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Using Macs In The Work Place
Kelly McNeill writes "It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
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I don't think the IT people realized that by "bring my Mac to work," he actually meant "Host a website that's going to be Slashdotted on it."
________________________________________________
suwain_2
then get through ignorant IT staff
Wouldn't the IT staff be the ones who want to make the change to Apple?
Whoops! I forgot, the problems with Windows ensure permanent employment for techies.
I somehow think Kevin Ledgister's attempts to get his mac connected to the network, perhaps weren't as succesfull as indicated.
Sounded like an interesting article... guess I'll have to read it later, or maybe tomorrow.
He's got our number all right.
supress this article ASAP? Everyone has to use Windows. It's important. For our economy. Or something.
Alex.
And I have had no problems, really. Once you get the TCP/IP stack on the Mac going, and Netatalk on the Linux server, they are just like another node on the network...they can access the internet, and print, and store files on the linux box.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
And they're generally the worst part of it. With Samba now (and going to 3.0 soon), you can basically do whatever you need on a corporate network with OS X. The only problem that remains is Exchange. Even though MS supposedly updated Entourage to deal with it, Exchange support still sucks. Of course, if you're lucky enough to have a company with a Citrix server, there's a native OS X client for that.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
is rather heavy for the server ... this won't help surviving slashdotting :(
Anyone hosting a basic nonPHP powered copy ???
AWx
This was also on a Blue and White G3, revision 1, which has an IDE chip bug. Many hard drives corrupt data when hooked up to a rev1 yosemite. The workaround straight from apple's support library? Buy FWB toolkit or similar, and use a slower (non-UDMA) transfer mode with non-apple hard disks.
So on one machine, to get ordinary compatibility with established standards, two pieces of third party commercial software were necessary. Thanks, Apple!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The author appears to have done zero research into how to get a Mac talking on a Windows network, if he had done maybe 1-2 hours of research, he would have saved himself 2-3 weeks of grief. Instead of not having any clue on how he got it to work, he would have known exactly how to set things up how he wanted. I don't get it, why spend the money on a Mac if you are not prepared to do any research on how to make it do the things you need to do? Would you buy a car without knowing whether or not it came with an engine? Or if that engine would play nice with your gas? I ordered a 12" Powerbook and I am going to make damn sure I can make it play nice with any other boxes/servers that I may have to interact with (Windows, Linux, other Macs, etc.) by the time it gets here.
I hate sigs.
It's useless. lets say I want to put Macs in the usual Office environment. G5's are horribly overpowered and overpriced for the task. Leaves i and eMacs. Both come with integrated screens. That means all the screens I have around from the last batch of hardware purchases are useless. Also, if in an eMac either screen or computer hardware is fried, I have to throw one functional part of it away. Doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint.
-t
Ignorant IT staff?
We here on the IT staff are exceptionally bright and well-informed. And don't you forget it!
What is a mac, anyway?
I recently brought my Powerbook at work.
I am a Unix Sysadmin.
The only thing I had to do was to obtain a Microsoft Office License from the Business support division.
Now, Entourage can connect to Exchange servers while most of my work is done using Word and the Terminal.
It's really good to work using my favourite tool.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Not that I would make the choice to bring a Mac into my environment, but way to set a good example of 'ignorant IT staff'. I'm sure you've done a lot of research into the subject.
Kevin in Google Groups, having problems with DHCP? (not sure this is him, but is dated 10/1/03.
Contributor: Kevin Ledgister
"It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
---
For the last two years, I have had to use a Dell laptop at work running Windows 2000 in a mid size company with 300-400 employees. After suffering through several complete rebuilds, blue screens, as well as dealing with patches and security upgrades, I decided that enough is enough.
I ordered the brand new 12" PowerBook on my own and decided that this would be my daily computer to replace my Dell. Quite a few people were curious at this silver beauty compared to the generic charcoal laptops on their desks -- and some even said that their next system will be a Mac too.
As I've come to learn however, integrating a Mac into an all PC world is not without its challenges.
IT Ignorance
The first challenge was dealing with an IT department that was completely ignorant of the Mac platform. Although they were helpful and curious about the Macintosh, they really couldn't offer much help so I was on my own. At my place of employment, they use Active Directory and after doing a lot of reading on the subject, I realized that it was not going to be the easiest transition.
When my PowerBook arrived, I immediately plugged a network cable into it, but for some reason, it was not being assigned an IP address. I checked all the settings and they were correct. I even plugged my laptop into a router outside of our network and it worked fine. But inside our corporate network, I would only get a 169... number which meant that I wasn't getting one from the network server.
I downloaded ADmitMac from Thursby hoping that it would help connect me to the laptop but that required a valid IP address as well so I still was left out in the cold.
Frustrated, I connected my PowerBook using the phone line by my desk and dialed into our corporate network, which was slow, but at least I could browse the Internet and check email to our Exchange servers running Outlook for Windows under Citrix. No one was able to help explain why this was happening. Not Apple, nor our IT department.
Ups and Downs
After two days of this, I got disconnected again from the phone connection but iChat stayed active and I was still getting messages! I opened up the System Preferences and suddenly I had an assigned IP address. I ran to the IT department asking for an explanation for what they did, to which they replied, "Nothing."
So now I had high-speed access to the network but not all was solved.
I still couldn't browse network shares and I tried joining our Active Directory domain using Admit Mac but it wouldn't let me join. So, I fired up Virtual PC, installed Windows 2000, and asked an IT person to join Win2k to the domain and it worked. I was also able to browse the network using a Citrix client but this was still hokey.
Little did I know that ADmit Mac didn't work because I didn't have rights to join a computer to the domain. But a week after I got all this up and running, I accidentally chose the Connect to Server function when I meant to go to a folder and Voila! I could see network shares!
I don't know when this happened but I could now browse through the servers and mount them on my desktop. I ran back to IT again asking if they had turned on Services for Mac, which I had asked them to consider. Again they said that no changes were made to the network at all.
Another unsolved mystery perhaps but I didn't care. No longer would I need to go through a Windows interface for network shares. As a side benefit, I uninstalled the evaluation copy of ADmit Mac and everything still worked fine which s
VoIP still has one problem: voice is simply less flexible useful than text messaging, for most people.
Right! you cant have any of the windows patching or hotfix fun, no fun when the next virius or worm owns the corperate network, and not having Corperate tech support means your computer will run properly.
Damn it sucks not using windows!
Of course, if you're lucky enough to have a company with a Citrix server, there's a native OS X client for that.
You even don't need that, a W2K server licensed as Terminal Services Application server (still costs some money, but considerably less than Citrix) is fully sufficient as MS has been offering a RDP client for OSX for quite some time.
My company specializes in Business Process Optimization (E-Integrate LLC.) We use macs for nearly all of our programing, movie making, and Oracle database development and administration. As a company, we are trying to move solely to Linux and OSX. There have only been a few tasks where windows is still needed and those are slowly diminishing such as Oracle JDeveloper development and terminal services connections. Each month we are expanding our employees to have mostly powerbooks, however, I am still forced to carry around my powerbook and vaio for a few more months :(. We currently have about 0.8 macs/employee and about 0.2 windows machines/employee with 8 Linux Servers running Oracle Collaboration Suite and 9i.
Sorry about rambling, just wanted to throw in my $0.02.
AJ
-------
artlu.net
I've never known this to be a problem. Most places I worked the cute girls down in marketing "needed" Macs to do their graphic designs. I hooked them up, loaded the client, and it worked. Maybe I missed something that broke in newer versions of MS and OSX in my unemployment downtime.
This isn't a troll...seriously...it's a problem?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I can't read the article because it's slashdotted, but from the submission it sounds to me like he's trying to bring his personal Apple to his office and expect it to work with the company network.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
This isn't college where you can bring your own hardware and software and expect to get along with it. In an office environment Desktops and Laptops are provided with COMPANY software, usually from a COMPANY image, set up to connect to the COMPANY network. If you're expecting to bring your own random piece of PERSONAL hardware and get the IS people to make special accomidations for one user you've got a screw loose.
I knew Steve in highschool. Ole Steve. Yea he was smart but... he didnt have any real skills to show the local pizzhut/computer club.
I always though of him as a bit of a circle jerker. He never had a woman or girl back then, although none of us did, feminism was all the rouge so there was really no point in trying to snag a date. I mean girls are in theory great, but when one kicks you in the balls and is all self ritious about it... well you usually beat the shit out of them with your back hand, back in the day you got thanked for holding the door... but in HS with feminazism being pumped into the girls hearts... millitant shit.
Anyway we almost always outfoxed him in Assembly, and plain new C (snuck into the UNI sometimes to play with the PDPs :D... unfortunatly it was next to the womens studies office which we trashed, alot.
I don't understand it.
Mac supports standard TCP/IP protocol for networking.
Mac has a popular Office software.
If you don't use any in-house software specially written for Windows, you will not have any problem.
Except for that the MS Office files created on Mac may not appear as they are on Windows MS Office. ( It's MS Office bug. )
I don't get it.
Why don't they just nuke every fucking place this fuckup could be hiding in. It would cost just some filthy muslim "souls" that are on the road to hell anyway. Did they give us a chance when they brought down the twin towers? No. If it weren't for the bleeding heart left-wing whinging liberals, it would be an eye for an eye time already. They kill 3000 us, we'll kill 30000.
Contributor: Kevin Ledgister
:: Open Content
"It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
For the last two years, I have had to use a Dell laptop at work running Windows 2000 in a mid size company with 300-400 employees. After suffering through several complete rebuilds, blue screens, as well as dealing with patches and security upgrades, I decided that enough is enough.
I ordered the brand new 12" PowerBook on my own and decided that this would be my daily computer to replace my Dell. Quite a few people were curious at this silver beauty compared to the generic charcoal laptops on their desks -- and some even said that their next system will be a Mac too.
As I've come to learn however, integrating a Mac into an all PC world is not without its challenges.
IT Ignorance
The first challenge was dealing with an IT department that was completely ignorant of the Mac platform. Although they were helpful and curious about the Macintosh, they really couldn't offer much help so I was on my own. At my place of employment, they use Active Directory and after doing a lot of reading on the subject, I realized that it was not going to be the easiest transition.
When my PowerBook arrived, I immediately plugged a network cable into it, but for some reason, it was not being assigned an IP address. I checked all the settings and they were correct. I even plugged my laptop into a router outside of our network and it worked fine. But inside our corporate network, I would only get a 169... number which meant that I wasn't getting one from the network server.
I downloaded ADmitMac from Thursby hoping that it would help connect me to the laptop but that required a valid IP address as well so I still was left out in the cold.
Frustrated, I connected my PowerBook using the phone line by my desk and dialed into our corporate network, which was slow, but at least I could browse the Internet and check email to our Exchange servers running Outlook for Windows under Citrix. No one was able to help explain why this was happening. Not Apple, nor our IT department.
Ups and Downs
After two days of this, I got disconnected again from the phone connection but iChat stayed active and I was still getting messages! I opened up the System Preferences and suddenly I had an assigned IP address. I ran to the IT department asking for an explanation for what they did, to which they replied, "Nothing."
So now I had high-speed access to the network but not all was solved.
I still couldn't browse network shares and I tried joining our Active Directory domain using Admit Mac but it wouldn't let me join. So, I fired up Virtual PC, installed Windows 2000, and asked an IT person to join Win2k to the domain and it worked. I was also able to browse the network using a Citrix client but this was still hokey.
Little did I know that ADmit Mac didn't work because I didn't have rights to join a computer to the domain. But a week after I got all this up and running, I accidentally chose the Connect to Server function when I meant to go to a folder and Voila! I could see network shares!
I don't know when this happened but I could now browse through the servers and mount them on my desktop. I ran back to IT again asking if they had turned on Services for Mac, which I had asked them to consider. Again they said that no changes were made to the network at all.
Another unsolved mystery perhaps but I didn't care. No longer would I need to go through a Windows interface for network share
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Bringing my iBook inside any of my corp networks have not been a problem, but with external security such a priority now the ability to remote in is getting pretty rough. AT&T Global net dialers, Citrix servers, etc etc. Mac clients for getting past gateways are generaly non-functional. I keep an XP box ruuning at home that I can RDC into and then remote into networks using the Windows clients.
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
Contributor: Kevin Ledgister :: Open Content
"It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
---
For the last two years, I have had to use a Dell laptop at work running Windows 2000 in a mid size company with 300-400 employees. After suffering through several complete rebuilds, blue screens, as well as dealing with patches and security upgrades, I decided that enough is enough.
I ordered the brand new 12" PowerBook on my own and decided that this would be my daily computer to replace my Dell. Quite a few people were curious at this silver beauty compared to the generic charcoal laptops on their desks -- and some even said that their next system will be a Mac too.
As I've come to learn however, integrating a Mac into an all PC world is not without its challenges.
IT Ignorance
The first challenge was dealing with an IT department that was completely ignorant of the Mac platform. Although they were helpful and curious about the Macintosh, they really couldn't offer much help so I was on my own. At my place of employment, they use Active Directory and after doing a lot of reading on the subject, I realized that it was not going to be the easiest transition.
When my PowerBook arrived, I immediately plugged a network cable into it, but for some reason, it was not being assigned an IP address. I checked all the settings and they were correct. I even plugged my laptop into a router outside of our network and it worked fine. But inside our corporate network, I would only get a 169... number which meant that I wasn't getting one from the network server.
I downloaded ADmitMac from Thursby hoping that it would help connect me to the laptop but that required a valid IP address as well so I still was left out in the cold.
Frustrated, I connected my PowerBook using the phone line by my desk and dialed into our corporate network, which was slow, but at least I could browse the Internet and check email to our Exchange servers running Outlook for Windows under Citrix. No one was able to help explain why this was happening. Not Apple, nor our IT department.
Ups and Downs
After two days of this, I got disconnected again from the phone connection but iChat stayed active and I was still getting messages! I opened up the System Preferences and suddenly I had an assigned IP address. I ran to the IT department asking for an explanation for what they did, to which they replied, "Nothing."
So now I had high-speed access to the network but not all was solved.
I still couldn't browse network shares and I tried joining our Active Directory domain using Admit Mac but it wouldn't let me join. So, I fired up Virtual PC, installed Windows 2000, and asked an IT person to join Win2k to the domain and it worked. I was also able to browse the network using a Citrix client but this was still hokey.
Little did I know that ADmit Mac didn't work because I didn't have rights to join a computer to the domain. But a week after I got all this up and running, I accidentally chose the Connect to Server function when I meant to go to a folder and Voila! I could see network shares!
I don't know when this happened but I could now browse through the servers and mount them on my desktop. I ran back to IT again asking if they had turned on Services for Mac, which I had asked them to consider. Again they said that no changes were made to the network at all.
Another unsolved mystery perhaps but I didn't care. No longer would I need to go through a Windows interface for network shares. As a side benefit, I uninstalled the evaluation copy of ADmit Mac and everything still worked fine which saved
the funny part is that a IT group that is that limited as to "not allow a MAC" is a bunch of moronic idiots.
Business is about making MONEY.. and business IT is about doing whatever you need to to give those sales people or other employees what they need or want to make MORE MONEY.
only complete no-talent nitwit asshats like you make such stupid statements.
A MAC IN AN ENTERPRISE
Contributor: Kevin Ledgister
Posted Oct 12, 2003 - 04:10 PM
"It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
---
For the last two years, I have had to use a Dell laptop at work running Windows 2000 in a mid size company with 300-400 employees. After suffering through several complete rebuilds, blue screens, as well as dealing with patches and security upgrades, I decided that enough is enough.
I ordered the brand new 12" PowerBook on my own and decided that this would be my daily computer to replace my Dell. Quite a few people were curious at this silver beauty compared to the generic charcoal laptops on their desks -- and some even said that their next system will be a Mac too.
As I've come to learn however, integrating a Mac into an all PC world is not without its challenges.
IT Ignorance
The first challenge was dealing with an IT department that was completely ignorant of the Mac platform. Although they were helpful and curious about the Macintosh, they really couldn't offer much help so I was on my own. At my place of employment, they use Active Directory and after doing a lot of reading on the subject, I realized that it was not going to be the easiest transition.
When my PowerBook arrived, I immediately plugged a network cable into it, but for some reason, it was not being assigned an IP address. I checked all the settings and they were correct. I even plugged my laptop into a router outside of our network and it worked fine. But inside our corporate network, I would only get a 169... number which meant that I wasn't getting one from the network server.
I downloaded ADmitMac from Thursby hoping that it would help connect me to the laptop but that required a valid IP address as well so I still was left out in the cold.
Frustrated, I connected my PowerBook using the phone line by my desk and dialed into our corporate network, which was slow, but at least I could browse the Internet and check email to our Exchange servers running Outlook for Windows under Citrix. No one was able to help explain why this was happening. Not Apple, nor our IT department.
Ups and Downs
After two days of this, I got disconnected again from the phone connection but iChat stayed active and I was still getting messages! I opened up the System Preferences and suddenly I had an assigned IP address. I ran to the IT department asking for an explanation for what they did, to which they replied, "Nothing."
So now I had high-speed access to the network but not all was solved.
I still couldn't browse network shares and I tried joining our Active Directory domain using Admit Mac but it wouldn't let me join. So, I fired up Virtual PC, installed Windows 2000, and asked an IT person to join Win2k to the domain and it worked. I was also able to browse the network using a Citrix client but this was still hokey.
Little did I know that ADmit Mac didn't work because I didn't have rights to join a computer to the domain. But a week after I got all this up and running, I accidentally chose the Connect to Server function when I meant to go to a folder and Voila! I could see network shares!
I don't know when this happened but I could now browse through the servers and mount them on my desktop. I ran back to IT again asking if they had turned on Services for Mac, which I had asked them to consider. Again they said that no changes were made to the network at all.
Another unsolved mystery perhaps but I didn't care. No longer would I need to go through a Windows interface for network shares. As a side benefit, I uninstalled the evaluation copy of ADmit Mac and everything sti
I hate sigs.
I am an IT architect who has for the last 10 years simply plugged my Mac into any LAN where I work. TCPDump allows me to sniff what network range is in use, then ping for an unused IP, and away I go. When support staff walk around, just unplug and look innocent. 99% of corporate security is LAX and allows anything. I keep virtual PC for Project and Visio. Afer staff see me, there is a flood of portables that then appear when the users figure out that can use their nice sleek powerful home portable as opposed to rigid old slow corporate junk. And yes, now with OS X, I can connect easier to Windoze servers. With OS 9 I used DAVE.
Ha, too late. ;)
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Lets convert all of our Cheap Windows Machines to Expensive OSX Mac boxes running Virual PC running Windows 2000 running Microsoft Office.
*ahem*
It's not always the IT staff that doesn't want the Mac in the door. I'm Director of Information Technology for a good sized company with offices on three continents. We were recently spun out from what is essentially a government lobbying body. It's all Windows, top to bottom.
Or it was. When we had to replace the Exchange server that was part of our former parent, we got an XServe. We've now got three, in two locations. About a third of our U.S. based employees use Macs, and that percentage is growing.
Tomorrow, I have to meet with the CEO and explain what the hell I'm doing (I'm hoping this article and posts will save me some research!). I'm assured by the CTO that he's open minded about it, but just thinks it's really "odd" and wants to know why. I hope that's the case.
It's not always the IT folks that're "ignorant". I know more Macs mean lower admin costs and greater reliability. And I know what having Unix workstations means to the R&D work. But some of the upper management has doubts... mostly, I suspect, because they'll need to explain it to the board, who's likely to be even more conservative.
Oh... and all our internally-developed software is Windows-only as well. The new CTO has already agreed that we're changing that. And we've got budget to ditch the few IE dependancies on our web site.
Sometimes we get to move in the right direction.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
abso-frickin-lutely.
and I'm sick of articles that talk about "ignorant IT staff" being the problem for mac users. mac's aren't rocket science, they talk tcp/ip like anyone else, it's just really not that complicated....any half decent IT guy can get it on the network. that's not the issue though.
the issue as you pointed out is brining in unknown personal pc's and attaching it to a corporate network. That's a security back-door if I ever saw one....
I fully agree that until recently it was a pain to get a Mac on a NT domain. It required flaky 3rd party hacks, and you still had to screw with AppleTalk somewhat if you wanted to print...
.. but its useable with out having to sacrifice a sheep )
Now with OSX thanks to FBSD and Samba, it's not too big of a deal. (Its still not perfect
I do admit we only have a few Macs, but I'm sure having a lot wouldn't be that much different.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Busniessess don't want shiny throbbing aqua buttons and fruity coloured computers. If you wan't colour then Its ethier beige or black (usually a dell).
Anyway, My busniess runs on a dell running Windows 2000, with a SuSE server in the background. I'm not spending $6000 on shiny Xservers, PowerMacs and Fruity distratctions! Ive got my $400 dell, and my $600 server, running a $99 operating system, and that means $5000 PROFIT for my business!
It's been said that bringing GNU/Linux into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network...
I run into a lot of problems running Linux as my workplace desktop, but for slightly different reasons. The SMB stuff is no prob, and I can access the local network and printers without a problem. Most of my problems occur because of people. I work in an engineering firm (but no programmers, IT specialists, or other techies here) so I get a lot of the usual:
Co-worker walks by, looks at monitor,
Co-worker: "Is that Excel?"
Me: "No, its OpenOffice spreadsheet" (or Gnumeric)
Co-worker: "Well, why isn't it Excel?"
Me: "Ummm, err, they don't make Excel for Linux."
Co-worker: "Well they should."
There aren't any serious problems caused by this, just a general uncomfortable feeling every once in a while.
There's this guy whose office door is almost always shut. I finally found out what his big secret was...in our very pro-microsoft school, in the totally microsoft office, he has not one - but two macs in there! Meanwhile I'm stuck sneaking firebird onto the windows2000 machine I'm on there.
Let's say you're running a network of 160 desktops. 20 of those people would like to bring in their personal laptop, a Mac, Ipaq, etc. You then have to consider the security of the other 140 desktops. Corporate IT will be held responsible if YOUR personal laptop screws their network. YOU will not. So if someone "slips something by" Corporate IT, and it screws something, is virus infected, not locked down, then it is suddenly their problem to fix.
Can't always batter the Braindead IT Department. Companies have standards for a reason. I can't trust that J Random Developer knows how to secure his shit. In fact, I would always, 100% of the time, bet that he doesn't. After seeing some of the poorly maintained, hacked 10 ways from sunday developer desktops I have, my default policy would be to say "no".
I like music
Perhaps they have a security policy that checks for critical security holes and it's not configured for Mac? I can see security not allowing home pc's with alternative os's that they can't secure on their corporate network. It's as scary as those ppl who want their home pc to dial into RAS with full access to department files on a mapped drive. You don't know if they let their kids play on it or not. My 2 yr old niece did a nice job of hitting enter while the C: drive was highlighted and tagging about 200 files for delete. I caught her when it was asking "are you sure you want to delete these files?". It could happen....
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
As the system administrator for the project, that best part is I can roll back any changes. Say, if apple were to release a bad update, I could just remove the overload and everyone would be back at say, a working 10.2.7.
Let's see you do that with windows.
I did this a year ago in my post-grad program: every student is required to own a laptop and a copy of MS Orifice. I am one of 2 Mac users in a class of 240.
When I registered and asked if it was okay to use a Mac, I got the same runaround: "We won't be able to provide tech support, we can't guarantee compatibility, blah blah." So I bought a Mac anyways, knowing that I could always use Virtual PC if necessary, and knowing how helpful and willing Apple tech support is, even if the problem is not directly related to Apple products.
After over a year, I have had no difficulties using my PB G4 in this Windows-dominated enviroment. I did have to explain how to ignore resource forks when sending email attachments to a couple of people, but that's about it. VPC was perfect when a certain professor demanded that we use a Windows-only statistics app. Wireless networking is flawless, and I get greater range then my PC-using counterparts.
Not to mention all of the positive attention I receive when toting a Mac around. All of the Dell/Toshiba/Sony/etc. users just want to touch it. And this year's incoming class even has a few more Macheads (I like to think that I had something to do with this)--so bring your Mac to work and spread the good user experience!
I asked for the permission to use it and was replied, we will never allow you to do it, but we'll look the other way if you do it. (The company was nearly 100% MacOS in the early 90's, 3000 workstations at that time, Apple blew it for not wanting to do services etc...)
All workstations are Windows NT being migrated to W2K, all servers are Solaris.
Well, a lot of things work out of the box, network (dhcp), access to SMB shares, proxy, printers access, etc... What I need is a correct Notes client (we still use 4.6), most of the intranet is "IE 5.5 for Windows or higher", and some custom applications.
I'd say I'm doing half my job on the Mac, half on my NT4 workstation.
I would do more on the Mac if Dreamveawer was not such a dog on MacOS X...
-- p a n a p i c - panoramas des alpes: Mont-Blanc, Mont-Rose, Cervin, etc...
Did anyone else find that website format incredibly annoying? Having to scroll to the right to read every sentence? Congrats on getting the Mac up and running, but learn to format a web page....
I ran to the IT department asking for an explanation for what they did, to which they replied, "Nothing."
Oh they knew what was going on.They just didn't want to waste an hour explaing to some dumb ass in marketing what DHCP/MAC control is!
They had much bigger fish to fry, such as downloading new drivers for that 256M 600MHZ vid card they were putting in that new E-Commerce dual 2.8 Xeon server with 4 Gigs of memory to play Counterstrike on the 61" plasma in the conference room when everyone else was home playing with their "fruity" Macs!
This might get modded as a troll, but it is true. Once you get outside of the few most common business tasks, you just won't find business software on the Mac. The overwhelming majority of specialized business applications are PC-only.
If you have a graphic design, photography business, or do desktop publishing, you are in luck with the Mac because the Mac happens to excel in your niche. Beyond that, however...
We have some macs mixed in with our windows machines. We also have Linux and a few legacy os2 and dos machines. And yes, you can get them to play nice together. For a while, at least. Then you make some little "harmless" change on the network that one os likes and the rest hate, and suddenly your nice and peaceful network is a chaotic mess. And tracking down those problems can be pure hell.
Just because it works great on day one doesn't mean it'll still be great on day 100.
That's the main reason our IT dept (and I'd guess most IT depts) has been pushing for a single os. It is not because of ignorance, but because of a drive towards simplification.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
you think it amounts to ignorance. Here's a happy thought. I don't give a flying **** if the company AS A WHOLE decides they want to use Linux, Windows, Mac, or Solaris.
I just started a job with a shop that uses AIX, Netware, Windows Desktop and Server, and Linux. There's a friggan security vulnerability released everyday. It's f*ing rediculous. So let's bring in a Mac and add to the joy.
See the sad fact is no matter what OS you use it can be a safe and cost effective environment. Do you know how many tools for instance Windows has for making the installation of a desktop easier? RIS to install desktop, AD to distribute apps to the appropriate users/systems, SUS to actually INSTALL those security patches/service packs for windows. e-Policy Orchestrator for McAfee VirusScan and I'm sure Norton has something similar if that's your poison.
And so what if you choose linux. You have other tools, like say RHN if you choose RedHat.
Or you could use a Sun Ray server and Solaris for all. It could be done really beautifully. But no, as with all places someone has to be the autonomous exception to the rules. So you have a friend in management, what next?
So, not a troll, but just think for a minute. Like I said I wouldn't care if I was supporting all Macs or all Windows or all Linux, as long as it was ALL ONE. And people will harp on homogenous systems being insecure, but that is largely BS if the IT Staff are for once doing their job. Whether you have 1 or 8 insecure OS'es they are all still insecure. Taking care of one dilligently outways 8 haphazard implementations.
I meant to say "Why the hell would I use a mac in the work place? We already have terminals with the little pictures of the burgers and fries on the buttons...oh that's right, I'm a shit monkey fucktarded asshat..."
Sorry for the mix-up,
Anonymous Coward
"Oh, and any TCO studies have shown that Macs are much cheaper than PCs in their lifetime"
Only cooked Apple-sponsored studies. It is pretty hard to get around the fact of one thing costing 30-40% more than another.
These studies are not to be trusted, just like you can't trust benchmarks saying `A` is faster if it is published in "`A` Addict Magazine" or on 'A`'s website.
Troll-fight! Troll-fight! :)
In other news, a man successfully completed a full week's work as a stonemason while wearing a deep-sea diving suit.
My employer (Sun) bought me a powerbook. It beats every Dell/Windows laptop they've ever given me. And getting it to connect to and use the network is not a problem. I would say it took about a minute to get my laptop connected to the network and access all the facilities I could have with a Solaris or Windows computer. Except when I go home or a coffee shop, I can also connect to those networks without redoing everything like I usually would in windows.
For the last two years, I have had to use a Dell laptop at work running Windows 2000 in a mid size company with 300-400 employees. After suffering through several complete rebuilds, blue screens, as well as dealing with patches and security upgrades, I decided that enough is enough.
In all honesty, if your company PC suffers like this, your IT department is to blame. [anecdotal evidence warning:] I've been using Win2k for over a year now at work, and I do a large amount of *dangerous* work (editing several large files, running 30+ applications simultaneously, writing I/O programs, allocating GBs of memory, etc) and have yet to have my box become unstable or crash.
Most companies realize that PC downtime costs bigtime $$$. A workstation should be stable as a rock. Your IT should have a current disk image that contains a company-wide standard, with all stable drivers, etc, and should be sufficiently *locked-down* that users cannot fubar the system easily. Joe Employee shouldn't be downloading the leaked HL2 source from Kazaa while installing experimental DX9 drivers for his 4MB S3 Virge.
What makes this story newsworthy? There aren't any interesting technical details, it's just the account of one guy who bumbled through putting his Mac on the company network. Good for him.
I'm also not impressed by the knee-jerk bashing of the IT department that doesn't know Macs. The IT department's job is supporting hardware/software the company owns, not whatever the employees could ever want to have. Neither the author nor Apple could say why his Powerbook wasn't getting an IP, but for some reason only the IT department gets branded as ignorant.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Where I work we're mostly a Windows shop with some Novell: NT, Win2k, XP, and Netware 4.1. I use my Titanium (running Jaguar) for lots of stuff here, and use it in conjunction with my Windows workstation as well. I'm even able to use the company-approved email client, Lotus Notes R6, on my laptop thanks to the OS X client that ships with the install CDs. I haven't had any problems printing, file sharing, developing, doing anything really, unless it involves Novell. Getting around WINS isn't hard thanks to SMB, but if I don't know the IP address of a Novell box off the top of my head, then that's kind of a pain because while it's not all that difficult to go *find* the IP of whatever Novell machine I'm looking for, it's easier to just drill in via "Network Neighborhood" on the Win box, whereas on the Mac I'm sort of stuck. So but yeah, that's the only real speed bump I've encountered. Otherwise, no sweat, man. A couple of our engineers over in R & D use their PowerBooks and have no troubles, either.
But you would have a hard time bringing a Windows box onto any of my networks. They're just not allowed anymore.
Wrap your self in the colors and pretty presentation of the MAC. Then consider the research, design, implementation and documentation it takes to implement system into a production environment!
Next take the amount of time and effort it takes to manage, monitor and maintain a single system environment!
Why would I want to introduce a niche product for a handful of elitist who decide that they want our wire but don't want to help ensure the safety, security and reliability of our network? "Damn it Jim I am a Doctor not a Computer Technician!"
What standards do they or would they adhere too? One last thought I think the next time I go to the Dr. Office I will tell him/her that I don't like the cold ugly stethoscope and I want him to use mine, or maybe I want a cherry flavored tongue depressor!
OK, so I love my Mac, but why on earth would you try to use a Mac in a PC environment where you develop apps specifically for PCs? I would love to use a Mac at work, but I need SAS 8.2, so that's not an option. Macs are great, but maybe a PC would be best for PC-oriented tasks?
To understand recursion,
you must first understand recursion.
You wanna be special and bring your different computer into the network? Heh. Sounds like you are ignorant. Maybe you should sign off on all support issues excepting a live network connection and they'll be more accommodating.
Blar.
do you mean "Increasing your capital expense budget by 50+ percent"?
I can get Dell's tricked out, for the price of ONE Powerbook. And I don't have to teach anyone how to use the Mac equivilent of anything.
Mac makes an awesome product, but with IT budgets shrinking, now isn't the time to "Go Mac".
I can't believe the play this article is getting. First it was on MacSlash and now it is on Slashdot. I can't see that it offers any useful information. The author does little to explain how he did anything, mostly because he had no idea what he was doing. The general consensus on MacSlash that this article does nothing to help other people get Macs running in their own place of work. I agree!
Smeghead every day of the week.
What the hell? Please tell me that you won't be operating any heavy machinery anytime soon. :)
Remember, this is the company that sold the first iMacs without removable storage, and they promoted this deficiency as a good thing.
IT purchasers better be ready to shell out extra bucks for peripheral purchases because Mac decided it was good to get rid if a feature long before the market decided it was not needed anymore.
Wow... sonds like one of those freaking mac fanatics.
So I connected my Mac to the network, and it didn't work.
But then it did, kind of.
Then it didn't.
Then by running Windows on my Mac, I could connect.
Just the sort of in-depth, technical article we should expect here.
In the company I work for, while there are certain standards of computers and operating systems, most of the time these "standards" are a "follow these if you want assistance" type.
In other words, if you do not have a Dell computer with Windows 2000/XP on it, the IT staff does not want to hear from you.
At the same time, they really don't give a care what you use on your desktop. Which, since I work for a company that does a lot of security work, actually makes some twisted sense. We have people running around the place running everything from Windows to GNU/Linux to OpenBSD (which is the OS of choice for our penetration testers), as well as quite a few OS X users.
So how does the IT staff handle this? Well, the first part, as I said, is if it's not the "official company approved stuff", they don't talk to you about it.
On the other hand, everything else tends to work because they system is set up to follow most open standards. They follow the DHCP proper configurations (and, if you've ever worked with Windows DHCP, you know there are ways to make it so that UNIX based machines will not be able to fully work within the environment depending on what settings you mess with). The Intranet runs on the https port, and they don't have any javascript/flash or anything that would prevent somone who's connecting via a slow VPN link and just using Lynx to log their hours to have a headache.
I've read the stories of the "well, if so-and-so brought that kind of machine into the building, we'd fire them!", then those same companies complain of rampant viruses because of their monoculture.
To a man with only a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But for those places which have the "this is the Support System - you can run whatever you like, as long as it a) has antivirus, b) you don't try to get around the firewall, and c) you don't bug us to support your weirdness", the employees are emplowered to get whatever tool they need to get the job done. Part of the company's system is 0% interest loans to employees to buy their own computers, which encourages them to buy their own stuff and use it for work (such as my Powerbook, or my Pen-Tester's BSD laptop, and so on).
It seems to work in my company, and except for 1 quarter in 30 years, we have yet to not make a profit. And we don't worry about the IT staff except when we have to.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
alright now, i think we all know the reason why people are scared to bring macs into the workplace. i look around my office, and over half of the dolts here can't even figure out a variety of basic actions on their windows pc's - the same os these individuals have been running for years. what do you think these people would do when a completely new os was shoved in their face? the problem with people like this is they do not want to learn, and you know i'm right.
.net work, and i'm not about to try all that mono shit.
these are the same people that are your relatives that have pc problems, and you go to fix their computer and they look like it as its some magical instrument that only you can repair, they don't want to know how to do things themselves. if people could get some brains, they could try a different os and see that it's better and much easier to use. i'm a mac user, but i have to have a mac and a pc at work, b/c i do
It's a very tough job to keep down help desk calls and efficently resolve problems in our environment of 45,000 workstations scattered around 600 cities if we have moron users demanding to bring their personal equipment in and connect it to our network!
Not to mention the fact that one of our cost-driven security measures is to manage all the software, patches, and anti-virus solutions for all of these machines centrally. We can't do that if you go bringing in your own freakin' hardware and OSes.
I'm IT and here where I work (very big two letters company) 50% of the IT people at my site use Macs. We have a cocktail of machines, HP-UX, Solaris suns, Windows PC, linux servers. Macs have probed to be a very convenient system administration platform. They provide us a very stable base for administrating unix an linux boxes, because of the Mac's Unix guts, while having access to office applications like MS Office (Dohh) and mail. I personally use Apple's Mail and not MS entourage because I find the mail application nicer. Some times I regret this because I can't respond to meetings requests I receive from MS exchange.
Anyway, I think Macs are a very good tool for my work team an my self, because it is the best of two wolds. (Or the only unix OS capable of running MS Office) As stable as Linux or any other Unix, and cuter then Windows.
Ernesto
is that you need to make all your corporate applications run on your mac. Not so much a hurdle as a brick wall.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I work for a small company that was exclusively PC/Win2K. I'm an MCSE and have worked mainly with Windows, but have seen the advantages of UNIX-like free OSs (Open and FreeBSD mainly). So when they hired a new web developer who requested a Mac, I leapt at the chance to set one up. I found it quite easy to integrate OSX with the W2K domain with a couple of minor hassles.
SMB support was a pretty painless setup, but I have dealt with SAMBA on BSD. The UNIX-y mounting of network shares does have its problems. When a file server had to be rebooted, the Mac connected to it kept the connection mounted. A umount in the terminal got rid of it, and the connection worked properly when reconnected. Printing was tons of fun, and required some text file editing to get going. At first I could get the printers to connect but not print. Turns out I needed to install GIMP-Print and that solved it.
Now none of the issues were insurmountable but I had 1 thing going for me. I have a UNIX background and do not fear the Terminal. The user I set this up for was totally surprised when I brought up a CLI and started typing away. I mention this because the vast majority of Mac users don't have this background. I found that Mac users look at a terminal window and make the same face that most PC techs make when they have to work on Macs. Until Apple makes a nice GUI for Windows integration this is not a viable solution for the majority of Mac users.
"If you've got memory, then shit's going to fly"
I'd hate to see, or even smell, your workplace. Sounds suspicously like you might be using a fan, not a Macintosh computer.
Point is, Macs take a lot of tuning, too. And they are not designed for ease-of-support as they are for ease-of-use. So Windows software may crash more, but when a Mac crashes, it crashes hard. In my experience.
========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
While I sort of see the point of some posters here that there is a risk in allowing a non-corporate machine access to the network. One IT type person noted that if said Powerbook was not secure and introduced a virus to the network that the IT people would be blamed. I work in a company dominated by Windows and the above type comments make me laugh. A few weeks ago most of the laptops were crushed by silly worms like blaster and such. They all had to be "fixed" before getting back on the network. Meanwhile I was plugging away on my Powerbook. While I understand the risk of the unkown machine, I offer this; Macs are much less likely to be infected with damaging bugs to begin with.
The whole issue of Macs getting into the rest the market (which is mostly business--the consumer market is much smaller) is VERY RELIVANT TO ALL OF US!
All the problems the mac has with adoption are the same as that of LINUX, BSD, etc. Except Apple has got a porshe of a setup and the latter does not. If Apple can't get a foothold because of x,y, and z then neither can LINUX. Apple has some nice extras LINUX does not, but LINUX is free/cheap. Other than those differences the whole problem is one that BOTH must face in gaining acceptance.
We need market diversity to help drive the open standards and the need for IT to make it all interoperate. Think of your future!
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
My Dell is a 1 GHz unit with 512mb ram but I didn't like running more than three or four apps at once because the performance became sluggish. On the Mac, I often run six or eight applications at once, including OS 9 and Windows 2000 in Virtual PC. Three open OS's at once plus playing music, downloading files and running updates is an amazing feat.
No, it's not a amazing feat. My work box is a 733 with 128 megs of ram and it can do all that as well. Right now I have Xmms playing, Xchat, A bunch of mozilla tabs, TightVnc, A few ssh sessions, emerging -u world, kmail, Jpilot, mysqlcc, apache with php, mysql, gaim, kdeveloper and foldingathome. And guess what, it's not slugish. It sounds like his os wasn't configured correctly.
A slightly offtopic but related question....
In my office we doing Java development using Sun JDK 1.4.1 & JBoss on PCs running Linux. I'm wondering if anyone has experience of using Macs/OS x in a similarly environment? On the surface of things, everything should be fine since OS X supports all the standard tools, apache, tomcat, Ant, JBoss, perl, python, Emacs etc and the compile time and JRE spped on a G5 should be comparible to a high-end PC (or is it?).
Does anyone have any experience of using a Mac such a PC/Linux-based environment? I'm especially interested in performance comparisons and compatibility btw Apple's JDK and Sun JDK and JBoss performance, of a G5 compared to a PC
The motivation for switching to OS x would be for the non-development related software that it runs natively (eg. Office, Lotus Notes, Photoshop etc) etc that i have to Wine or VMWare to use under Linux (as well as Aqua generally seeming a nicer environment to use).
He was unable to find Go --> Connect to server FOR TWO WEEKS! Don't people read help on their systems?
http://yofoshizzle.com
Adopt Macs. Fire ignorant IT staff.
Windows administrators are the Model T mechanics of today.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
"Wow, look at me, I bought a computer and plugged it in. I am so l33t!"
The article said that the IT staff was curious but not much help. As long as your IT staff is not hostile that is a step in the right direction. If you can provide most of the support you need you may even convert a few of them
More of my thoughts
Arrogant users are far worse than ignorant IT staff.
Sorry, but it is the businesses network, their site, hence it is their rules.
If you want a laptop where I work you get a nice shiny new laptop - of the companies choosing.
Why do IT departs demand and are right in declaring what is and is not permitted?
Support.
Licensing.
Security.
Those are the big 3.
I don't care if someone things product A sucks, hell I might agree. However as soon as exceptions are made to the rule for one person it starts a downhill slide into support hell.
So, grats to this guy getting his stuff to work. It would never happen where I am at simply because it would never be a question. If the standards provide the return the business desires then that is what will be adhered to.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
One problem that Apple still needs to resolve before they can really be a serious contender for enterprise-level use is the speed with which they service machines. When a machine needs a replacement part (e.g., when your mainboard up and dies on you,) it can take up to two weeks to get it back. First, Apple ships you a return box. You box up your machine and send it off to the depot. The depot takes a day to check it in. Once it's in the depot, it'll take a handful of days to repair it. Finally, they ship it back.
Unfortunately, they have no policy for getting you a replacement in the meantime. For a consultant like myself, sitting without a computer for a week and losing $$$ of billable time, not to mention getting behind on deadlines, is wholly unacceptable. The major PC-based laptop manufacturers (e.g., Dell and Sony) will get you a new machine pronto if your current one breaks down; until Apple can do the same, as far as I'm concerned, their machines shouldn't be used for any sort of time-critical activity.
1. I once had to give a Mac access to a network file server. It sucked- I needed to bypass a majority of the file server's security to allow this to happen.
2. Mac doesnt have any real kind of client software that allows it to attach to an NT network (much less an AD network). Quite unlike Windows, which can connect to ANY other network (Netware, Apple, Unix, etc), and still be secure.
This guy needs to learn what he is talking about, but thats a tall order. Its so much easier to just bitch and whine.
osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
Wow, an Anti-MS website touting the abilities of a Mac. Will the wonders never cease?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Okay you are right. I should have said, asked "how can you do this with an free, open source solution on windows". My bad.
The only defense they have is that they can't support it.
That was code for "we'll be happy to support your Linux system as soon as you send us on a two week training trip to Las Vegas"
Even with the overhead of VPC, it's often more pleasant to work on Windows only stuff in VPC and then do everything else in OSX - on better hardware (especially true of laptops). Compare wake times from other laptops to Macs.
Why is SAS 8.2 on the Mac not an option with VPC?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The TCO studies that put Apple ahead are misleading because they are forgetting that some of the costs you might have with a PC are from buying software that greatly increases productivity.
Let's say you have a fabrication plant. You have Macs running Office. You end up doing almost all of the work using the spreadshet in Excel. That's a hell of a way to do it, but you didn't buy more software.
Let's say instead you get a PC. You choose from among the many specialized applications that help out in such factories. You've spent more money, but you are getting a lot more out of the computer than if you were forced to only use the "common" spreadsheet application. It's that way for just about everything else: there is a wide variety of specialized business apps for the PC that you can buy (spend $$$) to help your business that just are not sold on the Mac.
A bicycle has a much lower TCO than a car. But you can't get as far....
I've worked in mixed platform environments for quite some time. My current workplace is about 85% mac, most of which are OS X desktops. The network OS is Win2k. Everybody gets along just fine, network shares behave reasonably and sharing files is fine between users since we make sure to have equivalent versions of desktop apps.
As pointed out in the posted story, I think my largest issue with windows machines, and with linux machines, is the sheer amount of labor required to get from point A to point B. On windows everything crashes, or the hard drives mysteriously get corrupted, or the current version of the driver for my video card somehow conflicts with something which causes an instant blue screen 20 minutes (exactly) into my computing session. (Don't forget the creative sound card 'helper' that freaks out and eats all of your system memory when it gets bored).
:-)
On the linux side, which I love and use for all of my server applications, things just aren't user friendly enough for an office workplace as a deployed solution. I wouldn't ever expect a system administrator to have any interest in troubleshooting my linux box. The flaw here lies in the obscure methods for installing software, what happens to that software once it is installed, and how the heck to run that installed software when it doesn't show up in a dock menu somewhere.
Prior to OS X, I hated the macintosh platform. The kludgy way things had to be done, the strange finder, the weird apple icon that was the bitbucket for everything on the system. I just couldn't stand how hard they were for me to use. But now, ever since they did the whole Mac+Unix thing, I have been quite curious but cautiously hesitant at throwing down the big dollars for a substantial desktop machine. This is the point of the story when I have to employ Apple to create an envoy of 'trial macs' to rent out to users to experience what life is like with OS X compared to windows or linux.
I recently changed jobs from a Windows NT/2000/XP/Whatever house, to a mostly Mac Only shop. In the interviews I was quite interested as I met and chatted with the system administrator about their infrastructure, etc. I was immediately very happy that I would have a day to day opportunity to goof around on OS X while working. I do mostly web and database development, which doesn't tend to be platform dependent.
After the first day of using OS X at work, I fell in love with it. That's all it took. A whole entire day where I could focus on work and my tasks at hand without having to even think about the operating system--except for how cool it was. Everything from the standard Terminal App, that allows you to select text, hit Command+C to copy it, then Command+V to paste it in another app, to the slick way I can download and compile most linux/unix based apps that I need to run on my system, made this OS the OS of choice for Getting Work Done. Things just worked the way I expected them to when I expected to.
If I hadn't been given the opportunity to spend an entire day working on an Apple, I probably never would have taken the plunge and purchased one. Yeah, they're damn sexy. But the price point alone scared me away from trying one. You can get the equivalent PC for half the price. You just can't get the experience. I'm telling you, Apple needs to build more apple stores with "Try it for a day" cubicles available for check out. Come in, sit down, and see what it is like to work on a Mac for a day. It really would change minds. A lot more than demo machines in CompUSA playing the new lord of the rings video on that 23" panel display.
I still use Windows at home for things like games, or when I get really bored with having a computer that doesn't randomly die on me. But, to be honest, I don't think I have turned that computer on in 2 months. I use Linux on my dedicated web servers and love those machines to death. The real deciding factor here is the fact that OS X allows me to focus on work instead of the strange things I have to figure out how to fix with my OS.
It isn't without bugs, and my system hangs every once in a while. Maybe once every 2-3 weeks. Nobody is perfect. But for those people who label themselves as geeks, I really think that OS X is the way to go when you want to get down to business. I don't think I could live without it. Just sit down somewhere and give it a try. It is different, but sometimes different can feel good.
When do you think I can get my own Switch commercial?
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
This is the only problem I have using Macs in a Windows environment.
My Dell is a 1 GHz unit with 512mb ram but I didn't like running more than three or four apps at once because the performance became sluggish
Gotta wonder if there's something shady about the way their IT department configured the Dells. This hardware should be more than enough to run a dozens apps, even if some are outlook, project, etc. Makes me wonder how things would look with a clean install of 2K or XP for comparison.
I'm assured by the CTO that he's open minded about it, but just thinks it's really "odd" and wants to know why.
;)
Explain that you knew you were different since you were about 12 years old. While the other kids went and played with Windows, you always prefered the Mac. After all these years, it doesn't make much sense to ask "why" when you can get more work done if you just accept who you are.
Alternately, flash your Canadian passport with a wink.
Before you grab an "unused IP", you should check whether they have a DHCP server and use it to get a dynamic address if they do. Otherwise, you may be grabbing an IP address that has been assigned to a computer that is turned off or is for some other reason currently off the network. Plus, if they have a DHCP server, it may eventually assign the address to someone else if it doesn't know you're using it.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
For what its worth there is one Mac in our organization. I have it, and I am the SysAdmin. Most of the workstations are Windows (mix of versions) a few are Redhat Linux, and the servers are a mix of Redhat Linux (app servers) and OpenBSD (IS systems).
I recently persuaded my boss to buy me a G4 Powermac, so that someone in the department could learn a little bit about the Mac, its hardware, and how OSX works. Seeing as every one else in the department shuns anything that isn't Wintel hardware, I got to the front of the queue :)
:D
I've been pretty impressed with the system so far to be quite honest. Out network is predominantly Windows XP on the client, and a mix of Windows Server 2000 / 2003 and Novell Netware 5.1.
I've been able to obtain a Novell Netware client for OS X - the downside being that Prosoft (the people that make it) charge an insane $149.99 for it. This just so I can connect to my Netware shares. The same thing that Novell give away for free. But what can you do? *grumble*
Any applications that I really need I just Remote Desktop into our Remote Desktop Server, and run - things like Outlook, and sites that need IE as a pose to Apples Safari. Microsoft actually make a Remote Desktop Client which works almost identically to the Windows version.
You can browse and map to any Windows machine - and even when they are joined to the domain, and expecting a domain member to connect, OS X can understand and work with that.
Microsoft do a version of Office for the system, so thats opening the bosses word documents or powerpoint presentations covered. I even think they do a version of Outlook (I can't get on with Entourage which ships with Office X as standard) but I have yet to find the Volume Licensing CD with that on and try it out.
It really is tremendously flexible - plus its by far the coolest machine in the office, and thanks to its inbuilt 10/100/1000 network port, I am now hooked up to our Cisco 3500 series edge switch at 1000mbit, whereas everyone else is on 100
After reading the article, it seems that the author just managed to figure out VirtualPC and other utilities to integrate into the corporate network. I too had a Powerbook and tried to incorporate it into the net at work. I just ended up running VPC also just to talk to the shared printers. Decided to sell the PB and just get a new Wintel laptop running Slack. Tell me how to print to a shared Windows printer with the OSX drivers via SMB and I will be impressed/indebted?. I still have my eMac just for the OSX experience but productivity at work in the Wintel infrastructure was best kept Wintel for now.
I did it. And in 4 easy steps:
1. Purchase Macintosh
2. Take out of box and set up computer
3. Turn Macintosh on.
4. Set Up Networking controls.
I don't see what's so hard about it.
First I plugged it in, but it didn't work. So I played with it for a while and it still didn't work. I left it alone for a while, and then it started magically working!
Then I went on to the next part. Again, I couldn't get it working. So I did some random stuff to it and it still didn't work. Then I left it alone and it started magically working too!
Our employer uses some proprietary software that has a Mac port. Unfortunately, the Mac port isn't perfect. But this won't be permanent, because my company is upgrading to a new version of the proprietary software, and I have faith that Apple will release an update to their package at the exact right moment to make it continue working.
. . . This really isn't making me want to rush out and buy a Mac, you know? I mean, the next part is pretty impressive - dongles working *through a virtual operating system layer* is mighty cool. But the first few paragraphs just make me wonder what I'd do if it *didn't* magically start working, or if the gnomes at Apple didn't release a new patch just in time for my own personal use.
If he said "it didn't work, and so I checked the extensive documentation, browsed the detailed error logs, and figured out exactly what was wrong", yeah, that'd be great. But if he's saying "it just started working eventually", that doesn't fill me with confidence.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
It's sad...for now at least...that so many people in the IT world know all this. For us, it's a "yeah...I've seen this article or one like it a dozen times in the past month or two". All very good points are made. But the problem, or problems still exist. We still have to get all this knowledge to Corporate America. And even once that's done, we have to convince IT Directors that this is the way to go. There are many reasons they would fight this...they're still going on what they know about pre-OS X Mac technologies and implementations (which sucked compared to what they are now), job security, fighting THEIR bosses, and so forth. It's all a worthy fight, and it seems like such a black-and-white "no shit" solution to us...but "us" is a different group and we still have businessmen, stubborn IT Directors, etc to fight with to get these points known.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I can understand the argument for replacing Windows machines with a KDE or Gnome (more secure and you're not tied to Microsoft technology), but what is the benefit of Mac OS in the work place? Just seems like you're making things more difficult than they need be for a higher price (you get security and you're not tied to Microsoft as much, but it costs more and is more difficult to use).
I think it would make more cents to migrate to Linux than Mac OS. I don't consider myself to be a Linux desktop fanboy either - I run Windows on the desktop at home and work and Linux on the server.
If they are running 10.2 or later it is a dream to admin. Now if it's a PowerMac 8500 with OS 7.6 I might see the problem, but since 10.2 came out (really 10.1 but it was slow compared to 10.2) OS X has been a dream.
3 years ago, and have never looked back. Virtual PC is the #1 reason it was so easy, though ...
I freakin' love 'cocktail' hardware. Cheap crack is still crack.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
> I even plugged my laptop into a router outside of our
...
> network and it worked fine. But inside our corporate
> network, I would only get a 169... number which meant
> that I wasn't getting one from the network server.
ifconfig --renew
That will solve his problem lickety-split
> I still couldn't browse network shares and I tried joining
> our Active Directory domain using Admit Mac but it
> wouldn't let me join.
> don't know when this happened but I could now browse
> through the servers and mount them on my desktop. I
> ran back to IT again asking if they had turned on Services
> for Mac, which I had asked them to consider.
What is he *doing* with ADmitMAC? It's simple, click on Finder, select "Go" from the menu and select "Connect to Server". No need for "Services for Mac" or any other BS.
> Then I downloaded Outlook 2001 for OS 8-9 and it
> connected instantly and ran much smoother than either
> of the two methods I used previously. The only downside
> is that Outlook for Mac does not render HTML email
> properly. But that is a small price to pay.
The name for the OS X version of Outlook is ENTOURAGE. He'd know this if he actually bothered to get Office X (which was probably pre-installed on his machine as a 30 day trial anyway).
Did he even TRY to search the net for tutorials on how to get his machine hooked up to a windows network? It *really* is NOT hard. I'm probably being a bit hard on the guy, but COME ON. It's a completely new OS and he's treating it like the 10 years out of date OS 9.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That you DO end up supporting it. I'll relate a couple of my experiences:
.25 FTE student (me). Now, everyone except one woman used Windows PCs. It wouldn't really have mattered what OS they used, all they ever did was type things in Wordperfect, check e-mail and websites, and manage student data via telnet to the SIS mainframe.
One was working for a small department at a large university. They couldn't afford a proper tech support staff, instead all they could afford was one
Now, it happens I do know about Macs and how to support them, more than most techies, but not near as much as I know about Windows. One of my first tasks was to get new computers, since theirs were woefully out of date. Well I speced new cheap Dells for everyone. We then had to have a big meeting and fight over Macs. The Mac lady though they should ALL go to Macs and refused to change. Ok, fine, everyone else gets PCs, she can have a Mac. She says it'll be no problem since "Macs never break".
Funny thing, I spent the largest percentage of time supporting her. She wasn't all that much more demanding than the other users, but she still had problem all the time. I hear the siutation got somewhat worse when I left and the student that replaced me had NO Mac knowledge.
Or take now, I work for network operations, at the same university. Well being a university, we can't tell people how to do things, academic freedom is a powerful force here. Well, most users are content to work with our equipment. We provide all the equipment, service, and support up to the jack at the wall (we don't do computer support, departments have their own support as perviously indicated). Most departments are quite happy with this. Our equipment is reliable and we can get things fixed fast.
However, some departments just have to do their own thing. They want to have some or all of their own equipment. This is an endless source of problems. They never seem to know enough to properly run and support their equipment. So something breaks and they blame us. We verify that all our stuff is working properly in every way we can but still no dice. So we end up having to go out and fix their shit (not our job) to make things work so they quit accusing us.
Best example of that was the school paper. They moved to a new building because of construction. Well, after the move, their big laser printer stopped working properly. So of course, they call us and claim it's a network problem. We try to explain to them that IP is IP to our switches and routers and all OTHER IP traffic is working fine. We eventually come out there and find some cobbled together switches hooking the comptuers trying to print to the printer. It was never even touching our NETWORK (problem was a bad card in the printer).
So, see, these sorts of things are the reason IT staff dislikes cowboys doing their own thing. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of you that setup your own system, maintain it yourself, and never bother the support staff. However there are plenty that don't. They do their own thing, break something, and cry to the support department, who isn't supposed to have to support that thing. Now this is annoying when it is a problem that the support staff can fix, but shouldn't have to, like our network problems. We have the skills to fix them, it's just not our job.
However if the IT department DOESN'T have the skills, then it's a real problem. Not everyone can be skilled in everything, and smaller IT departments usually have less staff, and less well paid staff, hence less skill. So having a cowboy can be a real nightmare for them. This isn't fair to the users who really can support themselves, but it is the way things go.
Aw Yes, the "Corporate Red Tape"....
My company, a hugh printing company world wide, always seems to muck things up when it's time to make an IT decision.
And this one is no exception:
We are thinking of not buying anymore Macs and going all PC hardware....
WHAT?!?!?!? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?!?!?!?!?!
The biggest reasons, they said, because the IT department couldn't support them. And over in Europe they are having problems.
The first thing out of my mouth was: "What are they using OS 9??"
And they said yes.
Over here in the US were using OS 10.2, and I said that's were you problems are coming from.
And it just so happens the Mac IT Tech is coming over here to see why were not having the problems.
We run Novell for file/print...for the Windows world.
The Mac's on the other hand use a Linux server Running NFS for a file server....
The Mac's do not have problems....
Corporate smucks are always trying to MANDATE everything they think that isn't "Standard".
Well sorry, but in printing the Macs are "Standard"!!!
The biggest RED TAPE, I've seen has been trying to convince Corporate, that Mac's DO PLAY WELL with Windows...
I could go on an on here...But I need to do some work!!!
Just fucking upgrade already!!!!!
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
The article omits any serious tests and solutions to integrating Apple hardware/software into a Windows networked environment. The major issues described were resolved either by running Win2K under Virtual PC or by magic fairies that inexplicably established network connections. In fact, there are so many "unsolved mysteries" and "I don't know" statements, I find it unfair that the author points out everyone else's ignorance when his own is too obvious to ignore.
It sounds like he made a poorly researched hardware decision, purchasing a Powerbook for work purposes without knowing whether or not he would be able to integrate it, use existing office systems, run proprietary PC-only applications. The IT infrastructure of his organisation sounds like Active Directory this and Exchange Server that, and by the fact that they recognised it as a Mac (rather than a Unix box) leads me to believe that they're not running too many flavours of anything else.
/dave
...how to avoid being smirked at and called a "Mac Weenie(tm)"?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I saw too much of this in the article to consider this passed with flying colors. When nobody can explain why things don't work one day and do work another, I'd have to label it still a work in progress. No indication that even a second Mac would easily and successfully connect to their network right now.
I'd mod the original article Overrated if they still let me mod anything.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Without the almighty floppy, Apple somehow managed to sell a ton of them."
Yes, a ton of ugly dongle-drives so the iMac would have the missing removable storage.
"Also, If it wasn't for the iMac, USB would still be the "What does that port do?" port.
Manufacturers were pushing USB before the iMac. They were pushing USB during the iMac. They would have pushed USB regardless of the iMac. However, few were as stupid as Apple to leave off standard interfaces for devices like printers. Sure helped people sell "standard-to-USB" converters to get around the iMac design deficiency.
" Any credibility you might have had is destroyed by your stupid sig attempting to equate Microsoft with Hitler.
yeh buddy we know they are not equal. Microsoft is far worse.
I hope they come out with the long awaited windows CT. All it lets you do is play crazy train, and look at pictures of ozzy.
Ive been an IT admin/tech/whatnot for about 12 years and Ive stuggled through the first renditions of Windows and some were bearable, and some were quite annoying with their quirks. Add now, recently, with all the security and virus issues coming out of the woodwork, and the lockups and I no longer needed an excuse to switch. I only have a few old Proliant I'll be switching over to UNIX (next learning project this winter) just for raid5 storage. I bought a DP G4 1.42 and love it. I needed a pc to do video editing and titling, and was having issues getting the Windows version of the 1394 firewire working, let alone trying to make good DV out along with Quicktime and .MOV files for the website. I sold the P4 and just keep a Windows machine for gaming, but, like someone else commented, I havent used it in a month or so. The g4 with OSX connects to all my windows shares for the storage, works with my 802 wireless network if I want it beyond the ethernet cable's range, and its smooth and stable. Personally, I havent had a pc which I didnt have to reload the OS every 6 months due to one problem or another. I'm talking 95/98/2000 and XP. If you have a stable system with testing new hardware and pushing your machine to the limits and youre running a MS OS, you're a lucky one.
I wouldnt mind doing a "I switched" commercial, too, I'll tell you now, the only way Id go back is with virtual PC if I ABSOLUTELY needed to run something like Visio or just an app I couldn't find on the MAC. I am sure in the corporate workplace there are too many applications that would not work on the MAC, or are not written on the mac, for example, if you didn't want to use Virtual PC.
I support over 300 Windows clients and they're just high maintenance with patches, bugs, viruses, and such. Servers and Desktops. Now, if I had MACS at the workplace for clients, IM sure myself and possibly other tech people would be out of a job due to their stability.
" I think he meant "more difficult to use" in the sense that Microsoft tries very hard to make it painful for non-Microsoft stuff to interoperate with theirs."
It must not be working, since companies make the overwhelming majority of things to interoperate with Windows, and few to interoperate with the Macintosh.
It ends up being a lot easier to interoperate with Windows when only a fraction of anything will even work at all on the Mac.
I know a lot of happy OS X users. I was the one who made the (successful) push to replace all the Windows desktops with OS X as I was leaving the Retriever Weekly (graduating). I think that OS X is a fine desktop, but my desktop at home is still Enlightenment on Linux.
Why? The Mac doesn't offer anything over Linux that matters to me, and it has some design elements that annoy me. I'm also cheap out of necessity: I haven't bought an entire new computer, ever, and actually enjoy my Frankenstein PCs. I don't spend "hours" on them because I know what I'm doing, but just like someone who likes to work on cars, I didn't mind back when I did spend hours on them.
Installing new applications is mostly trivial. Debian almost always has an application that's right for the task that I'm trying to do, and installing graphical applications automatically puts them in the Debian X menu hierarchy. Not that I use it; I have my own small, custom, efficient menu instead. I greatly prefer a tiny menu which comes up right under my pointer, and windows that spawn there, to a "dock".
I also curse Apple for removing windowshading. Bad! In E, I often have stacks of windowshaded Mozilla windows, which are identifiable as long as the page has a reasonable title. I have a 1600 x 1200 display and multiple desktops, but I would still run short on space without windowshading. And yes, I am using tabs; most of the windows have multiple tabs open. I can ALSO minimize apps down to the pager, which shows either an icon for the app or a tiny snapshot of it.
The multiple desktop solutions I've seen for OS X have all been hacks, to the point where they had limitations which were unreasonable to me (something like not being able to have the same app, like Terminal, in more than one desktop). All of my desktops are littered with Eterms.
I know that I am not the "average" user. I prefer The GIMP to Photoshop (sorry, not publishing a printed paper here). I prefer GNUcash because I can do accounting. Eterms far outnumber the real GUI apps on my desktop. I check my email with mutt and Vim. But I just wanted to point out that OS X, wonderful though it may be, is not the super-solution for everyone. If you are "frustrated" with Linux but don't want to go back to Windows, you will probably like it. But I am not frustrated with Linux.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Apple's biggest problem has always been their inability to estimate demand enough to ensure a steady supply. I worked strategy with many businesses, and was there when NorTel (then Apple's biggest customer) switched to Windows. When a company decides to add 300 workers, they don't want to need contingency plans for their reseller running out of PowerBooks. I worked for Apple out in California, and their innovation engine fires on all cylinders, moving the world forward one user at a time. But a succession of CEOs (including Jobs) has failed to keep Apple a minimum risk to the supply chain.
--
make install -not war
Is there a client to support 802.1x PEAP EAP-MSCHAPv2?
We all know that if this was an article about getting a Linux box onto the corporate network, this place would be full of "Yeah! Go for it!" posts. :P
Well...the first hurdle in this quest would be to get your employer's permission to use a Mac on their network in the first place, wouldn't it? Since this guy didn't get fired, he must've dealt with that little detail.
ANd it's a tad unfair to dump on the IT staff for being "ignorant" of the Mac. They were hired to support all those Windows machines the boss paid for. Whining about an MSCE not being able to support a Mac laptop is a bit like complaining that the kid at your local Big Mac doesn't know how to make your favorite Caramel Macchiato.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
- "So, I fired up Virtual PC, installed Windows 2000"
His IT department must have to draw straws on who gets to answer his calls.http://www.kubuntu.org/
Why is the article dissing on IT staff (calling them ignorant). I have 10 years experience working in IT, first with a Fortune 500 company, and now with a large privately owned company. I've got an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. I've managed Netware, Solaris, Oracle, OpenVMS, Windows NT through Windows XP servers, various Unix types, etc. In my 10 years we've run across the random user who either really needed a Mac, or could convince management that they had to have it. You know what we did .... yep, you got it ... we put that those Macs on the network and let the users have fun. I'm not convinced that the majority of these users actually HAD to have a Mac to do there job, but I don't really care as long as they could coexist peacefully with our network infrastructure.
I don't feel "ignorant" because my IT experience has been heavily weighted with Microsoft systems versus Mac ones. I'm an IT professional ... I just make things work ... Mac or Windows.
Ed
I'd be interested in seeing what the thoughts are of the IT staffers. Where I work, keeping legacy protocols like AppleTalk up (letting people easily abuse printing rights) and dealing with the fact that Rendezvos sets up a Class B on our Class C partitioned network (and then decides to throw multicasts and broadcasts out at strange times) is a pain in my ass. As handy as I find my PowerBook, I'd be a happier person if I didn't have to deal with the "ease of use" that Apple puts into it's products.
This comment was not generated by Uber Elephants...
Using a handheld skill-saw, I cut a rectangular opening 6x8 inches into the top of the case. Pour a layer of fine gravel about 2 or 3 inches deep into the bottom. Fill it to within 2 inches of the top opening with ordinary potting soil. Plant a medium sized Diffenbachia or Peace Lily in the soil. These generally grow well under medium level flourescent office lighting. Water sparingly, just enough to keep the soil a bit moist, but not enough to run out the bottom. Place in a well lit corner of your office and enjoy.
Try hooking an OS X machine into a network where network directory mounts are defined in LDAP. It won't work unless you first do a lot of research to find just what OS X wants. Then you get to do some MASSIVE modifications to the schema and repopulate MASSIVE portions of the db. Unless your enterprise has a lot of OS X machines, this simply isn't going to happen.
Then there are the other proprietary bits. For example, there is this nice checkbox that says "Use DHCP-supplied LDAP server". I'd love to know how that actually works if you don't have Mac OS X Server.
Apple is headed into pre-OS X territory again. No usable documentation makes IT folks very, very unhappy.
1. First, Entourage is not the "OS X version of Outlook". Among other things, it doesn't fully integerate with the Exchange server, which mean calendaring doesn't work right - just like the man said.
2. The Finder doesn't always work with AD networks. Personally, I'm tired of having to type my network domain over and over again, because keychain doesn't seem to store it correctly. (And, yes, I've read Apple's KB articles on the problem and their suggested solution doesn't work.)
Clear, Dark Skies
... how cute. Wake me up when they get AutoCAD on there.
(not flamebait, I do like Macs, but one would be pretty useless here)
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I'm glad Apple is using Macs in their workplace. They must be tired of being ridiculed for using all those outdated Amigas, BeOS, and NeXT cubes.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
On a similar note, I just posted a blurb on a similar subject over at SecurityDrop. Basically, I've seen a large jump in the use of Macs (primarily powerbooks) within the Networking and Network research fields. More than half of my peers at other facilities as well as at my own facility have switched or have been using Macs for a while. It's not enterprise (thank god) but it is a decent footprint. Virginia tech also has a large cluster of G5s, which I'll bet will make the top 10 in the top 500 supercomputer challenge. Are there any more network engineers or researchers using or switching to macs? Why or why not?
nb
"how cute. Wake me up when they get AutoCAD on there."
The "Mac belongs in the businessplace" proselytizers argue "if you can't do it with Office or safari, it is not worth doing".
In your office, the TCO of Apple is clearly much lower than that of Wintel boxes. Imagine what you can do with the money now that the IT department isn't wasting hundreds on licensing for Autocad.
according to the article Slashdot posted over the weekend
the history of the world
My staff and most of my co-workers use Dells. I'm the only one who consistently uses the Mac in a mostly-Wintel office, and I've been doing so since October 2001.
I've had absolutely no problems coexisting with those Wintel machines. I would be even happier if Nortel came out with a CC-MIS for OS X or Java and if OmniGroup could get OmniGraffle to handle all Visio files. Then I would just need to worry about Project...
" Thorbjorn Ravn Andersen "...and...Tubular Bells!""
Which version is THAT? I collect Tubular Bells versions, and do not recall that one (though I do recall the one with failed sitcom star Billy Connolly, and the one with Alan Rickman).
Serious question. How can one make an iMac running Mac OS 9.2 connect to a Windows network shared drive - without forking out loads of cash for Virtual PC or Dave? Just wanna know if I have missed something. All the Mac admins say I need either Virtual PC or Dave, both aren't cheap. Yet with my Linux (and my Windows box of course) box, SMB ain't a problem.
Not too impressive I must say. I also don't quite like the ignorant IT comment particularly since my experience shows Mac users tend to be ingnorant as far to computer knowledge. I wonder why in times of shrinking IT budgets that they wouldn't want to deploy boxes that cost three times as much? Why isn't that overpriced Xserve dominating the server market? Because there are better and cheaper products for every market segment except the cutesy computers lovers Apple wins over. That 2% can't see inside the box. If the author was a real expert he would try and bring in a system to use that he hand built, like when I was going to upgrade my system when I was in IT at Dell with an Athlon. Now that would impress me. Not knowing how to integrate a Mac into his work and then being hypocritical enough to blame ignorant IT doesn't.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
I love a good religious war as much as the next guy, but I'm forced to be pragmatic when it comes to choices on systems and hardware.
/dev/null.
In my current enviroment, we have a very healthy mixture of PCs and Macs. Like most have stated already, OS X has "fixed" many OS related issues found in earlier MacOS versions, but has created several others specific to application interoperability. Paramount among them, no *good* Exchange Client...and having to contend with an infrastructure committment to Exchange due to budgetary issues for at least the next year...maybe two has made this a serious sore point. I know, I know...Entourage. Have you used it over a WAN link via a VPN connection? I have...not a solution...a much bigger problem. I would be hard-pressed to recall a crappier program in my sixteen years of IT/IS experience.
The other issue that seems to have escaped many that shout to replace the MS enterprise entirely with Macs is that of switching costs. Leave alone the reality that the total cost of a Mac system with all required software to replace an MS system is more expensive than an upgrade to a newer MS system (in anything but an academic environment), the fact that most computer hardware purchases are capitalized makes it fiscally obsurd to replace hardware if it hasn't fully depreciated. I'd love to see someone successfully make the argument to a competent CFO that a hardware write-off was the way to go because..."Macs Rule".
In my opinion, those that claim Macs are easier to support than PCs in a mixed environment either:
a. Have a collection of tech-saavy, self-supporting *end-users* that fully understand (and remember) the hows, whats, and whys of interop,
or
b. Have never heard of, or successfully implemented any process automation in the Win32 environment. Perl + PSTools = Complete Enterprise Patching in less than an hour.
Now, before anyone accuses me of bening anti-Mac, or an MS-lover, let me make clear that I personally own two Mac PBs, and have a Blue/White G3 in my office. I also have a deep hatred for MS. That having been said, I know when to take my lemons and make lemonade. There are far more *competent* MS admins out there than there are people with the necessary *NIX experience to manage enterprise OS X available in the current job market (that haven't embedded their skill set in other, more mainstream *NIXes). People that think popping a disk in a system and re-installing the OS is the depth of sysadmin tasks required in managing Macs will have fun (sarcasm found here) over the long-term.
I personally don't care what system is being used, so long as a person's job can get done, but I'm currently the only one in my enterprise that will work in the BSD guts of OS X to secure it and automate enterprise tasks. It should probably also be noted that I run Gentoo Linux as my primary OS on both Mac and PC hardware platforms. Interop problems? What interop problems?
Hail to the All-Powerful Ubiquitous Penguin! Rock on, brothers and sisters. Rock on.
Flames will be automatically re-routed to
I'm the entire IT department for my University's newspaper. And let me tell you, I love macs. :-) Our shop is great - couple Xserv's, couple more osX servers, and 60+ mac workstations. It's 4:00 (read: crunch time for a college paper's news dept), and I'm kicking back and reading Slashdot like usual. :-) Our systems "just work." :-)
Jesse Newland
From the article: "My Dell is a 1 GHz unit with 512mb ram but I didn't like running more than three or four apps at once because the performance became sluggish. On the Mac, I often run six or eight applications at once, including OS 9 and Windows 2000 in Virtual PC. Three open OS's at once plus playing music, downloading files and running updates is an amazing feat."
I have to take exception with this. I run a 1GHz Dell with 512MB of RAM, and I regularly have eight or more apps running simultaneously without any noticeable performance degradation at all. What apps was he running that slowed his system down so much, I wonder?
I joined a company 5 years ago that had 440 users and no computer infrastructure, hard to believe these days but true. They wanted to give their employees Internet access and eMail. We purchased 6 iMacs for each of the 28 offices. Six users shared 2 wireless iMacs mounted on floating monitor arm-stands, we fabricated the base at a local metal shop and had them powdercoated (real sweet). The wireless Airports and SDSL allowed us to roll out the entire setup very cheaply, not having to rewire the place for CAT5. Each office had 3 groups of 6 desks facing each other head-to-head which allowed the iMacs to be shared while not anging into each other. We started with OS9 and a custom auto-install CD that we created to blast a new clean OS without much user intervention. This allowed us to have a central IS&T department without local MIS representation. When new software or updates came out we just sent out new CD's and let the users blast the new image to each iMac. With Web-based email the users had a quick and efficient infrastructure that was easy to maintain.
It what makes sysadmins call Mac users 'flaming idiots'.
Go ahead mod me down.....
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
The total cost of ownership is much lower for businesses using Macintosh computers.
If a business has gone bankrupt because they had to use Excel and MacPaint for specialized purposes to take the place of software like Autocard which is not available for the Mac, they certainly are not spending any more money on the computers, are they? TCO has gone down.
WTF is any IT staff letting a civilian admin his own box in this situation?
In our environment of Windows, Mac, and linux, the only boxes connected are COMPANY BOXES under COMPANY ADMINSTRATION.
The only real problem with a Mac in a Windows environment is Outlook/Exchange and that's an application problem, not an infrastructure problem. Everything else is fairly smooth and handled by simple scripts for server connections.
No user in a company should be attaching personal computers to a comapny LAN without a very good reason. Any IT group that allows it is begging for security risks up the ying yang. Not to mention the software licensing issues involved.
The author simply reinforces the the stereotype of the righteous Mac user with low knowledge and big attitude.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
who loved his Mac laptop. Of course, there was no useful cad software for Mac, so he ended up running it on a pc emulator on his Mac. Man, how stupid is that. Someone who's such a mac zealot that he refuses to use a pc even when he has no choice.
It sort of puts the lie to the old "Think Different" slogan. If you really "Think different" and want to run a program to help with a specialized business or creative task outside of the very basics ("Office") or Apple's niches (DTP, etc.), the Mac won't help you and you need to get a PC.
"p.s. Excel & MacPaint *cannot* take the place of AutoCAD"
Tell the Mac zealot this. They argue that Apple has a huge software library that does everything, and if you can't do it on the Mac it is not worth doing at all.
Personally, I run Windows and Linux because each has their place. Linux runs web-server, SQL Server, business software, and mythtv. Windows runs games.
Why would I spend a lot of extra money on a machine that partially fills all of those roles but excels at none? I don't feel that either are difficult to navigate, it's only 2 or 3 clicks in either to launch a word processor or web browser or whatnot. Who are these mythical people that waste hours and hours of time and energy navigating the innards of their OSes?
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
"Of course, there was no useful cad software for Mac"
No one needs to use CAD, really. If you can't do it on the Mac, it just isn't worth doing at all.
Seriously, you need a Mac if you are doing intensive graphic design or desktop publishing. Outside of these niche's, however, there's something else that will do it better than the Mac.
It's a niche machine, and also suitable for those who don't demand much from their machines (and will run only Office and Safari or IE).
'Ever seen a badly configured system on the network fuck up connections to other computers?'
Not for years. And we're running the most hererogenous small network I've seen for a long time.
Basically, these days, since unswitched networks and 10-base-2 are gone the way of the winds, there is almost nothing that will bring down a well-designed network except operator incompetence or inadequate design due to inadequate funding or inadequate manpower. Which do you have?
'If an employee needs a tool for their job, they request it, just like any other resource. It will be investigated and implemented if appropriate and feasible.'
This almost always means management will look at it and shrug and look at IT, and IT will look at it and say 'No, that might mean work for us', and the request is rubber-stamped 'no'. As for 'More often than not, it's a bad idea to implement their demands', what that means is, 'I don't care if it actually works, more often than not it annoys me and doesn't save ME any work.'
Mind you, this is most often because IT departments are understaffed by 50% for the work they have to do. But that doesn't excuse the attitude. The appropriate response in that case is, 'We could order that, but we don't have the manpower to support it', or 'We could order that, but only after I talk to him and assure myself that he can support it himself, because we don't have the manpower to support it,' or even, 'Yes, that would be an excellent solution to his problem, and probably make him a lot more productive; it's a pity we don't have the manpower to support it'.
Just rubber stamping 'no' on things, or (even worse) assuming that YOU know better than the end user how to do his job, just leads to the kind of IT that *should* be outsourced to India.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
When my computer (a dual 1.25 Ghz MDD with 1 GB of RAM) arrived, the whole of the IT department was there, at my desk, to greet it. Since none of them really knew how to get it to connect to their network (Windows NT), they let me have the first go. They watched, in amazement as the OS X setup took me through the network settings when I created my account. All I needed from them was a IP address number for my computer, and a few other numbers for the router, subnet mask, etc.
Needless to say, I showed them, without anymore settings involved how I could "see" the entire network and connect to anyone's computer via SMB and the proper password.
It was seamless No trouble at all. The only hurdle I faced was geting my Microsoft Entourage to work with the Exchange server. Now, some of those very same IT guys have bought some Macs of their own for home use. They were pretty blown away when I showed them the Terminal app.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
My company finds it much more effective to buy Powerbooks and Dell laptops for its employees. Plug into monitors and external keyboards just fine, and at the end of the day the employee can bring it home and maybe (eek!) actually do some work there as well. In fact, because of this, we actually have (no, *really*) some people who telecommute one day a week and actually *get* *something* *done* at home! Wow!
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
It was a surprise to me, and a pretty powerful incentive for me to go with the sexy little thing I'd never previously considered worth the price-markup. Now all I have to do is starve for a few more months...
PS: For those of you who are wondering what the rest of the audience was carrying, there were two ThinkPads, and one or two grad-student-like fellows had desktop-replacement Inspirons.
This was the perfect job for the new Macs. They won't tip over like everyday, garden-variety, mid-tower PCs.
A few months ago I switched from a Linux machine to a Mac. I do development in a PC dominated environment and we are using all of the above except JBoss. The only thing I can say to describe the experience is heaven. Developing in Java on my little powerbook has been nothing but pure joy since I set it up. Since I had NEVER used a mac before it took me a few hours to get it running "just right". Most of that time was a reeducation on my part and nothing that was lacking on the Mac.
If you decide to switch to a Mac for your development machine I am betting you will be grinning from ear to ear from that day forward.
While I do not have experience with JBoss on my Mac yet, I can tell you that Apple's JDK seems quite snappy and since Apple sees fit to include jikes with their development install, compiles are very swift. I can only imagine how instantaneous they will be on a G5.
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
Well, I can tell you this much. In one company I worked for previously, the reason putting Macs on their network will be a "tough sell" isn't because "ignorant I.T. staff" dislikes the Mac, or anything else. It's simply because they've been there and done that before, and got burned!
Back when they were first computerizing/automating the company, the owner was a big Mac fan. He used nothing but Macs at home, and didn't really want to be forced to use one of the new (286) PCs.
I.T. did their best to accomodate him. They purchased the Mac version (1.0!) of Oracle, adapters to allow his Appletalk network to communicate with the networked printers, and so forth.
Every time software got updated on the PC side, though, the Mac lagged behind. Database connectivity issues started coming up with Oracle, where the Mac version wouldn't talk right to the database, even though the PC version did (with updates to the connectors). Software started getting used that had no Mac equivalent, leaving the C.E.O. unable to review documents his own people were getting paid to make for him. It was just becoming a lost cause.
Finally, he admitted his trusty Mac just wasn't the best tool for the job - and went to a PC. All the remaining Mac peripherals and software went in the trash - and they never looked back.
Well, nowdays, things are MUCH different. Most likely, a newer Mac with OS X would work quite nicely on their network (and since they use Citrix, they could even serve a whole Windows session to a Mac user - to cover any cases of incompatibility that might be left). But you're asking the owners of the company to come "full circle" and embrace what it took years to convince them needed discarding.
Bottom line: Apple has a lot of "past history" to "undo" - to prove they belong in corporate America today. Proprietary Apple "standards" like phonenet and Appletalk, proprietary ADB connectors for keyboards/mice and requirements of proprietary Apple compatible local printers didn't win them lots of favor in "mixed environments".
If i had the dough i'd so be using a mac, however, the dough aint there!
Tragek
You IT nazi. I work for a major corp 50,000 plus people and we can use whatever computer we choose to use. If there's a problem the employee is held personally liable. That's a far better way of doing it than mandating people use the piece of shit computer IT provides.
I was surprised to read the list of various little applications that the writer had to use to make things work. As a very long time Mac user, I was hoping this article would illustrate how things "just worked" in this Windows environment--this is still, unfortunately not the case.
Why should he have to run extra apps to see other machines on the network? I thought OSX was suppsed to just work automatically. And is running half of your normally used apps in Virtual PC REALLY a solution?
I am psyched he go it to work, but I am frustrated that he had to do so much work just to get email and such working. I am particularly chagrinned that his primary network issues just disappeared randomly. Much better if there was a cause/solution.
It will be interesting to see if there is a followup article once Panther comes out...
---mike
Wow, I'm amazed reading the comments here. Slashdotters hating Microsoft so much that they advocate Macintosh before Linux, calling IT staff who don't consider Macintosh "ignorant", promoting non-homogenous networks, using the word "sexy" as a criteria for choosing a platform...
The end must be nigh. Repent!
-R
In my experience saying that Mac's don't operate well within a Windows environment is just a special case of a more general principal ... Diverse heterogeneous environments are more trouble prone and less reliable than homoegenous ones. Any time you introduce to a production environment a new system that does the same things in a different way, you're gonna have headaches.
... Oh! that PNG file was created on a Mac, which uses a different font naming scheme from Windows. If you open it on your computer you gonna have to change all the fonts over. If you save it and then send it back to the Mac, you'll have to change them all back again. You have *all* your fonts for both platforms right? In that case, let me look into the cost of re-licensing all our fonts for another platform.
For me the greatest problems using Macs in a PC environment are not the big things like file sharing but the countless little things, like not being able to move fonts from one computer to another
Or how about, my samba/smb file shares don't have Mac resource forks, so now my Macs are going to splurge Desktop folders all over the windows file shares. That makes organizing files a pain for the windows users, who have no idea what all these Desktop folders are supposed to be.
...would have to face in a Windows office is the constant '3-button mouse' jokes.
"Derp de derp."
This a great but true story you mac addicts can pass around.
:)
I got into Mac's when the first OS X boxes started rolling (before then I avoided them like the plague, and had quit running windows in favor of linux all the way back in 1997). Work is kind and flexible enough to provide me with a G4 workstation and a PowerBook for me to drag to and from from work.
But that's not the story. This story is this: one day I come across an old Mac G3 (something like 200MHz, don't remember for sure) that was in the trash. I'd been trying to convince my parents to replace their 500MHz PC with a Mac for some time, but a combination of lack of funds and unwilling to switch platforms prevented them. I saw this old G3 as the perfect opportunity to give them the OS X experience. True it's slow, but it would work at the same time.
Anyway, within a few days my Mom and completely switched to the little G3 Mac for all her web browsing, email, documents, accounting. It's significantly slower then their PC, but my mom put it best: 'It takes the mac a little longer, but it always gets there.' Last time I was home, the PC had been unplugged to save desk space.
I really hope the parents get a new G4 iMac soon...perhaps their oldest son will just have to give them a nice christmas present
END
Not sure why people talk about Netatalk instead of SAMBA or Netatalk instead of "NFS? Netatalk is a package for sharing AFP over AppleTalk or AFP over IP. It will give you what Apple calls AppleShare access to disks on a UNIX based server. It can also do PAP for printers and can do some stuff for SLP and the like.
:)
MacOS X has built in AFP over IP sharing. So netatalk is virtually uselss. However, netatalk is great on a UNIX server for sharing out volumes to AFP clients - such as home directories at a university, ISP, or corporation.
For MacOS X clients - AFP is still better than SMB - according to Apple.
Now - we just need ACL's for AFP
I lost some respect for Kevin's article when he got to the end and said he could not run more than 3 or 4 apps on his 1ghz/512mb dell without a significant slowdown. I am currently running 8 apps with another 8 in my system tray on a 866mgz/512mb and have no noticable slugishness. Kevin did not mention what apps exactly he was running and most computer enthusiast could come up with 4 apps that could bring a PC to its knees but I think his final statement gives his article a sense of dishonesty for lack of details. I am sure he could have come up with a better more convincing conclusion than that. His article ended up sounding like a Mac zealot with very little technical value.
Do you know that Panther Server (shipping next Friday) includes JBoss in the distribution, with deployment, configuration, and management tools?
If you're using the non-server version of Panther (or in fact Jaguar) just download JBoss and you're off and running.
IT staff does not have to be ignorant to deny introducing the Mac to the workplace. Theres a reason why they use all workstations from one vendor... ie IBM or Dell or HP and not mix and match. They may have problems but the problems will be consistent, rather than having a wide range of problems specific to each computer.
IT staff also tend to have their hands full with various tasks and the management wouldnt hire more coops or temps to help. So if the workers can support their own Macs, BeOSes etc, all wonderful. But we all know the moment that messenger doesnt seem to work, they hit the IT department with the problem.
An IT department could start the whole network by building it all on Macs or Linux workstations... but most frequently, that decision was already made by the previous sysadmin, and changing all workstations would be too expensive.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
"ten years ago under windows NT 3.0?"
There never was an NT 3.0.
NT 3.1 was the first release version.
I was *there*, puppy.
Lets be real here.
.... he designs the network and people come to him to ask him how to do things.
I have the phrase "architect" in my title, and I hate it because of little pissants like you. You've worked with some PC's, can do a little bit of Unix, and think you know what you're doing.
Let me explain the architect has to support standards and process because without rigid adherence to those two twin pillars, there *is* no architect.
Oh, and the real architect isn't sneaking around the network
You are a contractor with a poor attitude, and if I find out you work in my organization, you're fired as soon as you're uncovered.
Mr. "Architect".
Your experience is born out of shops that probably have 25 or less employees.
The name of the game to reduce costs is the same as Henry Ford: Standardize and offer one flavor. White boxes are cheap, but everyone is different and try to support 10,000 desktops, every one different.
Yes, Ciscos are expensive and probably not the best. But I can get 1000's of guys to support them for cheap. And I want the same one everywhere so that when things go wacky, one vendor will support them.
You're a prime example of a guy who has a little knowledge and is dangerous. Our previous IT administration embodied your type and its taken us 3 years to get rid of this kind of crap and save the company $10M a year by using "expensive" compaq desktops, expensive compaq servers, expensive CISCO switches.
No use arguing with you though; you think you save money by buying 10 different PC's at Walmart.
We have two windows machines in our office, neither of which are on an employee's desk. We used to run a Linux file and command-line application server, relying on netatalk. That's all on OS X Server now, and so many little issues are now gone. Our extremely small IT department actually has time to write end-user applications, while we sit around and laugh about all the SoBig virus email we see. The Windows machines seem to be able to network with our OS X server just fine, though they are a bit tougher to admin than our other systems.
I'm having so much fun imagining you frothing at the mouth at the thought of people actually using Macs for productive purposes. Keep on thrasing about, because you're only going to see more of it.
Some protocls are not rock solid, you know.
In any decent sized network, I'm sure any of us who have administered DHCP can say that at one point or another we've had hosts that did not acquire an address properly, for no particular known reason, and then just started working.
Yes, there IS a reason.
But if there isn't an ongoing problem, it's often not worth the time and effort to figure out what.. and if it's not repeatable, it may be impossible to find out anyway. It's not worth it.
As an admin, I do care why it didn't work, the curious side of me would liek to know why, but if there are no other problems, and the other 500 machines are working fine, dhcp exhibits no problems, and the temporary problem we had was with one guy who brought in some new kind of gear not normally present... 99 times out of 100, I'm going to write it off as "something related to the fact that he had a mac" and just keep it in the bank of my head in case we have other problems later.
Believe it. Obviously there's something important going on here. The commentary, tons of it, here, and on osviews, and probably a bunch of other places, is fascinating, partly for what it's saying and partly by its sheer volume. It looks like some nerves -- more than a few -- have been touched.
That this user was willing to go through "all of that trouble" (e.g. running Office inside VPC inside Mac) shows, not that he's an idiot, but rather, how phenominally poor the Windows environment was, and how vastly more pleasant the Mac is, at least for him.
Even more informative is the chest-thumping from the big-stick "IT" folks who find all this variously unthinkable if not downright heretical. I understand their concerns about stability and supportability, but obviously they have no clue about how productivity-sapping a clumsy (even if officially supported) computing environment can be, and how liberating a good one can be, especially to creative types like artists and programmers.
(And what's with all the nonsensical backlash against this guy for "just wanting to shout `I'm different!'"?! Don't we -- shouldn't we -- all want to shout that? Do you expect me to agree that it's a Good Thing if some corporation's work ethic, or its "IT" goons, feel the need to try to quash it?)
If you've got basic familiarity with networking then it should be a no-brainer to do Mac support. They are set up to be simple, with all configuration stuff (except NetInfo) in the System Preferences. A weekend playing with Mac OS X should be more than enough for a typical IT dude to get a handle on networking a Mac with any other platform.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Your point is well-taken. But doesn't it seem fundamentally fucked-up that you're pushing for the most problematic OS, the one that's causing you the most headaches? And aren't you concerned about limiting yourselves to Windows, while the rest of the world is moving on to more stable, standards-compliant, and open solutions?
A well-rounded IT staff (i.e., the kind that keeps itself challenged and learning) needs more than an MCSE, a lexicon of MS buzzwords, and a strange affinity for multi-layered tab panels. Your staff should be concerned with keeping its prospects open and gaining experience with Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, in addition to the latest Windows solutions.
Diverse knowledge is how you get the pick of the jobs when your employer goes belly-up. Knowing Linux / BSD is how you get a foothold with NPs, NGAs, and government subcontractors. Knowing Mac OS X gets your foot in the door in creative industries where you might get a good brain-stretch once in awhile and there's the remote possibility of meeting women.
If you're more the cave-troll type who enjoys saturated snack-foods and all-night Evercrack sessions then you may be better to disregard these insights.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Web applications run anywhere. A smart company implements its apps using standards-compliant web-based applications, of which there are several open-source solutions. This naturally applies to calendards, workgroups, bug tracking, etc. I can think of few companies that deploy proprietary desktop applications on a wide basis.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Everything is supposed to work out-of-the-box...
Supposed to, and does.
Go ahead mod me down....
Not at all!
+1 insightful. You got it just right.
Cyanide
"Tough Computer User" ;) --
:)
'Ass in a sling' -- You slay me.
The least scary thing I could imagine...Walking home through a dark alley and being 'jacked' by an overweight guy in a brown plaid short-sleeved shirt with a pocket protector, wielding a menacing ethernet punch-down tool
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
I left corporate world to start my own company. The condescending way an IT "manager" treats you when I am the one who does the actual work in the company - delivering sales presentations, r&d etc. - that should be too much to take for any human being. But then most of corporate America/World are just sheep - look at the (fake)bull market of 2000.
As one corporate guy told - How can I buy a Mac, when my company gives me a PC for free! (This guy makes over $90,000 and spends atleast $5000 now and then on the latest Tivo or DVD Home Theater).
Being a Mac and Sun company gives us added incentive to stay profitable and never become one of the corporate sheep again!
AM
Just rubber stamping 'no' on things, or (even worse) assuming that YOU know better than the end user how to do his job, just leads to the kind of IT that *should* be outsourced to India.
Amen! Aside from working for something like an ISP the entire IT department is a "one-off" activity that is there to support whatever the real work of the business is. Sorry folks but fas often as not your job just isn't as important as the job of the stupid "luser" that is requesting the tool we wants (or perhaps needs) to get that job done. This explains why IT is often understaffed but it is also why the IT department should be bending over backwards to actually support users (i.e. make their job easier) rather than vise versa.
I really like my powerbook.
Except it crashes too often w/o an autosave feautre (though this could be the code in MXStudio rather than the Mac) It has a shitty DVD player with encrypted firmware (which means it probably won't be made regionless for quite a while... yes, you can blame that on the DVD makers, but frankly I'm blaming it on apple too since they're the ones that decided to put it in the machien in the first place)
But most irritating is the lack of anyone who actualy knows what the hell they're doing on a Mac.
Ask somone about low end drivers on a Mac. Try to see why your airport extreme card won't connect to a specific system. Go ahead and try. It's fun. You'll enjoy yourself.
weeeeeeeee.
I need a drink.
This argument is getting old, I am sick of people criticizing a platform that they have never tried to integrate into a business network. I support all three major platforms Windows, Linux and Macintosh. I am sorry but the amount of money, time and effort spent on securing, backing up, and deploying a Windows based network as masochistic at best. Your "average" PC user in most corporate environments is one step above a complete computer moron. They lie on their resume about their computer experience and are lucky if they can even check their own email. A $300-400 copy of Office is a complete waste of time for most users since the most they use it for is a typewriter with spell check. I believe the best solution for most of "corporate america" is the following: Workstations: Apple by far makes the best user-centric OS on the planet, reliable, stable, virus free (right now), and very secure. These machines can be abused by users and they still keep ticking. These can be had for as little as $599 (refurb eMac) so don't tell me it's twice as much as a PC. File & Print Servers Linux (SMB,POP,CUPS) stable, set it and forget it! Mac (MacOSX Server) OpenDirectory, great Admin Windows Terminal Services For any Win32 only apps still needed. (Microsoft Remote Desktop on Mac OS X is awesome)
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 13 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
This guy knew enough to know that the DHCP server wasn't handing him an IP but not enough to ask his IT staff why that might be.
If anyone had watched the DHCP server for the powerbook's computer name (i'm assuming its one of those shiny g4's) they would have seen the abnormal DHCP address the laptop spits out from the ethernet cable. Also, if it wasn't working when the guy worked on it, and then it worked later, SOMEBODY changed SOMETHING. Computer's don't magically start working when they didn't work before.
Lets go through common sense for the guy....
The cable was probably loose, he wiggled it it fixed the no dhcp issue.
He was impatient and unplugged the nic after only a few moments, (perhaps before he gave it time to get an IP.)
He was randomly clicking configurations and found the enable DHCP (or maybe they were running BOOTP) whatever.
And then again, it could be the abnormal mac addy screwing with their dhcp server.
Whatever, this guy wasn't all that savvy.
Horror story at my last job: company IT policy: only PC hardware connected to the network (unless you were buddies with someone, then you could attach anything you wanted). User's can't install software - only IT can do that. All sorts of Nazi controls in place to prevent users from hosing the network. Except, hey! Several times a year my snazzy PC would hose the disk, the IT department would "reinstall" the OS, and I'd lose all my data, applications, and about 3 days of work. So, all their Nazi techniques made me unproductive, and the computer system STILL wasn't reliable. Their response? *SHRUG*.
Switched to a Mac running OS-X. No more problems with file systems suddenly going away. No more crashes. No more lost productivity. Typical uptime? 6 months - mostly reboots to load new versions of the operating system.
Predictably, IT was pissed that I was connecting a Mac, even tho a) it worked perfectly and b) it didn't need any attention from them at all (I'm sure that's what they were scared of).
The IT staff there was SO USED to the problem being the flakey Microsoft OS, that they would always just reload the OS, even when anyone with half a brain could see the problem was elsewhere. I had one PC that would reboot itself occasionally. I get grilled: no, I didn't install any funky software. No, no funky hardware. No, I didn't reboot it myself. No, nobody else walked up and rebooted it. Did you guys think about power? Maybe you should put a AC monitor in my office in case the power is flakey? No, they don't have anything like that.... Let's reload the OS again! Guess what it was... Power! Duh! The point is that they are so used to it being the lousy OS, they just always suspect that any problem is caused by the lousy OS. And... running this lousy OS benefits me how?
It seems from your comments that you have missed out on the "news" that the current Mac OS is OS X. All of your comments seem to apply to previous versions of Mac OS - as far as I can see, none of them apply to OS X. You should try it some time.
We do primarily J2EE work here. Everything that you mentioned runs just fine, thanks. I've got Tomcat local , but I try and do as much work on the dev servers as possible. I can say that compile time on a rev. A G4 500 mhz laptop can be slow, but it hasn't bothered me yet.
- learn to swim.
You've got to be kidding me.
I sent in my almost 3 year old G4 laptop (display went south) -- back in 3 days.
I sent in my friend's almost 3 year old G4 laptop (broken hinges) -- back in 2 days.
Co-worker calls to send in 2 day old top of the line laptop from one of the "major PC laptop manufacturers" you mentioned. After THREE WEEKS on the phone, finally gets a Tech Support person who doesn't tell him to "just buy another one".
Co-worker is Director of Database Engineering. We're a technology parter with the vendor in question or else I'd mention their name.
While this is purely anectdotal, it's merely the most recent of multiple anecdotes I've got of similar disparity in service between Apple and BOTH of the other vendors you mentioned.
Apple has a number of other hurtles they have to jump before they'll be serious competition. Service isn't traditionally one of them.
Is MAME production considered time-critical activity? I know for myself MAME use is considered time-wasting activity :-p
- learn to swim.
i'm not knocking macs, it's just a fact of the world that if you have a controlled infrastructure with standard clients, if someone else wants to bring another in and expect an overworked IT department to just welcome it with open arms, then it just isn't easy.
Even though the lot of you are arguing about the ease (or not) of supporting Macs versus PCs, the article triggering the discussion hasn't been mentioned:
It is actually pretty poor, as the author does not give us any insight how his problems were in the end solved (apart from running Virtual PC). Just stating "It worked! I don't know why!" should not be enough to get a slashdot mention.
On the Mac, I often run six or eight applications at once, including OS 9 and Windows 2000 in Virtual PC. Three open OS's at once plus playing music, downloading files and running updates is an ::
amazing feat. Having a PowerBook has made work fun again.
BANG! Fired!
It's bad enough I'm on Slashdot multiple times during the day during slumps; if I turn my box into a porn downloading MP3 party machine, I'm SURE there will be objections.... and then my life will be one big permanent slump.
I am a sysadmin for an ISP in NYC and I know one other ISP's sysadmin up here has a Mac laptop as well.
It's hard to beat built in FreeBSD on a 15" display that is so thin.
The display for the price sold me on my laptop. You couldn't buy a PC laptop with 15" display and DVD/CD-R capability for what I paid for this refreshed (apple's term for refurbished) laptop.
They also threw in a gig of ram which makes a world of difference in OS X.
I stopped using my desktop and totally switched to my Mac at work. Most of my work is in terminal though.
For those that have to connect to a windows network, the built in samba is hard to beat.
I bought mine at the apple store but Smalldog is has a good refurb selection if you don't have an apple store near you. Dealmac is where I found smalldog and has a lot of other good links as well.
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I have composed a list of reasons why you should stop arguing about this subject if you're a Mac or Linux user. This is not intended to be a scientific white paper. It's just for fun. MS ditto heads need not view this. If you feel you must, then decide to flame me, please feel free. Comments from you guys always make me laugh.
my journal
And they pay this moron to write software? If he had written the following sentence instead of that stupid article, we would have been uqally uninformed: "Uhm, I don't know, the thingie-magingie just worked, after I sat for a few weeks not doing any productive work...."
Discovering new things.... one beer at a time
First: that was an insightfull, well-thought-out response to my article, so don't take this the wrong way.
But when I read it I had to laugh. Why? You made a big assumption about which side of the fence I'm on. I'm not a programmer, or a QA guy, or a technical writer, although I have worked as such in the past.
I am an IT guy. More than that, I am the only IT guy at a company of 30 people. Five Linux users, two Mac users, and the rest Windows of various stripe and performance. We are a web software development company, and so I have to keep company services running, test servers running, demo servers (including one huge 50,000 user public demo service) running, development tools and source control systems working, and end users supported. And we won't even talk about IP telephony.
I work 50-60 hour weeks, plus commute, on median. One notable week a month or two ago, I worked 40 hours between 5 PM Friday and 5 AM Monday, after a 50-hour M-F and before another 50-hour M-F. (Trying to set up a pre-production Oracle product for a demo. I, in cooperation with two support people from Oracle, failed.)
But when someone comes to me and says that they need a tool to do their job effectively, I sit down and listen to them. If they can make any kind of a decent case, and a bit of exploration on my part doesn't turn up any obvious problems, then I will go to bat for them, sans veiled warnings and without the hope that my higher-ups will save me from some work. Because I'm focused on making the employees here as effective as they can be.
Now, maybe it's harder in a larger company. I don't know. It wasn't bad at Apple while I was there, but I hear it was awful in the late 1990s... people who couldn't get MEMORY, for God's sake.
It's interesting the assumptions we make. You assume that because I am unimpressed with the current state of IT in this country, I can't be an IT guy. I submit that if there's anyone who is qualified to be unimpressed, it's someone who has worked as a programmer, a QA engineer, a tech writer, and a salesman... and who is now an IT guy.
Touche?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
This is great, but what I would really like to see happen is the corporate suits opting for Apple hardware etc all through the landscape.
We'd all benefit by that.