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."

Comments

Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated

[Anonymous Coward]

The XServe, although not an x86 machine, can do everything you just said an x86 Linux box can do. Heck, if it becomes impractical to upgrade and you don't want OS X on it anymore, you can - well - install Linux on the thing.

Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated

[Mononoke]

Linux can be used as a file server/firewall/application server/web server/email server/DNS server/database server/all of the above at once without costing you nearly as much as an X-Serve.

You can do all of that with an iMac, if you wish.

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.

See, there's what the article is talking about: FUD. You can add RAM to an X-Serve. Somewhere down the road you can probably upgrade the CPU, also. There are CPU upgrades available for every single other Mac ever made, so it's quite likely that when the time comes that the original X-Serve CPU can't keep up, an upgrade will be available.

Macs, Linux really are better

[FunWithHeadlines]

At my company we use a variety of boxes throughout, Windows, Linux, Mac. We do this for a variety of reasons, among with is which systems the people using them like, what our customer needs are for development purposes, and so on. So from a real-world experience here are some points:

• 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.

Re:From the article....

[tychay]

Hard to believe the parent was modded as "insightful".

Cool! Where are the numbers to support [Mac Total Cost of Ownership lower than Windows]? Probably isn't going to cut it. [More uncontrolled ranting...]

Sad, people never learned to search the internet before pressing the flame button. There are a lot of studies that support Cringley's statement etc., and you'd be hard pressed to find a single study in the reverse!

BTW, I've seen studies supporting Linux as having a good TCO vs. Windows NT. I've never seen a study comparing Linux vs Mac TCO on desktop, and there are only a few studies comparing Linux vs Mac TCO in servers (the Mac usually comes out on top, but the studies are recent and may have bias).

Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated

[koehn]

Okay, first:
The password hashes are HASHES. Not encrypted. There's no way to get the original back, no matter how much CPU you have. Agreed that it's still not a great idea to let anyone at them, and I have to admit I was stunned that you could do it. I'll have to see if they use a different salt on each machine though, it adds a small measure of protection (if the passwords aren't simple). Download a copy of john and see how long it takes. My imac (running Linux) has been working on guessing a password to match my pw hash for more than ten days. The users on my system who used insecure p/ws were cracked in minutes.

Now you wanna talk security holes: by default, any DHCP server can send a URL of an LDAP server to OSX, and it'll authenticate users from that LDAP server. Yuck.

Second, you state that "OSX is much harder to work with," but don't explain how. Personally, I've found it much easier to learn than Linux was: I've never felt the need to compile my own OSX kernel, but I've had to do that repeatedly to Linux over the years. The distributed directory stuff in Jaguar rocks, and it integrates with LDAP, AD, whatever (and all of the above, simultaneously). See the macdevcenter at O'Reilly.

Agreed about Cringely: he's an idiot, IMHO. Can you name ANY profession that would recommend a change in their workplace that would remove themselves from being qualified to work there? Sheesh!