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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."
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.
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!
sPh
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
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
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.
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
Actually the reason why no software house will produce bug-free products is that, beyond trivial things that are provably correct, it's impossible.
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.
Yeah? How about browsing a routed Windows network with WINS? What about printing to a Sharp AR-810 printer/copier? These are things I found I could not do with a Mac.
I dunno, I seem to recall getting an update about once a week on my Powerbook - and more often than not, having to reboot because of it.
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.
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
"the mistake of looking at the cheapest Mac Apple sells and assuming it's a low-end computer."
Really? Ever tried to encode a 2GB avi to MPEG-4 using an iMac? Slower than a P3-500MHz.
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 $4000 or something." or "WOW that's so easy!!" etc.etc.etc.etc.
Then, they DON'T BUY ONE!! It's bizarre. I ask them why and they say, "well I just decided to stick with Windows.."
ARGH! Why are people so afraid to try a different type of computer? What is it about apple that makes people so irrational!?
I'm tired of hearing this. Last year I decided to try the Mac, with a 866MHz G4 Powerbook. Even with 768MB of RAM, the thing was sooo sloooow. I got to watch Chimera render web pages. Mac Mail was like molasses in January. Word couldn't keep up with my typing, and moving between cells in Excel was an exercise in patience.
I now have an IBM T40 (1.3GHz P-M, 512MB RAM) and this thing just smokes the Powerbook in everyday usage.
Funny thing is that AMD is supposed to ship it's "hammer" class of processors before Apple is supposed to ship G5 computers. I would also expect that intel will pump out some fast/power efficient processors in responce to both Apple's use of IBM's 5th generation of PowerPC chips and AMD's Optron chips. Basically, the G5 will make the high-end Mac about the same speed as the high-end PC equivalents (not saying anything about which is actually a better computer for productivity).
Another problem for the "low end apples are really mid-range PCs" is that in many cases (especially for the budget minded), a low-end PC is more than enough. With few exceptions, home users need something that can burn CDs, browse the web, wordprocess, and ballance the checkbook. Nearly every computer sold running any operating system can do this. It is hard for someone struggling to scrap together the 500$ for a entry level PC, monitor, and printer to justify the extra 500$ for the extras that come with an entry level MAC or a mid-range PC.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
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
A decent (just a few notches from top speed)
computer can be built from parts for $500
without monitor. Where can you buy a G5 Mac
for that price?
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.
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.
You ignore two factors that also go into TCO. One, how long can you use each box? Hardware quality aside, at what age would you retire a PC compared to a Mac? Two, for how much can you sell the old box?
I can't answer the first question for you, because that has to do with usage patterns. Many people do claim that a Mac stays usable longer than PCs.
The answer to the second question is clearer, though. Macs are worth a lot of money in the resale market, while PCs aren't. Browsing on eBay, I see a 400 MHz iMac receiving 18 bids at $325 right now. On the PC side, a 1 GHz Pentium III is at $102. Now, I'm not saying these two are equivalent computers. I'm saying you should factor that difference into the TCO.
But even if you totally omit the cost of hardware (not unreasonable, as it is maintenance that really costs), the XServe isn't any easier to maintain than Linux is. I find OSX to be much harder to work with, from an administration perspective.
It's a better DESKTOP than Linux (not a ton better, but better) -- but as a SERVER it's not as good. The hybrid OS it's running will run most open source stuff (thanks, fink guys!) but getting that stuff working is often a royal PITA, *harder* than it is on Linux.
And the marriage of the Mac's non-cap-sensitive filesystem with the fundamental case expectations of Unix is FAR from a match made in heaven. It is just awkward and annoying as hell.
OSX is really pretty, and I own a dual G4 tower myself. But I seriously question the constant adulation it gets here on Slashdot; I have often wondered if the place is being astroturfed. Yes, it's pretty; yes, it's Unix. Apparently their laptops are pretty sweet. But as a desktop, I see it as being competitive but hardly compelling. I don't think it's going to be any cheaper to maintain than a well-run network of XP machines. And as a server, it's a LOT harder to deal with. I assume part of that is the learning curve, but it's not an instant fit to most open-source stuff the way Linux is.
On top of that, I don't particularly trust it. From a security perspective, I'm not at all sure about the quality of the design. Consider: the nidump utility dumps out *encrypted passwords* to ANY user on the box, even 'nobody'. In other words, OSX doesn't even have the equivalent of shadow passwords! That is just so overwhelmingly boneheaded that I wouldn't trust it with my critical data. Sure, I could remove nidump, but it's not SUID or anything -- at some interface level, the box will happily spit out its encrypted password hashes to any user, and it's not like Joe Hacker is going to have a hard time ftping nidump back in. Their password hashes may be better than most (no idea), but even if they are, that doesn't excuse handing them out to just anyone. No matter how hard they are to crack, the advance of CPU power makes them constantly easier. This is just *so* stupid that I question the fundamental design; are they even thinking about security at Apple?
The only spot where I can see Apple being really compelling is in the Unix laptop space. If you want Unix on the road, Apple is far and away the best choice, probably years ahead of anything you can buy in the Intel space. But for the "normal OS" laptop market, I suspect that a Centrino Thinkpad will mostly run rings around a Powerbook; similar build quality, equivalently nice screen (though not in widescreen format, AFAIK), better battery life, much faster, and cheaper.
I generally like Cringely, but this week's column is just purely ignorant. He's making absolutely wild assertions on no evidence whatsoever. IT people are under incredible cost pressure; if Apple was really cheaper and better, they'd be switching in droves.
And don't even get me started on "12 people and a bunch of contractors would run IBM's network better".... for a network supporting THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND EMPLOYEES plus god knows how many customers, directly or indirectly, dependent on that network.
Words fail me.
Engineering!=CAD
I am an engineer. I've worked on many engineering studies over the past few years. I run a engineering company now. The number of times I've had to use a propriety CAD package I can count on my right hand.
Thanks to all of the open source packages out there, there are plenty of engineerng apps available for Mac OS X.
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.
Bottom line, the reason I didn't recommend Macs at my job is because of the built-in infrastructure. We recently upgraded our old Novell 3.1 server to Windows 2000 SBS. I didn't want to risk upsetting anything or compatibility problems. It's been in place for less than a year, and it got hacked. We weren't even that far out of date on the patches. I'm beginning to wish that I had recommended an xServe. It wouldn't have been hacked, I know now from experience that it would do our file-sharing and proxy server stuff just fine, I'd have software that I enjoy working with (mySQL instead of SQL Server, PHP instead of ASP, etc), and I wouldn't have to walk back into the server room DAILY to look for patches (as I now have to do).
Honestly, the vast majority of the infrastructure stays the same. If I were to switch out this company, the only difference would be instead of buying new PC's, I'd buy new Macs. I wouldn't go through and scrap everything, nor would I have a reason to do so. For our purposes, Mac's play completely nicely with the Windows stuff, and an XServe can play completely nicely with windows clients. The only thing I'd be starting from scratch is my relationship with our reseller.
No, it's not too complicated. The whole point of his article (and he mentions the low cost of Linux), is that the Macs take far less HUMAN overhead. Last I checked, even $1000 more for a Mac is nothing compared to what you pay for an IT professional ($50,000 +?). Im not saying it's a one-to-one savings, but when you throw in all the human costs, it starts to go up. Macs use less power, and that is multiplicative with the number of machines you have. More employees (IT professionals) have salary, benefits, retirements, infrastructure for payroll, HR, and on and on. He makes a valid point. I'd definitely like to see my entire school-wide infrastructure go Mac. I think it'd make it a whole lot more efficient.
The campus has about 30-40% Macs in labs and offices. The rest is pretty much windows, with some Sun thrown in the mix for the CS dept. Last I worked for them, they had one Mac person for all their needs, and about 10 Windows people. Im not exagerrating. 10:1. That's a huge difference in my book.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
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.
The Xserve only has one power supply... in a similar price range Compaqs and Dells come with redundent power supplies.
I realize this is a minor thing, but from the initial research we did at my company (a less then 100 person firm), we just didn't get the feeling that Apple really knew how to deal with the corporate market (e.g. redundency, dependability, interoperability, snapshots of drives, etc). More like they were counting on the 'cool' factor that makes them a good desktop machine, but not server.
Now on the flip side the group who designed thier RAID box does seem to understand...
Which is why Mac power users buy their favorite replacement mouse with multiple buttons and scroll wheels. If you can scrape together at least $15 to $30, you can buy a decent mouse.
Mac OS X has full support for multiple buttons (right mouse button works for contextual menus) and scroll wheels.
If you want to pop up a contextual menu without the right mouse button, you hold down the Control key and click with the mouse. Simple.
The better question is who sold you on that BS that it takes a smaller number of admins to maintain a Linux network?
I am one of two admins where I work and we have a network of about 15 Windows servers, 2 HP N-Class systems, 275+ desktops and all the associated network equipment. We have absolutely no problems handling everything. The important thing to know, however, is that the primary reason that there are even two of us is for redundancy. My employer is willing to pay for the peace of mind that comes from not having to call the admin back from vacation early because something happened. Someone is always onsite. Neither I nor my partner have had any problems maintaining the entire network with the other gone.
Whether it can do the same thing as a Linux box is beside the point. I went to Apple's site after reading this article to price some XServe configurations and compare them to similar Dell servers that I priced last week. The XServe was anywhere from 50-100% of the cost of a similarly configured Dell. And the Dell had better specs. U320 SCSI hard drives standard instead of Ultra ATA. 3.2GHz processors with hyperthreading compared to 1.33GHz. I know that clock speed doesn't mean much when comparing different architectures but I still doubt that the G4 would outperform the P4 in this comparison. Why would anyone buy an XServe that does the same thing for more money?
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 -
Okay, here goes:
The Apples I've had headaches with range from the humble LC III to the PPC 7200, through the forgettable iMac phase, and to the Mac G4.
In most cases on the earlier machines, I had to install OSX on the ones that would take it. That at least got around the horrible memory management (or lack thereof ) of MacOS9 that let one ill-behaved program (usually Finder) bring down the entire machine.
But of course OSX is far from perfect. As one example, a clean install of OSX 10.2 onto an iMac, resulted in an email client icon that, when clicked, would instantly lock the machine. Oh yes, that was before the internal CRT died, but luckily this was a very rare iMac that had an external VGA port.
And don't get me started on Appletalk (spits).
The 'Other Platforms' include Windows 2000 and Red Hat Linux. Linux requires the least maintanance, but I find myself spending more time on Linux servers, simply because there is so much more useful administration stuff you can do with them.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I would be surprised if a web site ran on an iMac because of their screens.. it takes up a bit of space for nothing in the server room. We used to run part of our website on 6 iMacs but we switched things around so the things that used to run on iMac now run on older G3/G4 towers and the iMacs are in the field. The towers are more easy to stack in a rack and have more CPU power per unit volume. Especially the dual processor macs.
That being said, I can think of no technical reasone you couldn't do the same with iMacs. Kidda a waste with that nice LCD, though.
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!"
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.
Care to give a url of a nice iMac web server to slashdot, and we'll see what OS is superior?
:-)
Here you go, as requested, an iMac server. This one happens to be an older G3 iMac running OS X, so......Do your worst, but know that all IP's are logged.
This little iMac get about 30k hits/day and is rock solid. One of the best $600 I ever spent.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
This is a major culture collision, unfortunately, and I just don't see how it's going to come out well.
I think, for the most part, the Mac users are RIGHT; case-sensitivity is incredibly, incredibly non-intuitive for a non-techie. MyDocument should be the same as mydocument, from a human perspective. Learning that capital-MD was different than lowercase-md was painful for me when I started using Unix, and I'm a techie!
I understand where these people come from; they're used to being able to use a computer without having to think about it much, and I can't really blame them for wanting to.
Unix, on the other hand, has 30 years of accumulated code, probably billions of lines, and any of it that touches filesystems believes in case sensitivity.
In general, code should adapt to people, instead of the other way around, so the RIGHT thing to do is probably to convert the Unix software to understand case-preserving-but-insensitive filesystems. But if that happens at all, it's gonna take a long time. I'm not holding my breath.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I love Sun's 1U pizzaboxes (Netra, X1, Fire100). We have been using these rackmounts for about 3-4 years now and never experienced a hardware failure with them (not even disk or PS). Very solid stuff, just runs and runs.
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.
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.
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?