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Apple's Macworld Looking To Corporate Users
coondoggie writes to mention a Network World article about a focus on corporate users at the upcoming MacWorld Expo. Along with the consumer announcements (iTV, iPod stuff), there will be several elements dedicated to introducing IT pros to Apple hardware. From the article: "The show has really evolved. For a long time it was a consumer-oriented show and those of us who are from the enterprise space - there weren't very many of us - would use it as a place to meet and compare notes ... Now Macintosh in the enterprise is becoming more recognized and there are tracks that are specifically for us enterprise people. We don't have to sneak off anymore."
Unless those apples cost less to keep up / maintain / their software is cheaper / they use less power.
By far the largest cost in IT is man hours. If you drop those by a little, you can save more than an apple will cost you.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Macs also last longer and require less day-to-day maintenance which negates the increased upfront costs.
My last job, I admin'd a network and supported over 100 users at an all-Mac shop, by myself. This was in the late 90s, so it was pre-OS X. Most of my day was spent reading and surfing the web in my office. I dealt with the occasional hardware failure. Once in a while a Mac would get cranky and I'd have to go run Norton Utilities on it to fix it up, which it very seldom failed to do. Most of my support calls were to help people deal with Office documents sent from Windows-based clients/vendors/etc, because this was before the antitrust stuff really kicked into gear and Microsoft was merrily using their ever-changing Office file formats to force upgrades and keep competitors at bay.
Eventually the company decided to migrate to Windows "to be compatible with the rest of the world." Fantastic choice. The IT staff quickly tripled, and we really needed a fourth because of all the shit that went wrong with Windows and the crappy Dells the company settled on. I very quickly got tired of it and left.
Apple has made great strides since then with OS X, and would already be a force to be reckoned with in the enterprise if it weren't for empire-building PHBs who must preserve their big budgets and staff of minions to tend to temperamental Windows boxes.
Not going to dispure your #1, I'd love a docking station for Apple's portable line (yes, BookEndz makes something they call a docking station, but those are rubbish).
#2 is a no issue, you can get USB serial adapters for $10. Modems (when necessary), can be handled via USB adaptor. I'm scratching my head on why you'd need to worry about needing a Parallel connection though.
3) I'm in the 4 hour range on my laptop with moderate energy savings set up (dimm the screen a bit, no cd in the drive).
4) My office hasn't bought a laptop with a floppy drive in it in something like 5 years. There's a few USB one around if someone needs it, in the IT office near the old Zip drives.
Mod point free since 2001
Because we all know the way to get an IT shop to shift platforms is to run ads on broadcast TV. "Hey boss, don't get Macs — their ads mocked my fiefdom of valuable spreadsheeting." *Cue sad violins*
Yes, all of us "mere humans" in IT and on Slashdot can't comprehend why Apple would target consumer Macs with consumer apps to consumers. Why aren't they advertising their exciting BUDGETING SOFTWARE on their U1 SERVERS!! THEY'RE CRAZY!!
All of which were forced on it by content providers. Of course, you can always rip your CDs into one of a few DRM-free formats and add them at will. It's not like iTunes ever, say, defaults to add DRM to CDs you rip, or tacks it onto files you *shudder* "squirt" to your friends. Either that or you misspelled Zune.
Yes, because Apple's strategy is to make using an iPod on a Windows machine difficult and pedantic. Or maybe, just maybe, this is symptomatic of the inherent byzantine shittiness of making things work with Windows. I have no relevant experience, really, as I am not a spreadsheet budgeting monkey and hence not a target of their blatantly IT-offensive advertising.
Yes, if only it were possible to, say, set all files of a given type to open by default with a different app. And if only it were as simple as using a pull-down menu in a Get Info box. And if only I could travel back in time 10+ years or so I could come up with that idea before Apple incorporated it into their OS. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!
This post seems a bit longer than my inital reaction, which was to suggest that you go FUD yourself. But as I said, slow Friday.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
AD Integration has been there for a number of years. You use the Directory Access application in /Applications/Utilities, and there's an AD tab where you enter the relevant information. It provides authentication and full single sign-on. You can also change the password on your Mac and it propagates to AD. So what's the issue?
You can also manage the Macs via AD, if you want to lock them down. This requires a schema extension -- extensions that Apple has registered with the IANA. This historically has made some AD administrators nervous, especially back in the day when you couldn't reverse schema additions. These days, the scripts are fairly widely available -- install them on a test or staging server and see how it works.
So this provides very good management, the main limitation at this point is it's necessary to use Apple's Workgroup Manager application to do the management of the Macs, and point it to AD. Most Windows administrators are used to using GPOs for management and are reluctant to use another tool. If this is too much of a hurdle (you know, that whole "learning new things" thing which may be scary to people whose brain filled up getting their MSCE certification), then look for 3rd party tools like Centrify's Direct Control (http://www.centrify.com) which allow you managemetn of the Macs totally via GPOs.
Pretty much any way you WANT to manage Macs from AD, you can. Each option has a few caveats, and is not 100% like using AD to manage Windows machines, because they are different machines. But all solutions WORK, and in fact they WORK QUITE WELL.
As far as MVL, it does apply to copies that run in Parallels. So you're covered there -- the expense is the copy of Parallels... which is $79 list, and I'm just betting if you asked them for 500 copies that they'd negotiate a bit.
Regarding Entourage... you're right, it's not as good as Outlook. But for many folks, it's sufficient. As far as Excel... I've never personally had an interop issue between Windows and Mac versions of Excel or Word. Then again, I'll freely admit I don't get many documents that are loaded down with large numbers of VBA macros. Whenever I get a "enable Macros?" dialog I say no -- so that point is moot anyway. With the main use of VBA being to transmit viruses... it's a wonder they're really still prevalent on the Windows side. And I say this having written a few custom decision support systems based in Excel and Access, that used custom OLE controls no less, back in the day.