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Mac OS X Gaining Ground In Corporate Environs

Posted by Zonk on from the moving-on-up dept.

nonsuchworks writes "MacWorld quotes a Jupiter Research report on the increasing penetration of Mac OS X in the business world. From the article: 'The report found that in businesses with 250 employees or more, 17 percent of the employees were running Mac OS X on their desktop computer at work. In Businesses that had 10,000 or more employees, 21 percent of employees used Mac OS X on their desktop work computer.' Analyst Joe Wilcox adds, 'Companies that were considering Linux are now buying Mac OS X instead.'"

3 of 585 comments (clear)

  1. This isn't a surprise. by Captain+Scurvy · · Score: 5, Informative
    'Companies that were considering Linux are now buying Mac OS X instead.'

    Of course they are. Why? Because there are a lot of legacy applications that write closed format documents with versions for Mac and Windows, but not Linux. This means that if a company wants to get the benefits that Mac and Linux offer over Windows, it will either have to buy Mac, or find some way to port its library of legacy documents over to an open format.

    There are certaintly ways to do this in many cases, but going the Mac route would probably be easier, and maybe even cheaper or at least as expensive if you take man hours into consideration. Plus you have a strong corporate label backing your Mac setup, which you don't necessarily have with Linux, and this is very important to people.

  2. Re:Less is not more? by technomancerX · · Score: 5, Informative
    Yeah, in corporate environments it's probably not as big of a deal but when you are talking 25+ of 10k+ machines that's a lot of cash you could have saved by going w/cheaper hardware and a free OS.

    10k+? A loaded dual G5 with dual 30" displays doesn't even come out to 10k. Apples are a bit more expensive than Wintel machines, but they're not THAT expensive.

    --
    .technomancer
  3. switch 1/4 of the office by pherein · · Score: 5, Informative

    sun solaris servers, and 1/4 of the office was switched to mac ox, 3/4 use windows xp.
    Mac os x has made a huge difference in our corporation.
    Techs actually learn unix.
    downtime is reduced 80%
    no compatibility problems
    opensource resources are outstanding
    job performance increased 40%
    no real security worries
    wireless is almost flawless
    bluetooth KB, mouse, phone work as well as windows
    greatly reduced cost
    the list just goes on, and we have plans to switch the entire 200 person corp. in 1 year
    I got to say any director of IT who is not looking into this is just negligent. Network engineering is not a preference. You have to use what works at the time.
    We estimate windows longhorn will be at this lvl in 2009.
    Most users are diehard windows user, but using this OS have changed everyones opinion. Going to the apple store and people actually care about helping them, at no charge, and simple stuff like finding a file written 3 years ago in 20 secs.
    I personally think that the os ranting is very childish. You ask urself what companies space suit you would wear on the moon. I guaranty most would be using the apple or sun space suit right now. Those wearing the MS space suit would die at the first freeze of the OS running the space suit. I can't bet my life or my business on what I like, I use what gives it the best chance for survival. Thats my job.