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US University Dumps Windows to go All Mac
MacKeyser passed us a link to a MacWorld article about a University doing things a little differently. Instead of sticking with their inefficient mix of Apple and PC systems, the college is doing a 'total technology refresh', and adopting an all-Mac policy on the campus. Previously, a class at Wilkes University would be outfitted with something like 20 Macs and 20 PCs, to allow for individual preferences in software and OS use. With Boot Camp students at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college will be able to switch between Windows and OSX, choosing which applications and OS to use at any given time. "[Scott Byers, vice president for finance and the head of campus IT said] 'We think it will save $150,000 directly, in buying fewer units - even though the Macs cost more per unit than PCs.' The school, which enrolls about 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students, will reduce its inventory from nearly 1,700 computers to around 1,450 after the change over. Other costs savings, however, will be harder to measure. 'By standardizing, the IT department should be more productive,' Byers said."
Wakey wakey! http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-5095026.html
One is that they may have determined they have enough Macs anyhow that it would benefit going for a sole source situation. There's something to be said for having one point of contact for all ordering, support, billing and so on. The university I work at sole sources various things. Thus if you feel that enough of the computers you order anyhow are Macs, you simply make them all Macs.
The other, and the one that is more likely, is that there's one or more Mac zealots in the position to make these decisions and they pushed it and people bought in to their justification. Unfortunately, this kind of thing does happen. People push their personal preferences on others and often try to cage it as being "easier" or "saving money" when in fact that's not the case, it is just what they want.
I say this is more likely since while Macs can run Windows, they are hardly an ideal solution. Boot camp is a beta and isn't supported as well as a PC natively made to run Windows. It would seem to make more sense to sole source another vendor for Windows PCs. That's what we do where I work. Gateway is our sole source (barring justification) for Windows PCs. However if I want a Solaris machine, I am free to buy Sun. Sure, you can theoretically get Solaris x86 running on a Gateway, but it is a much better idea to get it from Sun. Same for supported Linux solutions (don't get me started on Fedora problems on the Gateway blades).
To me it sounds like a Maccie wanting to push their platform. The hope is that everyone will use MacOS, I'm sure, but they said "Oh well this is easier since they run Windows too!" It isn't a seriously good idea because, as Apple notes:
"Warning: Boot Camp Beta is preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. Do not use Boot Camp Beta in a commercial operating environment or with important data."
Possibly, possibly not. After all, in a lot of ways the jump from OS/X to Linux is a lot shorter than the one from Windows to Linux. They're both Unix descended systems and have a lot of apps in common. And when it comes to Linux, the price is always going to be had to beat.
On the other hand, I have to say that it doesn't much bother me. What I'd like to see is a bit more diversity O/S world. I suppose if Apple ever attain Microsoft's market share, they might well turn out just as bad - I doubt we'll ever know. In the meantime anything help break Redmond's dominance of the market is to be applauded.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Then why does everyone say Macs are better for video/graphics? Every graphics designer I know uses a Mac.
The same can be said for windows relative to linux... People are still using it because they always have.
Not at all. I'm all for Linux, but in art or digital audio, the tools available in Linux just don't stack up (yet) with ones available for Windows and OSX. Yes, there's the Gimp for graphics, and Audacity for audio (among a few others), but there's nothing that comes close to competing with ProTools, or any of the other major audio software applications, and I don't think there's much on Linux that competes with Illustrator or Quark, either.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
And in no small part: Because they've never grown dependent and/or highly skilled in any Windows-only software. How often do you hear "Yes OS X is great, but as long as it doesn't run $foo it's not usable to me". Or about Linux, for that matter. And a lot of those really creative types I've met, well... their minds seem "jumpy". I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's probably what makes them creative, but I think they're prime targets for Apple's "just works" marketing because they wouldn't stay focused long enough to get technical problems fixed. Of course you have a whole class of basicly "graphics engineers" in the same way you got software engineers, but they tend to follow the creative guys' lead.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I began my undergraduate days in 1986 and the entire university was a mix of Macs and UNIX workstations. I do recall a few stray IBM (and yes they were IBM) machines in the computer center, but those were more of an oddity than anything else.
My first response to sitting down in front of an MS environment was, "What the hell is this and why would someone use something so clumsy?"
Hopefully we're heading back to those days, albeit slowly.
creative examples on windows:
1. typefaces:
a designer uses a 'faux bold' and 'faux italic' in there design, when printed, those are reverted to the normal face of the font
reason: extended windows features that are not typographically correct, and do not translate correctly in postscript
2. colors:
a designer makes a design with very vivid colors on it screen, when printed those colors look dull
reason: standard windows gamma is too high (higher then mac), resulting in more vivid colors, allthought those colors are outside the cmyk range, and therefore are not printed as they are shown on screen
(test yourself: try to differenciate 80% and 100% black on a pc screen, you cannot)
these 2 examples illustrate that designers, who do not have a clue about technical aspects, are experiencing issues with there design-workflow on windows.
offcourse, a designer could avoid using those 'faux' typefaces, and adjust his screen gamma, windows is able to do it all, and has even more options then a mac, but that is not what is required by a designer
about 'people don't like changes': (to stay in the creative environment) how comes that quarkxpress, the leading page-design tool for ages in the graphic industry (even from before windows95 existed), has been dumped in the course of 1 year in favour of indesign? could this be explained in any creative or non-creative way?
Could it be that Apple software is simply better at things like color matching, font handling and other stuff, like making top hardware manageable by non nerds?(since media processing always required more horsepower than say... Office Word + Norton AV + Outlook... wait, forget it...)
Perhaps, it's a matter of software quality... (limited to certain areas of interest, of course)
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Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Maybe Vista will help, but Microsoft just doesn't have the culture of design that Mac does and my guess is people with opinions on these things will continue to see Vista as a clumsy attempt at style. Think of the "Mac Guy" vs "PC Guy" commercials. One of these days they'll make one where the PC Guy gets some really tacky designer clothes that look totally wrong on him and reveal a little too much pasty nerd skin and flab.
Both of my parents went to Wilkes (long time ago- my mom met my dad in a slide rule class!), and they are impressed that Wilkes is going forward (for right or wrong). I think my mom was surprised that Wilkes even had computers. Like I said, long time ago! :)
As to good or bad- let it shake out and see what happens. I'm tired of all the fanboy/advocacy about what's better, cheaper, etc. Let's give some real world craziness a shot.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
AutoCAD.
Or is that two words? Anyhow for a lot of engineer/architect/designer folks, Linux would be their first choice too if only it would run AutoCAD.
This includes the following categories os users:
Now I have seen a blog or two of people who disliked the OSX experience. And a couple of vocal anti-mac types and purists in places like slashdot. I doubt they're in any way representative of the norm. There are very good reasons to use a pc over a mac. There are fewer reasons to use a *nix/bsd over a mac except in the "server on a shoestring" market. It just so happens that unless your a gamer or need a specific, niche software that isn't available on mac...almost all of the reasons above have nothing to do with the end user.
has it occurred to anyone that graphic designers prefer using macs and that they might actually have good reasons to use the hardware that they do? i have a windows box that sits on the floor next to my mac. i use it once every couple months to double-check a website design or somesuch other little thing. when i switch to an intel-based mac, i suppose i'll bootcamp into windows for those occassions and not much else.
nobody questions the choices of people in other fields to standardize on particular platforms or apps, but for some reason people really enjoy debating the graphic artists/mac connection. why do people feel the need to question a professional's choice of tools. do you also debate why certain mechanics use snap-on versus milwaukee tools or why one doctor might use a different brand of stethoscope than another? i don't see how anybody in graphic arts has to justify their hardware choices to anybody.
the argument seems to generally stem from the "macs are too expensive" crowd. well, when you bill by the hour, having a computer that works perfectly 99% of the time counteracts that argument. i bought a quad core g5 with 4.5 Gb of RAM, a terabyte internal RAID0 setup and 2 24" monitors. how long did it take me to pay off that rig with work? about a week and a half. why would i, or should i switch to save a few bucks when i already know what i'm using works perfectly for my needs. it's not expensive in the world view, only when you compare it to crap pcs.
seriously, keep your "ooh shiny" and "hype from apple tv ads" and "designers are too dumb to use windows" comments to yourself. it's incredibly insulting. i could choose to learn any platform and could probably get my work done on windows or linux, but why should i? to satisfy the curiousity of some random slashdot posters? or perhaps so i could save $800 on a box and hope that i can transfer all my files, get app crossgrades and generally get up to speed with a different plaform in the 8 hours it would take me to justify the cost savings. anything over 8 hours and i'm losing money. i'd rather just make an educated decision to use macs for my own reasons. but thanks for caring.
We replaced all our computers in our training labs with iMacs running both Windows and OS X. It has worked wonderfully and it takes up much less space and the lab is a lot quieter. We can now train twice as many people at a time because they can all be on the same OS, whereas, before we had half Macs and Half PCs. The biggest problems was with the Windows users not able to manage with the Mac keyboards and Mice so we replaced them with Microsoft keyboards and mice. I found it interesting that the Windows users (and management) just assumed that the "Mac people" could make due with the clunky windows keyboards and MS mice when the PC people couldn't. It really screwed up the clean look of the lab too. But maybe that's what makes the PC folks feel more at home :-). I do know that it sure made management of the lab easier.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
This is the first time I've seen the buzzword "standardization" used to defeat a set
of windows machines instead of the other way around.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
So you could mod me as Troll like the rest of the mac fanbois? (hopefully not)
FWIW, I went to Tech, and I have worked in industry for 20 years. I have yet to see macs in a production environment for engineering. Architecture, occasionally. Burt Rutan uses them (though he's really pure R&D, and is smart enough he can afford to tell every else to fuck off). Aside from that, they usually only exist in the marketing department.
Not meant as a slam to Macs (I have a soft spot in my heart for apple - I leaned both BASIC and assembly on a 6502 system) - but the bulk of the engineering software out there really is for PCs. It used to be for Unix, but most of the big boys ported to NT, back when NT was a real working OS (before graphics drivers had access to ring 0). Now the Win PC stuff is mostly there because of momentum (and market share). Even AutoDesk won't port to linux or mac, though I'm certain there'd be a big market. Architects are really just artists who think they can add and subtract (the secret: they can't), and would probably flock to a Mac AutoCAD. Many engineers I know would be happy to switch to Macs or linux, but with most of the work-a-day programs in win-bound apps it's not financially practical. I'd be a linux shop if the apps were there, but I'm too much of a hardware geek to go with apple.
As for VMs, why would I bother? XP is stable (despite the common perception here) - why pay the penalty for a VM if I'm going to spend 70-80% of my time in Windows anyway?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The point is that college is saving money compared to what had been their alternative prior to Boot Camp. Some people may not like the fact your hypothetical choice is not available (at least not at this point), but Apple has a right to create a differentiated product and try to sell it. It may be a great success, it may not, but I am sure that Apple is in a far better position to do the market analysis than I am.
Apple is not Microsoft. Apple makes its money from hardware, and it is able to generate higher margins on that hardware by writing its own operating system to go with it. As Dell struggles these days with its business model, it seems to me that Apple is doing a very smart thing. Making the Mac OS available for any random PC out there would be a huge headache for Apple. Think drivers. Take the variety of complaints from Vista owners about drivers not being available and magnifiy that many times for all the drivers that would need to be written for the Mac OS. I recently read that a Vista installation takes about 15 gigs of hard drive space, while the Mac OS takes about 2 to 4 gigs. Part of that must be due to the greater complexity of handling so many different plaforms.
People can complain, but Microsoft probably doesn't care that much. Their margins from selling Windows licenses to Boot Camp users are surely higher than what they get from the OEMs. The OEMs might not like it, but Apple is under no obligation to make the Mac OS available to them.
In response to the three posters who say their Mac labs go unused, that is probably because those who prefer Macs have one. People who use a computer lab anymore are those who probably aren't that computer literate and therefore have only ever been exposed to PC's a few times and will therefore gravitate towards the only thing they've ever seen. PC costs have dropped such that anyone with an interest in computers can buy what they want (PC or Mac).
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I'm in their master program for school admin. I can report that their technology in education courses stress interoperativity and are not OS specific. Students are encouraged to submit projects in open formats which promote open standards. I don't have a handle on their engineering or math departments but there are numerous penguins posted conspicuously on some professors' doors. re-v
"But they should do it by creating a better product (we're talking about the hardware here), not by forcing people to choose their hardware through this artificial lock-in."
Apple is not forcing anybody to buy anything. You buy it if you want it. That's it. Although I can understand that someone might want the Mac OS but not to buy Apple hardware, there are a lot of things that I would like to buy from companies on terms that aren't available to me. Buying channels a la carte from my cable company, for example, is one of them. In Apple's case, the harware-OS combination is the product that Apple offers. It's not "artificial." Consumers can make their own choices. The ability to boot Windows as well as the Mac OS is a bonus, and Apple is smart use that as a selling point.
Obviously opinions differ, but I like Apple hardware. My first Mac was a Mac SE purchased in 1989. I retired it in 1998. It was still working perfectly. My next Mac was a Power Mac G3 desktop purchased in 1998. I retired that last year, still functoning fine, running Mac OS X despite its age. My current Mac is a G5 dual-processor machine, just about three years old. It's been great. Sure, I paid a little more up front, but I think that I have gotten plenty of value from these machines.
A lot of design shops wouldn't switch because they have an investment in Apple scripts that streamline their workflow. That can't be easily ported. Quark and 3rd party plug-in makers are notorious for bad support and huge prices. Even if you can get a Windows version of the plug-in you use, they'll probably expect you to pay for it again. Some of those plug-ins cost as much as Quark does in the first place.
It's the counter part to those millions of shitty custom developed VB apps that keep businesses on Windows.
I can't imagine the designers themselves seriously considering switching to Windows. But if some manager type gets the idea of 'saving money' by switching to Windows they are very likely to hit that problem. There is lock-in on both sides of the fence.
I'd also point out that Photoshop on Windows works as well as it does because it ignores the usual Windows UI patterns and uses those from the Mac.
Document windows aren't constained by an MDI parent window.
Every command is in a menu, has a shortcut, and isn't hidden and only available in a context menu.
Mac based keyboard shortcuts.
I can move between Photoshop on the Mac and on Windows easily. The problem comes with using other software. As soon as I need to do something outside of Photoshop the user experience falls appart.
Don't blame me - this