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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."
People deserve better. Companies too. ;)
thats like saying your moving from california to idaho for a better selection of produce.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
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.
they do control the hardware, but all the parts in there are standard peices of hardware. It isn't so much the hardware that they are worried about, it is the software. OS X is pretty damn nice to open-standards and the hardware is nice. They still can go with a linux/bsd solution, such at a time when the latest Mac OS won't run on the machines properly they can load up Linux etc.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
Forgotten about SCO already?
My words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
Granted, but it's either stick with OS-X and be restricted to a much smaller subset of hardware they can choose from, or switch to Linux/*BSD and realize that Mac hardware *is* standard, and not exactly cheap.
Mac's prices are based on the fact that you have a stable system because, again, they control the hardware. If their goal was truely as stated, buying 'off-the-shelf' parts and installing Linux/*BSD would be just as effective and far cheaper...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Open *standards*. They didn't say open hardware, nor did they say open source.
that would be true if microsoft windows was based on freebsd, but i believe you're mistaken.
.net and includes a very crappy jvm implementation. apple uses's sun's official jvm with performance improvements and native widget toolkits in os x, and this is installed by default
lets take a looksie
windows has the registry. apple has xml files
outlook and outlook express use a proprietary database format. apple uses mbox
windows uses a proprietary network file sharing protocol. apple uses nfs
windows has a closed kernel. mac uses a freebsd kernel (of which you can download on apple's website).
microsoft uses it's own proprietary messaging protocol. apple uses oscar (which may not be open, but it's a hell of a lot more used and standard)
microsoft's browser defaults searches to msn. apple's browser defaults to google.
microsoft's browser is based on a non-standards compliant closed source engine. apple's is based off the open source khtml library.
microsoft's compiler and IDE is closed and costs thousands. apple's is free (xcode) and based off an open source compiler (gcc).
microsoft's backing
microsoft uses a closed source web server. apple ships os x with an open source webserver, apache.
microsoft implemented a proprietary api for game development, directx. apple bases their display system (quartz extreme) off opengl, and supports openal now as well.
x86 machines use proprietary bioses for each motherboard. apple uses openfirmware, developed by sun and ibm i believe.
i think i've made my point, but believe me, there's more. that sounds a lot more like open-standards based than microsoft.
- tristan
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.
Apple, a company which makes Microsoft look like a bastion of openness?
Ummm... Since when did Micro$oft start basing Windoze off of an open source OS (As Apple has by basing OSX on Darwin (which itself is a FreeBSD derivative))? Does Microsoft give away development tools like OS X's Xcode?
Wouldn't a Linux or *BSD solution, ultimately, be what they should have gone with?
You could definately say that OS X is a *BSD solution.
This isn't just a Mac story: The further adoption of open source is being undertaken
:P
The irony here is, there wouldn't be a mac/apple story if it weren't for Apple having gone to OS X and a more open software philosophy. It looks like, were it not for open source, much of the revitalization that Apple has undergone in the wake of OS X would not have occured, and "Apple is dying!" would be all over slashdot - as it as prior to OS X. Haven't seen those trolls for a while, so maybe it's telling.
Of course, now there'll be 15 replies with, "Apple is dying!" or "BSD is dying!" or such, just to spite me.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
My guess why they went for Apple is probably because Darwin is bassed on BSD and the source is available. It may not be open in the sence that Linux is but it is more open then Microsoft ever will be.
Also, with Apple meing a majoe vendor they have a certain sence of security when it coemes to future support. Apple have a better chance of sticking around than some shop making custom Linux boxes
That's all old Apple stuff. The new Macs use standard memory, IDE drives, USB keyboards and mice. They've bellied up to the Wintel hardware base, just like Sun has.
You're right about most of your other points, but don't hold the ancient history of deliberately closed hardware at Apple against them in this day and age.
resigned
Yes, because apple does give full documentation, for free, to it's users while also giving free development tools. Apple also doesn't include large ammounts of gpled software in it's client and server base install while also NOT supporting X11 compatability for linux apps. Furthermore, Apple sure as hell doesn't have an open source kernel to which you are free to contributed or fork.
Ya, them damn Mac people. Buy good hardware, get a beautiful GUI ontop of an open kernel using many open tools.
MacOS X isn't based on FreeBSD.
They ported in a FreeBSD userland to provide the core userland. They planted it on top of a Mach kernel based on NextOS, a proprietary closed-source OS. They piled on top a GUI layer that is closed source.
Saying MacOS is 'based on FreeBSD' is like claiming a Windows 2000 machine is 'based on GTK' because you installed the Win32 port of the gimp on it.
resigned
Actually, this is pretty important. Governmental departments are notoriously slow to change. This shows that governments are slowing giving MS/Windows alternatives a chance, which is extremely positive. Sure, they may not have gone with Linux (the fact that Mac OS X runs MS Office natively probably makes it easy for them to transition to the new platform), but this shows that alternative OS's are slowly gaining traction. Furthermore, Australia is very Microsoft-centric. I was surprised by the prevalence of MS technology there. And the fact that an Aussie governmental department would go with Apple highlights that alternative OS's may have a chance after all.
-B
I don't see the value in using 1200 Macintoshes for simple data entry applications which could be accomplished by dumb terminals. Nothing against Apple or the Macintosh, but this is like replacing the Fords and Chevys at the public works with 1200 brand new Mercedes-Benzes.
> so how does going to macs go with the open souce thing - mos OSS software works with windows at least as well as OSX.
./configure and make. Apple even bundles their X11 with the operating system. Therefore: you can have all that unix/linux sw running on your mac just about as easily as you could do that on linux. On windows, things get much more complicated.
Maybe there's quite a bit of OSS software for Windows, but have you ever tried to compile some yourself? Unless shipped with specific win patches, it won't be easy -- or even possible. Compiling for OSX is, on the other hand, mostly just
still running a x86? dinosaurs do exist!
Cool!
That means I get to listen to iTunes next time I go to fail my license exam.
"Yeah, but who's gonna FLY it, kid?"
Stability is a tricky thing - just like vendor relationships. Apple knows their hardware as well as their software. Whenever I hear the word, "Custom", as it relates to a large project like this, I cringe.
Does 'Custom' mean that you never have to:
- Patch it?
- Update various included software?
- Include new hardware support?
Of course not! Even if you're not paying for the software, you're going to have pay for the support for the software - however you figure it. Just ask IBM - that's their new business model. Think their customers are getting off any cheaper than Apple's? Don't bet on it.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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.
The plural of "Mac" is "Macs", not "Mac's". "Mac's" means "Mac is", as in "My Mac's such a sweet machine", or "Your Mac's been upgraded AGAIN?"
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
No, Mac OS X's kernel isn't Mach, it's XNU. Mac OS X's core operating system is called Darwin, which has a lot (but not all) of it open source.
"NextOS" doesn't exist, but Mac OS X is somewhat derived from OPENSTEP, from NeXT.
If their data is cross-platform, then it doesn't matter if they are using Macs, Linux or glorified iPods..they are not "locked in" to a particular vendor.
So why choose Macs? Maybe for them it was a lower TOC. Maybe for them it is easier to get a locked down system for iMacs. Maybe they just want their offices to look nicer? Who knows..maybe the question was answered in the article...
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
Going with Apple gives them the ability to run OSS software on top of a supported, performant, supported, off the shelf platform. It reduces the risk and is therefore a good thing from a taxpayers point of view.
The cheaper hardware isn't a big deal here either. As a government agency they would have to go with a big supplier, one that's going to be able to supply and support them and has a track record of doing so. When you are dealing with these volumes I would guess that the Apple kit won't come in much more expensive than say Dell or HP etc.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Another state police force in Australia already use Macs as their base machine. That is in Queensland (QLD).
Or at least they were in the 1990s. I'm a bit out of date on my Mac info.
Um HELLO!!!! (I copied that bit off your post)...proprietary computers don't cause lock in....proprietary data formats do. If the data is OS/hardware agnostic, it hardly matters what hardware they use on the desktop.
If using Macs helps with that transition (remember they probably need MS Office) then lucky Apple - they make a sale.
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
hmmm depends upon what you consider "cheap".
Lets put it this way:
for the cost of the MS per seat license for this one company ($15 million per year), is enough to pay for the majority of the hardware transition (if you buy in bulk). The rest of the cost can be handled in the savings on electricity in the first year and then after that it is putting a couple million bucks back into the corporate coffers. The cost of the Mac license is WAY less then 1/2 of 1% of that. Sure rolling your own has no license cost but it also leaves noone to sue if something goes horribly wrong and forces you to keep your experts in house rather then a phone call away. Good for IT guys but bad for shareholders.
Based upon my renters change over from MS to Mac his eMac is costing him $40 LESS per month to power! That adds up to $480 a year going back into his pocket (actually since his electric is included in his rent that is a fuckload of cash in MY pocket)!
Compare the costs of buying a low end eMac to the low end say Dell, add the purchase price to the price to power it over the year and the Mac is now cheaper by $80 at least. The second year the Dell is now over $500 more expensive. And that ignores entirely license costs, or the cost of any virii outbreaks (the company I worked for last spent $45 million US on either preventing or cleaning up from just one years worth of those), or other costs like heating and cooling floors with large numbers of desktops.
As to development... Well since you can run X11 pretty tightly in Panther you can code for it, and then include some free sample code to have it tie in to the main OS. Yup you can write X11 apps include some headers provided for free from Apple and have them hook into CoreFoundation, Cocoa, or even Carbon! So you're covered a bit.
So you are coming across as penny wise but pound foolish.
Whilst I like the idea of using Macs, somehow I think that considering the intended use of them, this is an ideal situation in which to deploy x-terms. The article says that they already use Sun gear, so why not roll-out a load of Sunrays? - They'd use less power and last longer because they have no moving parts.
That being said, the Macs are a better choice when compared to PC's... they might be a bit more expensive up front, but the build quality is excellent and people find them easier to use, so the cost of maintaining and supporting them is going to be lower.
One of the interesting things in the article is that they can use the swivel mount to show people their license photos easily. Pretty nifty.
Of course, I have no idea about why they made the decision because I don't work there - I also live across the border in SA.
Don't say cheaper. You have to hire people to put the systems together, image the drives, maintain the computers (oh, shit. no warrantee), the nerd you'd need to configure linux or BSD in an enterprise solution.... That sounds like both less effective and, in the long run, more expensive.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
We know it will work cause we make sure vedors who make anything made for our systems will make sure it works
Linux on a x86 platform
Well we will make drivers eventually.... anyday now.... we swear..... what its been 3 months? well we have a new product that IS compatable, you need to upgrade though....
Given the choice of open software on a platfore your almost assured will work, or a platform you need to juryrig to work... I would take Apple
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Also, since when does off the shelf hardware not have a warranty?
Seriously, something like this is planned, they can buy in bulk and it is most definitely less expensive both in the short term and long term. There is no comparison on price so find another point to argueWhen 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
Off the shelf does have individual warranties, but not for the unit as a whole. YOu want to add the beurocracy of dealing with even more companies to a government department? Increased time spent getting shit fixed is money - someone has to deal with it.And those support agreements are available - i never denied they were - but thats an added cost over the hardware (and assuming the software is free). Macs also tend to preserve their value for signifigantly longer than x86 boxen. iMacs have lower profile/cost of most available boxes, have an ergonomic LCD, etc. You save space, blah blah blah. If you're going to come up with conclusions, at least give us the benefit of making up some numbers.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Also, I can buy hdds in units of 50-500, even 1000 no problem. I am covered under an enterprise warranty. If a drive goes bad I ship it off to Maxtor or whoever I choose to go with after learning the environment they will live. Its not different from any other setting where you buy the computer whole. You're argument over space is irrelevent as well since there are both monitors and cases designed to be like Macs. If you assume the software is free and the computers themselves cost less then where do you figure Macs cost less in any run. Seriously, the argument has been made they use the same types of components so how would a new G4 or G5 hold its value compared to a normal PC? It won't, Apple gave that up when they stopped using scsi in all their machines.
As for numbers on the support agreements, they would be useless since such a thing would rely on information I don't have, such as, do they want the support team to manage the hardware as well? Do they want the support team to ensure upgrades are done when a new product is available? Depending on their needs the price will change a lot. But its still a hell of a lot less than the cost of a support call to Apple.
If you'd RTFA, you'd know that the "open standards" referred to are Java and Unix, which OSX interoperates with much better than Windows, which (apparently) was used previously. The iMacs run a Java virtual terminal and Mozilla browsers. Is that open enough?
What I find incredibly amusing, is the fact that a similar size loss has occurred to Apple in a nearby area. Optus Communications, Australias second largest telco, has been a MAC Shop since it started, but is slowly changing away. And slowly is the operative word, as it has been found that the "amount of hardware" and inherent cost has increased dramatically in the Wintel world...
Probably because it has outsourced it's IT to Compaq, and then HP (With IBM GSA Doing application design in the wings) disentangling the incumbent MAC components has been a nightmare for them, predominantly because of hardware vendors more focused on selling new widgets than working out what flavour of widgets the customer required.
But then, this is the same company that has a Billing System that runs just fine on VAXes, that they haven't been able to "beat" with applications runing on Sun E10000's and HP Superdomes...
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
I touched my first Macintosh in December of 1987 because my best friend said it would be better if my resume were presented as a Macintosh document. From a cold start to finished product (including figuring out how to print: 20 minutes). That resume got me a job as a contractor at Apple. I stayed there for the most part of the next fourteen years.
.Mac), AirPort, LC II Apple II emulator, HyperCard Audio Help, every Mac OS from 6 through X, every machine up to the original iMac (I was laid off in 1997), and every machine from the 1999 crop to the domed iMac in 2001. I now make my living as a Mac and Windows consultant on the big island of Hawaii. I've owned (or own) a PowerBook Duo 250, PowerBook 5300, iBook (dual USB) and a Sawtooth G4. I, too, know the machines, the software and a lot of the people who made them. Been there, done that and still own a shitload of t-shirts.
The projects I worked on: Communications Toolbox, AppleShare 2.0, AppleShare PC, AppleShare IP, PC Exchange, Copland, MacTerminal, quality lead for the Scriptable Finder, iTools (later
I could go on for a while, but suffice it to say that I know Macs.
With all I know, I will always purchase new Apple hardware. I'm recommending Apple hardware to everyone for whom it is appropriate.
I can rebuild a Mac from parts I buy at WalMart (monitors, CD and DVD drives, external Zip drives, speakers, mice, keyboards, hard drives, routers (wired and wireless), USB and FireWire cards in both PCI and PCMCIA flavors), RadioShack (memory, USB keyboards, mice and hubs) or Office Depot (miscellaneous). As long as the equipment is up to spec, I don't worry about compatibility.
Apple isn't perfect. It has its quirks. But I fix more Macs more quickly with less hassle than just about any Windows shitbox you could put in front of me. And they stay fixed.
End of story.
This is like saying, "I would be tempted to believe you if Linux wasn't so GNU-centric. Mac=Apple=Mac. I don't see your point.
Apple includes proprietary Mac OS X only programs for everything: music, photo, movies, DVD player, email, contacts, and office programs.
iTunes isn't Mac OS X only. And Apple doesn't make an Office program. And they can't legally open their DVD player either. Get your facts straight.
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.
Yes, that's the problem with Windows and Linux. Nothing is really guaranteed to work. It's always plug and pray. Actually, only the outside of a Mac has the logo on it. And my mouse, keyboard, hard drive, monitor, speakers, RAM, and several other parts can all bought from third-party vendors. So much for your weird closed standards notion of Apple. Thinking back to the Mac Plus days were we?
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.
Er, wrong again. DarwinBSD (which is the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X) can be installed on x86 architecture.
And just as MS pushes MSN and .net, Apple pushes Apple.com and .mac accounts.
Apple doesn't have apple.com accounts. And, no, they're not pushy about .mac accounts. I think you're getting confused with Microsoft Passport and Linux's Wallet program, which is the most annoying pushy feature I've seen yet in an OS. Mac OS X has NEVER popped up a dialog about .Mac
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.
Now this is where you really show your true colors, TROLL. If Apple hadn't embraced BSD, they would be nowhere as big as they are now. Apple embraced BSD when they didn't have to, and they lost 2 good years trying to get going on top of that crappy operating system (2000 and 2001). Apple is one of the few real success stories of open source, but you're all too ready to point the finger. It looks like you're too confused about this whole "sharing" thing to tell your friends from your enemies. Anyone who decides to give their work away for free and then DEMAND that people use it exactly as they wish is a FOOL. Giving things away is a risk you take for a greater good. You shouldn't be advocating open standards when you don't know why or what they're for, you hypocrite
Yeah, but now you can have Macs and go swimming too! Yahoo!
Who moved my sig?
... let me say that the story doesn't do the project great justice.
The main reason for choosing iMacs over a Linux/BSD/whatever solution (which we did try side by side with plenty of others) was OH&S.
Yes, Occupational Health and Safety. They took one look at the screen design, the way each individual user could move the screen where they wanted it and they were pretty much sold. We approached another supplier for a similar solution, only to get a quote for a movable screen of equivalent specs that put it about AUD $1000 over the price of the iMacs.
We were keen to Switch to Macs from our Javastations because they make a great product, they are supported by a "big" name (the rest of our our system is Solaris), and we can perform remote admin and stuff easily.
Other big-name suppliers were pushing to get in on this but someone with the authority to make such decisions said "no Windows in registries" after Blaster/Slammer/et al took out most of the rest of the organisation while our Javastations kept on kicking on.
As with any public-facing organisation, the amount of customers we would have had to say "sorry you've waited half an hour already, please come back tomorrow, assuming we've fixed it by then" to if our registry network was taken out would have made for a bigger news story than this one by far.
On another note, the press release that seems to have made it out mixes two different things we are doing - changing to the iMacs here, which running our custom Java app (plus Mozilla and a few other bits and pieces), and investigating open-source as a general concept. There's plenty of OS there all throughout the registry network, but the corporate desktops are all still Win2k/Office/Exchange/Novell jobbies, the replacement of which is being investigated with closed and open solutions from varying vendors.
Nothing like inside information to set all the wild theorising in slashdot to rest. Oh yeah. Slashdot. Sorry, continue the wild speculations!
Bitter and proud of it.
Another reason the iMac's moveable screen was such a hit was that it allows the RTA staffmember to show the customer an image of their licence photo before the licence is printed, which happens at the registry. (New South Wales driving licences are pinted on demand on a plastic card the same size and thickness as a credit card, and include a passport style picture. A transparent holographic image is then laminated on top to make them harder to forge.)
But if YOU were given a spec that looked like this: Replace our EOL'ed Javastations, must have
LCD screen on movable arm
fast, reliable Java implementation
strongly prefer UNIX
can't be Windows
Easy integration with head office wintel software a bonus
Would you pick anything but an iMac?
Bullshit. The Apple GUI is heavily based on the OPENSTEP specification, which is publicly available. The implementation may not be open source, but it is based on open standards. Code from other OPENSTEP platforms (NeXTStep, GNUStep, some versions of Solaris, etc.) can usually be run with only a recompile.
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OS X is not just a pretty UI running on top of a FreeBSD kernel, but saying that it is not based on FreeBSD is also wrong.
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You're right, and I don't know this is always the knee-jerk reaction in the tech industry. A slightly greater cost up front can save SO MUCH downstream that is isn't even funny.
I think this is one of the big issues with Linux on the desktop. Not all IT managers are dumb. They realize if they have a few thousand operations employees, a switch to Linux is going to involve training, countless hours of help desk support, on site PC support, etc. So what, you save a hundred bucks a head or something by not having to buy XP. The cost per head to have a good tech employed with benefits and by the time you factor in paying workers comp, the employers part of FICA, etc.... well- he only has to sit at someones desk a couple hours before the "savings" of $100 is totally negated. If these guys are willing to ship jobs overseas to save money, don't you think they would make a simple switch of desktop software if it was really that simple to save the money?
A while back I remember putting in a request to buy an application icon set for a couple hundred bucks- included hundreds of high quality app icons in all different states. A coworker at first thought I was an idiot. His comment was that "we can just draw our own." Uh, yeah. Spend weeks drawing our own icons at senior software engineer salaries (probably a few thousand bucks). Or, pay $200.
Time is money in the IT world, and in an incredibly big way.
Licencing OS X is not like licencing Windows - Apple is very fair in the price it charges for volume licences and such.
Hell, it's very fair in the prices set for consumers - $130 for Panther or $199 for a 5 user "Family" licence.
And note, Apple doesn't force to upgrade every time they release a new OS (Puma, Jaguar, Panther).
Apple doesn't have forced upgrade contracts with customers, making payment and upgrade of OS and Office suite mandatory.
Ok, it's not as cheap as free, but someone has to support your platform once it's in place, even if it was free to download and use.
The Finder burns CDs.
Just pop in a blank CD, drag files to it and pull it to the trash (which turns into a burn icon)
Alternatively, you can use Disk Utility, located in Applications > Utilities.
Personally, I think it's worth the money for Toast Titanium.
You can download a freeware Toast-a-like from versiontracker that does pretty much everything Toast does. It's called Firestarter.
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.
It should come as no surprise that a lot of posts are in the vein of "they should have used xxx instead of Apple, because Apple is proprietary/expensive/..."
Which shows a lot of people who shout RTFM all day are above RTFA. I think it's pretty cool to see macs deployed in open source situations. Best of two worlds and such...
The funniest posts of course are in the vein of "they should of called my cousin Ned" (translated from "build yourself").
Which shows a lot of people don't know what "Cost" and "Cost of ownership" and associated factors are.
Even with Apple's recent track record, I doubt self-built kits will outlive a bunch of macs without blowing some fuses and minds, but whatever.
I think the appropriate response to Apple and NSW TA would be "Good on ye, mate!"
I think, therefore I am...I think.