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New South Wales Traffic Authority Switches to Macs
MacGyver writes ""In what may well be Apple Computer's largest coup in the Australian enterprise space, the New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) will deploy 1200 G4 iMacs across 140 registry offices." This isn't just a Mac story: the RTA statement noted, "The Apple rollout is a continuation of RTA usage of open standards-based software and systems. The further adoption of open source is being undertaken to provide more choice of vendors and to guarantee RTA systems are providing value for money."
It's been a long time since I've heard a story like this that didn't involve a university or some other education-based organization.
I think Apple can make an excellent case given the rising amount of spyware, viruses, and worms on the PC as well as selling their BSD-based OS.
Good deal and hooray for competition! It's about time (again).
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
This is quite a great achievement for Apple. They currently are doing very well with their advertising campaign and showing off the capabilities of their products. I have been a hard-line OSS user for probably about 5 years and have been very impressed with the new eMac, Powerbook and G5, the new MacOS X too is very refined and well done and I love how the command line utilities are still available(compared to Win). I think all governments should be trying to distribute their computing schemes to several different OS for security purposes alone and should at least not be locked into deals with Microsoft. Linux on the desktop I just don't feel has the simple usability of MacOS X yet so I am very glad too see Apple getting such a large deployment. I am sure their will be more to come as I doubt they will hear many complaints about there G4 iMacs.
A moratorium around election time to end some of these shenanigans would be appropriate.
... then they should have gone for a custom FreeBSD solution. All the stability of OS X without the heinous cost of proprietary hardware and software. The outlay on custom development for their needs would have been offset with cheaper hardware, no licencing costs, and then they would have completely owned their own software rather than being locked into the vendor relationship.
So they are using full blown Macs for a cash register, attaching a laser printer for receipts and certificates and running some specific software. Seems to me a cheaper solution might be found using a dumber device and a web app or two.
NuBus was created by TI.
And it was used in more than just Macs.
Honestly, when Apple selected NuBus, they had no real choice.
There were two other major busses available at the time.
One was VME Bus (used by Sun, amongst others). This was in wide use, but card support was strange, selecting drivers was often difficult. Also, you had to remove jumpers when you put in a card and put them back if you ever took it out. As an aside, VME Bus was "unfair", giving priority to some cards over others. This was not a big deal, although it was made out to be at the time.
The other was IBM's AT-bus (later ISA). This was incredibly slow and it was tied closely to the architecture of the Intel 80x86. Trying to make it work on a Motorola processor would have been difficult, and even if done perfectly would have produce very slow throughput since AT-Bus was only 16-bits wide. And, as we all know, installing more than one AT-Bus card at one time was incredibly dicey, requiring lots of jumper settings.
In short, Apple chose the only alternative they could have to accomplish their goals.
As to ADB, well, they could have used the PC keyboard connector (PS/2 wasn't available or in wide use at the time). It wasn't well suited to international keyboards (as you couldn't detect what keyboard was attached very well) and Apple wanted international support. It was key to gaining the desktop publishing market, which they did very well.
ADB also allowed the mouse to be plugged into the keyboard (reduced connectors) and allowed the machine to be turned on from the keyboard, which was nice.
All in all, I think your complaints are misguided. The technologies you speak of actually show less protectionism than the issues of the motherboard ROMs at the time.
As to Microsoft not working with competitors' hardware, Microsoft doesn't sell hardware. Well, usually they don't, and when they do it, they do it poorly (witness their current failed attempt to enter the 802.11 market). Anyway, there were 3rd party solutions to make 3rd party CD drives work. I don't get what the big deal is.
When used with the smartcard readers they feature, you can take your session with you. So you are working, need to go somewhere else, just pull the card and go. When you insert it into another system, your session will be there, just as you left it.
I'm a real fan, provided you aren't using intense applications. If your stuff does a lot of graphics, you'll quickly find that the CPU and memory it requires makes the servers more expensive than just getting dedicated computers. However for centralized data entry (as they'll be doing) Sunrays rock.
I'm faily certain this guy is a troll, but I'l bite.
/hardware/ lockin - they're concerned about software.
So, what is it then exactly about the current breed of MacOS that locks a person in? People don't tend to be terribly concerned about
Name one thing about apple software that currently locks a person into MacOS. I'm genuinely interested. Look here if you have any doubt that apple is, indeed, embracing a more open approach.
In all honesty, I'd wager that you're likely to have better "hardware portability" with PPC stuff and macs in general in the future than with x86, due to the fact that there are many fewer variants of macs compared to PCs, and there seem to be a lot more shitty components that lack multiplatform support on PC (winmodems, nforce chipsets, and what have you).
So basically: it's wintel monoculture vs. everything else, discount or no. "choice of vendors" makes perfect sense, as when there's a monopoly with over 90% market share (hint: it's microsoft), everything else -is- a choice, if it works.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Apple includes proprietary Mac OS X only programs for everything: music, photo, movies, DVD player, email, contacts, and office programs.
.net, Apple pushes Apple.com and .mac accounts. .NET is a programming api. that buzzword is used for many other things, but that is what i was talking about. not .mac. if you don't like .mac, don't use .mac. however for .NET, the programming api, it's pure microsoft platform lock-in using system.windows.forms, which is heavily windows-only. unlike java.
then use xmms, gimp, mplayer, avidemux, evolution, and openoffice. there's not much stopping you with fink/darwinports and x11. there are plenty of native mac equivalents to those. the difference though is these programs are all included in the cost of the OS ($129). this is not so bad a deal considering all you get.
Apple makes sure that everything that goes into their computers has their logo and their stamp of a aproval on it. They insure that you cannot purchase components directly from the supplier so that they make as much money as possible, another great way to support open standards.
this is far more a problem with the industry than it is apple. if there were several cpu manufacturers, several mobo manufacturers, etc, then economies of scale would allow you to build a ppc os x compatible machine. don't complain to apple for this, complain to the hardware companies for not offering more solutions.
Their OS while based on Unix can only be installed on Mac hardware while its base suggests that it could be run on X86 machines and other formfactors becides their own.
windows can only be installed on x86. why can't i install it on ppc? that sure is vendor lock in! don't give me that crap. apple doesn't make money off it's OS. it makes money off it's hardware. if you want os x for intel, keep dreaming. if it wasn't made for ppc only, apple would probably go out of business.
And just as MS pushes MSN and
um, those have nothing to do with each other.
If anything, it is Apple that is the worst infraction to open standards computing, since they make sure that their standards are open only to other mac users. In essence, Appe takes from the open source community, mutates its function and intent, and then spits it back out with a high price and fruity colors. Going Apple is okay if thats your thing, but heralding their openness is like saying you purchased Windows for the stability
so would you rather apple implement a proprietary closed standard for EVERY SINGLE THING they do? i know a company who does this.. they are called microsoft. go look up your history books sometime. the fact that apple leverages open source is an ADVANTAGE. it means they spend less time concentrating on OS security bugs, and more time producing great software using the power of all this open source. if you don't like the fact that it costs more, then don't buy it. if you don't like the fact that it looks better than windows (because aqua does) then quit bitching and apply a theme (go to uninsanity's website). yes, i AM hearlding their openness. because they are 100 times more open than the most proprietary, monopolistic company, on the planet.
- tristan
I hear you. I went to RMIT for my Master's in IT, and I think it's a little bit better than Macquarie in terms of alternative OS support, but not much. When I was there, only about 5 student in the whole department were running OS X (me included), and I am sure no more than 5 were running Linux. Getting any sort of support was basically nil. However, I was very happy to see the advanced graphics lab running Linux, and our main servers were all Solaris based (except for some Windows Terminal Server monstrosities).
:-P
The good thing was that none of the courses were too Microsoft centric. In fact I was able to complete all of my assignments and subjects using OS X! Thank goodness for its UNIX underpinnings.
However, being a Java webapp developer with no MS training, looking for a job in Oz was always fun ("Do you know ASP? Oh, too bad, it's an ASP position." "Did you even bother to read my CV?")
-B
Actually, the Macs are replacing SunRays in some locations. What people forget about SunRays is that they require a fairly beefy SUN server to be on the same LAN as them. This means that the RTA has to deploy SUN servers in remote locations - something that they can avoid with the Apple computers. Also, the applications in the registries are a little more complicated than standard POS - the cameras used to capture license photos are controlled by the current terminals (and will be controlled by the Mac)
no, it's not.
the x-term + back-room server model works great if you already have an IT staff on-site for other reasons. but it involves running the server and keeping the terminal hardware up. again, x-terms are great. i've admin'd sites with that model, and it's wonderful to be able to just replace the whole unit and have to do near-zero config when one breaks. but they do break. on our floor of ~30 NCD x-terms, we swapped out about one a month.
note, also, that x-terms aren't as cheap as you'd think - i'm constantly surprised by how expensive they are, actually. that is, if you're buying from a reputable vendor, but the dirt cheap ones usually have a corresponding increase in problems.
i've done the x-term thing, and i've admin'd mac networks. for about 90% of the applications, the later has better cost factors. not to mention usability factors. remember that the most expensive thing in this question is almost always human time.
oh, and i've also admin'd large Win32-based networks. that makes sense about 0% of the time.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Plus, staff feel more valued if they get a Mac, which probably helps them work better anyway.
"We care so much about getting you the best tools available that we've spent a little more on computers, bought Macs. Hopefully this'll reduce your stress a little compared to Windows machines, and help you work more efficiently. You no longer need to worry about viruses, rebooting, malware, or frustrating difficulties."
Plus they're renowned for being the simplest things to do support for. They probably have 2/3 of what used to be "Windows Support" available to do other more useful things now.
Nothing says you work in a cool place like a Mac on the desk...
I still have a 9600/300 running downstairs - it's been through the wars somewhat and is pretty beaten up but it still works and has never given me a single problem.
The same is true for my 600Mhz G3 iBook - that's younger, only 2 years old, but she's still pretty much as good as new apart from having a 'lived in look'. Structurally sound and everything feels as solid as it did when I used her for the first time.
We use a Dual 450 G4 as a Final Cut Pro 4 edit suite to this day (alongside a dual 2 gig G5 box that we bought in December). That DP 450 is churning out broadcast material without so much as a sneeze, and it's still bombproof.
Every Mac I've ever come across (a lot) have been rugged, consistent performers with the build quality to match.
Every PC I've come across has been shoddy 'built to last a year' construction with bits that break off, things that stop working, hardware that becomes slow if you want to run the latest OS (OS X is actually faster on my iBook now that it was when I bought it two years ago).
Yes, there are exceptions in the PC world, but that's all they are - exceptions to a crappy build quality rule. Sure the hard drive might be the same as the one in a Mac, but the chassis isn't engineered as well, the exterior panels, that fans used wear out and start to vibrate, cheap 'filler' parts like modem cards, budget CD drives etc that PC vendors use to keep the costs down stop working after a time, or worse, used drivers that have long since been lost for most machines and you have no hope of finding them if the card is unmarked (at least not without hassle).
My friend dropped my iBook on the floor from a few feet (something for which I've forgiven her) and you'd never be able to tell - nothing broke, nothing chipped, no dents or scratches. That was 6 months after I bought it. Don't tell me your average PC laptop would survive a fall completely unbroken (while open and running)? Maybe a Thinkpad, but they have that horrible nipple mouse (not that I have anything against nipples mind you, just that they don't make very effective navigation devices).
It obviously depends what you're buying, but Macs tend to have a longer useful life than PCs and as such, cost more second hand.