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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."
Wake me up when a major US university does the switch...
I was just looking at the majors they offer and I'm trying to figure out how Wilkes is an art school. Liberal arts university, sure, but that's it. In fact, the only art program they offer is a minor. Also note that they have about 2,200 students.
... diversity good.
Even it it's a 'non-evil' monoculture.
Dumps Windows because the new Macs can all run Windows?
That title is very misleading, it is only the hardware that is switching to mac, no the OS. It says they plan to use boot camp to dual boot OSX and windows. Hardly what you'd call a mac campus. They're just making it so that hardware wise they only have to buy macs rather than macs and pcs.
The university is not dumping windows at all.
They're dumping generic PCs in favour of mac PCs. They'll still purchase windows licenses & allow dual booting.
It's a hardware story, not a software story.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I may be a Mac fanboy, but I don't see how fewer computers can be a benefit for students.
RTFA.
The classes used to have (all number pulled from my ass) 15 windows PCs & 15 Mac PCs. In a class of 20, 10 would go unused.
Now, they'll have 20 PCs capable of running OS X or Windows. All students still have access to a PC.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
fta:
"Although the $1.4 million three-year switch - which started last year with the purchase of approximately 500 Macs"
$965 per apple? including the installation, planning etc? Over three years, in which time period the current macs would be outdated and require hardware upgrades in order to use the mac OS that will be in circulation by then?
Methinks their budget may fall a tad short..
I think you're confusing Liberal Arts with Art.
Take a look at the undergraduate majors:
http://www.wilkes.edu/pages/143.asp
Accounting, Air & Space Studies being the first two on the list...
Apple has nothing special for "Arts", Photoshop etc are all available on Windows as are drawing tablets. If you want specalised hardware for art then you shop Wacom and others not Apple.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
No, it's a good thing. The transition from Mac to Linux is much easier since they already lost compatibility, application support, gaming, and driver support anyway.
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.
Well, art does have a well known liberal bias.
I've said it before, I've said it again; I bought my first Mac(book) recently, and the thing that pushed me over the edge to do so was the fact I knew I could fall back to Windows when I needed to, or completely stay in Windows if the OS X experience wasn't a good one. But like most people who try it, that "security blanket" of Boot Camp is more of an insurance policy, or peace of mind (or gaming option), rather than something they end up using in real life. I have my MS Office and OpenOffice, Opera/Firefox/Safari, and even IE under Crossover Office or Parallels. (I tend to use Parallels for IE testing purposes of my websites).
:)
The only reason I reboot to windows now, is for the odd game; and even that's rare with me. Windows seems so much peppier, too, when I do go to it; since I only go there occasionally, the system doesn't get bogged down with addons, startup items, spyware, etc.. (The old reinstall-windows-every-six-months can be extended greatly, if you only use Windows occasionally.)
I think for a multimedia course that needs to teach students both Mac and PC skills, it makes all the more sense; both OS's on one machine: of course it's an overall savings, and somewhat of a no-brainer.
Yes, Mac hardware is single-vendor (unless you do the hackbook thing, not viable for a commercial enterprise); but in my experience, it's well designed, solid, stable, fast hardware. My only lament is that I'm a big fan of sub-nootbooks, like Librettos, and Apple has no such option currently. But I can live without that, for all the other benefits that OS X brings.
Yes, I'm a recent fan, and I am a boy, so fling away with your "fanboy" insults. Meanwhile, I'm productive and enjoying the experience immensely
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
But it's not about that; and, as is often the case the slashdot headline is an anti-windows line.
They are standardising on hardware, not an operating system. Which makes sense in terms of cost and hardware management.
often longer. every fw imac, cube, power mac and ibook we ever owned is running tiger and doing better than previous OS versons - every non-fw g3+ is running 10.3.9 and doing very well.
installation? ard.
planning? has to be done anyway.
etc? macs have less etc.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This 'dominance' is slipping away.
The Mac offers nothing special or unique in the field of digital arts today.
It used to be the case that the Mac had better software tools and better color management but this is no longer true. The same software and specialist hardware is available for Windows and many cost-concious design shops have gone over to Windows on generic workstations.
A lot of designers still use Macs because they've always used Macs - simple as that.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Macs are generally considered more user friendly for novice users, a group that I would guess video/graphics professionals would probably tend to fall into.
That's really what it comes down to. I've heard lots of creative justifications, but they are BS when you get down to it. It is just legacy. Back in the day, Mac was it for graphics work. Windows couldn't do it and didn't have the apps in any case. So it was Mac or nothing. Likewise with things like digital audio. When it first started, it was ProTools or nothing, computers weren't powerful enough to do it on their own.
Well, many people don't like change, thus they stick with Macs because that's what they've always used. The other justifications usually come from the fact that they either just tend to listen to the marketing hype, or because they feel a need to try and justify the more expensive purchase.
Even in the summary, it states they are intending to use Bootcamp: "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."
So they arent dumping windows, they are just going to a more manageable single-source hardware vendor, whch just happens to be Apple.
Sure, its a good thing as more students will get a taste of OSX, but please be a bit more accurate here of what is going on. Geesh.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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
The 'Altivec meme' has been cancelled. It is no longer to be used as an explanation of why Apple products are 'superior.' Similarly, all 'Pentium' jokes have now been rescinded, and any records regarding said jokes in the past are being wiped.
Didn't you get the fax?
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
The Mac zealotry argument does not really fly in this case. If you read the original article, it says that the IT head of the college was "before the switch was a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user." He clearly states the reasons for switching in terms of cost savings ($150,000). One set of machines will be able to do what previously required two sets of machines. Set up one lab. Boot up in Windows or the Mac OS depending on what the professor wants. They save money by buying fewer machines overall, as the article states.
Besides, speaking overall, anti-Mac zealotry on the part of IT departments has been a huge barrier against more widespread adoption of Macs. IT people know Windows. They'd rather have to maintain only a single platform. In most business environments, and in many academic ones, there is no choice at all. It's just Windows. So what's the big deal if one institution decides to use machines that, gasp, can boot both Windows and the Mac OS? Must be zealotry. . .
I suppose they could save even more money by just refusing to buy Macs at all and forcing all courses to use Windows only. In that case, it would just be a smart financial decision, right? Happens all the time.
Boot camp will be out of beta as soon as Leopard arrives, which will be a few months at most. Not worth fretting about that at this point. Apple has to provide that disclaimer for the time being.
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)
e
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
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.
You are correct — you are not up to current pricing. Universities often have campus-wide licenses that bring the per-user cost of a Windows installation on par with what an OEM pays. Based on the numbers in the summary, as long as the cost per Windows license is below $100 they still save money even without the lower cost of a hardware monoculture.
And, speaking on a purely personal level, it's nice to see how much the Windows users here are enjoying a taste of what IT has been doing to Mac users like myself for years. I'm sending Cartman over to lick your tears as you enjoy the Wilkes chili.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Decent color management and Photoshop (at least CS2 level). I'm not sure why color management hasn't arrived, but Photoshop may be the killer un-app. Adobe has no particular reason to make it easy to run under Parallels and even less reason to make a native port. No Gimp flames please. I've been playing with it on Ubuntu - actually pretty impressive, but not Photoshop. Not even close.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This comes from the faculty - all real-live professionals in their fields. While lots of folks use Macs - they're perfectly capable critters and I constantly drool about switching, to be perfectly honest - there isn't any drastic need to do that. At least while XP is still supported....
This argument is really pretty foolish anyway. It's not the OS that does the work - it's the app. And Photoshop on the Mac is just like Photoshop on the PC. If you can't make the switch between the "Mac" squiggle key and control (or Alt, whatever), you've got some serious issues.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
Well, art does have a well known liberal bias.
So does Slashdot.
Has anyone noticed that they aren't dumping Windows at all? They just want to use Bootcamp to cut down on total hardware costs and standardize on a single hardware platform. All they are actually dumping is beige-box PC hardware. They still plan to run Windows and Windows apps just like they did before.
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.
Because it was, for a long time. In fact, it still seems to be somewhat faster than Intels SIMD instructions. The Altivec gets its amazing speed by being a very, very simple piece of hardware. Using it properly is not easy at all, and in some cases it simply can't provide the precision you want.
But Apple and Adobe seem to have discovered that it's even faster to have a dedicated GPU do this work. And so the important use cases for SIMD have evolved in Mac OS X, edging more towards a scientific and gaming bias. But anyone can tell you that the Altivec, with its lack of double precision floating point support, is not well suited to scientific applications. The difficulty of using it properly is also a major limiting factor in games. Intel chips have other advantages which end up giving a net win to things like CoreImage, but that assumes that you can farm out work to the GPU.
People like to say Apple pulled a 180 on this, and I suppose there is some merit to that. But it's also true that Apple Engineers decided they found a better way outright, and the marketing engine didn't fight them on that, unlike in some companies we've seen (Intel with the P4 architecture, for example).
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
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
Anyone except NASA in 2000.
http://hpc.sourceforge.net/NASA_G4_Study.pdf
Or the High Performance Computing gang..
http://hpc.sourceforge.net/index2.php
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Well, since all the hardware is being bought from Apple, the phrase 'all mac' isn't that wrong. No, they're not dumping Windows, but they are dumping every Windows based PC manufacturer out there. And I think that is just as significant.