the fact that the ratio was one guy for 200 PCs to nobody for 30 Macs, the real support burden was on about 4 or 5 Mac users, and they were, to put it mildly, getting really pissed off at their Macs. Their Macs crashed a lot. This was in the days of Mac OS 7.x when Apple claimed that Copland would fix everything.
On the PC side, we were running some OS/2, some MS-DOS/WfWg 3.11, some DR-DOS and some Novell DOS. The Windows users suffered from typical Windows lousiness, but when NT 4.0 came into the company, the Mac users seriously considered switching to NT.
It never happened, for whatever reason, but that's how fed up the Mac users were at the time. Keep in mind that before Mac OS X brought NeXTStep/BSD goodness to the Mac world, Apple's Copland initiative would have only brought Macs to the level of Windows 95 (in terms of memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking).
Now that Macs have OS X, I'm willing to consider them, but good luck getting any of the apps I need to run on them.
And it goes like this for Apple:
Cringely just discovered the problem with outsourcing your IT competence. Someone pat that genius on the back.
Of course IT seeks to remain relevant, just like any other department. Most internal money is spent on make-work that just reminds everyone of everyone else's role. Hell, half the feature creep and spec shifting is just management's way of reminding everyone that the middle-managers exist. After all, their sole purpose is making life easier for the workers, but if they did that successfully, like security experts, they would appear completely redundant.
It's a wise CE/IO who keeps IT in-house, thereby tieing their livelihood to the success and well-being of the company. Outsourced IT is like paying a pharmacological company for drugs for a terminal patient. They'll help keep you alive to profit from your problems, but they won't want to make you better since then you might not need them.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Why do people who have never tried a Mac make statements like this?
... it's not just the CPU your getting.
If you had just one Mac, even second hand, then maybe you'd have a clue.
The price for a Mac includes the case, power supply, HD, video AND THE CPU
Seriously, how can you make comments about something you have no idea about?
Er, it's all about process.
How do I image an XServe?
Oh, it's different than all the x86 machines, obviously. I could learn.
How do I control which services start at launch?
Oh, it's different than both Linux and Windows, but I could learn.
How do I compile standard Unix apps on this machine?
Oh, I have to acquire fink, but I could learn how. It's like installing a Solaris machine -- you do it once, and then again "for real".
There's alot of learning, alot of new process, alot of stuff to do. And for what gain? A more expensive system that, at the end of the day, is just a commodity?
Certainly there are more rational reasons to standardize than "Well, it keeps me working." Hell, even Thomas Aquinas recognized that it was worth staying with a suboptimal system if the pain of switching exceeded the benefit of the switch.
--Dan
As an Apple service man and systems technician all I have to say is
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Lower maintenance my butt. OS X is not ready for the enterprise, period (not that windows solutions are quite all there either).
The reason I don't recommend Macs is because:
1.) The hardware is horribly overpriced and difficult to maintane (single vendor, hard to get parts, history of parts availibility probs, etc)
2.) Apple has lousy support for large corprate leases (in business you never ever buy desktops).
3.) Poor local warranty service in most areas of the country (think on-site, 24x7, 4 hour SLA everywhere in the country...just like Dell or HPaq)
Now if OS X was available on several platforms and carried by several vendors, then I would go for it (as long as licensing made sense), but I wouldn't touch Apple hardware with a ten foot pole in the business setting.
Note: I have two macs at home (and 4 x86 machines...and soon to be one x86-64 machine) all running Linux (the macs run Mac-On-Linux).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I'm Director of Computer Svcs. for a large department (400 users) within a large state university, and this is why we don't spend money on Macs:
1. Apples cost more than comparable PCs.
2. Application support is spotty at best. For example, Quark just released a native version of Quark Express for OSX (more than 2 years *after* OSX came out). Bottom line here is that application developement companies are not going to spend R&D dollars on Macs... not enough users to justify the expense, and you can forget bug fixes.
3. Apple service and support is lacking. Dell will dispatch a technician with parts to do next business day repair (for 3 years) on our PCs. They'll also cover laptop damage due to drops and liquid spills. Apple does neither and requires me to buy Apple Care (an additional $250-$350) just to get more than 90 Days of phone support after buying a $3,000 laptop. Bottom line, Apple simply cannot compete.
In conclusion, Apples are expenisive machines w/o quality application support and they have the absolute worst support for dollars spent in the business.
That's been my experience.
IT doesn't recommend Mac because It doesn't know Mac. The techs don't know how to work on Macs and haven't wanted to touch Macs because they saw Macs as just more stuff they'd have to learn and more items on their plate. They've spent all their time leanring Windows and taking MSCE courses and don't want to have to take any other course to support their job. Thus they don't recommend Macs. The tech geek elite learned Linux in their spare time and it slowly infiltrated the business space. First it showed up as the IT guys personal computer. Then the spare server to do IT related issues. Then the intranet web server. Then the enterprise computers. (I admit, that history was all specualation from what I have observed which is a limited viewpoint.) Linux has been a grassroots solution that has finally caught on. With OS X, I have started seeing more of the same with Macs lately. With job I just entered into I went to the desk of the guy I replaced and there was an old faculty G4, installed with OS X set up as a departmental ssh, ftp, and web server. We unplugged it to use the IP and quickly got a call from him asking if we had turned it off. Seems he was still using the files on it and asked to let him get it off. We're still using it for the same stuff he did because Mac OS X is less than Win2k server and we have the spare boxes to install it on* and are not afraid of them failing like the spare clones we have around.
* Our radiology department used to be 100% Mac (the entire hosptial was about 50%). Over the years it has slowly gone towards PC. Because the faculty wanted PCs, no. They are the last hold outs of Macs (except for the bank of GE image brokers). For two reasons. One IT services has refused to support Macs at the hospital even when 50% of their customers has Macs, and two, because GE made a web application that we have to use that only runs on IE 6 for Win2k/XP (in breech of contract might I add).
The IT shops I've worked we did minimal Apple support and discouraged Apple when possible. Trouble was trying to hire Apple people with strong technical backgrounds. Most didn't know much about tcp/ip networking, or interfacing with other OS's. Now things may be different with OS X, but prior to X it was easier to buy them their own server let the department Mac guru support it.
Suppose that the market was 50/50 Mac/DOS. Each Mac requires about 1/5 as much support. This means that the DOS universe supports about 5 times as many consultants as the Mac universe does,
Along comes a computer newbie who is sure that computers can improve his/her business. This newbie goes out and finds a random computer consultant. Even though the market is 50/50 Mac/DOS, the probability of getting a DOS consultant is 5/6 -> 83%. Guess what system the DOS consultant is going to argue for?
This pushes the market even further against the Mac, and thus the death spiral starts. This also explains why Mac users seem to be so downright pendantic about their support of the Mac... They don't understand why so many consultants seem to be suggesting that users go to DOS when it's clear that the Mac generats less work for the consultant.
(sounds obvious when I put it that way, doesn't it?)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Objection overruled.
though a few people have brushed the topic:
Rollouts are expensive! The more things you change, the more expensive they get. Not only is there training to pay, both for users and techs (either that or you have to turn over staff too) but licencing and hardware.
Now, changing from MS Win9x -> NT products generally allows you to keep most of your hardware. Likewise for MS products - > Linux. The same isn't true for a switch to Apple. You switch both at the same time, or not at all.
To minimize training costs, OS rollouts tend to be company wide. The IT departments usually try to cut costs by performing hardware upgrades in conjunction to OS rollouts, but hardware actually gets replaced every year in most companies. I've been told it's financially smart to spread the cost of hardware out over the 3-5 year lifespan of the computer - replacing 20-30% of the computers each year. I'm not an accountant though...
There are a lot of other reasons for not dragging the rollout over the course of serveral years. Most imporant is this: it's disruptive and annoys users, who generally hate change, even if it's a minor stretch like moving from Win95 -> Win2K. It's a source of stress for them and that's bad for both moral and productivity.
"Be afraid to die until you have won some victory for humanity" -Horace Mann
I Just installed X11 on my iBook
and it is quite priceless to
click on X11 in the dock -> up comes an xterm window
ssh -X into a linux box
type kmail or evolution or whatever
and it just works
the linux app gets forwarded to the X11 display on the Mac
so X11 stuff AND command line stuff can be made to work on a mac even with network transparency
!
Boy lots of comments about the MAC stuff in this article. I did, however, expect a few comments about the other stuff.
What about all this jobs moving to India, China, Russia and probably soon Zimbabwe. Any comments on that.
I think you young guys should think more about this. Yea you Europeans too. Companies in Europe are working hard to get things moved off shore also. After all how much manufacturing is still done in Europe. Not near as much as there used to be.
Cringly's analogies here are sometimes wierd but you get the picture I am concerned with. I have worked for small dedicated projects a few times and lots of good things were created. For the most part they tended to be better products for the companies I worked for and it tended to piss off other larger projects. Think about that.
But even more importantly for you young guys read between the lines a little. More overhead is mentioned in the article. Where does this comes from. Well basically it is somewhat older engineers like me that have been around a while. We become project coordinators and architects with the work being done mostly off shore. Probably also tested somewhere else off shore. What that means is there will be a much reduced or eleminated demand for the generation of CS majors just about to enter the real job market. How does that look to you. The problem is in a few years there will be a backlash and the "in" managers will find a big new idea to bring the work back here where it can be done more efficiently. What are your software skills going to be like after working as a cashier for a few years.
This article is not really about Mac vs. Linux vs. Windows. It is about most inept management that does not understand the problems making stupid decissions for a company. We go into the mess of an economy becuase of them. They are making it worse and buying off polititions to let them do even more harm.
The article is also about how the general user of computers in most countries can look forward to even worse experiences with there systems than now. Bad as it is, quality will go down and frustration will rise.
I am a linux user, I am a mac user and occasionally I need to be a windows user. I prefer Linux because I like to be deep in the OS. It pays the bills right now. I can also use the others and sometimes I am required to. Lets drop the bashine of particular systems and get on discussing the real issues.
Oh and go out and vote the california governor of your choise.
I agree the article and idea definitly has merit, but Cringley offers no basic reasons to support the fact that MACs need less IT support, and thus cost less. That just doesn't make sense to me.
Now I think that he is wrong. (I appreciate his argument, and would like to hear some evidence supporting it) I believe that MACs in corporate america would actually increase support costs:
1) MACs are more expensive, regardless of what he seems to think, a MAC that costs $799.00 does cost more than a PC at $499.00. Granted that may only be $300, but over a entire network that could add up to thousands or even hundreds of thousands! That's quite a large cost difference.
2) The corporate applications (that are not web based) would require porting! This also seems like it would be very costly.3) The learning curve of a MAC may be less sharp than a Windows based box, but really, on a properly setup network, and system, the user should be restricted to a group of programs that sits right in front of them. This really should be about as easy to use as any MAC.
4) IT Admin costs are overall more expensive, because there are less MAC techs around thus demanding a higher cost, and slower to obtain, and the employer has to work hard to keep him. It's similar to comparing an Windows Admin (who gets paid $15.00/hr), to an AS/400 admin (who gets paid $65.00/hr contracted), because the AS/400 guy has a more specialized skill, and requires more money.
Overall I think the idea is a good try, but I would like to see information to address my 4 concerns, otherwise Cringley is just running his mouth again.
I find that most often I end up learning from necessity, rather than for enjoyment.
XServe might be nice but OS X Server is not. I've just spent the last few weeks upgrading OS X Server and migrating OS9 clients to OS X and it was pure hell. I could write an essay about all the troubles we experienced.
The OS X Server manual, first off, is pure crap. Information is missing and just crossreferences everywhere. But who needs a manual, right? The bundled server apps, like Workgroup Manager, is extremely buggy and crasches now and then. It also caused the entire Netinfo database to be corrupted. I had a backup of course, but it would load. I had the reinstall the entire server. Then halfway through we discovered undocumented missing feature. We wanted to use netboot without local disks as you can do fine on many unixes. OS X Server doesn't support this. You MUST use a local drive. And even nicer: once you have a working netboot disk image, there's no way you can upgrade it.
I think I'll stop here, there were many other strange bugs and missing features... finally got it to work after devious bootscript hacking and trial n errors.
I REALLY hope Apple makes a better job with Panther server. What they have now doesn't feel mac'ish at all. I love OS X (and apple generally), but OS X Server is really bad and can easily be replaced by Linux.
Ciryon
PS. Really tired, grammar nazis beat me.
I recommended this article to my boss. Then he fired me.
on this thing is that the root of the situation is the hardware cost. PC's are cheap, so most people get them, and therefore most people are comfortable with PCs and know them. I think that is why companies (who are staffed and run by the same people) prefer PCs to Macs. They're a known quantity. The same story with Windows versus MacOS and Linux. It's well known and people feel comfortable with it, so it gets used. Even in the face of ludicrous support costs, rampaging virii and gaping security holes.
Does everything include nothing?
With Macs, less PEOPLE are needed and the money saved can go into the more expensive Apple hardware.
Macs (when set up correctly) can kill an IT department, especially the leaders, as less high end decision making is required.
Peachy keen jolly green. But in 1995 when this happeend Windows 2000 wasn't an option, Windows 95 and 3.1 were the only options. They weren't rock solid, and everyone who worked on computers in that era would know that too.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
windows has flaws, but if you protect the os from its users, it's not really that bad.
What kind of bullshit is that?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Cost I'm willing to bet is more the case than some grand conspiracy by the IT world. Sure they cost less to support, and increase productivity, but when the initial outlay is more than a compatible x86 box, the people in charge of budgets start screaming. No one thinks about the saved cost in the future, it's all about now.
IE: Should I spend $3k (CND) to buy a swanky new apple powerbook (or more for a new g5?), or should I spend $1000 and upgrade my current x86 system to be a pretty kick ass gaming box, which can also act as a high powered linux server? Pretty easy choice if you see my bank account.
Sure in a year or so I'll want to upgrade again, or I'll have a MB or DIMM or hard drive go and will have to buy a new part, but that's ok. Because the cost is down the road, and therefor, doesn't exist.
Note: the last sentance was intended to be sarcasic or ironic, depending on your view.
Ah let Crindgley do his rant. The tradgedy is that your hash is still showing and Microsoft really does care. You have to pay to upgrade, longhorn longhorn longhorn.... no more worms no more viruses, no more piracy only secure computing heaven finally for all the loyal MS users. Or if you like you can try a wonderfull new computer software security service. JUST SEND certified check or money order for the low one time price of $39.95 US to Asomahumad Deglawasi Dept of Information Secrecy and Security Post 375 Swalthely St. Station Lagos, Nigeria. PS please include any pertinant banking information. We will secure your illegal copy of any microsoft software for you. Either that or send more money to Microshaft next year when the Fritzed out version of Windows hits the stores!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Ten years ago, nothing beat appletalk from a user's prespective. Finding printers was easy and straight forward, as was finding servers. It was easy to share your work with others. And at the time, there was (and still really is no) equivilent in the Windows or Unix worlds.
/. users (preceived costs, lack of apps, unfamilarity, high cost of experiment, vendor lock, ...).
I've heard administrators horror stories of dealing with apple talk, but they don't seem to much worse than other horror stories. And even if they were the cause of a little more pain, isn't that the price of providing a good network solution to the users.
At my former company, when it was time to move away from appletalk, the network adminstrators jumped as fast as they could to replace it. But they didn't have horror stories of having to patch thousands of users computers, or bringing down entire networks as reasons for their JOY of seeing appletalk go away. Instead, it was that appletalk "slowed down the network".
So, we got a new network where we had to remember the IP address of any printer we wanted to use and any server we needed to access, and to share our work we had to tell everyone our IP address and hope that they wrote it down or you'd be telling them again, and again, and again... We went from a user centric network to a faster IT centric network.
Although I am a big Mac fan, I don't agree with Cringley on this issue. There are other reasons that Macs are being used in most businesses besides IT looking out for their own jobs. And most seem to be outlined here by
But whenever I think about the lose of AppleTalk, and now see it being blamed for Apple's shortcomings, I really wonder who IT thinks they work for. Always thought the user, but maybe not...
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
the CEO should pick the computers he wants to use. It obviously doesn't come down to technical capability of the OS or important things like security, performance or TCO. It comes down to one things and its very simple, preference.
I don't know of any company or oligopolistic corporation that ever does a QA evaluation before purchasing several hundred new systems from Dell or Compaq or wherever. Companies don't want well designed technology. They just want a cheap outsourced "solution" that may or may not work, it doesn't matter. As long as it can be squeezed into place and forced to fit the bill. Then management goes on patting itself on the back for a job well done.
The alternative is to use your brain. So you've finally decided to save money. What you do is buy 1 PC, 1 Mac, 1 *nix box and test to see which one is the best tool for the job. Or for desktop equipment you require your employees to learn whatever OS you want to use and you throw something like Linux across a bunch of very cheap PCs, built with the exact hardware you want. Use generic parts like Antec cases, good motherboards, CPUs, memory, disks, cdrws, etc. Build the systems in house and order replacements parts as they wear out. Keep track of the failure rate of each piece of hardware. If you find a certain brand of harddrives failing more than expected, try an alternative. If one brand of hardware is has a high failure rate you might even consider posting a press release or something.
I dunno. I just know if I ever manage a business I'll do it right, there are no excuses. But that's a big if.
Since Apple is still targeting a niche market, it has a completely different user base and therefore completely different support needs. If everyone and the mother, grandmother, etc. had an apple, there'd be just as many support calls as there are now, more actually, because no one would be familiar with the interface and those not geeky enough to figure it out would have to pay for hand-holding sessions. You can't compare a machine that has a niche market vs. the most popular computer architecture in the world.
love his articles. Lots of foresight and sees the core of the problems.
Perhaps you don't realize that OS X can be configured to use /etc/hosts exactly as most UNIX variants do. It's an option.
It is true that OS X is not "the same as BSD, Solaris, or Linux" but then BSD is not the same as Solaris or Linux, Solaris is not the same as Linux, etc. Each UNIX variant has some differences that you need to learn.
Let it rest in peace.
MacTCP/IP works marvelously!
As someone who admins macs I can tell you I get my fair share of hours and frustration.
http://www.zazona.com/LCA-Data/
look up apple.
Don't worry about starving Indians; Apple
will give them jobs.
Having worked in a place that many Macs I can safely say that Apple are not well regarded for their support. My conclusion was that Apple must truly hate their customers. Support sucks, hardware is expensive and often hard to get, the machines are a pain the ass to get into...
"Don't use the machine, just admire the design elegance" That is their attitude. Even though they use BSD they really think the opposite of open source. Who wants to buy into that?
I'm not sure where these mystical offices are where the only thing they use is Office, E-Mail, and Internet. I have yet to see one. Sure, there are some people that do that, but I've never been anywhere the majority of the office wasn't using some form of industry specific software.
So, that software is almost always based on Windows, sometimes it's something else. Fact is, the OS shouldn't be the issue, nor should the hardware. I'm not going to restructure my business so I can run the apps that run on Macs just because they have better uptimes, the same goes for Linux.
What hardware we "nerd ego" bound IT types buy IS LARGELY NOT UNDER OUR CONTROL. How many organizations do the IT types really hold the purchasing power? Damn few.
We have:
1) Demands of a certain app must run on a certain hardware
2) Prejuidices of management
3) Biases towards COTS hardware for repair and upgrade concerns.
There are lots of reasons Macs don't penetrate much into many companies. Same reason as you go into your average small widget-making business you will likely not see a Sun or HP server there. Because the customer wants small and cheap and "common" and the IT staff may be Bubba's nephew.
Linux is cheaper and supports more users (per IT person) ... so it requires as much IT support as Windows. No, wait, it requires more support!
With logic like that, I foresee a bright Cringely future in politics. Especially the way he alludes to Macs requiring half the maintenance at one point, then says they "probably" have a lower TCO.
What Cringely overlooks is the cost of and resistance to making IT changes. Spending lots of IT money is a tough sell right now. Rolling out a trial Linux program is very inexpensive in terms of hardware (reusing older boxes), and probably inexpensive in time because some Linux zealot will put in the extra effort to make a point. A Mac zealot still has to get past the capital expenditure hurdle.
But here's a thought: if Mac servers really do require half the maintenance of Windows boxes, then why not just load FreeBSD (or Linux) on the existing Windows machines? Then you'd have all that reliability without having to buy new hardware from Jobs. Oh, wait, that's exactly what Cringely admits some IT shops are doing!
Tyler
Just the other day, I installed Yellow Dog 3.0. NOW this sucker is blazingly fast. AND I put OS X where it belongs, in a window with Mac On Linux ;)
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
This is kinda funny, how true it is, I'll leave that up .
/ vi deo/crashdifferent.mpg
.
to apple folks to decide
http://www.bordergatewayprotocol.net/~jon/humor
This file is huge, almost 50 meg, so broadband only folks need apply
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
When you only need to interface with terminals and an Office app, but there are a lot of end users, even the old Macs had their good points.
And as for using MS software, Macs can use a Terminal Client aswell. Why increase the amount of hardware and MS software if you don't have to?
interesting points, but comming from a student point of view macs are a WHOLE lot more expensive. im a 4th year student at a design school. we run a total mac environment (as is done in the design industry) but as students if we buy a machine for our selves we have to go PC, as the macs are just too out of our league. i have a P4 running windows and redhat. the only way i can get design work done on a pc is to use windows as linux doesnt have the programmes avalible (photoshop, illustrator,indesign, flash are just so much more mature than open source stuff ive come across) and this works fine until transfering files to mac, which can be bitchy! as the macs get fussy (and vice versa). the interesting thing is we have nothing but problems with the x-serve, and the G4's, they are generally much slower than a pc the design students seem to be waiting around for things to process rather than designing!! remember macs arent just there for an IT purpose or number crunching...theyre helping the design industry to slow down as well!!
Less variety of software
/me looks over at Power Mac 7600 running my home automation setup with:
Office? Check. E-mail? Check. Web browser? Check.
Oh, you meant GAMES. Sorry, those don't count when we're talking about work computers.
Highly proprietary systems whose replacement parts can only be bought though Apple.
Hmmm. Really?
-3rd party G3 CPU upgrade
-3rd party PCI IDE card attached to
-3rd party IDE 20GB hard drive
-3rd party USB card
-3rd party 10/100 Ethernet card
-scads of 3rd party RAM
About the only proprietary stuff in modern Macs is the motherboard and the power supply.
Not geared towards engineering/computational/production environments.
What are you, fucking crazy? University researchers, etc have been going apeshit because all the UNIX apps they were using can now be ported to OS X fairly easily-- before that, they were running Sun workstations, not Windows.
What do you mean by "production environment"? If you're talking about Winshit boxes controlling large machine tools, they can have that market. Apple doesn't want it.
I work for a relatively small company 50 employees, and if I deployed Apples here it would be an unmitigated disaster.
Clearly. Because you've got your head so far up your ass you're still seeing the Macs of the 80's. Let me clue you in: Reagan is no longer President.
Macs have changed alot since 1984. Whenever I hear a PC user say Macs are slow, they are basing this on a comparison of their 2GHz PC at home and the crusty IIci in the school's Career Center. That IIci is 15 years old!
Macs aren't more expensive than PCs, UNLESS you want the absolute cheapest possible PC you can get. You won't get a Mac for $499.00. But you can get alot of Mac for $999 or even less. Mac laptops are often a couple hundred dollars less than comparable PC laptops. And Mac desktops and tower units are competitively priced. The only difference is that Apple doesn't make the ultra cheap, bottom line computers. Most people wouldn't be happy with a KMart special anyways (at least I wouldn't).
Macs have networked over TCP by default for 5 years. Macs have supported TCP/IP networking for over 10 years. The current Macs running OS X use standard Unix networking technologies. It's really easy to set up and configure, even on Wi-Fi. As a matter of fact, it's easier to set up than a PC for networking.
AppleTalk was great in the early days, easy to set up and all, but once networks went corporate, it's chattiness didn't make friends with IT. AppleTalk runs OVER TCP/IP now and it's not actively chatty. The old method still works (for printers and such), but that isn't passed by most routers or bridges anyways, limiting that traffic to the local network segment. I use Gimp-Print to print over TCP/IP on Wi-Fi since my WAP doesn't bridge AppleTalk. Works great.
Essentially what you get with Mac OS X is two operating systems. You can fire up Terminal and do all the Unix stuff, but you've also got a rich GUI there as well. Some things are easier to do in the GUI, and sometimes you want to reach for the power of some classic unix commands. Mac OS X lets you do both, without the clunkiness of X.
I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job and am devoutly multi-platform. I think every IT department should install a Mac in their office and use it. People fear the unknown, but what they know is less scary. Any good IT person should strive to learn as much about as many platforms as possible. It makes you more valuable. Anyone that knows only Windows is only limiting themselves in my book. Windows and Unix is better and Windows, Unix, Mac is even better.
It's stupid for companies to force Windows on people that use Macs and are productive. Let the accounting folks use PCs and let the Art Dept use their Macs. And the IT guys can use Linux boxes or whatever they want. The machines chosen should be whatever the people using them can be most productive with, not whatever is cheapest or whatever is most convenient for the IT guys. Use the right tool for each job and hire the appropriately skilled IT personnel to support that.
Buy Apple
as a wise man once said,
"I would rather have software be developed at a slower pace, but have freedom in using all of it. I would rather have a quart of Free Software than a gallon of proprietary software."
Yes, obviously I am not not in IT.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
I havne't used a mac in years, but when someone asks what computer to buy I recomend a mac. For my own protection. I don't use windows, but I get many questions on Windows. I have no idea how to deal with a windows machine that is described over the phone as having given a dialog box that mentioned registery corruption. With a Mac I'm comfortable that I won't get a call like that. Those details are taken care of, so when something bad happens they can normally deal with the problem. (and it doesn't happen as often)
I couldn't imanging my grandpa on a windows machine, but he can work his mac just fine.
your friends can tell you all they like, and you can have theories up the whazoo, but it's clear from your rant that you have no practical experience in what you're writing about. in short, sit down.
What kind of bullshit is that?
no bullshit. most problems with windows flakiness and crashing are influenced (not necessarily caused) by poorly-written or intentionally malicious software. specifically, i mean p2p software, its associated spyware, and things like bonzi buddy. at best, they waste cpu time. at worst, they outright break things.
as i remember, bearshare had a penchant for replacing windows' tcp stack with its own. as a result, https:// urls couldn't be loaded in ie. of course, there are many, many examples of 3rd party software destabilizing windows.
my original point was that if an admin sets up the system such that it doesn't allow the user to install their favorite suite of unnecessary software, then it's likely that the system will run much better. if nothing else, it requires that all the software on the system be installed by someone who (hopefully) knows the effects it will have.
someone that actually READ THE ARTICLE and SAID SOMETHING INTELLIGENT! I'm I'm I'm shocked! Dude, you are too smart for slashdot. You should be out doing things with other people or something.
Are we still not willing to accept that there are not as mnay software options for this platform. With the great graphics they have, they still are below insignificance in the gaming market? All they have are the education & desktop pub, and a small number of fervent loyalists, same as it ever was.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
If you really want to lighten IT's workload, get rid of the Macs and PCs, whether Linux or Windows, and go with Winterms or Xterms. Think about all the time wasted ghosting new PCs, installing patches, etc., etc. With Winterms or Xterms you just plug it in and it works. All the application installs, security patches, etc. happen once, on the server.
I know a guy who worked in a building next to where the building of the company you used to work for is now. His current roommate did also do phone support for within the first 6 months afterwards he could tell them to fuck off but here is the really interesting thing he tells them to fuck off even in the first 6 months of the sale and he averages 340 calls in one day and he doesn't even have a computer.
Printing to a Sharp AT-810 printer? Sorry, never had to do it, and I'll take your word that it cannot yet be done. I was only offering my experience and, clearly, YMDV. That's fine, it's the nature of anecdotal evidence.
Slightly higher prices? I only go by what we pay, and we mostly use laptops, and laptops are not as cheap as desktops no matter which platform.
Can't afford it because you are a student? I hear ya. You do ask for the student discount right? If so, and you still cannot afford it, there's not much I can say. You do what you can when you can.
Macs have automated updates that require rebooting? Horrors! Well of course Macs have that. However they are usually not emergencies, or in response to the latest worm or virus, they can be scheduled at your convenience, and no need to reboot at that time unless you want to. This ain't Windows! Macs just work when you want, how you want.
Your experience is different? That's cool. You made your post just as I made my post. We share experiences. All I wanted to do is to share my experience. Before I tried Macs, I thought I would have problems in a Windows environment. Once I tried it, I found I have no problems whatsoever. Nice for me. Just wanted to share. Thanks for all the feedback, good and bad.
If machines had to be rebuilt once a week then you people were really doing something very, very wrong. Most of the machines in the environment that my organization supports (20,000 Windoze desktops) go three years without a rebuild, then the user gets a new one.
On the other hand, nobody ever got fired for recommending IBM.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
To all those who insist on putting the price of a PC up against the price of a "comparable" Mac...
Let's get something out of the way right up front: a Mac is a Mac and a PC is a PC. Sure, that's obvious, but it surprises me how little it's acknowledged in these kinds of discussions. $1500 worth of PC hardware won't give you a Mac no matter what you put on it. The same goes the other way; Mac hardware and software will never get you a PC no matter what combination you use. In the end, a PC is still a PC and a Mac is still a Mac. Play with numbers all you want, it won't change a thing. Folks who want a Mac will not be happy with anything but a Mac, not even a comparably spec'd out PC, period. The reverse is just as true.
Comparing Apple computers to PCs is like comparing Palm devices to ring-binder planner systems (nothing should be implied by the order in which those items were listed, by the way). Both serve similar purposes, and there are folks who use each who would never think of ditching their choice for the other. So would it be safe to say that all Palm users should ditch their Palm devices for ring-binder planners purely on the basis of a price tag? I think not. Palm users love their expensive Palm devices and binder planner users love their slightly less expensive binders, and neither is going to be wrong for sticking to their preferences.
I find the whole Mac vs. PC debate silly for the reasons described above. I use both, although I prefer my Macs to my PCs. That's just me. My wife loves her PCs and despises my Macs. Life goes on.
Well, what do you expect?
The last time our company had an Apple Sales rep. out at our office, he called our entire desktop infrastructure "utter garbage" and said that whoever did this should be fired (which I was that person, and the person in charge of deciding to start issuing Mac's on a trial basis).
I told him I was that person and he chuckled, obviously embarrased by his stupid comment.
He went home and I signed a sales contract with Dell the next day (and amazingly enough, our profits went through the roof a few months later).
Dichotomies are fun: "The streets are safe in New York. It's only the people who make them unsafe."
The scary part is, he's probably serious about it.
How frustrating that folks are arguing Macs vs Linux, when government agencies are shutting down, including Edwards Air Force Base http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm (scroll down), and Msft itself has fallen - already, way before predicted, to an DOS attack http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/08/15/dos /.
You guys are geeks, you're supposed to be smart. How about looking at each individual circumstance and evaluating: what's better *here* Macs or Linux?
366Mhz is not mid-range. It's the slowest chip that XLR8 sells. None of the boxes on Apple's site offer anything less than 800Mhz. Admittedly, Macs tend to have better performance per Mhz than PCs, but "upgrading" to 366 is ridiculous.
It's the job of an IT administrator to provide the best support possible for his company. You can't do that with a Mac for two reasons: 1) Hardware. It's a fact of life, you can't keep a steady supply of equipment on hand for replacements. It's not only impractical but extremely expensive when you can no longer use those old cards that no longer work with your baseline. Furthermore if I need ANY piece of hardware that can work on a x86 architecture I can go to a local store and buy it in case of emergency, instantaneous delievery. I can't do that with a Mac architecture. No store in my area (and I've got a lot of local stores from Mom & Pop shops to Walmart to Best Buy) sells Mac equipment. Also have you considered price? Whether you like it or not you can get a much better deal on more readily available hardware (sales, neogotiating, whatever). In todays world readily available hardware is x86 hardware. 2) Compatiability. Face it, no matter how much security is pumped up today it still doesn't beat range of use. With Linux or Windows I can use just about any piece of software made for any version of the OS, can Mac boost that? Cost comes into this factor as well, if I want to update my Mac machines, I've got to update just about everything, which can be very costly. If I want to update my Windows or Linux machine I can update just this server, or just these workstations. That's not even taking into account I'm just updating the OS, not all the required software. So lets see: I can go with the Mac which is less widely used, meaning higher chance of training required for new employees, which guarntees if something goes wrong I'll probably have to wait for a part unless I'm lucky enough to have a replacement in stock. When upgrade time comes close I've got to seriously conserve my budget or beg upper management for more to make way for the cost of upgrading so much junk to ensure everything works properly. Or I can go with a Linux/Windows solution, find parts falling around me for cheap prices I've scammed from distributors. I've got cheap upgrades, minor training requirements, and an much larger support base to fall back on. And guess what, stability isn't a problem because a properly administered Windows box is just a stable as a properly administered Linux box, which is just as stable a properly administered Mac box.
Why is this modded as informative? It's misleading at the very least.
First off, the XServe is already running at 1.33 GHz (single or dual processor), so what's the frelling point of putting a 1.2 GHz processor in there? The upgrade you cite is designed specifically to fit in one of the older-model G4 machines (running significantly slower than 1 GHz).
The price difference is not just the chip. The G4 upgrade is a daughter card with a processor and cache memory (including L3 cache on most G4 daughter cards, these days). If the card contains L3 cache, that's about a megabyte or more of expensive high-speed SRAM.
The Athlon XP 2100 is a stand-alone chip, which I might add still requires a heat sink. No L3 cache, though, and no daughter card, so of course it's going to be cheaper.
I am sure most admins would readily recommend Apple hardware (and even systemware and software) if they could rely on Apple themselves making the right kind of pitch to their bosses; but Apple don't do anything with their business potential. Apple hardware 'just works', and so do Apple systemware and software. Admins love Apple stuff, not only because it's cool, but because it means a lot less work for them. But Apple disappoint, have always disappointed, and will continue to disappoint: They won't do business with business, and the world of business will not take them seriously.
The IT organization I belong to must meet its objectives without spending money. To do this, we all make due with what we have. To this day, I'm still using a Dell GX1 (350 mhz P-II) running Win2K. As long as I maintain it properly, it does its job just fine. For spare parts, we strip from the "bone pile." In a real bind, we've been known to call the IT departments of other companies to buy used parts from them. Though many in the company gripe over our frugal ways, we're meeting our objectives and contributing to our ninth straight profitable quarter.
When we absolutely must make a purchase, we can get brand new 2.0+ Ghz machines from Dell and/or HP with WinXP pre-installed for around $450.
If anyone has a real-world example of how their organization is making ends meet, PC or Mac, let's hear it. If there are Mac shops out there in similar circumstances, hearing from you would go a long way toward convincing some of us that it's possible to keep going when the "chips are down."
I'd love to see all our M$ machines cast into Mount Doom, but it just won't happen. Apple had their chance to be the big dog in the desktop world and blew it. Too much inertia in the world to see that change happen now.
Jack
grab an X-serv and then install linux over the mac osx stuff.. voila. best of both worlds.
Politician wants to keep you in getto, living on welfare and food stamps. If you ever become a successful business man, then you won't vote no more and politicians lose their jobs.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I could make the same argument for switching an enterprise to Sun machines, like my company did. The problem is the price of vendor lock-in. Any idiot can learn to use Solaris 8 and Gnome if all the app icons are in place. That same idiot will have a terrible time switching to Macs after using the Suns long enough. Intuitiveness is a misnomer. The biggest difference is pure cost and a rough economy. Corporations want to maximize profit and the TCO arguments for Linux are everywhere. There is story after story of how fewer admins are required per Linux machine. Help desk staff might be another story, since it's not Windows, not because it's not intuitive.
Perhaps adults remember how poorly Macs behaved when they were in school and there were never enough funds to upgrade them? Maybe they also remember how old Macs never let you remove a disk unless you did it exactly the right way and then wanted the disk back before it'd let you do anything, even if you'd lost it. First impressions are everything.
You figured us out!
/.
I was recently asked by my client company about their overall processes. I thought to my self... hmmmmm, they could replace their 3000 computers with Macs, but then I wouldn't have a job because everyone knows how to use a Mac, and Mac's never have problems, so I suggested they stay with the platform and software they already paid for.
Seriously.... this is so faulty, so totally stupid, I can't believe it made to
There are so many things wrong, I can't even start. So I won't.
I have a very hetrogenous network at work - MacOS 9, Win98, and LTSP boxes on the client end, NT4, Linux and Sco OpenServer on the server end. I find that the macs take up an unreasonable amount of support time, much of which is saying 'oh, just reset it, it's crashed again'.
/very hard to manage/, unreliable, hard to back up or force users to store data on the network, and generally not suitable for large-scale business use. Hopefully Apple have improved this with OSX, but I still crashed it in 15 minutes (admittedly running Quark under Classic with a font manager).
MacOS 9 + QuarkXPress + Network + Fonts = Crashintosh.
The LTSP boxes need the next largest amount of support. It's a fairly new installation, and we're having more issues than we expected given initial testing. It's working well, but taking more time than I'd like - hopefully that'll change in time.
The Win98 boxes need the least amount of support and attention. They have no floppy drives or CD-ROMs and the USB ports are disabled, so it's hard for users to bring their own stuff in on disk/flash/whatever. They're asked to email it instead - forcing it through our virus scanner. I know, email isn't for that - but if you have no alternative, it works.
OTOH, MS Word (on the '98 machines) does appear to have a magical ability to rearrange toolbars whenever the user looks away from it, resulting in a fair bit of confusion and wasted time.
Eudora, on the 98 boxes, takes as much support as Mozilla on the LTSP machines. OTOH, mozilla is improving - Eudora is still the same old POS.
My point here - I suspect many IT folks don't use macs because past experience says that they're
Technical professionals won't recommend Apple or linux because they recognize that the best tool for the job is one that employees understand.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
User resentment. If you use Linux or Mac OS X at work, and your users use Windows at home, they're not going to like using a different OS. You'll have more training time, more users trying to make it work like their machine at home, etc., etc.
Conversely, those using Mac OS or Windows at home *won't* want to use Linux at work. It looks different, feels different, acts different, and is a 'close approximation' of Windows.
Woop! Yup, bring on the flames (not targeting anyone, just commenting). Anti-Aliased fonts work about 90% of the time, after much fucking about. Yeah, yeah, you can "apt-get install mscorefonts" and fuck with this config file, and dick with that X configuration; don't forget to update your NVidia binaries, make sure you're running the font-enabled build of Mozilla, etc. - or I can right click the desktop, select "Clear Type" - and have great fonts out of the box. Is this the be-all, end-all? NO. But does appearance affect the perception of usability? You bet. Apple gets it. Microsoft gets it. Eye candy or not, appearance is important.
IE on WinXP w/ ClearType is legible, consistent, and easy to follow. Mozilla on RedHat 9 or Mandrake 9 w/ TrueType fonts doesn't *suck*, but it ain't great.
StarOffice/OpenOffice are "close". Evolution is "close". Like many things GPL, close enough is good enough.
If you/we want to dominate the marketplace, begin by building a better product. 97% of the end-user community gives a flying rat fuck about uptime, etc. They turn their computer on the morning, and off at night to save electricity! They want to play a game here, watch a little porn there, email grandma, listen to some tunes, and not FUCK WITH STUPID SHIT that they don't care about.
*Breath*
Sorry, mod me off-topic/flamebait, but until Linux/Unix can outperform Windows in *all categories* - as rated by a -Typical End User (TM)- ; you have nothing but a hobbyist's OS.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
From the article:
Now, I think differently. Now, I think Macs threaten the livelihood of IT staffs. If you recommend purchasing a computer that requires only half the support of the machine it is replacing, aren't you putting your job in danger? Exactly.
Normally I agree with Cringely but this time I'm just going to have to call B.S.
I'm a sysadmin for a small bank (about 175 workstations spread out of 17 rural locations) and the reason our IT Staff here doesn't look at MAC (or linux for that matter) is that virtually none of the necessary banking software is put out for mac (or linux). And it's not like we're running some obscure banking core software... we're an ITI/Unisys mainframe shop.
Furthermore, no other sysadmin that I've ever talked to has had the attitude of "lets choose something that's difficult to use for job security"... that's just crap. Most of the IT shops I know are, if anything, understaffed and have plenty of job security because of it. We're not about to go looking for more work for ourselves... if anything it's just the opposite.
I use what the industry allows me to use, not what makes my job more secure...
- The auditors said to secure the server... hand me that duct-tape -
The numbers are out there if you take the time to look. I only have old ones, 'cause I don't do this stuff any more. But Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) used to do periodic TCO analyses of Windows vs. MacOS in Fortune 500 environments. IIRC the difference was about $5000/yr/desk for Windows, $2000/yr/desk for MacOS.
Mac user productivity was higher (the machines just worked, were easier to use with more consistent UI, and didn't go 'blue') but mainly support was much cheaper (less upkeep, much less helpdesk, much less reloading of OS, much less backend work on the server & network infrastructure to keep the workstations going.
I haven't kept up so I don't know if they still do the analysis. I was unable to find an old reference on their website, sorry. You'll just have to take my word, or look it up at ZDNet or something. But as several people here have noted, a typical large mac installation seems to require about 1/5 as many people as a large MS installation.
I personally know at least one consultant who shifted from Macs to Windows for exactly the reason Cringely stated. He found that his Windows clients needed him a lot more => he made more money, and was glad to do it.
In my one stint at a $n billion company they spent over $5 million in support, plus unknown lost time, dealing with one virus event (Nimda?). With about 20,000 PCs that works out to $250/pc just for the one event. If you add 2 hours of lost time per person (over 1/2 professionals), that's another $200 in loaded costs. They banned Outlook Express from the company after that incident.
I also note that a couple of years ago when some big virus/worm came round, all of the Big Five (or however many they are now) accounting firms used Unix servers except KPMG. KPMG was down - the entire company as I recall - for a couple of days, while the others continued operating with a few limps here and there. That probably cost almost as much in lost time as their entire hardware infrastructure's capital cost.
People tend to forget that a single onsite support visit of two hours will cost as much as the entire PC, and a single helpdesk call costs from $20-30 minimum, up to hundreds of $. (I used to worry about the cost of my time setting up open source software, but found that it took just as long, usually longer setting up Oracle & iPlanet.)
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Oh horseshit.. The reason I wouldn't bother recommending Apple hardware is because we can get two machines for the price of one.
The exchange:
Me: I think we should get two of these really cool XServe boxes to act as webserver and for our mail machine.
BOSS: Woah! Why are these boxes so much more expensive than last time we bought servers?
Me: Because these are Apples! Even though they don't have a record of reliability in a server capacity, those hippies at Apple claim these boxes are more reliable and better and we can run Linux on them.
BOSS: But the boxes you've been building are all running that thing you call Linux and we've had no problems. Let's spend half the money and get the Intel boxes instead.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Sun's SPARC rackmounts are in this picture. The V210 is pretty comparable to the X-Serves. I'd wager it would do at least as well as the Apple in the long term plan as well.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Perhaps the problem isn't with recommending Apple specifically, but with a lone person trying to wedge anything in that's totally new. Novel OSes and the like are automatically viewed with suspicion, and an integration headache (despite Apple's ever-increasing ability to play nice with the Wintel) they'd rather not bring upon themselves. I perceive most IT departments are engaged in a permanent defensive mode of keeping the existing stuff running well. So they make conservative choices.
http://www.waveworks.net/mac.html
What not true about this? Stay away from people and no one can mug you.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Sorry, mod me off-topic/flamebait, but until Linux/Unix can outperform Windows in *all categories* - as rated by a -Typical End User (TM)- ; you have nothing but a hobbyist's OS.
As rated by a Typical End User? Get real. This hobbyist's OS is used by Goverments, on Super Computers, and by assorted MegaCorps. This hobbyist's OS runs half of the Internet the Typical End User surfs for their porn on. It runs the email servers they send their grandma's messages through. Fuck, even Windows Update is cached worldwide on Linux by Akami.
Maybe the desktop isn't quite there yet (and I'd disagree with that already), but let's try to keep it in perspective, eh?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
The real reason nobody uses apple is because they only have 3 products.
1) Bad fucking ass laptops
2) Rockin' mp3 players
3) Super Multimedia Graphics workstations for photoshop/quick time type artsy people.
Ever seen a 16 cpu server running mac? How about a mac database server?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I had an Atari 800 for about 5 years, never crashed ever.
http://www.ohlssonvox.com
Having worked in a public school district, I'd say the answer to that is a big, fat "no". Admittedly, Windows tends to eat itself every so often, especially if people are adding and removing software, so it'll probably need a reinstall slightly sooner.
However, with all the voodoo that a Mac entails - magic types, blessing bits, PRAM/XPRAM, and all that, it's hardly uncommon for someone to end up with a Mac that's in perfect working order, other than it just doesn't want to boot, and the user doesn't have a clue what to do. People play around in the System Folder, adding unnecessary extensions, and end up with it in an unbootable state. The OS crashes inexplicably one too many times, and the filesystem starts acting weird, so you have to have third-party repair tools handy.
Also, dealing with Apple's service can be a nightmare, especially with their AppleCare parts ordering, and the billing, especially when they screw up your billing, and start claiming that you owe them money for parts that you shipped back to them. Or when you order, and the order for the part gets lost - with an online ordering system. Always fun. (The place I worked for was AppleCare certified, so they dealt directly with Apple for parts - on more than a few occasions, we wished there was someone else to deal with that headache.) I hope they finally fixed the AppleCare online ordering, because it was really bad.
The fact is, Mac, PC, Linux box, whatever - a computer is a complicated device. A lot can, and does, go wrong - especially when most of the people using them can turn them on, run a few apps, and that's about the extent of their skills. Whether it's an actual failure, or just someone screwing around with things till they finally broke something, things will get screwed up, and techs will be needed to make them work again. If you really think "Ooh, if we just buy Apple, this will never be a problem again!" you're just deluding yourself.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
There are other reasons that Macs are being used in most businesses besides IT looking out for their own jobs. And most seem to be outlined here by /. users (preceived costs, lack of apps, unfamilarity, high cost of experiment, vendor lock, ...).
What the fuck is a "preceived cost"?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Because mac doesn't have two mouse button... so we don't need it for IT job....
However, among the about 20 people in my sub-department, there are three with an Apple laptop for home use. One was always a Mac fan, the other took a good look on what as on the market, and the third talked to a bunch of people (including me) which laptop would be the least hassle. We all said: You don't want to have to fool around? Go get an Apple. Note that I've been a Linux person for ten years know, but I like my friends and intend to keep them. Linux on the laptop sucks, not because of Linux, but becaue of the laptop makers.
Anyway, we now have a small but critical mass of people who are getting everybody else interested, and keep bugging our tech people if they can get their Macs linked up to the rest of the system so they can do work from home on a real computer (company policy seems to say "no"). Also, they flash their iBooks around as Apple users are wont to do, and yes, those things are seriously cool. The design makes other laptops look like they were designed in the Soviet Union.
Buy an Apple desktop machine? Hell, no. I can get a far better deal with off-the-shelf x86 parts and SuSE. Buy a laptop from Apple? Yes, I'd switch, and I think most people in our department would, too. But official use? I don't see the inertia being broken. There is truth in the statement that nobody ever got fired for using Microsoft.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I had this case just today. I was talking to my Administrative Assistant friend, and he was just getting off the phone with IS with regard to the Blaster worm. Seems the auto-update thing didn't work for his computer. That turned out to be because he was running NT with service pack 4, and you need SP6 to be able to install the patch.
No biggie, right? But get this - IS's first recommendation was to upgrade to Windows2000. Why? Because "Windows 2000 already comes with SP6". Which is crap, they just meant that the Windows2000 that they would have installed would have already had the correct service pack needed to install the patch - but they still would have had to install the patch!
So, rather than upgrade a perfectly functional NT box (my friend only needs Outlook and Netscape, really) to SP6, they wanted to spend $250 to upgrade to 2000.
Which wouldn't be a big deal if we had money to burn, but we don't. And the best part is, we're a friggin' *nix company!
If you drop a totally different computer and totally different OS into an office that is normally used to windows you'll be causing more problems that solving. Maybe it would make sense for a company totally starting from scratch that hasn't bought any computers yet at all but there aren't any like that.
The modern mac with OS X is no easier to use and maintain than the modern windows XP.
This article is just more talk from apple zealots and doesn't really have any basis in reality.
To all those who denegrate Apple.
Feel free to express your opinions about Sun, SGI, or any other System V Unix. Wait, let's throw in BeOS, OS/2, OS/2 Warp, xBSD, or GNU HURD. Oh, wait, you've never used those platforms? Oh, well I guess you are an expert then.
As for those that have used the current Mac platform and like to spew vitriol for it, whooptie freakin doo, you are apparently clueless enough not to be able to learn something _different_. It's called adapting, humans are supposed to be one of the best of breed in that realm, but it's not happening for you. I guess Darwin didn't think about you with his theory of evolution. Oh, wait, he did, it's called WEAK!
Yes, Apple has issues. The OS has some things that work really well, others that need work. I can say the same thing for Solaris, Windows, HURD, xBSD, and most definitely Linux. Got any other nuggets of wisdom to drop on us?
Crigley is meerly making a statement about things that he notices. He notices that there are companies using Macs successfully and asks the question, "Why can't other companies do the same and be successful? Maybe because they don't want to be."
You know why Apple has such poor support, or fewer applications, or any of the things that Windows or other platforms has that Apple does not? Because of a smaller user base, smaller funding, and smaller demand. It's that simple. If they had even double the userbase, they'd have twice as many applications, twice as many features, and maybe even quadruple the support options. The reason they suck is that they _are_ small. Deal with it. Sun, in all it's glory, is small. Everything is small compared to Microsoft. Linux is tiny. HURD doesn't even show up on the map.
Feel free to correct me with conjecture and commentary about how you _know_ Windows is better because the majority uses it. The majority thought the world was flat in 1400. Does that mean the majority was right? Oh. Sorry, you didn't pay attention in geography because you were too busy being cool. Well, in that case, feel free to walk off the edge of the world...
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
The bottom line: Cost of PC: just hardware. Cost of Mac: hardware + software. You can't "share" a single user license between a PC and a Mac the same way you can share a single user license between two PCs. Macs look expensive at any place where people tend to cut corners with licensing. A new platform forces people to fork over the bucks for a valid license for the new computer.
I was working at a university a while back. I found myself in a PC dominated research group. One of my co-workers was talking about how he was going to replace his old Mac with a PC. I asked him why and he said that "there's no software for the Mac". I immediately shot back with all the standard answers--Office, many Adobe products, several scientific and engineering packages, etc.
His response was that purchasing Office and all the other software that he wanted would be too expensive; he would save a bundle of money by copying the software from the university.
This attitude isn't limited to the academic world. Many small businesses play fast and loose with software licensing, and the extra cost of buying legit Mac licenses drives up the cost.
I wonder if Microsoft is really shooting itself in the foot with Palladium.
Let's get something out of the way right up front: a Mac is a Mac and a PC is a PC.
Yet they both run Office, Photoshop, IE, various e-mail programs, and hundreds of other software programs that can be compared. They both function in pretty much the same way (using a cpu, memory, hard drives, a bus, removable media, etc.). They both have very similar input and output devices (mouse, keyboard, monitor). They both have similar user interfaces (WIMP). They are both used to perform very similar tasks. Your suggestion that the two are incomparable is excrement.
Comparing Apple computers to PCs is like comparing Palm devices to ring-binder planner systems
And here you prop up your poor argument with an analogy. All analogies are flawed. If your argument is really truly good, then you won't need a necessarily invalid analogy to support it; it should stand on its own merits. If you disagree that all analogies are flawed, then take the time to list the differences between an apple computer and a palm PDA. Then take the time to list the differences between a PC and a ring-binder planner.
I find the whole Mac vs. PC debate silly for the reasons described above.
I find your argument weak for the reasons described above. You are stating that the two cannot be compared when, in fact, people compare them all the time. I think you are actually upset that people aren't choosing your favorite computer and even moreso because people can state valid reasons for not doing so (namely, that the price/performance ratio is too high).
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have to help a company that was running a bunch of workstations for graphics design. They were a design/pre-press outfit. OSX ran terrible and always had problems.. It crashed all the time... Even after rebuilding a machine you would have problems not too much later. You just had to push it. Let's not even talk about Mac fonts... Geez the old Mac's were worry free.. Now XP runs circles around OSX.. IMO! Maybe if you just play with the Mac it still holds it's own, but in a business environment like the one above, they are a real pain. Nice little hex dumps when an applications fails.. Come on apple... At least they didn't leave a stupid hole in the OS like the Windows and RPC... Support free they are not...
Actually, no. According to Microsoft's own monitoring, 50% of Windows crashes are the fault of Microsoft code. It was on Slashdot this week.
Female Prison Rape in NY
"Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department's job."
Kinda like McDonalds recommends their own food, EB Games pushes their special magazines and BestBuy recommend a warrenty/the items that give them the most profit and kickbacks.
I guess this is another one of those WELCOME TO CAPITALISM!!! WHERE YA BEEN!?!? moments...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Both the G5 and the Opteron are capable of addressing exabytes of memory. The distinction here is the amount of physical RAM the machine can hold. Show me an Opteron motherboard with 34 trillion DIMM slots. Most Opteron MBs have 16 DIMM slots that can hold ... 8GB of RAM.
I keep seeing "cost" argued back and forth, and people are constantly comparing x86 and Apple.
We seem to be forgetting that at least in the Server Space, you are competing with SUN, IBM, SGI and the likes. Go price some of that stuff and come back to the cost issue.
Also, I have a friend that runs some webhosting stuff. Not a real big firm, but he's been a UNIX guy since the early 80s or so. He checked out an Xserve from Apple, was very objective in his observation. He says that it was a decent machine, but unfortunately inadequate for what apple is touting it for. Things such as the case-insensitive commandline, some SERIOUS security issues such as hash files being wide open, various daemons running unfettered and invisble about the system, and more. He said that he eventually spent untold hours reconfiguring it and adding 3rd party software to do the things that say, a Cobalt or Netra would do out of the box. He never did get it all ironed out, and yet he said by time he gave up on it, he had just about wrung all the "Apple" out of it, coincidentally. His conclusion was that it was a nice start for apple, and would probably work good as a non-net connected central db server in a small business or something, but apple is really not ready for Real World Enterprise Computing. Maybe they will get some experience and be able to compete in the near future.
But there are already plenty of options that are affordable, flexible, well-tailored for specific tasks that will pass right by Apple's current offerings. Ready-to-run within an hour or less, and dependable.
He ended up putting NetBSD on it and it acts as a backup nameserver, mailserver and a few other things, and he's happy with it now. But the point is a $300 PC or a low-end rackmount server from any other vendor would have sufficed, with much less hassle.
Disclaimer: This Guy is a friend on IRC, and this was about a year ago or whenever the first Xserve became available for purchase. And no, i did not spray paint your cat.
do() || do_not();
So you don't auto-preview the message - you still see what looks like a continuation of an existing message thread, from someone you've gotten mail from, or sent to, before. And you open the message. And BAM! You're infected too.
The problem with LookOut is not auto-preview - it's the insane idea that assumes viewing an email requires opening attachments and executing arbitrary code without at a minimum asking the viewer whether he wants to execute the code before doing so.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
There is so much anti-Apple FUD in this discussion it makes me want to puke. I don't even know where to start, and I've only read halfway down the first page.
Please, would it be too much to ask for everyone to try to VERIFY the information they post before they go and say that Mac OS X (Server) can't do this, that, or the other thing, or that you can't upgrade on a Mac?
Oh, and "I tried it and it didn't work" doesn't count. I've tried plenty of things that didn't work for me, on multiple OSes, and that doesn't mean they don't work for anybody.
Cringely is only half right--the other reason Mac OS X hasn't made more inroads is that there is too much misinformation being disseminated regarding its capabilities. IT Staff ( and I include myself in this) need to keep in mind that they serve their users, NOT the other way 'round, and we are OBLIGATED to make sure that we research all possible solutions thoroughly (weeding out endemic FUD) and give our users the best solution for their needs. Period.
I recommend Apple all the time, yet I am in IT. The less stupid crap you need to do on the end-user's machine, the more time you have to tweak server settings, test new stuff (hardware, software), clean up cables, play chess with only your voice, browse /., the list goes on and on. The more time I get to spend in a 66 degree climate controlled room, the better.
I hate sigs.
90 percent of statistics are made up on the spot... 'Nuff said.
$500 dell vs $1000 apple
And I don't. Not for a second.
I mean, spurious logic like this:
OS X is not ready for the enterprise, period
Oh, period. You said period, so damn, I got nothing on that.
If you really were an Apple service guy then you'd know damn well that Apple does not target large (2000+) corporate installations. You'd know the Xserve is an entry into small business admin servers, you'd know that OS X server is aimed precisely at the small creative type of business that the Mac is strong in. They do not compete with Dell or Hpaq. They don't even try.
I mean, come on! Hpaq competes with Apple? Hellloooo? Totally different beasts.
(BTW, The propensity for posters to say 'I have a Mac at home so its cool if I whinge on uselessly about 'em" is becoming far too common.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I run carbon cloner and have several OS .dmg on my ipod for default OSX and Classic installs.
It takes me less than 5 minutes to rebuild a current model mac from scratch. Run Disc Copy, connect one mac to another mac via firewire cable. 10 minutes later, you have a clean working mac. If the home directory is still good or backup, the user doesn't miss a thing. Simply, elegant.
BTW, most macs can be rescued by putting them into firewire by pressing T at boot; hence the computer itself is seen as a BIG firedrive by any other mac. I simply plug my 12" powerbook and can restore any modern mac and retrieve data...
Apps and backups are just drag and drop w/ no dependencie hells, no DLLS. Application installs is truly elegant on the mac platform. We run a 80 person mac shop (with IRIX and Sun servers) and we have little or no support issues.
Can't say the same for Linux, nor Windows.
BTW, BSD rocks.. IPFW and ports are so much better than ipchains and RPMS.
I see a lot of posts saying you can do everything on a Mac that you can do with Windows... well, at my company I see a lot of software RFPs go out and the requirements in the responses almost always specify WinNT/2000/XP workstations. Addtionally, we use a lot of custom Access-database in use at our company.
Now, perhaps you can run in an emulated mode, but is that any less problematic than just running a Windows box? I really don't know the answer because I have limited experience with Macs... if we could "switch" are operations to be Mac-based, I'd be all for it, but I've always assumed the headaches would outweigh the advantages...
On a side note, it's for the same reasons I haven't switched my laptop... ever since OSX came out I've been tempted to get a MAC. But I use MS Access quite a bit and honestly I have few issues with Windows nowadays. Plus I like small laptops and the 12" Powerbook doesn't impress me... you want to see a cool laptop, checkout the Panasonic W2: 12" screen, internal DVD/CDRW, and 48 watt-hour battery in a 2.8 pound package that is only slightly bigger than the screen dimensions.
If the Mac were really any easier, I would switch. Having taught IT in a school with nothing but Macs, I wouldn't. Between frequent white screens and inexplicable slowdowns (memory leaks?) that required a reboot with OS 9, I felt right at home like I was using Windows 98 at my dad's house. I really missed the extra mouse buttons for Opera gestures and X-Windows pasting. Let's not forget that the school computer administrator and resident Mac expert never could figure out how to handle permissions correctly in OS X. We had a homework dropoff box that only the admin could access. I had to ask for chowns every week and she was often busy figuring out compatibility problems with LCD projectors and such. We also had a software crash in OS X that corrupted the password file and required all new accounts. Let's not mention the free copy of OS X Apple sent to me and all the teachers with a EULA not to use it on any school computers. It's obvious they want to force the poor school to buy new hardware and software upgrades. Even for home use, there aren't any video games and I can't just dual boot to Windows to play.
How much power does a rack of Xserve consume compared to a rack of Intel chipped servers? How much more or less cooling is need for the same number machines? Energy costs should be figured in too.
If anything, high energy consumption is a design flaw.
photosMy Photostream
The PowerPC G5 (PowerPC 970, in other words) has a 42-bit-wide address bus. That's 4 TB of RAM.
Plenty, but technically not exabytes. (I prefer "billion gigabytes." It's just sexier than "exabyte," which to me still means "8 mm tape.")
Ok, I have tried to read as may of the moderately rated posts as possible. What I have found was (sorry about the length):
-Many of the negative comments are based on issues / biases that have been resolved for several years. (Pre Mac OS 10.2 at least, most pre Mac OS 10.1)
-There was a post that complained about the difficulty of using Mac OS 10.2 Server. I personally find it extremely easy to use and manage. Mac OS 10.3 Server is making advances on that including adding the ability to act as a primary domain controller thanks to the inclusion of Samba 3. For the poster that did not like the management apps they have been completely rewritten as well as being able to be managed via the command line. On the documentation side yes it is a little light. That too is supposed to change in 10.3 Server. For more information on 10.3 Server go to for information on the currently shipping 10.2 server Oh and one more thing. Mac OS 10.2 Server received Product of the year from NetworkMagazine.com () that has to be worth something right?
-Cost. While Linux and BSD systems cannot be beat for cost. The amount of dedicated support and liability that they have can be. Microsoft on the other hand can be beaten in the per user license realm. Both in desktop OS and server OS Apple's Macintosh licensing fees are reasonable and flexible. The general single user licenses are free with purchase of a machine and $129 standalone. Apple can be flexible on this with large or educational purchases. The server version of their OS is even better priced $499 for a 10-user license and $999 for and unlimited user license. They also provide a plethora (sorry you never get to use that word enough) of support options all reasonably priced.
-Reliability and Stability. The one thing I absolutely love about Mac OS X is the stability it offers. This is part due to the OS and part hardware. The key thing here is that Apple controls them both. I don't have to worry about the hardware I'm running being compatible with the OS and vice versa. Apple has already done that for me. The result uptime. Which at the end of the day is worth the extra dollar for me. For instance the PowerBook, which I am writing this on, has had uptimes on the order of 80 days (I just put it to sleep when traveling.) The only time I have to reboot is when an update requires it.
-Major OS releases. When Apple releases a new version of its OS for example the to-be-released before the end of the year Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS 10.3 Server add several new features and improvements not just "bug fixes." And the nice thing about the releases is that Apple takes feedback about its products and if the demand is high enough put it into its next release () for the client version and () for server. I want to see that from a major commercial OS.
-Open Source. Mac OS X is built on open standards, and open source. You can download and tweak Darwin, upload changes. The same features that you get with all open source projects. The exception to this is the GUI interface. Most other commercial operating systems do not give you this ability. Also check out Fink a package manager (based on the Debian package manager) for ported open source projects.
-Security. Mac OS X abandoned telnet in favor of the more secure SSH in 10.1. Apple has a quick response time to up coming security threats and releases an update to fix them (). Apple provides easy and efficient methods of applying the updates via "Software Update". The OS ships in a secure fashion with all incoming ports closed. There is a good paper on securing Mac OS X available at () There are A/V solutions from all of the main companies (Symantec, Sophos, Virex.) Tripwire has been ported for host based IDS. You can run snort, nmap, nessus, etc.
-Expandability and performance. The Power Mac G5 can handle up to 8GB of Ram. Show me a desktop PC that can handle that much memory. The G5 processor has a half speed front side bus so the Dual 2Ghz has two 1Ghz FS
The price of $210 for the Athlon XP 2800+ included a new motherboard, because most likely if one is running a chip as old as an Athlon 1GHz a motherboard replacement would be necessary to upgrade to an XP 2800+.
Prices for the CPU/MoBo Combo and PC2700 ram were current listings on Pricewatch.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If people weren't irrational, they'd be one of those things which everyone is having this discussion about :) Then of course, it would come down to which 'race' is better. Oh dear...
The Mothership
"IT doesn't recommend Apple solutions because they need less support, thus endangering IT professionals' job security."
Okay, so why don't they recommend Linux, again?
NMI
my xserves have never failed. redundancy doesn't mean shit if the product isn;t good to begin with. I got lucky with super micro and in fact the latest 2000 cpu cluster at my company is super micro too. but frankly the other copanies on paper were actually better.
the only reason I dont buy more apple xserves is that as long as I can get lucjy the linux boxes are cheaper. but if I had to pay anybody the same as an apple i'd rather have an apple since I know it will work. you can have your redundant power supplies.
the key if finding a good vendor and sticky with them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's probably harder to get the data these days, but "probably" is generally not a good term to be using in a column. I'm sure with his connections he could have gotten the data from Apple if not elsewhere if he wanted to and had the time before deadline. I wouldn't have responded but several other folks were demanding real data as well, so I gave 'em as much as I could.
:O)
My nephew has an XServe now, and he's very happy with it although he's been a Mac'r for a long time and doesn't know Unix, Apache and so forth.
As for myself I tend to be more comfortable in a BSD environment - it was always more user and sysadmin friendly than AT&T (example of geek-built vs. corporate-built worldviews), while Linux used to regularly bug me with its windows-isms (like FDISK instead of format & partition - I mean, !!!). It's, like, almost unix but not quite!!
Oddly enough, besides the fact that I'm now a starving student again, one thing that is preventing me from getting a Mac is that I'm so used to life in the open source/GNU world that I'm a bit scared about being in a vendor environment again. But I was very happy using a Mac workstation to manage a bunch of remote unix servers. I had the 3rd party Mac X windows server (name?) set up so the X windows of the remote servers, connected via ssh, worked just like the other Mac app windows
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
How is pushing a button on a keyboard *and* the mouse at the same time "easier" than having a mouse with two buttons in the first place?
Apple aggressively marketed the one button mouse concept for years to promote their own unique slant on "easy to use" and then when world+dog discovers that the human hand has more than one finger, no one stops to ask what they were smoking.
What boils my cheese is how Apple gets away with a vacuous redefinition of the word easy.
Easy is one of the most complicated human criteria in human language. For a two year old, it is easy to go down stairs on your bum. That is how I always felt using a Mac.
When a teenager I discovered that stairs (on the way down) were mostly optional. I discovered that I could make it all the way to the bottom in a single bound, two steps from the top. Then one day my forehead sailed into the overhang, dropped me on my ass halfway down, with a concussion and a damaged tailbone. That's how I feel using older versions of Windows.
One Christmas morning I spent at my girlfriend's, she had an older house where the carpet was not glued onto the steps, but pinched down with metal rods at the nook of each step. The steps underneath were the old wooden style with the rounded projection. There were shiny patches from long years of use worn into the stiff carpet bubbles folded around the stair edges. I put my bare foot onto a shiny patch as slippery as a skating rink, then smashed my leading heal on every step all the way to the bottom. That's how I feel using Unix. Ten years later, that same heal still hurts in the shower.
One time I worked in an office building with highly depressurized stairwells. Because I still had my keys in my right hand, my pinky was folded outside the handle. I pulled hard to crack the airlock, the door swung open ballisticly (which I was prepared for), I was just to pull my hand free when hard steel door handle crushed the small knuckle of my pinky finger against a decorative rockface. What I didn't realized is that the decorative rockface stuck out six inches from the plane of the door hinges so it crushed my finger well before it finished swinging to 90 degrees. This left me with a mild, permanent disfiguration of that knuckle. I'm not sure what OS that represents, but both Windows NT and VMS spring to mind.
So here Apple comes along and proclaims that their stairwell is easier to use because there design has only one handrail, so you don't get confused about which handrail to grab, nothing can go wrong, and I'm supposed to feel impressed.
I think I could fill a 500 page book on stairwell design factors: step dimensions, surface materials, footwear, footsize, materials carried, overhead clearance, emergency lighting, evacuation, firefighting, bannisters and handrails.
At the end of the day the answer would be that different designs are better for different people, different tasks, different situations.
Not even a common stairwell has a one-size fits all solution.
One decision has made my life easier: never underestimate the complexity of the task you are facing. After beating myself senseless on dozens of different stairwell designs, that's the only kind of easy that still interests me.
"Mac is competitive on price."
Not in my experience. Not only is it more expensive/performance, you have to take into account that it does NOT run the most popular games, or a great majority of the most useful commercial business applications. A few nice suites that it does very well don't justify the price that Jobs wants for it.
"
Mac runs BSD Unix-like OS, very similar to Linux but you can run photoshop on it."
That's a troll, plain and simple. the GIMP does most of what photoshop does, and If I had to use the commercial version of photoshop, I'd rather dual boot and use windows to run it than cripple myself with MacOS
"Mac laptops kick ass and wireless network is about 10 times easier than that goofy card sticking out of your PCMCIA slot."
Whatever...if it's working for me under Linux, it can't be any easier under OS/X, and I don't give a shit if there's an antenna sticking out of my PCMCIA slot. Plus I can run stuff I actually need, unlike if I was running OS/X.
""wow, only $999? I figured they were $4000 or something."
The ones that are at least a little useful are closer to $2000 than $900. As always with a "base" unit, you get what you pay for.
"ARGH! Why are people so afraid to try a different type of computer? "
Because people need to get WORK done, and they generally can't do it on the Mac and justify the cost. Also because people like to play games, and they DEFINITELY can't play the games they want to play on the mac (unless chess is "good enought", in which case they aren't serious gamers.)
It's not fear, it's common sense.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Hear the Shocking Truth!!! People act in accord with their perceived self-interest!!! Story at Eleven!!!
I invite you to google for "medical equipment malfunction"
You'll get interesting stuff like this:
Oops, I did it again!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
...that IT doesn't recommend Apple solutions because they need less support...
What a load of shit. The reason we aren't recommending Macs is we are dealing with users who a) don't have time to learn a new O/S and a new way of doing things. and b) have to have a platform that can run the software that they need to get their jobs done. What does that software nearly always run on? Windows. What does it often NOT run on? Mac. That's it in a nutshell. It's not which is better or which is less likely to crap out or which one needs the least amount of support, it's which ever one gets the job done that the users demand, pure and simple.
You're using her as bait, Master!
"Helpful hint: anti-virus software is not a cureall."
Neither are condoms but you're an idiot (or very trusting of your partner and don't mind having a kid) not to use one.
AntiVirus isn't cheap. But what costs you more money? $50 per PC to keep the viruses at bay or the money spent fixing systems (and lost productivity) after they get hosed?
Firewalls and AntiVirus are two essential and BASIC components to running any computer on the web. There's no excuse not to have them.
I was stupid once and got hit by nimda. Fortunatly it didn't do any real damage and my server was cleaned and back on-line in a couple hours. It hasn't been without AntiVirus software since. And that was about 2 years ago.
How many times do you need to blast an image before you learn?
Ben
Work Safe Porn
-- Any money saved on support will be spent to hardware.
So you crunched numbers on this, or just said it because it was convenient?
-- Many companies have custom made software packages. Why port them to new hardware and software when you can just buy a new PC or upgrade an old one?
Yes, why break the cycle of torment from Windows?
-- I can't tell you how many people bought an Apple simply because it came in that pretty case.
Silly humans. They buy cars for reasons like that too. You'd think people cared about aesthetics or something.
-- You can add memory, but at a higher price when compared to PC.
What dimension are you from?
-- They make no money if their boxes can be upgraded for a long time. They'd rather you replace it.
Part of the reason that Macs are easy to support is that people don't tend to turn them into frankstein machines, with a hard drive from 95, a NIC from 97, a USB card from 99, and a motherboard from 92. Perhaps you've noticed Windows doesn't always deal well with multi-generation configurations like this. People that dedicate their lives to maintaining/building computers may find this approach appealing. The vast majority of computer users are not in this category.
-- The G5 is overkill by most standards
Huh?
-- not to mention it's still damn expensive
US$3,000 for a dual processor, 64-bit unix workstation (that runs consumer apps) and DVD writer? Seems like a good deal to me. Or you can get a G4 flat panel iMac for $1300.
-- A PC will cost more to support but less to buy and upgrade.
Yes.
-- The addition of DDR memory was made by a marketing team. The 100MHz (or is it 133) front side bus can't use the extra memory bandwidth.
Did you mean a 1GHz front side bus , per processor?
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
The Xserve RAIDs have redundant power supplies. May be a sign of things to w/ the G5 Xserve...
I can't believe what I'm reading. I swear 90% of these people don't use the tools sitting right in front of their face. Shit like, "I had to run around to (fill in number) machines to install this, blah blah blah....!" Whatever, learn your trade before you start ranting on slashdot how hard something is in a particular OS.
And the sad thing is, I KNOW most of the people I'm talking about have been in the business for more than 5 years. It goes to show how getting a QUALITY education makes all the difference.
Here's a bit of advice for all you struggling with a particular OS. BE LAZY. There is always an easier way to get the job done. And it never ever involves CLICKITY CLICKITY, TYPITY TYPITY at every machine.
Nope, I didn't realize it could be configured that way. I'd just heard some folks who own newish Macs griping about it.
Robert X. Cringely reminds me of Jon Katz. A lot. Perhaps one is a clone of the other?
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I used to do Mac support. They do break. There ARE support issues. I didn't spend a year of my life restoring AppleTalk access to printers for nothing, you know!
I don't even have an Apple to recommend or a job to lose. Unreal.
What's in a sig?
I wonder when the last time was that this guy actually worked in a computer department? In the early 80s when departments were well staffed?
I'll ask my work tech admin if he's happy dealing with the fall out from Windows Viruses or if my boss is? I know what the answer is "we have better/more enjoyable things to do than patch windows".
There are more simple reasons why companies don't use macs.
There is a perception that you are 'bound' to Apple in terms of hardware, rather than the vendor independence afforded by Microsoft
There is less business software. We use a call centre package at work. Is there a Mac version? Nope. What about something like Coda? Nope.
You can't so easily get developers to write software for Macs. I know that's a vicious circle, but that's the way it is.
They are perceived as being "for graphic designers".
I'm sure many people just running Word and browsing the net can manage fine with a Mac. Personally, I'd rather stick with Microsoft or bank on Linux.
Windows actually works out cheaper, amazingly enough, and they only assault you with upgrades every 2-3 years or so (if you're on the NT side of things).
Not for the number of useful features that you get. In my eyes, both Apple and MS are feature companies. But while Apple concentrates on features that are (for the most part) very usefull, MS adds features so you have a reason to upgrade. Kind of like home appliance manufacturers: yeah your 2003 Kenmore stove isn't really any better than the 1998 model, but just look at these new features!
For me, there's only three useful features that XP has over 2k: fast user switching, dll handling and system restore. But those nice features are brought down by the Big Gay Al's Big Gay Gui, bloat and activation jibba jabba.
I don't worry too much about the prices for the OS's as I never pay for them. My family has spent over $20,000 on Macs over the years, so I don't feel guilty about copying a cd from a friend. That and I plan on buying a Powerbook as soon as I have the money. As for Microsoft, if they want to force people to use their software, it should be for free dammit.
This reminds me...
The OS upgrade for windows, if you are a home user and buying the upgrade and not the full version, is $20 less than for the MacOS upgrade, but I am willing to pay *at least* that much for a full installation CD and *at least* that much to not be treated like a criminal by the operating system when I try to install it.
Not to mention that the XP install is an ugly mess that wipes your user directory... I can only hope that cow upgrade comming in 2005 is somewhat nicer about it.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
They know windows, most of them do atleast, and thats all they know...
At my old company we had about 10 mac's but there wheren't supported by IT, since they wanted courses first.
I also worked at the IT dep and i would look at them with my coworker, but we where the system programmers....not the support staff...
And ofcourse its true that MS creates lots of jobs with there windows, since it needs loads of support. I advice MAC's to my customers, since i own a mac, my girlfriend does and it works fine. And as an PC Repair Man we also have MAC jobs todo, since they have problems too, but most of the time you can really help automate these people instead of putting your time in support. Thats what IT should be about, automating things instead of supporting. Computers are like TV's you turn them on and they work, unless you buy crap.
As stated in the subject, I am a linux admin. So take my comments with a grain of salt. I disagree with the IT Myth that it takes more people to manage a large number of Linux boxes than it does to manage a similar number of Windows boxes. That has never been my experience. I would guess that it is the opposite, but I don't have hard data to support that. If you manage your entire windows network with 2 IT people, you should be able to manage a similar Linux deployment with the same nubmer of staff. True, you may need to hire new people, since in my experience, Microsoft certified employees are often too inflexible to learn new technologies.
There is also the idea (and this could be true) that Linux admins cost more than Windows admins. Again, this hasn't been my experience. I certainly don't make six figs, or even close to that amount. Do I feel that I am underpaid? No. Judging by all the salary surveys that come out in my area, I am well within the average for my job description.
Finally, my aversion to the Mac has nothing to do with my desires for job security. Partly it has to do with a number of really bad experiences with them when I was doing support at the junior college I attended. Admittedly, I lack experience with os 10, My experiences were with os 8, but trying to troubleshoot network problems with the Mac interface was difficult at that time, due to the fact that some of the network settings were buried in one location, others were buried in an entirely separate location. I have also never gotten used to the corporate mantra "more is better." Even when spending someone else's money, I could never justify to myself the extra $600 - $1000 that purchasing a Mac would cost over a similarly powered PC. Robert X. Cringely might consider that an insignificant amount, but coming from my small town background, I never could.
Finally, I have never considered the mac interface to be beautiful or intuitive. Come on, dragging your floppy to the trash to eject it from the drive? I have always hated that context sensitive menu bar accross the top of the screen, the happy smiling icons staring back at me from the monitor, and the file system where if you wanted to get to something quickly, you had to put it on your desktop.
Anyway, I have ranted enough.
IANAL... But I play one on
Support usually costs a fixed amount per purchase or per year, and not per support call, so recommending a solution because it requires _more_ support would be shooting yourself in the foot
It's even better than this... Apple listened to the people who were griping about this, and changed the lookup order so that /etc/hosts gets looked at first.
/etc/hosts? just do it.
[netsrek@Buffer:~] lookupd -d
lookupd version 310 (root 2003.07.29 18:17:00 UTC)
Enter command name, "help", or "quit" to exit
> configuration
Array: "Configuration"
==> 8 objects
[
Dictionary: "Global Configuration"
<snip>
Dictionary: "Host Configuration"
LookupOrder: Cache FF DNS NI DS
_config_name: Host Configuration
see that? The lookup order for host information is cache, then flat files (/etc/hosts) then DNS, then NetInfo (kind of like Active Directory vaguely) then any other configured Directory Services.
No futzing around needed. Want to add entries to
i don't read slashdot anymore.
If you recommend Macs for render farms or heavy processing, then you should lose your job (terrible price / performance ratio). For desktop / office stuff, personally I think Linux is the way to go, but Macs will do the job done fine. For design work, it's between Mac and Windows, and it really boils down to the software you want to use.
The drives and power supplies in Macs are made by 3rd party vendors, just like the ones in PCs. Buy the same brand and you'll have exactly the same failure rate. If you think that slapping an Apple logo on the box makes the drives and PSUs magically become more reliable, then you're an idiot. If you know they don't and still spit out that nonsense, you're a troll. Personally, I vote on the second hypothesis.
You've all been to winface.com and bought your UNIX guide to Defenstration? It's a better read than Bob's article to be honest.
I could really tell you which was easier to admin: Linux or Windows because while Windows is easier to set up, keeping it running is a nightmare of updates and the effort grows exponentially as you add more windows machines. In comparison, Linux can be a bitch to set up but it's easy to script the necessary updates so adminning one or a hundred isn't that much more effort.
The nice thing about Mac OS X is that it's got both down pat. It's easy to set up and it's easy to admin. Our company web server (iMac 233 running Mac OS X) has been a lot easier to admin than it's predecessor (same hardware running Linux).
And, yeah, it's true that you don't need a GUI to run a server. So...just turn it off on OSX. It's just an edit of a text file - I'm sure most of the nerds here could manage that.
It doesn't have L3 or a daughter card because it doesn't need one. PCs are designed to be easy and cheap to upgrade. Macs are designed for people who can't tell a CPU socket from ZCR slot. And the XP 2100+ runs circles around the G4 1.3 GHz (it's about 35% faster in pure CPU tests). A heatsink costs about $10, so feel free to increase the Athlon's price to $71 (although, if you're upgrading, chances are you can use your old heatsink). Your message is typical of a Mac zealot, and a trip to your web site confirms that: you can't resist the urge to say "yes, I used iPhoto, I'm a good iBoy".
Can I get a refund for the original (useless, 1-button) mouse?
Having sold wintel to companies ranging from mom&pop to SBC, Coke and FedEx I think I'm qualified to point a few things out:
Software is god. Usually software requirements drive hardware requirements. Perception is more enterprise stuff runs on wintel. Reality: many enterprise apps are bad ports of stuff writen for other platforms. Also: vendors typically appear to charge a little less for their wintel software and make up the difference in gold and platinum support contracts that are just a part of the deal on their AS/400 or Unix versions.
Strategic IT Purchases are Political. With the exception of very small companies, IT platform decisions are not usually made by the CIO. The CIO and IT managers act as advisors as the CFO or Controller, CEO and other executives make a committee decision. The result is that decisions are made based on sizle, perception and consultant's advice more that anything. Believe me - you aren't hearing Gartner, Bearing Point, Accenture whispering "Buy Apple" in anyone's ear.
Most Wintel v. Apple (or Unix) decisions are about should we switch to Wintel. That's right. Most of the time it works like this: CEO and CFO tell IT to get rid of Apple (except for the marketing VP's staff) and Unix. The IT team has to then decide to 1) fight for keeping Unix and possibly loose job and 401K vesting or 2) Manage a glorious rollout project that will result in more $$$ at the next place.
Perception v. Reality is not in Apple or Linux favor in the board room. Right now, MS has done an amazing job of teaching their vendors to sell "low total cost of ownership (TCO)." TCO basically says when you buy take into account all the costs associated with the purchase over the life of the product. While reality is that Apple and Linux systems require lower headcount and generate less downtime, most TCO models assume that the IT department will remain the same size and require more educated errrr expensive people. They also don't factor in software upgrades.
Future Development is to be on wintel. Many companies claim that they are moving future development to Wintel for their package. Buyers see this as validation that the world is changing to their point of view.
Salesmanship. Disclaimer: there are some really smart, dedicated and professional salespeople in the Apple and Linux world. The brutal facts of reality are that most Apple and Linux reps are good geeks but not good salespeople. This statement does not apply to IBM.
-- $G
So you don't use Macs and you don't use Windows... but you recommend Macs? What's that supposed to mean? If they're good, why the hell don't use use them? And if you don't use Windows, why do people "ask you many questions" about Windows? And what's this about "a dialog box mentioning registry corruption"...? I've been using multiple flavours of Windows for years (since 3.0) and I've never seen any such thing.
Because only a few in each batch are tested, whereas each and every SCSI drive is tested.
HTH.
Deleted
Artec Design offers that. Cheap and excellent Thin Client that runs either a thined-down Debian or Windows CE. What more could you ask for?
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
But, then, we're moving all the unix users on to an array of login servers and getting rid of all the workstations at the desktop. Or rather, moving them to the backend.
o s it'snolongermyproblem.
Nobody gets individual upgrades or replacements from now on. They want computing power? They click on the Cygwin Xserver, Hummingbird, use an XTerm or Idon'treallygiveatoswhatisphysicallyonthedesktopc
Upgrading becomes a case of adding or replacing servers. And it was the I.T. dept which suggested it, why? Because supporting desktop based systems is a Royal Pain In The Arse! We really really have better things to do.
You could easily do the same thing with windows and mac systems.
Deleted
I manage a group that roles out and manages SOEs in a resonalbe size organiseation (~3500 workstations)
And in my experiance Apple suck.
Our PC supplier, provides us with new hardware to check that our standard images run on it, before the hardware is released.
Apple refuse, and so we sometime have to stop shipping new apple models for 2 to 3 weeks while we sort out what the problem is with our standard image.
Whats more Apple refuse to tell us when a new model will release, as we may stop buying the current model
This causes us major problems as all workstations are on a 3 year lease, and when we have to return workstations, they have to go, and we cant wait for apple to get the act together.
The other minor problem is that OUR mac's (all 500 of them) cost us about twice the cost to support compared to our Win2k / WINxp fleet (mainly as we have a fully managed Windows SOE, and the Macs are standalone.)
Hopefully when our managed Mac SOE is released, those costs will fall dramaticly.
Another problem is Apple will not discount,
If I buy 50 G4's, do I get a good price ?
No apple will give me a free Xserve which I dont want as I already have 3 of them !!
The final problem is intergrating the Macs with out Environment, it is not simple, and the Apple documentation is worse than non existant, we mainly have to use documentation written by third party people, and that is not good.
My experience underscores some of Cringely's points. However, Apple has too many open issues overall for corporate comfort. Some random thoughts.... Apple basically sells a 1U server which has limited application, at least in the corporate environment. Most corporations I have seen, need lots more horsepower and diskpower. Another issue that Apple must face up to, is the abscense of either well accepted applications (e.g. databases) on their hardware or the abscence of programmers for applications where their is programming depth in the organization. Ultimately the major worry of any IT manager is who will support an application after the original developer leaves, dies etc. In support of the client side, I was always amazed in the early 90's, where you needed one SA for every 30-50 Microsoft PC, while you could get away with 1 SA for every 120 Macs! Obviously the ratio have improved in both camps. Regarding usability, I think OSX has been somewhat of small step back. Many might argue but OS9 seemed less quirky. Also Apple has some annoying issues (from a corporate management point of vu) such as using Macs with print server. Try connecting a relatively common Epson with a Mac through a print server.
I'm not an accountant, but they tend to be really anal about hardware. They want the old ones tossed out so they can get them off their books.
Anyone know the tax implications this?
(I know, way off topic, but it is something that might stop other companies from doing a similar thing...)
...at least when talking about non-tech stuff. IT departments don't recommend apples because they don't know much about them. Having a 10% market share doesn't get you a bunch of people raring to learn to support the Mac. That coupled with the fact that until the last couple of years the thing was still using 1980's OS architecture which caused a win95-like high number of crashes per operating hour, a claim that even M$ can't make any more, caused Macs to be a very poor solution for day to day work in a corporation. Finally they're expensive, not because they're better but because the laws of Supply and Demand mean they have to be more expensive (back to the crappy market share). In the past the only reason you had macs were that you had artists who were convinced of their surperiority and had to have one. It was eaiser and cheaper to buy these people a Mac and then refuse to support it than it was to set 30 minutes asside each day to listen to a Jobsian Sermen.
That said, if Apple can drive the cost down a bit and pick up market share (they've already fixed the largest part of the architecture problems by switching to OSX) then you'll see apples appear in corporate america as more and more techs learn to support them and execs are drawn in by the prices. However, the vast x86-wing conspiracy of the corporate world is just B.S.
There are really only 5 CAD packages that matter. AutoCAD, ProEngineer, I*DEAS, CATIA and Unigraphics. There are lots of other packages out there, some pretty good, some not so good. But the 5 I mentioned above are the "standards" (for lack of a better term) that are used throughout industry. Those others that were mentioned (ArchiCAD, CADintosh, ..., MacSchema, PowerCADD, VectorWorks, etc) are not widely used and present potential compatibility headaches if you want to exchange electronic drawings with suppliers or customers.
Want to work with DaimlerChrysler? You need CATIA. Ford? I*DEAS. GM? Unigraphics. If you work in the aerospace industry, chances are very good that you will need CATIA. If you are doing 2D CAD, AutoCAD is the standard everywhere. If these CAD packages are not available on a mac, then the mac doesn't have any CAD packages that matter.
Believe me, I'd love to use a Mac for CAD work but it's simply not an option right now. Now that it is unix based, there is a prayer of seeing CATIA, I*DEAS, UG and ProE on a mac since they also have unix versions already. AutoCAD is unlikely to come to the Mac anytime soon I think. They're tied too closely to Windows and have no real reason to change that.
To sum up 80% of these posts:
I'm a computer expert and just like I tell everyone at work,
although Wintel has problems, Macs are overpriced and
out of touch with what users want to run. Besides, there's
no software available and who wants a fruit colored PC?
I know I'm right because 6 years ago I had to admin a bunch
of Macs at my community college and it was an awful mess.
So don't tell me that Macs don't have problem, I've lived it!
I haven't touched a Mac (why?) since then but I imagine that
OS X isn't any better. I've read things on the net about all kinds
of problems. Besides, my Athlon XL3600 that I just built will
blow the doors off of any Apple stuff, at a quarter the price!
We just installed Windows Server 2003 at work and I can do
everything on it I want, just like at home.
ummm I went to the nearest Apple store:w edenstor e
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/s
and to the most PC-like computer:
G4
Now If I just could find "the dock"
Is it this?
"Copyright (C) 2003 Apple Computer, Inc. Alla rattigheter forbehalls.
Mer information finns i Villkor och Apples policy for integritetsskydd."
Get it over with. Install your base hardware and software, then lock on the Centurion Guards. Have all data be written to local servers.
Then if they install any crap or if a virus hits, just reboot the machine. Bam, back to normal. They could format the hard drive, reboot and its back to normal.
Dirk
I'm the Network Admin for a small school and I'll tell you why we don't have more Macs on our network...
Active Directory and Group Policies.
These technologies allow us to deploy group specific registry settings locking down things that get users in trouble. It allows us to remotely configure proxy servers, and remove controls that users don't need or aren't allowed to use. It allows us to enforce remote patch installation, and create a commonly configured software installation for all users. It allows us to redirect folders to more secure/appropriate places, and have every users settings follow them around the network. The list of remote management stuff goes on and on.
Apple, for the first time in history, has a software base to challenge Microsoft. OS X is great, but Apple needs it's own directory services and policy management software and it needs something to replace exchange server. If it can provide those features, then Apple WILL show up on more networks than it currently does.
Mangement and control are what Network Admins need.
-ted
2.5: throw that godawful puck out the window, and plug in a decent 3 button mouse, while cursing apple for their infuriating habits.
What you are saying makes sense. however, I have seen companies like Managistics which regularly used video con to talk to the coders..The coders are thus kept fairly well informed of the demands of the end user. In a number of cases, the US company just puts its client directly in touch with coders in india.
OS X is BSD based. You have most of the things you have in Linux, such as a Terminal with bash or tcsh (you can also drop the GUI altogether if you edit the startup file), where you can edit your scripts to your heart's content. A lot of stuff is different but available (ipfw instead of iptables, netinfo for users, groups, network config etc etc) and you should find your way around quickly.
I get irritated by so many people who used Macs back in the OS 6-9 days making authoritive statements about the OS of today. It seems similar to someone here making authoritive statements about Linux based on knowledge of setting up slackware in 1998, or of Windows based on experiences with Win95 or WinNT.
Time moves on, things change.
Wow, cringly trolling on /. Who'd of thought... Seriously though, Mac's percieved easier administration is just that, percieved. Those other IT departments are just setup incorrectly and probably don't have a real corporate standard for hardware. In my company we have 12 techs in various places around the world to support ~2500 users. Most users having 2-3 pc's. Datacenter ops has 15 people to support the wan, the various servers, and notes.
Now, how can 12 people support 2500 users? Correct fucking hardware standards. You don't buy from little mom and pop shops, you stick to major manufacturers who keep the same basic hardware in their machines. We use IBM, but there are other companies that fit the bill. You don't give users 50 different choices for machines and you don't change those choices every 6 months.
At my company a user has a choice of 2 desktop solutions and unless you're a VP or higher, 2 laptop solutions.
You can get a netvista or a x pro for a desktop depending how much power you need, or you can get a t40 or a30 series laptop (x series available to VP & higher). IBM has a tech that comes out 3x a week to repair all hardware that fails, what little there is aside from a user's kid popping keys off their laptop keyboards. Total call volume using standard hardware? 600-800 calls a month. That includes reghosting machines and things like network lockouts, needs more toner, etc.
Oh yeah, norton ghost. Should a machine fail and you need to setup a new drive, ghost an image on to it. 20 minute setup instead of 3 hours...
Well, it's not MS-Windows, and that's probably close enough for him... (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
OSX is so much worse than Linux that you use Mac on Linux with either OSX or OS9 running there instead of native OSX on the machine? I find your statements accurate in terms of Apple's nonexistant leasing plans (in the USA, in Europe it's different depending where you are) and poor support plans for enterprise clients, but your claims about OSX and running MOL make me think that you have either very old Macs, or haven't done much Apple support in the last two years. OSX fits into corporate networks much better than OS6-9 did, due to it's built in SMB, NFS what have you support.
OSX is based on BSD. This means that for all practical purposes, it's the same as Linux (except it has a better GUI )
As for oldish Macs, there is a company that sells an special Mac Linux distro, and if you like SuSE and Debian will also oblige (I have Yello Dog Linux running on my old 333Mhz G3 Powerbook).
There are some good points throughout this entire thread about the cost and usability of the new apple line of computers (and not just the servers). I certainly give Apple credit for the innovation and style they've put into their product (not my taste, but at least they're original).
My issue with Apple, and I'm willing to bet it's fairly commonplace is that I still have a bad taste in my mouth fromm their company culture. IMHO the biggest strength of the PC is that everyone is developing for it - both Hardware and Software. Yes Mac is a 'good' computer, but my PC's (yes, plural) are just as good, totally configurable and 'evolve' over time. Each PC can run any number of OS and take any number of hardware components and work with a huge variety of industry wide components, giving me total price and function control. Same with software, you have huge movments in the PC world with open source operating systems, applications and now gaming and very little with the Mac. If one PC vendor goes down, its really not that big of a deal. Plus I continually scavange parts of my PC's to create more powerful models or models suited to specific tasks. This holds true on a personal or small business levels, and probably for most medium sized companies as well. A staff of a cost minded medium sized business (say a factory)can go out and check everything from ebay to refurbished parts to computer 'junkyards' and probably get what they need to maintain their infrastructure.
Jobs/Apple has held a very tight leash on Apple development for years - and will continue to do so. This is why Apple has the small showing it does, they really aren't suited for all that much, they aren't that adaptable and the software available is nothing comared to the PC. I don't see why Cringely thinks this is a mystery. Computer use starts from the bottum up, more people use PCs so more people are familar with PCs, PC's are more versatile for any use, so people are comfortable with PC's and IT departments are going to recommend PC's.
I don't see Apple's culture changing either, even their Idesk that another poster showed reflects a tendency to make a desk good only for one thing. Who buys that? 1% of users, perhaps. Mainstream? Unlikely.
Until Apple comes out of the closet and opens up and allows more development on their machines, on both Hardware and Software by outside groups, they will never be more significant than the communists who still run for president.
Apple has a great platform and a strong OS, it's a shame they keep is so tightly locked up so as to strangle it.
In my professional opinion, Cringley is full of it. I've been a unix sysadmin for the last ten years. I've run big shops and small ones, I've been a grunt and a manager. There is exactly one reason that Apple doesn't have MS's mindshare in industry: marketing. Period.
I have recommended Macs as desktop machines to all kinds of customers just about forever. Believe me, it won't put me out of a job. Configuration management, software distribution and system administration tasks that are not the end-user's reason for being employed will have to be taken care of by someone no matter what platform is used. No business wants to have its accountants, programmers, scientists, photographers, etc, etc, etc spending their time messing with their computers. There will always be a role for professional IT people.
My experience has been that when I argue in favor of Apple, the pointy-hairs essentially come back with all kinds of marketing rhetoric. MS wines and dines them. MS gives them slick presentations with lots of big numbers. MS gives them free stuff. MS whispers FUD in their ears. Apple does none of this, they just sell a better product. Apple doesn't give those slick presentations. They don't offer to help port your legacy code for free or to send legions of droids to the customer's site to hold their hands during the conversion. They do not fight Microsoft's mass-market juggernaught.
The only conspiracy is the one in Redmond. Technical IT people aren't stupid and they aren't gullable. Having better tools would mean being able to get more done, not less work to do. If everyone used Macs instead of Windows, productivity would improve, but so would demand. Users would expect to get more and higher quality work done. Demand for IT support wouldn't go away, by a longshot. Cringley: try actually working in an IT shop sometime.
I taught high school computer science last year in a 2-year-old Mac lab. We started with OS 9, but soon upgraded to OS X because OS 9 was so unstable.
OS X was stable, but never worked right for us, causing immense problems with its built-in menuing and security features for multiple users. (apparently implemented without using UNIX file permissions or groups or other seemingly obvious features, which would have seemed the obvious solution). Life would have been much better if we had an OS X server, but I ran stand-alone Win98 labs years ago, and found them much easier to manage (though admittedly less stable) than the Macs.
The lab was intermittently unusable for at least a quarter of the year as I waited for our support people to find ways to fix our problems, some of which they just couldn't figure out.
Our PC labs, on the other hand, had 80-90% uptime, with their greatest source of problems being physical network issues and physical issues of mice, keyboards, and cables being damaged by students.
Part of the issue was definitely the quality of our Mac support people, but after that experience, I don't want to deal with Macs, especially in an educational setting, ever again.
The default FS used by OSX is HFS+, which, while preserving case, ignores it otherwise. Creating a UFS partition would solve this problem.
Apple provides documentation about porting Unix apps for those who RTFM before and during the porting of applications to a new system
paid fred flintstone to do this study. considering it appears to be about as old as the dinosaurs.
Even out of context this is very funny
No sig for YOU!
Redundant? No. just inspiration for a sig change.
So just because Apple knows how to make a RELIABLE operating system, that means you can lose your job over reccomending it? Why doesn't the whole world switch over to Mac/Linux? :)
My own, admitedly limited experience says that a Mac really does need less support. We had about 50/50 macs & pcs at my educational publisher employer several years ago. We had four PC support specialists and one Mac guy (me) who also admined the groupwise, firewall, db, and web servers. The # of Mac tickets was REAL low, so my job was really interesting--80% server, 15% mac desktop, 5% firewall, vpn, etc.
What do you think we did? Went to 70/30 Windows to mac ratio, added two more people and eliminated Groupwise (a godsend if you've ever been stuck with any version of exchange) in favor of... Exchange. Ugly. Ugly Ugly. We were in the office for two straight days to implement the whole mess. My job became a nightmare of updating Windows security holes opened by Outlook and fighting the exchange server's constant memory leaks.
Predictably, the number of PC tickets went through the roof. So a bigger budget was needed for the IT department, more employees, more prestige for VP of IT as his head-count, budget, and value to the company went up. Just a cluster-fuck for users and support staff. I left a month later for a job supporting heavy duty hospital software and its database/EDI functions for a nice raise.
Who did what now?
is contained in this statement. .....has a system bus at 167 mhz.
case closed. G5's are sweet, Apple b4 G5=THE GHEI.
We went from a user centric network to a faster IT centric network.
That's the thing about IT that makes me nuts. The whole point of IT is supposed to be to enable the actual workers do their jobs better/faster/stronger, but in practice it usually amounts to making life easier for IT.
The supreme irony is that (at least for small to mid-sized companies) IT usually consists of some guys with an MSCE who don't want to deal with anything they aren't familiar with (i.e., non-MS) even if it would ultimately make thier lives easier. Case in point: my CIO migrated our email server from a unix box to an XP server--just in time for Blaster.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
By some of the decisions made by your team. It seems as if the move to OSX was a test, simply done to see if it's possible, not because there was any real decision to port the scripts there, otherwise I cannot see why your customers "are installing RedHat" which doesn't run on PPC hardware, as you should know. If the scripts were for some server based software and the customer already had Mac hardware, then I truly cannot see the reason why a UFS partition could not be installed somewhere on a disc on the machine. I mean, you have to actually do the work and push the CD into the PC CD drive as well, don't you?
I mean, what were you guys thinking? If you were developing tools that ran thru a web interface, why on earth were you going for Apple hardware? A x86 box would have been a lot cheaper, and even an Apple XServe by no means needs an HFS+ partition. It has nothing to do with whether a customer will "not do that or not" since the installation effort is the same no matter what you are installing. I simply find it hard to believe, or else your team are less than competent.
And taking weeks to find the source of that bug is kind of strange as well.
I am truly confused.
----------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
There is a real simple explanation for this:
MS and IBM were the only customers that dictated what platforms Rational's products supported (their biggest customers).
Those apps won't come over to the mac until a company with enough guaranteed sales to warrant the port demands it.
Ok, now *that's* funny. :) But something must be wrong with your browser. The copyright text at the bottom isn't in English. ;)
No, i's not in English because I went to my *local* Apple store. Duh!
Still haven't found the dock though.
Well, hopefully you'll have one closer sometime this year.
One municipal library sys admin I have spoken with several times points out that since upgrading all the public machines to Linux, they can maintain 75 linux machines with the same effort as less than a dozen Windows machines.
I think that was infact the point : Remove from the equation what Apple offers, and Apple will have nothing to offer. ... go with a more common server OS
The "best" way to select the computer platform of any organization may not be to have a standard platform (as IT groups usually contend), but to let each individual worker decide what kind of computer they need for their job and to support whatever mix of computers results. Empower the employee and watch what happens. I predict that the result will be determined by whatever helps each employee be most competitive in the marketplace, according to what each needs to do to perform.
The fact that the result will be a mix of different types of computers will simply force IT to deal with a heterogeneous environment, which is all to the good, since each organization must deal with a heterogeneous world outside. Let's scrap the false god of platform heterogeneity, once and for all, even if it does spread the wealth around among diverse computer vendors.
ThosEM
I like reading Cringely, even if he's a bit whacky at times. At least he's a good kind of whacky. But this is the biggest load of paranoid crap I've seen in a long time. (Not counting some real tinfoil-hat ravings from other sources. Those are really in an entirely different league of whacky.)
I've worked at half a dozen shops in the past 15 years, from a huge mega-corp to a couple of dinky start-ups and various sizes in-between. In every case the IT department, if it existed at all, was overworked. They may want all-PC shops for various reasons, but it's not because of some vast protectiveness of their own jobs.
There are several reasons for wanting an all-PC shop. The first is that PC techs tend to be more readily available than anything more esoteric. This actually works out fairly well, because most office workers tend to equate "computer == Windows". So the office workers get Windows PCs and the IT staff hires a bunch of Windows monkeys to support them. The problem is that this creates two classes of techs, the Windows techs and the non-Windows techs. The non-Windows techs can generally service Windows machines, but not necessarily the other way around. There's a natural tendancy to buy equipment that most of your people know how to service.
Of course, there are actually some very talented IT people who honestly believe that Windows is the One True Way. I've worked with a number of them. They're not stupid or incompetent by any means. They know Windows inside and out and can force it to do darned near anything. These people may have dabbled with other OSs, but (not knowing them well) couldn't make them work as efficiently as they could make Windows work. This only reinforces the idea that Windows is superior for everything. Whenever a new system is needed, naturally they'll install a Windows system.
And even with all that, everywhere I've been has had one or two token Mac or Unix machines around. Even the staunchest PC supporters have to admit that there are a few niches better served by another OS. Generally these black-sheep machines are unsupported by the IT department simply because there's no one around who knows anything about them other than the people who use them every day.
There's no need to invoke conspiracy or paranoia to explain why other OSs aren't as popular. Face it, for the most part Windows is "good enough" for the job. Unless there's a killer app that demands something else, Windows is going to be the popular choice.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
As in "let's scrap the false god of platform homogeneity, once and for all".
ThosEM
Are you questioning MY sense of humor? Are you? Are you??!!? 'Cause if you are I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, mister.
:-D
On second thought, I don't think I would want to be in your shoes anyway, mine is just the perfect size and comfortable and all that. So let's just move along shall we?
I'm really not that interested in an mac anyway...
Needing to "protect the os from the user" is
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
1. Most of the people on this board seem to be arguing about OSX. Cringely said Macs have ALWAYS been cheaper to support. Like OS7... We're talking about an operating system with almost no process control which requires third party software in order to login remotely.
Cringely, you've never had to manage a large IT operation and you don't know what you are talking about. Its not about how easy it is to use when things are working. Its about how much power you have to investigate things when they aren't working. GUIs do not make this easy. Being able to completely control the system and troubleshoot a problem at 3AM over dialup makes this easy. You can't do that with OS7. You can hardly get a handle on what the machine is doing even if you are local. And this is just the start.
The fact is that there were many corporations that used Apples in the early 90's, and Apple lost most of them, because for various reasons their software (often the networking parts there of) simply was not good enough. To state that Apples have been better all along is to ignore 10 years of practical experience people had really trying to do this.
2. Yep, OSX is a real operating system. You can use it for real problems and you can fix it when it breaks. I own a new mac and I love it. But, lets put this in perspective...
Most companies have a Windows environment. This is because Apple lost what corporate business it did have in the 90's. If they want back in they have ease back in. OSX can't print to windows print servers. It sort of can talk to Windows file servers, but this tends to crash Macs as often as it works properly. Accessing visio diagrams is a pain. They JUST RECENTLY got a reasonable web browser together. They are close, but they are not there yet. It is still not reasonable to drop a MAC into a windows company.
The only other way to do it is to start from scratch. Build everything out of Macs. Maybe drop a couple of linux boxes in for places where Apple doesn't sell server hardware that is low end enough, or high end enough, as the case may be...
Planning on convincing your CEO to run his whole operation on Apples? This is, at this point, a very risky proposition. Good luck.
Are they really going to get this right over the long term? Old habits with respect to networking die hard. The video stuff in ichat works about as well in a firewalled network environment as their brilliant first rendition of networked Quicktime. (I'm being sarcastic.)
They've got a good thing started here, but they are really going to have to demonstrate that they can continue to produce systems that network well and work well over the long term. Interoperatbility is where that starts. They have got to clean up their windows support. They've got to let people ease into their platform and see how they like it.
The idea that this is all some silly conspiracy of the IT cabal is the dumbest thing I've heard all week.
Tell that to my Win2k machine at work that needs to be restarted 3-5 times (along with the same amount of logging out and back in) a day so that our network and database-driven apps can authenticate properly, or even just to get Outlook working correctly. Even then, our net services are always giving us grief. Granted, a substantial part of the responsibility lies on the server end of our network apps (Win2k servers running MS services along w/ Oracle database), but the client end is responsible for at least 1-2 of those daily restarts. Our tech dept. is so overworked as it is, we can't be asking them to rebuild our machines (aka reinstalling Windows) weekly or monthly to get them running the way they're supposed to. Add to that the worms and viruses, and we spend a huge of time not being able to get our work done, costing the company a whole lot more than to replace our setup with a quality one, based on stable open-sourced technology. Forget OSX (though that would be heaven), just gimme a linux box or something that isn't possessed by the Macroshaft crapiness voodoo. The problem, of course is proprietary Windows-only software we use for our lab data input (I'm a microbiologist at a rather large pharmaceutical company). WINE might be able to help there, but good luck getting the software's developer supporting that... So basically, we're screwed, and our company is losing very significant amounts of money due to lost productivity and general lack of reliability. So, in summary, Win NT based OSs are no panacea, and I've found them to be a huge kludge to get working right and fix when something goes wrong. Nothing ever works like it's supposed to all the time, and unreliability has become the norm. So we are doomed to rebooting and logging out and back in, and just postponing work until some app decides to work like it's supposed to.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
I tend to agree Mac support is easier and cheaper than Windows. However, if it's such a big difference, why hasn't this been researched and shown more often? Or on a positive note - why doesn't Apple advertise this with their "switch" campaign? Oh - and as for IT departments fearing redundancy due to a smaller IT department, I think that's not their fear AT ALL - the fear is of supporting a totally foreign system, where all their experience and training may count for nothing. They don't even get to the next thought that the department might shrink. For some reason Linux is less threatening. Greg
http://www.bordergatewayprotocol.net/~jon/humor/vi deo/crashdifferent.mpg
.
.
Broadband required, whether it is TRUE or not I have no idea,
just thought I'd run it by a Apple fan and see what he thinks
File is about 48 meg
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Didn't think so. Won't even investigate how they work. Get back to whatever it is you do for a living... which must be to work hard with Wintel boxes.
The HP Proliant DL360 G3 can be fitted with dual power supplies, dual processors, has dual on-board gigabit nic's, up to 8 GB RAM and (only) two hot-plug SCSI Ultra-320 disk bays. I also like the 64MB on-board RAID controller. I've got six and I'd recommend them to anybody.
While SCSI, by itself, isn't necessarily better than IDE, you'd have a hard time finding a hot-pluggable, 15,000 RPM IDE drive.
I don't have anything against the XServe servers, but I don't think Apple is prepared to support enterprise users at the same level as HP, IBM or even Dell.
-Don
Try reading it again. He recommends macs to computer illiterate people because in his experience they can figure a Mac out on their own and won't call him with tech support questions the way windows users do. I'd assume that he himself is a Unix user which is why he doesn't use either Mac or Windows himself (though, now that the Mac *is* Unix perhaps he should look into them for himself)