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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."
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.
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."
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
*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.
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
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.
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
Adopt Macs. Fire ignorant IT staff.
Windows administrators are the Model T mechanics of today.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
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.
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
You once had to give a Mac access? What, four years ago? I hate to sound like a fanboy, but I've had positively zero problems getting these Macs connected to our NT network, and I didn't have to change any security policies to do it.
I'm also amused that you make the comment that Windows can connect to any network and be secure. Are you new here? Windows doesn't connect to much of anything securely. Windows also doesn't connect to AppleShare volumes very well. It connects just fine if the Mac or UNIX machine is running a Samba server, though, since that's what Samba was designed to do.
Ugh. This kind of ignorance frustrates me, because it's a major block in the acceptance of alternative operating systems.
- oZ
// i am here.
When was this, ten years ago under windows NT 3.0? Or were you just using an inflexible security model? Nine years ago I set up an NT 3.51 server for a cross platform network and had no issues with the Mac security side. NT was full of security holes, of course, and getting patches was a bigger pain.
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 is just so many kinds of wrong you need to be slapped.
a. Mac OSX is built off a BSD core, so unless you care to claim Samba is a myth and BSD doesn't network well, you're just talking out of your a**.
b. Yeah, I tried to hook my Windows box up to an NFS share just now. Guess what! It doesn't work out of the box. Tried to connect it to an old Appletalk network. Guess what! It doesn't work out of the box (Server can act as a Appletalk server, but cant connect to another). There's lots of other stuff a Windows box won't connect to either.
This guy needs to learn what he is talking about, but thats a tall order. Its so much easier to just bitch and whine.
Unlike a reasonable and intelligent poster like yourself.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
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.
Modern OS X uses Samba SMBFS for its CIFS/SMB networking. So far I have had ZERO problems taking OS X and hooking it up to corporate (or home) networks. My only complaints are:
1. There should be a way to permanently attach network mappings that automatically show up when you plug into the network.
2. Before #1 can happen, someone has GOT to fix that problem with Finder lockups when you leave a network without unmounting an SMB drive.
You're thinking of Mac OS 8 and 9 which I personally hated with a passion. I also had to support the blasted things and always came out annoyed. My favorite Mac User quote was "Don't go so fast! You'll lock it up!" Thank GOD Jobs finally finished OS X.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
> 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
'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.
When you make this argument, it may get a rah-rah from the slashdot crowd, but the people making the decisions think they are doing the right thing by their own criteria.
Exactly. They THINK they are doing the right thing. But they've been so out of touch with what's going on in the trenches they don't really know what's going on. They're more interested in reporting to the CFO, CTO, etc to say "yeah, everything is ok". And maybe I should stop saying "they" considering I was one of those decision-makers. I've been under them, I've been one, I've been consulting them. I've seen it from all sides. Many times, corporate politics play more into these decisions than actual performance.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang