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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."
Security Guide for OS X - by the U.S. National Security Agency
Email virus protection - setup SpamAssassin, ClamAV and Amavisd-new with Postfix on OS X
Linux Magazine gives OS X five penguins
The nice thing about this site, as a developer, is that everything I was looking for regarding OS X is all here. Tools, manuals, FAQs, discussion boards, you name it, it's here.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
A good site for managing OS X servers that seems to be getting better all the time is http://www.afp548.com/. I'm not affiliated with them btw, but it's worth checking out if this is your business.
every problem is a nail.
Historically, Apple had its own operating system(s) developed in-house. Creating enterprise systems would have been a huge extra burden for them. Now, their os is basically _nix. Existing enterprise systems can be easily integrated with Apple's stuff.
Bottom line: Apple can more easily do this now and so they are doing it.
iT :)
Here's the Security guide for OS X. It looks like they've revised it since they first listed it.
Actually the Virginia tech cluster cost WAY less than any of the other clusters of similar speed - a mere $5,000,000 compared to $380,000,000 for similar speed clusters made from x86 boxen. The G5 is a stonking chip - especially for what these guys want to do - lots of floating point work.
Die-hard views in IT about Apple products may change, as did many ways we do things post-September 11, when (not if) a major computer security catastrophe occurs which could render many Windows operating systems inoperable. It's bound to happen--the laws of chaos and Murphy's Law dictate that something with order will be occasionally paired with disorder.
IT hasn't had that wake-up call yet. History has shown that lack of diversification leads to fatal results. Having only one way of doing things, or in this case, only one choice in handling services, causes a backlash when elements of the systems are put to test.
I've been an IT professional specializing in Apple products for over 12 years now. Despite the advances (administratively and competitively) that Apple and other companies have done in providing alternatives that work as well or better than the mainstream products, many IT pros still have NO FSCKING CLUE about the alternatives. They aren't TRAINED to think about alternatives, but only to do what they can with what they have.
They may be a time where one of the many serious vulnerabilties found in Windows is fully and dangerously exploited, leading to failures of various sorts throughout the country and the world. Data is lost. Networks paralyzed. And all through such a time, computers running operating systems that are much more resistant or immune to these issues will aid in keeping our businesses working despite ourselves and our industry's lack of vision.
It was a lack of imagination that led to the some of the world's notable disasters like the Titanic, the recent tsunamis, the Apollo 1, Shuttle Challenger and Columbia tragedies, the Macerena and Anna Nicole Smith. Someone in the IT world has to wake up and see that putting all the eggs in a basket may be cheaper, but that it is still one basket.
I try to educate and never preach about the use and capabilities of Apple products, and I'm sure others try with Linux and other operating systems. I hope a site like this, sanctioned by Apple itself, adds a bit more professionalism to the mix of offerings.
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Maybe they don't love being told how to do their jobs, but they sure as hell love creating job security by standardizing us all on machines that require near constant attention.
I love when our IT guys try to tell us things like "Macs can't network", "Macs can't use the internet", and my personal favorite... "Apple is going out of business".
Maybe instead of being told how to do their jobs, they should take it upon themselves to learn how to do their jobs.
I have supported Apple products for years and have always had problems with the quality and amount of documentation Apple creates. Just for curiosity I went to the new section http://www.apple.com/itpro/ and clicked on their featured article "Integrating MacOSX and Active Directory." This page is a sales pitch. It clearly explains that OS X is capable of authenticating to AD, but offers no advice on how to set up that authentication. Next to this sales pitch are several links to the websites of enthusiast and Apple employees who have developed documentation for Apple products and features in their personal time. I think it is shameful that Apple has to link to enthusiast sites for concise documentation of their products. Apple has never done a good job of creating useful documentation. To defend Apple, the do provide a link to their 190 page PDF detailing Open Directory and it is required reading for true professionals. But for questions regarding specific issues or general questions, it can be amazingly difficult to find the information you need. I have become accustom to searching independent Mac resources before I turn to Apple for information. Hopefully, this will change with the new IT Pro focus. Shea
They went from 350 MHz in 1999, to dual 1.42 in 2003. Honestly, most Mac users think that was too long, not too short.
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I agree with you on everything except the short life cycles. We have a number of 1999/2000 era g4 powermacs running OS 10.2/3 happily running Illustrator CS, Photoshop CS and Quark 6.
These machines are slow by todays standards, but they *work*, and reliably. The only upgrades they've seen are extra memory and firewire hard disks.
This is a lot more than I can say about any of the > 3 year old PCs at my office. Some of those machines can barely boot XP, much less run office effectively.
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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.
That's a pretty funny analogy.
And apt, too! Apple is just like a North Korea, except that they have fair trade (open source kernal), human rights (well-designed consistent UI), a market economy (PCI, AGP, USB, SATA, IEEE 1392, GigE), a free press (TCP/IP, OpenTalk/ZeroConf, Apache, Jabber, Kerberos, SSL).... but other than that exactly like North Korea, yes.
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