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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.'"
Wow, first comment! If MacOSX overtakes Linux, well, at least a platform that adopts some open standards will overtake Windows eventually. It's better than Windows/MS dominating the market place, and might force innovation. In the end, innovation benefits the end user....
I've been noticing the trend for enterprise acceptance for Macs for a while now. It started with some of the industry mags (not just MacWorld and Mac Addict) writing about Macs. Perhaps it was the introduction of XServe with its UNIX power, Mac ease of use, and cheaper licensing. Or maybe it was an offshoot of the move to Linux. Whatever the case, I've seen more and more actual stories in the different magazines that weren't simply bashing the Mac as in the days of old. Rather, the writers were talking about each new Mac OS release, the performance, etc.
I find it especially funny how it contrasts the "market share" numbers published. This is certainly higher than the 3-4% you commonly see. One could say "well these numbers are business numbers so they must have higher acceptance in the enterprise than for home users", which once again goes against everything we've been taught over the years. "If you want a home machine, a Mac is ok. But for business, you need a PC".
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I just converted my primary machine from Windows to Mac. I'd been using Macs again since 10.2, but with 10.4 it was finally good enough. No more virus worries, Word works if anything better on the Mac, you have all the benefits of Linux with none of the costs.
I'd tried Linux for the desktop so many times but it always was a very frustrating experience. OSX has some related problems. The fact is that SAMBA browsing of Windows networks isn't anywhere near as easy as using a Windows box. If I was on a Windows network where all the IP addresses were dynamic, I might think twice about a Mac or Linux. But once you get past the networking problems, the Mac simply is a better experience.
I wish Linux well. But configuration is simply too hard. It still feels like things are 90% done with that last 10% being too frustrating! I think many people won't mind. But for many people the effort just isn't worth it.
But I would love to switch our regular desktop users over to OSX, especially remote users. We could get rid of that totally cruddy and barely functional POS that is is Checkpoint, and switch to the simpler and easier-to-understand SSL tunnels. Once you see the beauty that is timed startups & shutdowns + radmind, you'd never want to go back to Windows...
As for linux... Yeah, linux is fun and all, but it ain't ready for regular people. I'd much sooner roll out a BSD than linux -- and this is why I ditched linux myself -- I am sick and tired of dealing with dependency hell. Even my 'easy' Gentoo box sucked days of my life from me...
My work environment is typical: Exchange server for email, MS Office for spreadsheets and word processing, etc. Guess what? I'm happy as a clam. Mail.app can connect to the Exchange server, Entourage handles the calendar (and mail, but I prefer Mail.app), Office for OS X works just fine and is completely seemless when exchanging documents with people on Windows, and I can connect to and mount any share on the network. I can, in short, do everything I want or need.
And I'm running OS X, not Windows, and that in and of itself is worth a lot.
There is only one application we use (our source control software, which somewhat ironically is written in Java) that does not run on OS X, and whenever I need that I just Remote Desktop in to my PC and do what I need.
Unless Macs are being used as servers as well as desktops, I don't see them doing as good a job as Windows or Linux for their respective 'corporate' environments.
I can tell you from personal (and daily!) experience that this isn't the case. Macs work quite well even in an almost exclusively Windows environment.
I wonder if that is 17% of actual employees or 17% of actual systems. 17% seems high...
The place I work at has 4 main offices, each with ±40 people. Of the ±40 at each office we have ±4 people in the marketing departments at each who use Apple systems exclusively. That's a solid 10% for Employees/Mac Users. But how many Apple machines is that?
Well if each of the ±40 people have 1 PC, this includes the Marketing dept, since their web related stuff is done on PC's, then the ±4 users each have a Mac, now include the ±3 PC servers in each office (Mail, Marketing, CompanyShare) we have ±47 machines in each building ±4 of which are Mac that leaves us with Macs being 8.5% of the total amount of systems in the office.
Now obviously my company isn't the same as everyone else, but I'd be willing to bet that either that number is fudged in Apples favor a bit, or the numbers reflect PC's being tossed out while unused Macs sit around in inventory for a while. Which I believe could influence the numbers since at my work we only USE 4 systems for the 4 people, but there are 4 G4's that are sitting in storage as "backups" in case one of the G5's goes down, and we don't keep old PC's at all. They get donated soon as they are unplugged.
Ave Molech Setting
Anyway, by now we have achieved a sort of critical mass -- if you randomly ask somebody about a virus problem, you are just as likely to get a shrug, a smile, and a response along the lines of "what's a virus?" And every time our Windows servers go down, you get a stream of sarcastic comments. The interesting thing: The Windows people don't defend Windows -- it seems they use it, but have no love for it, either.
Sooner or later, this all is going to have an effect on management. I don't think we're going to switch our main systems anytime soon -- too expensive -- but if there are secondary things that need to be installed, Apple might have themselves a bridgehead.