Slashdot Mirror
New Apple IT Pro Section
aqsalter writes "Apple has finally created a new section for information from an IT Professionals viewpoint, with articles about all the good stuff. Previously Apple shied away from having any obvious IT focus, but it seems Apple are acknowledging their influence in the IT sphere, with two high-profile HPC clusters and enterprise class tools for managing open source technologies."
1. Windows isn't a vendor lock in? And with the exception of some binary-only ODBC drivers I really haven't run into much that dosenot compile on PPC for linux and OpenBSD/NetBSD (not to mention Darwin). The problems are comparable to the myrid of problems when you start to look over the different linux distro's out there.
Apple has always made it a point to be interoperable with as much as they can, so you are not really "locked in" to a single platform like Windows tries to do. Apple computers have read PC disks for well over a decade, and PC's still don't read Mac disks. Who is locking you in?
Apple's major software has always been cross-platform: AppleWorks, QuickTime, WebObjects, iTunes (ok, a subset of QuickTime). And they tend to use standards far more than Microsoft (thus mitigating lock-in).
2. Care to tell me what will be coming out from Dell in 6 months? Can you give me their price-list? Or are you talking about the features of Longhorn... or it's ship date? How useful is that information when you know it is not going to be remotely close to true.
People expect things out of Apple that they don't expect out of other companies (or fool themselves into thinking they are getting).
3. The G4's were out for a while... Apple just moved the marketing name to G5 now. There were several different versions of the G4 processor in there. Just like there is a long list of very different processors that bear the Pentium 4 name... that too is simply a marketing name (and also don't fit in the same [processor sockets/slots).
If you are talking about service hardware, Apple has a service department that keeps on-hand hardware for a long time. While working for a repair shop I was always amazed at the old stuff that we could get. It cost a lot... but if you need it it is there.
And lets be honest. Do you think that a 4 year old Dell motherboard is more easily replaced than an Apple board? It is just as specific. The hard drives, memory, and processors (look at the Mac upgrade market) and all just as available (since they are mostly the same parts). And the graphics cards may have a smaller selection, but they are readily available.
The 4-10 years between upgrades is going to make Mac's much more valuable... they tend to last better than PC's (both from a usability and a durability standpoint). Just look at schools for that, they are using ancient Apple hardware next to brand new PC hardware... guess which gets more maintenance calls?
The real reason that IT has not made the switch is inertia. The people in IT have their certifications from Microsoft... that is why they got the job. They don't know anything about maintain an Apple computer, and it would be work to educate themselves. So even if the results would be better, they don't feel the need to do so, and have some incentive to try and prevent it.
Looks like Apple is trying to capitalize on IT departments' relative unhappiness with Windows. I actually have a Mac at home, and I think it's a great desktop machine. From an admin point of view, you can lock down anything you want, and it's stable. Of course, any advantage regarding spyware and viruses will go away once enough people start using MacOS...right now most hackers can't be bothered. One of the biggest problems we deal with is Windows patch management and virus/spyware control.
Plus, the good thing about MacOS is that the desktop/window manager is fully mature. Recent advances in the Linux kernel really help the whole plug-and-play thing, but it seems like a unified set of desktop apps or an accepted One True Window Manager is a ways off. It's going to take a Red Hat or an IBM clamping down on feature creep and version control to make that happen.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple managed to sneak a few XServes in as departmental file/print servers or other low-end tasks. MacOS is very cool under the hood as well as on the surface.