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Mac OS X Gaining Ground In Corporate Environs
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.'"
"I'm surprised to see just how much Mac OS X has captured the interest of potential Linux switchers," said Wilcox. "Companies that were considering Linux are now buying Mac OS X instead."
Why? They run MS Office products without having to have an additional layer in between the OS and the software (i.e. Wine, VMWare, or any of the various other solutions).
The only thing that surprises me about this statement is that companies are willing to spend 2x as much on the hardware and the additional money on the OS. 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.
Is it perhaps that in those businesses, 17% and 21% had people using Macs?
I'm a Mac user, and at my company we have about 10% Mac users.
I'm not saying it's impossible that TWENTY ONE PERCENT of the businesses out there exclusively use Macs... I think it's unlikely, and that the article is misrepresenting the data...
But then, I haven't read the Jupiter report.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I call shenanigans on this survey. I've worked educational and corporate IT, and Macs have NEVER been this prevalent. This article's suggesting that 1 in 5 business desktops are macs. Sales show this is more like 10x the real figure.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
"in businesses with 250 employees or more, 17 percent of the companies had one or more employees who were running Mac OS X on their desktop computer at work. In Businesses that had 10,000 or more employees, 21 percent of the companies had one or more employees who used Mac OS X on their desktop work computer."
That sounds more likely.
Most evil is done by good people, and not by accident, but deliberately; motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.
And why shouldn't it ... it'll save millions of dollars wasted in cleaning spyware/worms from Windoze machines. Also the luser-friendliness of Mac means fewer calls to tech support.
out of 7000 users we have 3 Macs(in the graphics arts dept of course). If they polled who had a Mac at home the number would be significantly higher, I can count at least 10 people in my immediate area who use Macs at home(including me). You can't trust these reports.
I am your run of the mill Mac enthusiast, but for 12 hours a day at work, it's Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 all the way.
They're workhorse OSes, they're quite reliable, and most of our internal tools require IE6 or Windows only patch-distribution systems. The investment in Windows-only software is immense. Our most critical system is from a defunct company and was just barely ported to win32. It's not going anywhere.
There is one G4 tower, and it is used to test our one Apple-compatible app. The rest of the time it is used for fullscreen music visualization at 80fps. Uptime: 400 days.
There really isn't anything wrong with Windows at work. It's just that nobody wants to go home to the same shitty experience.
This is why I got my first Macintosh, and shortly thereafter gave away my PCs.
You are exactly right.... so for all you out there who hate Apple you should think about this: If Mac's gain more market, Microsoft has to work harder FOR YOU to make a better operating system than it had before. Competition is a wonderful thing.
Or at least the report of the report.
On the face of it, if that large a percentage were using Macs, Apple would have shown tremendous market share gains in its past several quarterly announcements, and its share would now be somewhere in the neighborhood of HP/Compaq. (The ~33% gain of this last announcement was Apple's own year over year--terrific, and I'm glad I own stock--but not against the industry as a whole.)
I agree with an earlier post, that the percentages must be the amount of businesses that have at least one Mac, not the percentage of employees using Macs.
But most of all, I haven't had to spend $129 a year keeping it updated.
Overall I don't like Microsoft, but there are things I don't like about Apple either -- usually different things.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why go any further? OS X has just about everything you'd want. Plus it runs Office. Woohoo!
Seriously, I think OS X is way less daunting than Linux.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Maybe because every user doesn't want to fight with 8 configuration files dealing with graphics, two to get a network card running, and be responsible for ensuring every piece of hardware works correctly right after being installed.
;).
Face it, Linux is difficult. It's getting better, but OS X is already where Linux needs to be (though artificially; you control the hardware, you control the software). And it's worth it to us to pay the premium to get a machine that works.
Oh, and the eye candy's definitely better
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Nothing will rile up a bunch of linux users like a mention of Microsoft and Windows. But nothing riles up Windows users like mentioning Apple.
Linux still has a long way to go in usability polishing, but it's getting there. As a recent Ubuntu convert myself I keep running into situations where I miss the polish pro of XP. Another year or so, and I think we'll be closer.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It helps you feel more comfortable because you start out with something that is completely working, and you aren't always doing system administration using it. First, it's good because you aren't depending on your shell skills to run the system. It's a comfortable way to experiment because, if something isn't working or you can't figure it out, you can always go back to the GUI. Second, it's good because system administration doesn't have to be done in the shell. I run Gentoo, and I've b0rked my system a couple times by doing something dumb like downgrading glibc. On Mac OS X, that's not really a problem because administration tasks like software updates are done in the GUI. In other words, using a shell is not essential to administrating the system. What Mac OS X provides you with is a fully-functional GUI layered on top of a Unix core that you can directly access at your own leisure. It lets you tinker without asking anything in return.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
True Linux is free, but...
I don't own a Mac but the point of having closed hardware from one vendor is that the people who run the OS don't have to jump through hoops trying to find out who made the hardware, where is the driver, what is the latest version of the driver, etc.
The people who develop the software for the OS or the OS itself don't have to worry about having their software work fine on one machine only to have it flip out on another.
Look how much code could be ripped out of Linux, and how much more stable it would be if they only wrote software for limited combinations of hardware.
This is why people buy Macs. Because are stable, secure. People are willing to pay for that, especially in larger environments.
The Jupiter report is not accessible, but it's either worthless or being grossly misquoted by Macworld. 1 in 5?! Where are those Fortune 500 companies that have announced rollouts of Macs as replacements for their IBM and Dell Wintel machines?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
As a noted Apple apologist, I'd like to say: this is completely impossible. The P-M is much faster than a G4 of the same or even greater clockspeed... in fact probably on par with an Athlon 64 for non-64bit operations.
Now, all those nice virii/spyware/company anti-virus-defense cruft that your Windows box will attract... now that may make it seem like the Mac with the G4 is much faster :-)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Firstly, I don't mean to imply that my OS is better than yours, or vice versa (unless you're running windows, then yeah, I do), so please don't mod me a troll. ;).
I currently switched to Mac from windows, because I like it better. From performance to overall ease of use.
I administer a WAN of five private practice physical therapy clinics consisting of about 15 clients + server. Currently we use Intergy Medical Manager as our medrec/billing software, which ONLY runs on windows and is client-server. It's not a bad program, but is very limited for our environment (especially costwise). The server I built for it, has been running win2k steady for almost a year now without fail or problems.
However, the costs associated with paying Intergy for licensing, upgrading, and training really add up. Now, add on top of that, time and trouble from those pesky client pcs(windows xp) and adding other workstations. Costs start adding up when you have to scrap legacy hardware to run the latest OS to keep up with the latest upgrade. We all know the drill.
Linux would be a GREAT solution to these kinds of problems for us, but my bosses are committed to this expensive investment of hardware and software . What comes to mind when I try to see it from their perspective is "you get what you pay for, no way am I taking a risk and flushing this invest ment down the drain, for something FREE." Would you risk your business on it? I certainly wouldn't. I think maybe in larger environments bean counters are starting to see more costs coming in supporting windows, bandwidth, etc. and encouraging the tech staff to find a solution. The solution being linux or unix. Well, in my mind, I can't see a PHB betting their job on "free" so will pay for an alternative, that they may feel is similar to windows (don't outcast me mac guys) and something they have to pay for gives them security, name recognition(it's a psych thing I know), and just plain works. Especially since Mac is making a name for itself as being "virus proof" in mainstream media. Linux too, but once again, it's "free, and you get what you pay for." Sure Mac systems aren't terribly cheap when placed against the PC market, but I think the savings becomes apparent when the hardware dosen't have to be upgraded as often, especially if all you're doing is running a thin client or web browser.
I look forward to tossing all the windows machines out the door once I upgrade our systems again in another year or two.
The WorldVista software something that I'm now seriously looking into to help make the switch.
Networking Macs, I discovered is terribly easy, and just as easy to secure and lock down.
Now, I've just taken and made a longer lasting and more secure investment and saved a TON of money. From Hardware on up. The best part is, the investment in our server gets paid off as it's lifetime is increased using linux (hey, if they don't need to work on it, they don't need to know
(email me if you'd like to know why they'd accept a free medrec/billing program and not OS).
I'm not in a large enterprise environment, only because of lack of employees. I'd guess that appart from the cubicals and numbers, things are about the same everywhere.
It says that in businesses with >250 employees, 17% of the employees used macs. So if the business did have 250 employees, 42 of them would be using macs (17% of 250). Likewise for the 21% figure.
It doesn't say that 17% of all the companies who were polled exclusively use macs, at least that's not how I read it...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It runs MS Office (and NeoOffice) and has that great "it just works" thing going for it.
Well, it "just works" until you have to try to set up a networked office printer, connect to a shared drive on a PC (or even another Mac), set up email to work with an Exchange server or mount a firewire drive with a file system other than the one your current version of the Mac OS expects. Then it basically doesn't work at all unless you know what you are doing. These sorts of things are for all intents and purposes automatic on a Windows machine - the most you'd ever need to know is your password. (btw, the above examples are all problems both I and others at my office have had with our Mac machines - including people who have never used anything but Macs for their entire lives.)
I run both a Windows and a Mac machine at work, sitting side by side. I alternate between them depending on the task, mainly because I've got a 30" widescreen LCD for the Mac, so obviously it's a lot better for things that require having a bunch of windows open at once.
But I don't consider the Mac any easier to use in most situations. It has a learning curve like anything else, and there are a lot of things that are just a lot harder than they should be (and a lot harder than the same tasks are on Windows machines). Of course, the reverse is also true on other tasks - installing software is much easier on a Mac, for example; so easy that the first time I had to do it, I didn't understand that after dragging the installer to my applications folder, I was done. I kept looking for the "install" button. But overall I don't think one has an inherent advantage over the other in usability.
I also run Linux at home. The Mac OS is definitely easier to use than Linux but in some ways (such as setting up a firewall, networking and file sharing) it is similarly difficult compared to Windows. But, there's never been a situation where I've needed to use the command shell under OS X, whereas I still need to do it all the time under Linux (SUSE 9.2).
Ever tried to share a printer connected to a Mac with Windows machines? Ever had to reboot to make your network shares re-appear? Ever had problems copying files to Windows file share due to unsupported characters and resource forks? Apple has A LOT of work to do there before they can say they've nailed the interop story.
Also, once Apple starts shipping Intel boxes, a lot more black hats will have opportunity to come up with creative ways to fuck up macs. Right now every security update closes gaping holes that would be totally exploited if more hackers had Macs. Just wait and see now.
The market share numbers are overused and overvalued. Far too often you see market share numbers vary wildly between two different reporting companies. Those numbers also represent computer sales for every imaginable facet of the industry. If you look at more fine grained numbers Macs have far higher share numbers. In the POS market Macs probably make up a percent or two while in the IT management market probably upwards of 40%.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
But I can speak from experience.
Companys buy linux because its "cheaper".
But when you figure in that you arent going to be using commodity hardware in your datacenter environment, so you buy dell/hp/sun.
Then you buy redhat AS/ES, since thats what applications specify they NEED, then you need support (which is worthless from redhat) because you can't run supportless in an enterprise environment.
You have just spent just as much money as you would on the equivilent M$ system.
You lost me there. How is it any different than if Dell, HP or IBM provided a turnkey Linux box? There is no technical obstacle to this. It is more of a chicken and egg problem. Big names will provide turnkey Linux boxes once Linux gets more popular (which would happen quickly if big names provided turnkey Linux boxes).
And by provided, I of course mean provided with continuing support.
The other chicken and egg problem of course is convincing people that standard interfaces (HTML, RTF, even DOC formats) are stable enough that you don't really need Microsoft products to work with them.
It is essential to Microsoft that they disrupt this thinking before it gets too far. Dot-Net and other changes in the next versions of Windows and Office will certainly be aimed at breaking as many non-Microsoft things as possible.
As far as eye candy, I miss my Crystal icon set when I'm using my Powerbook. I've gotten used to the menu bar at the top of the screen but there are situations where it is counterproductive. While in Linux I can choose to have that title bar at top or not, OS X doesn't give me a choice. Apple has made the GUI more "user friendly" by eliminating the clutter of options available to the Windows or Linux (speaking particularly of KDE here) user.
But that brings me to my main point which is that Linux (or Open Source in general) arrives eventually at better design decisions than are likely to be made by any proprietary product. In Linux the GUI is clearly sitting on top of a generic windowing program which clearly sits on top of a general purpose multitasking OS. The Vendors, in their infinite wisdom go too far to blur these relationships while using Open Source I can choose between Linux/BSD X11/Xorg KDE/Gnome/... and in the latter two cases I can switch quite quickly between combinations of those things.
If the average user could have a fully configured Linux system that "just worked" placed in front of them I think they would forget Windows and OS X rather quickly. But Apple with its IEverything and Microsoft with , well, with whatever they finally come up with will continue to provide an artificially moving target as long as they can get away with it. They will have Jobs continue to do his song and dance and hire people like Scoble to oooh and ahh over some "cool" new button every 30 seconds. As long as these techniques continue to work on the "average" user the companies will continue to overcharge users so they can afford to convince users that they need to be overcharged. Like I said, chicken and egg.
It will take a growing number of non-conformists, or some other disruptive force (like the Chinese economy) to break this cycle. I have high hope that it will happen, but not next week.
Uhmmm.
OK, Mac OS X is quite happy with FAT16, FAT32, HFS and HFS+, and maybe that UFS thing I've never used but can choose in the formatter.
I've never tried NTFS on it; but trying to work NTFS on non-NT-based systems is awkward at best--though it is definately better in the newer Linuxes.
So what filesystem do you have on an external FireWire drive that Windows is perfectly happy to mount, but Mac OS X won't touch?
And can you explain why I can take the internal IDE drive out of a Mac, plop it in a FireWire box, and use it on any other Mac I want... but if I take the internal IDE drive out of an Intel PC (Linux or Windows), plop it in a FireWire or USB box, the very same system does not recognize the partition table?
Let's face it, we're still pretty much stuck with FAT32 for cross-platform filesystem interoperation, even if you aren't using Windows. And every camera is using it, or at least FAT16, for the flash cards--it may suck, but it's a known system, and everything can deal with it.
Right...
That's why those built-in Dell wireless network cards work so well. Or maybe those great Linksys ones so many people already have that "just work" with Windows.
Oh wait, they don't. Sure, it's Broadcoms fault, but that doesn't make it work. The point is there is always an excuse and nothing ever works right the first time or stays working.
A *lot* of stuff doesn't work, looks crappy (love those Linux fonts -- what? steal the MS ones?), use different widget sets (how come firefox doesn't match the theme I just installed. Oh wait, neither do any of the gnome apps!), and on and on.
I love Linux for servers, but if you can't admit Mac OS X "just works", you aren't being honest. If price is a factor, then its a factor, but don't BS everyone about it being a PITA.
As for those interested in Mac OS X, look into the "Missing Manual, Tiger Edition" book. It has a lot of useful information you might not figure out on your own.
And before you say "don't use it then", already been there done that. I use Linux for servers and am moving to Mac OS X for the desktops.
Why go any further? OS X has just about everything you'd want. Plus it runs Office. Woohoo!
Seriously, I think OS X is way less daunting than Linux.
That last bit about OS X being less daunting is a bit of an understatement.
There is one single reason why I'd still run Linux, though. I still have a PC at home that I haven't decided yet to get rid of. I never use it, because I have a iMac, but... hmmm... maybe I'll throw Linux on it and tinker. But it's just that- a hobby kind of thing, thus not something a non-programmer type is going to do. Me, though, I'll do it. When I get some spare time...
I guess I just backed up your argument pretty well there, didn't I ? I originally though "hey, he's wrong, *I* will still use Linux"... sigh...
Um..because it costs a few hundred dollars more and runs better. It's easier to maintain. You don't need to know how to recompile the Kernel, or even use a script if you don't want it. It just works.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
"If the average user could have a fully configured Linux system that "just worked" placed in front of them I think they would forget Windows and OS X rather quickly." I think you may be a bit out of touch with the "average user". If a Linux system "just worked" then yeah, maybe they'd choose it over OS X or Windows. But Linux is never going to "just work" that way. The mere existence of multiple windowing systems means that applications will be targeted at one of them. Sure, if the average user decides he likes Gnome best, he can still use KDE applications, but the little inconsitencies in the interface will start to wear on him. Why is that? Because the inconsistencies lead to things not "just working". Users don't want to have to know 3 different ways to paste something based on what toolkit the app is based on. They just want to go to Edit -> Paste (the more savvy ones may know Control+V) and have it work. I'm not saying choice is a bad thing. It's a great thing when you know what you're doing. When you don't know what you're doing, you want the simplest thing that will get the job done. Linux still needs a lot of work to be that thing.
"When I want to tweak and hack, I can do so to my hearts content. But when I need to work, it's ready to go, no tweaking needed".
I'm paraphrasing someone else's observations, but it's always stuck with me, and it describes why I decided to plop down money on a dual G5 about 1.5 years ago. While I still like to hack Linux on occasion, or try to squeeze a few more cycles out of my box, I don't have to just to do everyday things.
In fact, what also made me see the light was realizing how many hours I'd spend tweaking together a Linux distro, or an XP installation, just to get it the way I wanted it. I multiplied that by the hourly rate I charge others to work on their PC's, and immediately realized that I'd be time and therefore money ahead by getting a Mac and just having it work.
Google Earth...
pretty much any new game...
Those are the two I thought of off the top of my head....
Maybe because you can get use out of a Macintosh without any Unix knowledge and then learn Unixy things at your own pace.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I will preface this post by saying that I have +20 years of computing experience as both a developer and administrator. I have developed or administered almost every kind of UNIX out there (including NeXtStep and OpenStep) and every edition of Windows. While the Macintosh was not the greatest in the 1990's, Mac OS X changed everything. I have used Linux as both a desktop and a server since Redhat's Mother's Day release in the early 1990's.
Linux is perfect for background servers and special cost sensitive, in-house specially developed projects where licensing fees are important. Mac OS X is the perfect UNIX for the desktop and is beginning to make in-roads into enterprise rack servers.
The Linux community brings it on themselves. Linux will always be a niche in the desktop computing world. And while it is sometimes fun and interesting to try Linux on the desktop, Mac OS X is what Linux will always wish it could be.
Mac OS X is all the UNIX you could want with a simply brilliantly designed, fully featured, and consistent user interface, exceptional ease of use and administration with an excellent unified package management system. Everything you always wish you could have had on UNIX is now here on Mac OS X. Absolutely brilliant.
If you bash on Mac OS X it is because you have never used it before or you are too afraid to admit it kicks Linux's ass on the desktop. Linux zeolots are afraid to admit that Linux on the desktop sucks. All of the Linux zeolots I have listened to over the years all live in their own little world. And if they never realize it and never change their views, and if they don't get their act together and all work towards a common unified platform for desktop computing, Linux on the desktop will always suck. And they will continue to live in their own little world. End of the story.
And for most people, Linux is only a hobby OS and nothing more. Something to play with when you have spare time to tinker around with it.
I think you may be a bit out of touch with the "average user". If a Linux system "just worked" then yeah, maybe they'd choose it over OS X or Windows. But Linux is never going to "just work" that way.
I think you are a bit out of touch with the fact that nearly all users simply use what is provided to them -- whether by Dell/HP/etc., Apple, or their employer. The notion that Linux must be perfectly easy to install so that people can convert their old machines is somewhat nonsense. Most consumers just throw out their computer and buy a new one. If that new computer has Linux instead of Windows, they'll use it. (and half will think it's a new version of "Microsoft" until someone informs them otherwise..) On the other hand, I wouldn't put it past Linux to start catching on as a way to re-use old consumer PCs where Windows has been destroyed by Spyware or its own doing. If you're formatting the drive anyhow and don't care about old data, most modern desktop-centric distros will provide a useable working environment with minimal knowledge and will detect all major hardware.
The mere existence of multiple windowing systems means that applications will be targeted at one of them. Sure, if the average user decides he likes Gnome best, he can still use KDE applications, but the little inconsitencies in the interface will start to wear on him.
First of all, the consistency is no worse than Windows software, where almost every program today has its own custom widget set and/or bitmap themeable GUI. Office 2003 is not even consistent with the Windows XP interface -- nor is Windows Media Player, nor iTunes, nor AIM. This is not a major issue to most people. They're used to it. Sure, it's an eye sore to those with asthetic taste, but it's not a show stopper. I would go as far as to say Linux GUIs are more consistent for the most popular software.
The cut and paste issue is likewise a non-issue today. Go try it yourself. Cut from KWrite and then paste via Ctrl-V into gaim, gedit, OpenOffice, Firefox, and KWord. No problems whatsoever. This argument is bunk. It was valid 5 years ago, but not today.
Linux still needs a lot of work to be that thing.
I often say the same thing for Windows and Mac OSX, though OSX may have a slight lead at the moment. The whole consistency and usability issue is going to keep getting better thanks to work by the freedesktop.org group.
I agree completely. I started using Linux in '97 after we saw the writing on the wall for OS/2.
The linux groupthinkers will never get it, because they're told all this nonsense about choice and source code is a moral right and all sorts of other nonsense.
Your point about a common unified desktop platform is spot on...and something the groupthinkers never grok. Hell, if the LSB (Linux Standards Base) would have a LDSB(Linux Desktop Standards Base) then at least you might see a standard toolkit.
Hell, X11 is a standard, why isn't there a standard toolkit. I know why. Because Qt can never be the standard and nobody that has pull has the balls to tell the KDE fanboys to STFU.
Thing would be so much better today if someone had bought Trolltech say back in '98, LGPL'd or GPL'd + exceptions the toolkit, Gnome never had been started, and things like Enlightenment would have been experimental, research desktops.
XFree was ported back in '92 and it just took too long for people to take the desktop seriously on Linux. That's somewhat understanding considering old-time Unix geeks tended to have a bunch of xterms open and not much else, but now we have a bunch of newbies that think after they pop in a Mandrake CD that someone they're a soldier in the war against Microsoft.
It's completely evident now that being able to sell your OS (with proprietary bits), along with complete control over the entire software stack from the microkernel all the way up to the desktop has lots of merit.
The linux "community" is just too factionalized to ever make big inroads onto the desktop.