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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."
... diversity good.
Even it it's a 'non-evil' monoculture.
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 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...
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.
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."
I don't know. Speaking from a perspective of a graphics pro that's used both platforms, the Mac just "feels" more natural to me. No, I can't put that in a quantitative explanation. I've gone from Mac to PC back to Mac and yes, Photoshop performs on both, but as I said, it just "feels" better to me on the Mac. I've tried to understand why this is, but I really can't put my finger on it.
But honestly, it all comes down to personal preference. I know in the pre-press shops I've worked at, the PC has tried to make inroads, but there are a few things that just keep it back. Font handling is one....though most shops are going to an all PDF workflow, so that mitigates some of these problems.
But like this article, the great thing about the Intel Macs is, you can run either OS X or Windows....or even Linux, if you want. I would say that the extra you pay for the Mac is actually made up for this ability right there. It's very versatile now.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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?
No, it IS versatile, you just have to use it on their Hardware. Their OS, their hardware. Don't like it? Don't buy it. No one is forcing anyone. But the perk of buying THEIR hardware is the option to run all 3 OS's if you want...that's versatility. Albeit you're paying more for the hardware for that versatility, but to some it's worth it.
Apple opening up OS X to run on any hardware isn't going to be happening anytime soon and I think that people should just get over it. If it happens it happens. I'm not holding my breath for it.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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?
Only on /. (and digg, i suppose) would someone say Apple/OSX "might be a dead end platform before long" while commenting on a post about a university going 100% Mac. With Vista getting panned all over the place along side growing share in the Mac base, you have to either be on serious dope or suffer from mild retardation to put that statement in writing.
Your comments do not make you sound intelligent. Here's a quote; maybe you have heard it before.
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. --Alan Kay
A lot of people would agree with that.
Until it can be run on non-dongle-ridden hardware, it is not versatile.
The claim is that the hardware is versatile. Your comment does not apply.
In fact, depending on how Jobs' current 'selling sugar water to the kids' (iPod/iTunes) initiative goes
I'm not even quite sure what this means. Why does everyone fight against iTunes and the iPod? If you don't like it, don't use it. No one is forcing you.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
It depends on what desktop market you are talking about. If you are doing serious digital video production your choices are Mac with Final Cut Pro, or Avid. The Mac offers 90% of Avids capability at less than a 1/3rd the price. That sort of lead isn't going away anytime soon.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
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.
You're just used to it.
Windows is constantly telling you when things succeed -- like it wants to be congratulated on doing what it's supposed to do. "New hardware detected! You've attached a camera! I found a driver! Do you want me to open the pictures or copy them or sing a song? The camera is now connected and working!" There are balloon tips popping up in the taskbar and notification area periodically, letting you know that whatever you're doing is not important, because Windows just found a new wireless network! Hey, Windows just updated your time thanks to daylight Savings! Thought you should know! hey, you have unused icons on your desktop!! Do you want me to help you clean them up? Icons are hard! Stop what you're doing and pay attention to me!
The assumption in the Windows OS interface is that things are going to fail -- that at any moment the computer could simply explode and kill everyone in the room, and if things go well it should get a pizza party like the winner of the Special Olympics.
On the Mac, it is assumed things will succeed. If you plug in a new piece of hardware, it just shows up ready to use.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
As much as I like the Mac, it's marketshare has not increased significantly over the years, and has dwindled a bit with every major technology change they've made
Mac sales growth up over 100 percent in January
Net Applications: Apple's Mac 'market share' continues rise, hits 6.38% in February 2007
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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
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).
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