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Hi, I'm a Mac, and I'm Your Enterprise Computer
Esther Schindler writes "Not just another 'why big companies should adopt Macs' article, CIO is running a piece assuming that Macs are already on the way in the door. Hi, I'm a Mac, and I'm Your Enterprise Computer offers advice to IT managers about how to integrate Apple systems into the existing IT infrastructure, and offers hints from leading Mac OS X experts on configuring those systems once they've arrived. '[A] key element in corporate Macintosh adoption is the importance of third-party software and custom solutions. They can help smooth the way for integrating Macs onto the network. While specialists say they wish third-party support were greater, the openness of the Mac makes correcting issues possible. Don't discount the lure of the well-worn path that draws and then traps your IT staff into familiar habits.'"
Remote Desktop can be configured on any OS X computer to allow connections from regular old VNC apps. I've used a free program called "Chicken of the VNC" to connect and it works great. In addition, you've got a standard POSIX layer for remote administration through the shell. I don't see what you're complaining about.
At the company I'm working for, Macs are getting attention at the Vice President level where they're configured to run Windows XP in a Parallels virtual windows machine to run those must have Windows applications. Since I'm the only Mac owner on a PC-centric IT staff, I got a bit of job security as a Mac guru. I keep telling people that a Mac is PC with a better OS. :)
Well, actually...
Most of this article is pretty good, but I disagree with one of the early bits about supporting Macs in a PC-oriented office:
The article goes on to say that some of that may be because these particular Mac users whine a lot and need more help (my words), but also "... due to the nature of the tools we use on the Mac."This contradicts both my experience and the experience of an awful lot of tech support people I know. In PC-oriented offices where Macs are used, the tech support folks rarely have to fiddle with the Macs. The Mac apps don't seem to cause any more problems than the PC apps, so the support costs are about the same. Maybe Publicis Group is a bit more PC-oriented than the CIO is willing to admit?
But end users need to be controlled! Can anyone tell me how Mac or Linux allows central control of what the id10t holding the mouse can get to to break?
Will they portray the enterprise mac with the same heroin addict looking actor? I swear every time I watch one of those videos, it reminds me of trainspotting and I almost instantly go into withdrawl symptoms when it's over.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
"The Macs require a greater density of field associates. Where we have 1-to-150 PC techs to users, we're somewhere down to 1-to-100 for Macs. I think that's due partly to the technology and partly due to the users. The creatives are more demanding and you have to be more responding, because those are the people that clearly create our revenue," says Anschuetz.
That's the direct opposite of my experience (More like one Mac guy for 700-800 Macs, one PC guy for about 100-150 PCs), but I suppose a university environment is a bit different from a creative environment (at least outside the art/music/etc departments).
"Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) is a Macintosh application produced by Apple Inc., first released on 14 March 2002, that replaced a similar product called Apple Network Assistant. Aimed at computer administrators responsible for large numbers of computers and teachers who need to assist individuals or perform group demonstrations, Apple Remote Desktop allows users to remotely control or monitor other computers over a network."
... then what kind of computer are they using on the Klingon ships?
... then what kind of computer should I use at home?
... then can I use my iPod as a PDA?
Using Apple Remote Desktop (for OS patching, application installs, configuration) or any of several open-source VNC solutions (to help lost users by taking control of the machine) remote management of enterprise Macs is not only possible, but easy.
I manage a small cluster of Macintoshes (for video production) in a 95% Windows shop. If anything, I think I have a far easier time than the IT Service that maintains the Windows machines (they often have a lot of complex licensing issues to wade through).
These stories are free but worth money.
Can you elaborate a little bit on what type of access you need, or fear is missing ?
I'm sure Apple means well, but there can be only one Enterprise Computer.
I love Macs. I use both Macs and PCs at work, and I run OS X, Linux, and Windows at the house. OS X is my favorite and I would love to switch everything accross the enterprise tomorrow. But it will be hard for Apple to make it in most enterprises because of the limited support. The Apple Care 3 year warrenty is the max you can get. Once that is up you are looking at parts or repair. We have a couple of Mac servers in our art departmet that are running into this wall now. Then we look over to our NOC where we have IBM servers running on a 24x7 4 hour response for 5 years support plan. When Apple can do that we can start talking.
Ya, if only they had a Remote Desktop application, or something that could push settings the same sort of way that the Active Directory does.
Even ssh would be a start.
Why doesn't Apple make these tools available?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
What do they mean by "openness" here. (Just curious - don't interpret this as troll.)
As the other guy said, you can use Apple Remote Desktop which lets you run the other computer's desktop or push apps and updates out to them all automatically. You can use free VNC programs to connect to ARD or free programs like Chicken of the VNC can do the whole thing itself (that's how I interact with the mini that acts as my media and file server). There's also ssh and any of a host of other UNIX tools.
Netboot on Macs really works very well too. You can plug a new Mac into your network, hold down a key on boot, select the image you'd like it to run and after it downloads it, you're off and running, new computer completely configured to your spec.
Someone who has an Enterprise level agreement with Apple, let us know how much an "enterprise" level iMac costs in bulk.
I know for a fact that both Dell and HP's "enterprise" desktop systems with a 19" flat screen monitor are about $650. (HP DC7700 for example) This includes an Intel Core2 Duo, 1.0 GB of ram, an 100 GB SATA hdd, integrated Intel graphics, and a SATA DVD/CD-RW combo drive. Dell's product is very similar but a little bit less ($750). Both systems as I said, come with a 19" flat screen.
The cheapest iMac is the $999 iMac, which is only 512 MB (but does have a larger hdd). I'd love to know the corporate pricing. To move to the 19"... add another 200 to that. Still, thats retail store, so someone kindly provide the corporate pricing.
Till Apple has prices that are similar, no large enterprise in their right minds would make the move, considering most of those, if not all of the fortune 500's are running Windows on the desktop....
gee because coming built with SSH and VNC does not work for you
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
You can even set a computer to always netboot too. We used to do that in my fathers school labs for years. At least since the early 90's.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I'm not a Mac user or anything, but if they're right about this trend, I say more power to 'em. I say anyone stepping up and taking a swing at Microsoft's market share is a good thing since it will drive innovation and value rather than good ol' incumbency.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
Congratulations. Now there's nothing stopping corporations from making the switch.
For all those recommending Apple remote desktop, I don't think that's what the parent was referring to. going to each and every computer over VNC or something similar is almost as difficult as making house calls. What he's looking for is something like Active Directory with group policies and automatic updates so that the configuration changes are made one place and reflected on all the machines.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
What exactly is open about a mac?
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http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/13
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/08
Wait, maybe OpenDirectory is all-powerful?
"lookupd had some limitations, though. Designed in a time when libc calls expected to return full user records -- including crypt() passwords -- it has no specific authentication support. It is, additionally, a read-only architecture. While this is the norm for libc interfaces, it makes sense that in a world of evolving directory services to support write operations. Finally, lookupd is relatively difficult to extend. While third party lookupd agents were written, they were the exception rather than the rule." http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/08/05/
Openldap works good for me.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
For Mac OS X 4.5+, Apple offers an emulator named Boot Camp.
I stopped reading after that. The entire article was this bad.
There are many applications and platforms out there that do this, including:
Apple Remote Desktop
LANDesk Management Suite
Casper Management Software
LanDesk is a cross platform solution. There are also management extensions available that allows you to integrate Mac workstations into your existing Microsoft SMS 2003 environment if thats whats being used: http://www.quest.com/quest-management-xtensions-f
I'm sure there are more out there. Just look. Most of these tools have been available for the last several years.
I think years from now many people will look back on the period of approximately 1985-2005 as a "Golden Age" for Microsoft, when they were able to rake in huge profits by illegally dominating huge chunks of the personal computer industry with the Wintel duopoly. Of course for many of us we will look back on this period as "The Dark Ages" of little or no competition in the PC marketplace. Really what we are seeing now, as Apple and other firms like AMD start to make inroads into the enterprise market, is a return to normalcy. Competition on price and competition on features is a healthy state for the computer hardware & software industry. Capitalism and our free economy is really founded on the notion that there is not a central power (be it a totalitarian system of government, or a monopolistic corporation) that can control an entire sector.
Also, please take a look other major industries that have healthy competition - Plenty of airlines -> lower airfares. Plenty of car manufacturers -> lower car prices. Plenty of restaurants -> reasonable cost of food.
The idea that there is only one group of people in the world smart enough to create a reliable and modern PC operating system is simply a falsehood.
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
Then it is an easy fit. If it is accounting or manufacturing, less so.
In any case, there is no such thing as "the" enterprise computer in companies of any significant size.
Are we talking the server room of the enterprise which has a polyglot of systems, many dating from before the PC?
The desktop of the enterprise? The desktop of the ad department? The desktop in accounting? The mac isn't a universal solution anymore than the PC. Many enterprises are completely agnostic in the hardware area. They care about things that help them deliver value to customers and things that can be supported internally and by 3rd-parties.
Seems everyone's already mentioned Apple Remote Desktop, VNC, and OpenDirectory, but I'll also mention that RadMind
...that corporate America continues to suck Microsoft dick is that when the executives get together for their cocaine and whore parties, the executives from companies that have Macs get picked on.
It's simple peer pressure amongst pampered MBA types that that never mentally matured past the sixth grade.
Mod me down, but you can feel it deep in your bowels that I am right.
That's one of the things you have to accept when putting Linux on a machine, Mac or no: Not everything will be properly supported right out of the gate. The Ubuntu installer not working properly all the time makes it a nonstandard piece of shit? Maybe, but it could also be that Ubuntu just doesn't like working with every single computer you can put it on.
They meant "Microsoft" based versions of those tools, rather than those that work with all sorts of computers and systems.
... RDP
Remote Desktop for Mac is based on VNC, not
OpenLDAP isn't AD
ssh? a commandline on a Mac??? Say it isn't so.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You mean something like Remote Desktop's "AutoInstall" feature?m l#autoinstall
http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/newfeatures.ht
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
This here is one of those cokehead executives I was talking about in my other post.
Q.E.D.
Okay, now let's take that anecdote and compare it to the average corporate environment. You know, the kind where most people don't need to run specialized tools beyond MS Office, maybe Photoshop and other creative apps, and the company doesn't want the user supporting their own machines because most users know jack shit and would wind up messing things up further. You're not a standard corporate user. Sorry.
Well it is a BIOS Emulator. Kinda. Without special tools 3rd party or by Apple (like bootcamp) you wouldn't be able to boot into windows nativly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Don't discount the lure of the well-worn path that draws and then traps your IT staff into familiar habits" Don't mess with your IT staff and it's paths.
I'll assume that you didn't even read the first paragraph of the article. You know, the one where they state painfully clearly that they're not advocating switching to the Mac.
Wrong. There was an EFI update that added a BIOS compatibility layer. I've installed Windows on Intel Macs right out of the box, no Boot Camp required. Boot Camp is just Apple's way of making it easy on people. It's the EFI update that made it possible.
Enterprise Computer systems need to be easy to open up and the mini is not easy to do so and the mac pro cost is too high.
The I-macs are not easy to open as well and they can not fit in to the same space as desktop + screen on it's own can. It may fit but the side loading cd / dvd may be hard to use then also Built-in iSight camera can be big NO NO some places.
I think it's more like using channel 13 is forbidden by US law. Apple can't sell hardware in the US (at least, not legally) that doesn't pass FCC guidelines, and FCC guidelines forbid wireless devices operating on anything besides channels 1-11.
In Europe, channels 1-13 are allowed, but wireless devices are required to operate on a reduced transmitting power to avoid interference. In Japan, 14 channels are available.
Please don't buy a computer in the US and then complain that it doesn't conform to European law.
The thing is, ARD let's you send a package to be installed on all clients at once. Than there's apple OpenDirectory, that let's you control the clients parameters centrally. Heck, it doesn't even have to be an Apple Server, you can get this functionnality with OpenLDAP and the proper schemas!
Menzoberranzan Networks
Yes, but RealVNC Viewer on Windows to Apple's Remote Desktop sucks the big one over a slow connection. I still prefer OSXvnc.
What I find frustrating is that in many cases a Mac cannot be used, and there is really no legitimate reason. To continue the above analogy, while their may not be Snap-On tools for all, certain persons might use such tools, and some persons might wish to buy such tools. There is nothing that says "only Stanley tools can be used in this shop". And I am not talking about application or support issues. Those have been dealt with for a very long time through end user experience and emulation. What I am talking about are decisions made to reduce short term costs that prevent long term flexibility. These decisions prevent the use of Macs much more than support or applications issues. In fact the I bet the custom development is most likely due to previous ill fated short term development decisions.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Didn't read the article: Check
Makes a blanket, factually correct statement: Check
Makes a righteous, indignant statement: Check
Introduces personal, anecdotal views as fact: Check
Brings up a meaningless comparison: Check
Closes with a blanket assertion without any facts: Check
Congratulations, you are on your way to becoming a real slashdotter. You must not be new here! :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"The Mac itself, the nature of the Mac, how it works and how it looks, is actually more conducive to the creative mindset. But those same things have also created a religious factor where the typical 'creative'--they can't even touch a PC keyboard. I'm being actually serious," says Christian Anschuetz, executive vice president and CIO of Publicis Groupe, which is based in Paris.
I haven't finished the article yet, but while I can believe this mindset being prevalent in years past, but I don't think I've met any designer in the past 5 years or so with such an anti-PC attitude. I've worked on a mac since my freshman year in college, but still had no problem sitting down and doing design work on a PC. And this was over a 2 year period. Using CorelDraw because my employer was Canadian and apparently Corel is a Canadian company.
Likewise, I've met plenty of PC users who are willing to sit down with a Mac if that's what the job requires. I just don't think this idea of "He's creative so he HAS to use a Mac" is valid anymore. You do the job with the tools you have. At my current job, once the IT dept. found out that I was going to be hired they immediately went out and bought a Mac. If I had been asked I would have said I could work in either platform. It doesn't matter as long as I have the tools to get the job done.
Sure, PC and Mac users like to make jabs at each other every now and again, but the few times I've met hard core Mac/PC users, they've been jackasses who weren't nearly as productive as they'd like to believe.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
--Erik
One of the things that an Apple Admin absolutely can't afford to get trapped in is the religious wars aspect of OS advocacy. The shell is a key element of remote administration and I'm glad I have it.
That's one of the things you have to accept when putting Linux on a machine, Mac or no: Not everything will be properly supported right out of the gate.
I am complaining to Apple about the problems with Ubuntu Feisty (which are numerous, including bugs that were introduced after the Alphas were fine).
I am instead complaining about *hardware* problems with the Mac. The fact that the hardware inside what should be identical revisions is different is a serious problem. It means that you cannot be certain that, for example, your uniform Windows disk images will apply properly.
*You* might not think that's a major issue but when one of the selling points that Apple uses is the ability to run Windows, and corporate Windows means images, that's a big freaking problem right there.
As a side note I completely don't understand Apple not providing Linux compatible drivers for their machines. They are meant to be a hardware company that makes money from hardware sales. Sure they want to protect their user experience... but if that was the case they wouldn't provide boot camp! 2-5% Linux users may not sound like a lot but a) Linux and OS X users overlap heavily and b) 2-5% if they all switched to Apple hardware due to being certain everything would work would push up Apple hardware sales by around 50%. That's a big chunk of change to ignore. Sure Linux users don't pay for software... but they do tend to be the kind of people who pay for quality hardware.
Beep beep.
Then again, there's always Tivoli.
Keep the current keyboard, mouse and monitor, replace the PC with a 1 gig RAM/80 GB HD dual-core mini, and you're "Mac-ified" for $724.00. You can go to 120 GB HD for $824.00. Do it for a lot of desks and you should be able to do better on price - those prices are retail, onesies, direct from Apple. You get gigabit ethernet (and 10/100, of course), 4 USB 2.0 ports, a firewire 400 port, DVI/VGA monitor port, audio in and out, 1.66 GHz core speed, 24x CD/CDRW/DVD drive, and the current OSX, which includes Address Book, DVD Player, iCal, iChat AV, Mail, Preview, Web browser and even the software development system. You can slap Openoffice on there with zero trouble and zero cost, and you've got your basic corporate desktop, with a strong *nix underpinning for your power-users and an ultra-friendly, ultra-reliable GUI for everyone else.
That initial cost is in the same zone, and you get one hell of a lot better computer, operating system, hugely lessened support load, tiny desktop footprint, still have the ability to concurrently run Windows (Parallels is the way to go, but it is a few extra bucks) with OSX... I put minis all over my software company and I haven't had any cause to regret it. We don't have a single desktop that runs a PC today, nor do I anticipate we ever will again.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The problem isn't remote desktop, it's doing things en masse. I can push out a group policy to 5000 machines, go on a coffee break, and be done with it. Doing that one by one is... challenging, to say the least.
Well, {obligatory statement about my computer background and/or preference}, but i {explanation of what is used at home and in office}.
With that said, {obligatory statement to stave off mac cult mods}, but really {please don't hurt me}.
In my experience,{statement involving one of the following: tech-staff experience, home experience, or work environment}.
Although, {subtle jab at microsoft indicating preference for neither windows nor mac}
{statement that anything to jab at big guys is good}
But really, my take on this? Businesses will use what businesses will buy. Sometimes you keep using a law firm because it works, and as long as they don't cause mistrials or fail due-dilligence, they stay on retainer. Until windows fails miserably, businesses will continue to use what they've used. The small, independent companies are the ones that get all the mac-related press.
{begins waiting for examples of "big" companies that use macs in numbers greater than 90%}
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
$1000 more? Please cite an example, because while there may be a SLIGHT premium to buy a mac, it's hardly $1000.
I could be wrong, but I don't think the IT department has ever remote desktoped into my laptop to run managed updates. I believe the GP is referring to managed updates and software pushes, something like SMS.
I find all this funny. This following comment gets a -1 ratingc id=18888535
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=232367&
This comment (The real reason...) is a +1 and it is obscene but anti M$ (not offended)
The first is just sarcastic but pro M$.
Hmmm... Mine will be a zero or - because I dared to question.
BootCamp is really just a pretty installer to help you shrink the OS X partition, burn a driver disk, and start the Windows installer. All of those things can be done separately, but there is seldom reason to bother.
ssh? a commandline on a Mac??? Say it isn't so.
Man, welcome to THE YEAR 2000 already.
You're saying that people shouldn't buy Macs in the corporate arena because they have non-standard hardware that isn't playing nicely with Ubuntu. I'm subscribed to the laptop related Ubuntu bugs. The bugs I see the most are related to the last few generations of IBM laptops. These are classic corporate laptops, yet they don't have that great of support in Linux at the moment. Doesn't seem to be stopping anyone.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
Apple Remote Desktop is not a comparable product to VNC. It's not like Terminal Services, either. ARD does provide that sort of remote desktop viewing, but it also provides a bevy of other remote-management features, such as being able to install the same package on several machines or running the same script on several machines, using only a few clicks.
Macs can also connect to Windows AD servers for authentication, and Apple provides their own directory services through their own directory server. Many of the same things can be accomplished, though not always through the same methods.
"The Mac itself, the nature of the Mac, how it works and how it looks, is actually more conducive to the creative mindset."
Nothing infuriates me more than this single, completely mistaken idea that there are people who, unlike "most" people, have some magical inborn gift of creativity, where in fact ANYONE can be creative. It's only this attitude that propagates an otherwise completely artificial division between "normals" and "creatives." I am a graphic and interactive designer at a small Manhattan design firm, and I witness this bullshit attitude EVERYWHERE. "Oh, that's a creative's job. I wouldn't know what that means." It's willful ignorance, just like any other kind of willful ignorance, and it goes both ways. Ever had to deal with a web designer who has no freaking idea how web pages even work? It's because they buy into this insane notion that there's a division between creativity and "everything else."
And thanks to this all-pervading, quasi-classist attitude, the cult of mac has grown up around these supposed "creatives." Ever heard of "the creative class?" The fact that someone came up with that idea blows my mind! Designers and technicians alike need to realize that the only thing keeping this sensibility afloat is common belief. Those that don't believe they are capable of creativity ought to give some time and thought to it, and those that believe they are "a creative" need to learn that they are not defined by their job title.
Limina.Log
Dell Dimension 9200 with 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1GB Dual Channel DDR2, 80GB HD, CDRW/DVDROM, 256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE, and 20" Widescreen LCD Monintor for $699 with FREE Shipping!
www.gotapex.com
Always has links to dell with the best prices. Not a corporate bulk price.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Oh shit, a Dell can also cost $1000 dollars more than the regular pc! Wait, what's a regular pc?
You're right, it was bad. It never went into any real solutions. Never mind that it didn't mention how SaaS may make the transition a lot smoother. You don't necessarily need to port over to the Mac as you might migrate to the net and then have availability on any system. OS X Server can surely simplify the maintenance of a Macintosh network.
I can't help but hear George Costanza ranting about the "delicate genious".
What a bunch of pompous pro-mac bullshit. This type of dickitry is precisely why I will never buy a mac, ever.
I guess the guy with the iPod is "hipper" and more "creative" than the guy listening to the exact same playlist on a zune.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Which can also be done with Remote Desktop and, if you want further control, a Software Update Server for one-stop shopping of filtered updates.
Good lord, this article pushes the fact that Macs are for creative people over and over and then the next section includes "Or How I..." Give me a break here, come up with something new and stop using Kubrick as your inspiration.
You're probably looking for Mac OS X Server v10.4 (Tiger).
Open Directory
Software Update Server
Macintosh Manager
Apple Remote Desktop
ssh
NetBoot
Then there's third-party tools, like Radmind, and others.
Well, duh.
That WHOOOOSH sound is the sound of you missing the point.
Actually, there have been Command Line utilities for macs for longer than that.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"I'm in your office, replacing your PCzz."
I guess a monoculture environment is only bad if it's Windows PCs? I see arguments for it being even worse with Macs...mainly because you're virtually assured that the environment will be identical, down to the hardware, for whatever piece of malware you're writing.
Still IMing in the stone age?
You sound like every other fat, lazy & uninspired IT person out there...you have no idea what you're talking about yet you feel compelled to comment in these forums as if you do. Sorry, that last bit wasn't necessary but I grow tired of all the blind ignorance.
FYI - There are MANY ways to remotely manage a Mac. First there's Apple's relatively rich Remote Desktop. Costs $$ and requires another Mac to admin. Useful for managing LARGE numbers of Macs. Second, there's the freely available VNC. Can admin from just about anything...gives you access to remote Mac's screen. Not recommended if you're managing dozens, hundreds and certainly not thousands of Macs as things would get tedious...but certainly manageable for a small number of machines. Third, you ever heard of a command line? No, not a DOS prompt but a full blown command line? Yes, Mac OS X runs UNIX so you can ssh into any box that is thusly set up so. There are MANY other management solutions as well (and iChat will do screen sharing Mac OS X 10.5) but these are the 3 biggies.
My advice to you...GET A MAC and use it before you blindly slam it for something that just isn't true...and hasn't been true for a loooong time.
Read the article? This is /. - who reads the article?
Jobs is a mean S.O.B. Woz said that the characterization of Jobs as a bully in "Pirates of Silicon Valley" is higly accurate.
His ridiculing of of "PC" for not having perfect hair and a svelte body in the current Ad blitz is insulting to viewers.
Using Jobs own rules, the only thing he'd understand is a thorough beating.
Anybody who thinks Mac is cool is delusional.
Apple is well known for silently changing/upgrading components. For example, last fall many people were quietly given free upgrades from Core Duos to Core 2 duos because of the timing of their orders. Also, because Apple identifies machines only by brand name, and not model number, you cannot assume that they will continue to use the same wireless chips, etc. for several years.
Your point about imaging Macs with windows is moot. First of all, if a corporation is going to buy macs but also install windows, they are probably going to use parallels instead of bootcamp so that employees can eventually migrate fully to OS X. Even if they don't, the bootcamp driver package contains all the windows drivers for all the intel Macs.
Lastly, Linux drivers don't matter much, because Linux software runs on Macs. It will always be easy to install GNOME or KDE on OS X. I only use use Linux in parallels for testing portability, because OS X runs all the software I need it to run. (The WINE port is lagging behind a good bit, but that doesn't matter much to me because my only Windows-only game now uses Cider.)
Yes, the Mac does that, too. You just need Mac OS X Server and Open Directory, just as with Windows, you would need Windows Server 2003 and Active Directory.
Go price the cheapest pc that you can get from dell and then the cheapest PC that you can get from APPLE. I am a Network tech at a library and all my computers are mainly used for patron s who use the itnernet and staff who use a program called millenium. We dont need high end computers. So when I buy a new computer why would just need the cheapest one. Cheapest I found on apples site with a 1 year plan was 1,168 and the cheapest dell is 379. Thats not even including the discounts we usually get from dell like 20 percent off.
One problem we ran into was network printer drivers.
For network printing, Mac OS X uses CUPS[1]. And the printer drivers that you download from the manufacturers which are labeled "for Mac" are not CUPS drivers. They're local drivers only (ie. for printers physically connected to the computer with a USB cable). These local drivers can't be used for network printers.
Apple supplies the Gutenprint (nee gimp-print) CUPS drivers but the selection of printers covered is limited. (Check the list on their page before you buy a printer if you're planning to use a Mac.)
This isn't a huge deal. It just meant that our Mac users could only use a subset of the printers at our site. But it is something that really surprised us because it isn't well publicized (we initially naively thought that if the manufacturer's website had a Mac driver, we would be set for all printing).
[1] Note: this rant doesn't apply to postscript printers.
You make a joke.
...
He makes a joke, riffing on the "fact" that he doesn't get yours.
You don't get his joke, and accuse him of not getting yours.
Thursby's ADmitMac
Centify's DirectControl
... elipses...
As a side note I completely don't understand Apple not providing Linux compatible drivers for their machines. They are meant to be a hardware company that makes money from hardware sales. Sure they want to protect their user experience... but if that was the case they wouldn't provide boot camp! 2-5% Linux users may not sound like a lot but a) Linux and OS X users overlap heavily and b) 2-5% if they all switched to Apple hardware due to being certain everything would work would push up Apple hardware sales by around 50%. That's a big chunk of change to ignore. Sure Linux users don't pay for software... but they do tend to be the kind of people who pay for quality hardware.
And you reveal yourself for being a Linux fanboy. The amount of Linux users that would buy Apple hardware if Apple supplied drivers is TINY. Why? Because desktop Linux users are a much smaller part of the market than you make them out to be. Apple has no real incentive to supply drivers because they don't really care about Linux for reasons stated above: It would do almost nothing to help their sales. A few Linux geeks buying Apple hardware (as opposed to building a machine themselves that has known working components for cheaper than a Mac) would be a tiny fart in Apple's bottom line.
Remote Desktop for Mac is based on VNC, not
OpenLDAP isn't AD
ssh? a commandline on a Mac??? Say it isn't so. Who the hell uses RDP these days? Ever heard of RAdmin? Larger companies are likely only to use RDP as a backup for administration of servers. Using Remote Desktop from Apple is what an IT department would use for administration of their mac workstations.
Yes, OS X has had a terminal.app since 10.0.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I wasn't quite aware of ARD's capabilities, but when I saw people pushing that as a solution along with SSH and VNC, as well as the remote desktop name, I kind of assumed it was just another similar tool. Although I think to really have good enterprise administration that you'd need something like Apple's Open Directory system. I just don't like it when people recommend solutions like using SSH to administer 1000 machines.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
When you can capitalize Mac correctly, I may pay attention to you.
Pulleeze! Enough with the "everything's better than the evil empire even if it doesn't work the way we want it to!" crap.. I work on a Mac every day and it's got it's niche, but use as an enterprise workstation is a pipe dream as long as Apple stays out of the business software writing business or until MS gives in and makes MS Office more Mac friendly. Ever opened a macro laden spreadsheet on a Mac that was created on a PC? Hit or miss as to whether those macros will do what they were intended to do. Have any of you actually used Entourage or dealt with font issues on a Mac? My advice is to ignore this piece of fanboi dreck and upgrade to Vista. You won't be sorry, unlike what you'll be trying to integrate Macs into a non-publishing workflow. That's just a waste of time and that's not even flamebait. It's reality.
You forgot:
FORD: "Fucked Over Rebuilt Dodge"
A while back I happened to be standing on the side of the road in front of a Ford factory with a giant Ford logo in front, while a rusty Ford Festiva tried again and again to make it up the fairly small hill the road went up. It stalled out about 5 times then went back the way it came. If only I'd had a video camera. Seriously though, I replaced almost every critical part of my old Ford at least twice while I was in school and they would have to do a hell of a lot to ever win me back as a customer.
I have some experience with Mac OS X in a mixed enterprise environment, consisting of Linux servers and Linux and Windows desktops. Linux desktops use NFS and NIS, while Windows machines are using a Samba domain controller on the Linux servers. So far so good. Till the moment we got some Mac OS X desktops. Mac OS X is Unix, so using NFS and NIS should be easy, right? Wrong! First, Mac OS X has really crippled the Unix back-end: there's no more fstab file, no more init scripts we *nix users are used too,... To integrate Mac OS X in NIS, there's a graphical interface. But: it does not really work! Most of the time, network accounts simply won't be available when the login screen appears, if you configure it like that. Using the configuration files, already works a bit better, but even then it often does not work. Workarounds mentioned in a Mac OS X and NIS HOWTO, consist of adding ugly sleeps and killall -HUP lookupd commands in some scripts. We found out, things work most reliable, if you force lookupd to use at maximum 1 thread. It seems like lookupd is full of race conditions :-/ And even now, sometimes machines hang on a blue screen when shutting down Mac OS X. And when a user gets over quota, his whole session hangs with a "spinning beachball of death".
On the above mentioned web page, the conclusion is:
"we officially withdraw the statement that NIS features are compatible with current versions of 10.4."
I cannot agree more. Mac OS X is certainly not enterprise ready to be integrated in mixed environments.
So it will implement all the Single Unix Specification and POSIX requirements, which means a fully open API and a standard unix toolset.
As far as remote or mass admin goes, I would suspect that normal unix tools such as ssh, rsync, shell/perl scripts should apply.
Just out of curiosity, how are you extrapolating that Ubuntu Linux installs failing mean that Windows installs from a disk image would fail. Since Boot Camp will no longer be a beta when Leopard comes out, don't you think there's a pretty decent chance that Apple will devote QA time to ensuring that Windows and the associated drivers work on all hardware produced by the company, even when the internal hardware isn't identical? Might it also make sense that they wouldn't put for the same effort for Linux?
Can you do *real* .NET programming on a Mac?
.NET your code runs on Windows. If you write code for open systems APIs your code runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, any UNIX, VMS, IBM's mainframe operating systems (whatever they're calling them thise week).
Do you want to? Why? If you write code for
(not that you can't lock yourself into a particular variant of any of the above, but it's really not that hard to write portable open systems code instead)
why wouldn't you use Linux on commodity hardware?
Applications. Mac combines an OS that doesn't suck with actual applications.
this commercial, at least here on /., is turning out pretty interesting. Just look at the first 20 comments; several posters asking "Ya, but can it do that?" only to get straight up positive responses.
I was expecting to read a round of flamewar-lite and move on to the next article. It's the obviously-ignorant-about-osx, and smugly-so crowd, that have turned the first part of this thread into a pro-osx-enterprise commercial the likes of which must make any apple marketeer wondering who in the office is playing bad-cop.
damaged by dogma
I took apart a MacBook Pro last night for the first time. We were trying to upgrade the hard drive -- and it was a total pain in the butt. I don't personally care if you run a Mac or a PC -- Linux runs on all of them. I do know that I can change the drive or motherboard in a Thinkpad very quickly; it was obvious that the MacBook wasn't designed to be easily serviced. Not a big deal for the average /. crowd, but a huge issue for IT departments. Maybe the desktops are better (and they looked so the last time I got into one), but a lot of folks are issuing out laptops instead of desktops these days.
Oh, and it didn't recognize the hard drive, and wouldn't say why. Not good. Worked fine when we put the old one back in, though.
Hello, Mac. Tea, Earl Grey, hot.
Hey! A handy checklist!! With this I can write the kind of posts that'll get lots and lots of mod points!!!
"Our enemies will talk themselves to death and we will bury them in their own confusion!"
The school I work at is looking at integrating Macbooks into our exisitng Windows infrastructure. This is ONLY my experience, please do not read it as anything else.
To begin the evaluation process, I contacted Apple Canada to order a single Macbook. I had to jump through a lot of hoops setting up a new educational account, but that is understandable. finally, everything was in order and I sent in my PO. 40 days later, my Macbook arrived. Two weeks prior to the Mac order, I ordered 4 Dell laptops. They were here within 5 days. (btw, the $$$ was the same for each order.)
Out of the box, the Macbook and Dell took the same amount of time to enter user info etcetera.
I admit that I have been trained to work with a Windows environment. For this discussion, this is neither good nor bad, just a fact. Because of this training, I would like to manage an Apple environment in the same manner - specifically, GPO's.
While the Directory Access utility can kind of integrate the Mac into my environment, it was no where near what I am looking for. I began looking for third party methods of managing both systems and providing a Single Log On solution. The best one I have found so far is DirectControl by Centrify http://www.centrify.com/. They actually have .adm files that get added in to Group Policy to allow me to manage the Mac the same way I manage a PC. The policies are still limited, but they are growing. Also supported is the ability to automount a Windows home directory as a Mac home directory. So I may not need to purchase Antivirus, but this utility is ~$60 per machine, plus a $1,000 admin console. And under my Microsoft licensing, I must count and pay for all the Macs in the school as well, so no savings there.
In conclusion, we will be adding Macs. Not migrating to, just adding. I will continue to manage them the way I know how, as I learn the new OS. Also note that we intend to add a Linux lab in the future. The product mentioned above integrates a very large number of OS's into a single management framework using Active Directory. There are some tasks I grab the Mac for, and others that I grab a PC for. Depends on the task, both are useful.
Jack/Joe/whatever: *sarcastically* I am Mac's Enterprise Computer?
Tyler: *laughs*, I get cancer, I kill Mac.
Sex. Drugs, and Unix.
For network printing, Mac OS X uses CUPS[1]. And the printer drivers that you download from the manufacturers which are labeled "for Mac" are not CUPS drivers. They're local drivers only (ie. for printers physically connected to the computer with a USB cable). These local drivers can't be used for network printers.
Look here, here or just f*cking google it yourself.
From http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/windows/
Share Printers Macs and PCs can also share printers. Shared Windows printers automatically appear in the Mac OS X Printer Setup Utility so they can be added to the Macintosh as a local printer queue. You can create a queue for as many shared Windows (and Macintosh) printers as you like, and any application that can print on the Macintosh can print to the shared printer.Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Forgive me if this sounds stupid, but couldn't you just save yourself the aggro by using VMWare's Mac OS player?
Actually, it may still have been Northern Telecom at the time. With the exception of some Sun servers, I worked on Macs at Nortel from April 1995 until late 1997, when Nortel migrated nearly completely from Mac to Windows. So, thousands of computers, nearly 100% of a worldwide company, and it worked for years.
Using Macs, support was easy. We used Timbuktu for remote desktop access, and very rarely had networking problems. There were fewer crashes, etc., and when there was a problem it was typically a "how do I do this?" kind of thing. I was told (don't know for sure) that the decision to go with Microsoft was to open up the number of useful apps, and to prevent problems with incompatible files with partner companies, which primarily used Microsoft. At that time, files saved on a Mac did not necessarily open in the same application on a Windows box; they had to be saved as the "Windows" version.
Once the switch was made, my life immediately became more difficult. The percentage of problem caused by software and the computer increased dramatically. When I heard the change was going to happen I started tracking the problems I encountered, and the ratio was about 1 software-caused incident for every 5 or 6 ignorance-caused calls. This ratio changed to about 4 software-caused incidents to every one ignorance-caused incident; and since the ignorance-related calls did not decrease, you can guess my life was much busier.
Some years later (2003) I supported a small (about 50 boxes) terminal server network that had everything connected from Windows 3.1 - XP Professional and Mac OS 9 & X. Again, the Windows machines were much more likely to have software problems.
My point is that I've seen successful enterprise use of Macs, and I've seen large migrations from one to the other. This was long ago, before all the improvements in networking on both sides. So I see nothing against a Windows --> Mac migration. But I don't know that it's necessarily the best choice for everyone. The advantages or disadvantages, I think, would depend on the company in question, and their specific application requirements.
SUS is near end of life, being replaced by WSUS.
Yeah, but that's not SMS. I want to do it with SMS. Why can't I do it with SMS? I already have SMS. Why should I have to purchase something else to work with a different OS?
I drank what? -- Socrates
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NT&t=my
Brilliant frikin move there, Nortel
Remind anyone of ``Hi, I'm Aptiva?'' from IBM? ...lets party like it's 1994.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
As a general rule: If its a beige Mac, don't try to install OS X. My blue and white G3 runs 10.4.x just fine, 50 mhz overclock (sits at 450, weary of 500) and extra ram provided. I havent tried the ADB peripheral connections on it, as it originally shipped with a usb keyboard anyways.
-Microsoft apps: no problem, actual MS products or open source equivalents.
-Graphics, video, audio: Mac's specialty.
-Database access: mostly depends on the type of the hosting server (SQL, Oracle, etc.) but I'd wager there are connectors from any one system to another.
-Legacy, Windows applications (no current Mac versions): Citrix server (Citrix supports Windows, Mac and Linux clients and allows any of those clients to run a Windows environment.)
I think this last point is where most issues could be resolved. Sure it costs more to provide this, but it allows for major flexibility regardless of clients and provides reverse compatibility. Any company wanting to transition would likely be willing to pay for such a solution. In the future, VMWare's desktop product (ACE) may be another solution.
One other point I believe many are missing. Last I checked, you cannot compare a PC's specs directly to a Mac's specs. i.e. the Mac CPU's don't have to run as fast and the HD's do not have to be as large due to the major differences of the OS and how applications are written for the Mac. (Maybe I've been away from Mac support too long if they are similar now.)
I think the main issue as with any platform change will be user education. If users are asking for Macs, by all means, get them one. From my experience support calls will decrease. If the user is uncomfortable with a PC, they'd likely adopt to a Mac even easier. The PC savvy users would be the ones most difficult to convert. Again with a Citrix server in the back-end, it wouldn't really matter.
I mean, that's a real piece of shit article. I was actually interested in this topic, as I'm facing some challenges integrating macs into the workflow here. And really the hardest thing I've found is dealing with the hardware.
Anyone got a solution for me on this problem?
We don't actually have any Mac desktops, just about 10 MacBook Pro's (of which the majority are 17"). We seem to have had a run of bad luck with our laptops and are sending one in around once every couple of weeks or so for various hardware problems.
This does happen (albeit at much less frequency) with our Dell Latitude laptops. Nevertheless, when it happens to a Dell, I pop out the hard drive (2 screws), pop in a drive with a base OS on it, stick the user's disk in another identical laptop and they're on their way. Then I send in the broken laptop with base OS hard disk into Dell. It comes back and goes in the "spares" pile, everyone's happy. I've tried to do that with the MBP's and I don't have to tell you (wait, yeah I do, it's 26 screws each way) what a pain that is.
The only way I can think to do this is to make an image of the user's hard drive over the network somewhere. Then restore it back to another laptop (that's in a spare MBP, that I do have), and ensure the user's data, etc is all there. Then nuke the broken laptop's hard drive, reinstall with a base OS and send off to Apple.
Is there a better way? It can even cost money, I don't care. Thanks.
-Steve
Before or after he gave you those afternoon rapings?
Err -- subject should have been "What a crappy article && a question for Mac folks"
mmmmmgood. Nothin brings out the heat in a slashdot thread like a good windows versus mac versus *nix fight.
In addition to SSH, there is a very useful utility called 'osascript' which lets you run AppleScript commands from the command line. This is very useful when you need to do something that usually needs the GUI.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Enterprise MEANS thousands of machines. A 1-1 remote session is not an enterprise managment tool. (..maybe a helpdesk type tool for when someone calls and the helpdesk and can't figure out how to print, etc.) BUT when someone asks, hey, is everyone on version X of such & such software package... NOBODY is paying 30-50 people to remotely check them all out.
..plus SMS is free in most MS enterprise agreements anyway (SMS is very good for answering "what do I have questions").
AD can be used to enforce installed software AND applicationa and OS settings across an enterprise. Best choice? Maybe not for everything, but it is free and works well in many cases.
As far as I know, there is no match for the full functionalty of AD included w/a mac. (it isnt just about user accounts!)
Hi, I'm a MAC. I can put my arm back on. You can't. So Play Safe.
I could just see this in one of those Mac/Windows commercials on these days.
Search the page for the text "Select your printer from the list." Look at the screen capture just below that text.
This is the screen where you are required to select the driver for the network printer. The list of printers presented in that dialog is the Gutenprint (aka gimpprint) drivers, not the drivers that you get from the printer manufacturer.
Heck, read the text from that page below that screen capture:
As I said in my grandfather post, if gimp-print doesn't have a driver for that printer, you're in trouble.
*Tubby little six year old kid walks into a bodybuilder gym and tries to run through a workout designed for a guy who's big enough to be five of him and has been working at his physique for a decade or more*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They're not talking about creativity; they're talking about artistic talent. People who have certain artistic talents can do things others can't. If these types find the interface on a Mac to be more intuitive, then the argument might hold water.
IAALS.
YMMV I guess.
My '94 Ranger keeps chugging along. There are little things that are broken, but a '91 Honda accord I had a few years ago had the same little problems. I would never buy a Ford *car* though.
I'm looking at replacing my Ranger with either a Ford F150 or maybe a Toyota Tundra.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I work for what Apple refers to as one of its largest customers (cannot disclose-- sorry). And, no, we are not in the movie business. We are in the consumer products & goods business.
We are a mixed environment, with nearly equal PCs for Macs. And while Macs are easy to use in a standalone environment, our mac support, namely software distribution, is considerably more costly and taxing than our PC environment. There simply isn't a tool on the level of Microsoft's SMS, for the mac world. We wrote our own, a combination of SSH, FTP, and client side scripting. The problem is maintaining that code. Every new Apple cat release brings a somewhat major re-write of our end-point management tools.
Group Policy is another sorely missed application. It would be nice to establish a setting and ensure that setting was refreshed or enforced every 60 mins or so like we have in the PC world. We simply don't have that, besides rolling our own. And not that rolling our own is something we shouldn't do, it's just considerably more expensive, ties to a changing architecture, and requires keeping developers on-staff that have knowledge of a tool that is not used anywhere else. Maybe we should sell the tool to lower the support costs, but that's just not a business interest our execs want to take on.
My point? Apple needs to pony up the tools first.
- -
On another note: as soon as the business apps move to Apple, we'll get all of these "macs don't need anti-virus and don't have security problems" people to sing a different tune. All platforms have security problems. And while some are better than others, it should be taken into consideration just how mature the security (ahem, band-aids and duct tape) solutions are before switchly to a platform that's widely unused for those stiff, conservative business types. Our artists are fine, but they just don't draw the same crosshairs-of-a-target that are legal, HR, and finance people do.
For me using the ADB mouse with my B&W G3 under 10.4.8 actually seemed to work even better than the USB mouse.
Man, that thing flowed as smoothly as an old dirt road. Sounded like it was written round robin style, where everyone got three sentences, before handing off to the next person. Short attention span theater for the CIO?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Linux desktops use NFS and NIS, while Windows machines are using a Samba
The Windows machines don't use NIS, why should the Macs ?
Mac OS X is Unix, so using NFS and NIS should be easy, right?
Mac OS X is NOT Unix. Even though there is some overlap, the best way for Unix admins to approach the Mac is to assume it is as different from Unix as Windows is. Please name another Unix system that uses launchd and netinfo, supports resource forks on its file system, the preferences are all XML files, and applications are in bundles. There is some traditional Unix mixed in with OS X, but you can't treat it just like any other Unix system you've run across.
Use netatalk for Mac file sharing, not NFS or samba.
Oh, that's not true at all. You just aren't familiar with the competition.
Yup. That guy and his peashooter are a major threat to me and my Abrams tank!
Hmm. Machine gun (.50 cal or one of the two 7.62mm) or the M256?
Bah! Waste of ammo.
*Rolls over the top of popgun-boy at 60mph*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
white box v mac is the usual way you get large price differences but most corps don't buy white box, they buy branded machines. For branded PC v Mac you get much closer to the same price and often it's the Mac that's the cheaper option.
The only way I can think to do this is to make an image of the user's hard drive over the network somewhere. Then restore it back to another laptop (that's in a spare MBP, that I do have), and ensure the user's data, etc is all there. Then nuke the broken laptop's hard drive, reinstall with a base OS and send off to Apple.
You can try to put the broken Mac into target mode and directly connect it to another machine via Firewire to image it. To put it into target mode, power it on and hold down the T key until you see the Firewire logo appear on the screen. Connect it to another Mac and it will appear as an external disk on that Mac. If you boot the second Mac from something other than its internal HDD, you can clone directly to the drive of the replacement machine. I usually use an app called Carbon Copy Cloner, but I think you can do it with Apple's own Disk Utility as well.
FYI, the MacBooks have easily-removed hard drives.... remove the battery, 2 screws and out. Hopefully the next generation of MacBook Pros will incorporate that feature into their design as well. The MacBook Pros we have now are more or less last-generation PowerBook case designs, where the MacBook is a new design.
~Philly
~Philly
It would also let me view an entire lab's computers and see which students are taking notes and which were goofing off. Man, the things some students IM about (usually involved being drunk the night before and who they did). The professors loved it when I set that up on the lectern Mac. After awhile, they must have thought the profs were psychic.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I know all about Target-Disk mode, but on the destination machine, how do I copy the image over? I mean, I'd have to be booted off a CD correct? You've gotta be running some kind of software on the destination mac to make the copy, otherwise you'd be overwriting the OS you're running, etc.
-Steve
As I said in my grandfather post, if gimp-print doesn't have a driver for that printer, you're in trouble.
IMO, installing any printer which doesn't support PostScript and/or PCL is asking for trouble in a networked environment. Sooner or later I guarantee you'll come across a Windows PC which for some reason keeps on crashing when it tries to run something through the fancy 90MB printer-hardware-replacement driver and as likely as not it'll be some dirty great 200-page printout that the managing director's trying to do.
At least with a Postscript printer, you can say "stuff it, I'll run it through a generic postscript driver for now and reimage the PC later".
Net Octopus?
I drank what? -- Socrates
A few months back Slashdot had a "story" about a Linux guy who did a switch experiment with Windows, where he concluded that "Windows isn't bad, but it's not quite ready for primetime", which is a jab at all the Windows switchers who say that about Linux. Well, as a reluctant Mac switcher, I have to say, Windows isn't even close to ready for primetime. The UI is abysmal. But, on the other hand, Windows XP has been very very stable for me, much more than I thought it would be. That's the only nice thing I can say about it though.
IBM or Lenovo? I just upgraded from my t43p running Ubuntu to my t60p widescreen running Ubuntu and they both work(ed) flawlessly. I even login with my fingerprint. And I saved the company about $2k for not buying a heavy, shiny, over hyped, Apple. Yay for me!
[...NIS...]
Why would a sane "enterprise" use NIS anyway?
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
I simply CAN'T agree with the rest of you on this. I am the sole Mac Administrator in a shop with about 30 of them, only four of which are in daily use. The level of time and effort I have to put into resolving a problem with OS X nearly always dwarfs the level of time and effort required to resolve a comparable problem on Windows XP. Apple has a habit of breaking things with OS X updates, like NIS authentication, command line scripts, and users' applications. NIS authentication has been broken since 10.4.6. While I'm sure your experience varies, I've yet to sit down with a Mac for more than an hour and not found a bug. In March, I reported an average of 1 bug or crash to Apple per day, most of which they hadn't seen before. Then there's the hardware. Three of the four G5s we bought were dead out of the box. One of the two Intel iMacs in our QA Lab is probably defective given how unstable it is. I was a HUGE Mac fan as recently as 1997, but no more. OS X pretty much killed any desire I have to own or use a Mac. I'll take Linux, XP, or Vista any day over the Mac.
Yes, to completely clone the image, you'd have to either be booted from a CD, an install of OS X on another external drive, or a network volume. An external drive with an install of OS X on it is a damned handy troubleshooting tool.
/Applications/Utilities.
There is another alternative... if the replacement machine is running OS X 10.4 and already has a standard system build or anything on it, you can run Migration Assistant on it with the broken machine connected in target mode. If you're not familiar with Migration Assistant, it's sort of like Files and Settings Transfer Wizard on XP, but much better. It will pull over non-Apple applications and all user data, nearly seamlessly. I use it all the time when I roll out replacement machines to people, and it has made my life much easier. The only issues I see are occasionally some applications that require activation will need to be reactivated on the replacement machine. You can find Migration Assistant in
~Philly
Can you use X-Code on a PC? I think not. Don't use proprietary languages, and don't want them. Your droning monoOS is sooooooo 1984.
For most employees, businesses don't need high end machines. They need low to mid-range machines that are reliable and easy to repair quickly. That usually means the lowest common denominator on most hardware except maybe the cpu and ram. The GP's point is that Apple doesn't cater to this market and their closest product that would fit the purpose costs too much.
Well, no, because it isn't available yet. On the other hand, Parallels works great for this type of thing.
Web consulting +
Hey man, you got my attention. I won't speak for anyone else, but I'm interested in hearing what you've done with Remote Desktop. I'd like to roll out a Mac lab (there's demand, and I'm interested in the exercise) of ~50 seats in a university setting. We have a few curriculum-related apps the are Mac-only, and I'd also like to support garden-variety general lab activities - browsing, Office, some multi-media editing. The usual suspects. Do you have any comments on image management, OS update and software-update support (hopefully lights-out based activity), hardware support (I see a lot of comments on diffcult/no ease of access when swapping parts).
I'm genuinely interested in hearing actual experiences. A bonus would be comparative comments from someone who supports both MS and Mac environments.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
So I kind of know what the deal is. Yes, Apple makes a GREAT product, fun, easy to use, excellent for home use, blah blah blah. But for an inexpensive solution for a business, be it Enterprise level or SMB, it's hard to beat a PC. Yes, you would probably want a Mac for any graphic design, art, what have you. And it's great that they have access to outlook, word etc so they can stay in the company loop. But transferring your entire network to mac? No way. Too expensive (Apple actually uses refurbs for their employees), too difficult to manage from an IT standpoint, and really, do office drones need them? No. Think about it. They need access to databases if they are in sales/customer service, not a machine they can make home movies on.
Oddly, it is not MacOS X Server that will help you out in this case, it is Apple Remote Desktop. Apple has chosen a curious mix of functions to put in a product of that name (the least of which is the remote desktop viewing part).
With ARD it is really easy to push anything you want out to any size group of Macs that have been configured for this. For some things you need to know a few trick involving making your own packages (like that you can create a package with just scripts to run), but the learning curve is remarkably shallow.
However, if you are trying to match group policy, then MacOS X Server, and notably the Wrokgroup Manager part of it are the way to go.
First off, .net is very locked into window for all practical putposes, and that is bad.
.net frame work appear for it.
.net, and I do it myself. That doesn't make it good for the company.
Bad software architecture, bad for legacy, and it locks you in.
Second, When Macs start getting IT enterprise market share, you will see a
Third, Yes, I know theere is a demand for
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When they could just use Xen?
Until Apple has enterprise class support for hardware, they won't be truly ready for the enterprise. I recently had to send a Mac to AppleCare, it took a full month to get the PC back, and they lost data that will have to manually put back onto the computer, literally a days worth of work. They will not reimburse you for the lost working hours, even though the fault is theirs.
Intelligence is a matter of opinion.
Assuming the bad laptop can boot into firewire target mode (and it's hard to mess up a macbook so badly that it won't), just connect your spare to it, boot off a CD, and clone the drive using CCC or superduper. Skip the network, this is faster.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
>>People who have certain artistic talents can do things others can't.
Like their absolute and unquestionable love for one-button mouse? Humm...
The only Ford I'd buy is a Ford GT, but that's not actually a Ford :)
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Oh, I agree with the general sentiment that network printing in general is a pain regardless of operating system and the postscript is nice, if you can get it.
My complaint is just that I think that Apple could be a little more up front about the fact that most printer manufacturers don't make Mac (or Linux, for that matter) suitable network drivers and that you need to consult the gimp-print supported printer list. (Maybe on that page on the Apple web site where they tell you how easy it is to interoperate with Windows that the guy earlier in the thread who called me a liar linked to.)
I guess we were just a little spoiled by living in the Windows world where the same drivers are used for local and network printing. So all you need to do is check the manufacturer for drivers. My company did check the manufacturers web sites for our printers before we brought in Macs and were happy to see that all our printers had Mac drivers. It was only after we started trying to set up Mac network printing that we learned about the gimp-print twist. (And we only learned that by some detailed research.)
Server? But his company uses XP Home throughout. Why would somebody need Server?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
hahaha, that's awesome... i'm glad i browse with 'flamebait' set to +5
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
Well, hello to you, computer!
What you really want is a stock image of OSX with the right applications installed to cover all of your users and "Portable Home Directories"
Or you could simply try integrating it into the Windows domain.
Generally I'd recommend to Unix using LDAP and Samba using an LDAP back-end to store Windows information. Unified logins for everyone.
See chapters five and six of Samba-3 by Example for a good overview.
Do you want to do *real* .NET programming anywhere? Just kidding, of course. But the answer is that companies don't usually just buy the cheapest crap they can. Everyone in my company has a laptop. Currently it is an HP, but recently we have the option to get a macbook pro instead. The macs are taking over because people like them. And happy workers is a good thing. In silicon valley the market for web developers is super tight and offering perks like macbooks is a good recruiting tool. And $1800 for an MBP (bulk rate) is a lot cheaper than a 5% higher salary.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
And this command: /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDA gent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -activate -configure -access -on -users admin -privs -all -restart -agent -menu`
`sudo
can be used to allow VNC connections on a remote machine while logged into the command line.
Well, the beta's available. I've been using it a little without coming up against any bugs, and, unlike Parallels, it's free :)
How do you know?
I support a mixed environment of 50 PCs and 6 Macs. Overall, the cost of Mac support is much higher than that of the PCs. Once correctly configured (use group policies, don't run with administrator rights, lock down program/window directories, don't run crapware) PC require almost no care or feeding. The business-class Dells are reliable. The support costs for the Macs are much higher--imap problems, font problems, applications. Perhaps if locking down the macs was as easy as locking down the PC our support costs would be lower. But the Macs really are designed as "personal" machines rather than "corporate" machines. Not easy to lock things like the dock (why should an individual employee change this?), desk top, network connections or remotely push policies to a desktop machine.
If you every want to kill a mac purchase, just specify need for Visio (flowcharts, diagrams, process charts), MS project and full access to an exchange server. Until the mac can check off all three, it's a long road to corporate acceptance. Running dual operating systems is a bad solution... multiple places to check email, corporate IM... plus twice the licensing cost for Office and whatever other applications.
Also if your company requires flawless documents for client work... opening a powerpoint document that done on the Mac never looks right when the client opens it on the PC.
And have you ever seen keynote used in a corporate environment?
Simply put, there aren't enough models and configurations
Agreed!!! This is one of the things that agravates me about the lines of Macs Apple puts out. Apple needs to release a line of Macs that sits between iMacs and Mac Pros, something that though not top of the line is expandable, a stripped version of the Mac Pro maybe.
Many business professionals use tablets
I wouldn't mind a tablet Mac. Even better would be one that's 21" and could run on battery for several hours.
I still, inexplicably, can't buy one with 2 mouse buttons.
You're right, the Macbook(Pro)s only have one button however myself I never did like using track pads. When I had a laptop I had a second mouse in the bag. And the Mighty Mouse is a four button mouse. Now the only laptops I've had were PCs running Windows however because MS has started to treats it's customers like criminals I'm switching. You can also use generic two button mice with Macs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I still miss the Pantera...
already a Linux user.
Couldent agree with you more, just today i bought 5 hp's and 5 imacs for the school i work for. the macs were about £700 each, the better speced HP's were £248 each. Needless to say the majority of our 500 boxs are pc's the macs are relegated to the specialist departments such as music.
And how much money was spent to make sure those HPs had AV, antispyware, and a firewall? Then how long will they last? I'm typing this on an HP Pavilion I bought new. In the first year both the hdd and the motherboard had to be replaced. Because it was under warranty it didn't cost me anything to repair but when the motherboard took a dive I was without my PC for a few days then when the hdd dove I lost another couple of days. And then I had to return it because the hdd they replaced the old one with was smaller, there's no way I was going to except a smaller drive. If I had needed the HP for work then I would of had to spend more money to get something I could use while not having this one, or I would of lost some income.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You can use SMS with Linux now?
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
You can do *real* Objective-C programming on a Mac. You an do *real* C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, etc. programming on a Mac. You can run Windows in Parallels and do *real* .NET programming on a Mac...wait, what?
.NET programming on a Mac.
I guess I did just say that. You very much *can* do *real*
captcha; dialects
I work for a large enterprise (60000+ employees) with a gigantic IT department. Integrating my MacBook Pro was as easy as carrying it into the office and finding an open ethernet jack. Seriously.
I already use Thunderbird in Windows for my corporate IMAP email, so that was no stretch. I don't have a license for Office on the Mac, but NeoOffice proves to be good enough. Printing is a non-event - it is just as easy to configure any of the HP or Dell printers in any of our several hundred offices to work with OS X as it is under Windows. VPN was a snap, as the Cisco client we use is available on OS X and Linux, just as on Windows. Most of our internal applications are web-based, so those are not an issue.
In many ways, it is EASIER to integrate OS X than my company-assigned Windows laptop, since it already has a lot of the tools installed that I use every day (ssh & scp, nfs, java apps which are much more nicely integrated, etc).
It's a shame that a lot of enterprises define "standardization" as Microsoft. I've worked for 10+ years for a company that truly embraces open standards, and it pays real dividends in that employees can choose the company IT standard PC or any another tool that makes sense (different OS, PC, etc) for their job and they all integrate just fine.
Sorry, fergot my /sarcasm tag.
I drank what? -- Socrates
unless things have DRASTICALLY changed in 6 months... this is a total fabrication.
"Portable Home Directories" sound a bit like "roaming profiles" (Windows-land) and isn't doable in my case. All I have are laptops and they're almost never in the building -- they're out "in the field" for long stretches of time. Am I missing something? Thanks for the suggestions
-Steve
I wonder what the price will be when it hits the streets. The VMWare rep at Macworld was quite elusive, basically demoing the software without actually giving anyone any concrete information about it. That stuck me as a particularly bad approach, considering the mindshare that Parallels already has. VMWare may be widely used elsewhere, but they're arriving very late to the OS X party.
Web consulting +
..... I've installed Windows on Intel Macs right out of the box........
Unless games are the goal, a company call Parallels makes a virtual PC program which allows running Windows as just another application under OSX. It runs Windows and all its apps in a Window (or full screen if desired) and allows easy, instant switching between OSX and Windows, as well as transfer of data in both directions between the two OS. If the host Intel based Mac has enough RAM, most Windows programs don't run noticeably slower than under boot camp or any other computer. It's the best way to use those few "can't get for the Mac" special software that often ties companies to Redmond. Users can be weaned from Windows gradually by letting them learn the Mac slowly. In time, the Windows side will get used less and less. This is especially true if the Windows section gets infected with a few malwares/spywares making it behave in annoying ways, while OSX is unaffected.
All theory is gray
Did people that draw pretty pictures for a living grab the descriptor "creative" while the rest of us were busy actually creating things? As a member of a field that produces... you know, actual stuff, I feel a bit gypped.
I mean, sure, using publishing software (to hijack your example) is technically creating something, but taping the pretty red bow to the nose of the Saturn 5 does not a "Creative" make. I'm gonna reserve that term for the guys that advance the tech on which the human race's progress rides, thanks.
Ok, obligatory semantic gripe done now. Now, the technical gripe: "Creative users tend to replace software and hardware much more often" and "in order to be properly supported, require that their support personnel actually know something about their highly specialized field" go double for engineering, and "We're not talking Microsoft Office here. This is some serious shit with big money involved and little time to dick around" also applies to engineering applications to a much greater extent than pretty-picture drawing. A delay in the design process on a new plant is gonna cost a company on the order of several million a day at the least, several billion a day not being unheard of. Since I don't know any engineering design software with any Mac support whatsoever, I'm gonna have to say your argument, while perhaps good within the context of your own field, fails in mine, and therefore isn't really as general as you make it out to be.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
They tend implement IT as technology has progressed. Migrating to newer infrastructures takes a lot of time, especially when you want to make sure the enterprise can continue working uninterrupted during the migration.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Hey Steve,
:)
n t_Admin_v10.4B.pdf
I'm not quite up on the Windows stuff, but I believe that roaming profiles are just network mounted home directories, appropriate metadata and central authentication.
On the other hand Apple's portable home directories are designed for laptops, a sometimes connected model. When a user connects their computer to your network, the user's home directory (or the parts of it that are pre-selected) automatically syncs with a copy of their home directory on the server.
I'm not sure what your managed mac environment currently looks like. At the least you'll need some form of network home directories, over samba/MS's SMB/CIFS or NFS. If you've got an existing AD environment that could work. If these laptops never come onto your network, then it's unreasonable to provide backups and you should totally tell your users that.
See the "User Management for Portable Computers" section of this document:
http://images.apple.com/server/pdfs/User_Manageme
Isaac
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I suppose you could call it 'running', but with how things crash and are poorly supported on OS X, I would not trade in my Linux install for a OS X install. Hell, ever since X11 came out on OS X, they can't even get clipboards working properly. It either doesn't work at all, or can only copy just a bit of the content you selected etc. (note, the X11 servers on windows can do this, and they can even do DRAG AND DROP).Really? You see.. I tried, from trying to find the right versions of tools to compile KDE to setting up a build environment on OS X, I find it insanely difficult. Which, in the end didn't work. I want to use KDE stable, 3.5.6, I don't want to use outdated KDE 3.4, nor experimental KDE4.x.
I want to use Krita, no, no option there. I want to use Amarok, no, no option there. Hell, maybe I want to use StarOffice -- How do I do that? What about Novell's openoffice fork that has decent vb macro support?
Stop bullshitting, Linux software does not run on OS X unmodified and I refuse to migrate to OS X on my main desktop (I do run it however) because a lot of the software I enjoy just isn't available at all on OS X. Nevermind having to deal with OS X's issues.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I thought VMWare made their money off their server products, while their players were free? But I suppose on the Mac they don't have to consider a free Virtual PC, we'll find out if that makes a difference - I daresay the Parallels team are praying it does :)
The thing I don't understand is why any printer manufacturer would take such a route. Gutenprint (formerly known as gimp-print) is just a plugin system which is meant to integrate with something like CUPS to provide the actual printing service. Need support for another printer, you just write an appropriate plugin.
The idea (in Unix) is that your program sends something to the printer through the lp command, this is shipped off to the printing system (generally CUPS on Linux - is that also used on Mac OSX?) which handles network support transparently. The data then leaves CUPS and goes into gutenprint for processing before it hits the printer. It's substantially more work to write your own printing system from scratch, because you've got to provide the entire jigsaw rather than just one piece - or, as you have found out, provide enough of the jigsaw to claim support.
Don't know if it helps you now, but one of the side-effects of this is that with a properly configured Linux print server, you can run any printer which has a suitable Linux driver on the Linux box, send straight Postscript to the Linux box from your client and it will be turned into whatever language the printer expects by gutenprint. Of course, if the Linux printer driver doesn't support something which the printer can technically do (such as duplex), then you won't be able to do that from any of the clients either.
> Probably they don't want to fix what isn't broken.
./john passwd ?
> Many enterprises have existed before SMB was even created.
You mean LDAP?
Nis -- LDAP
NFS -- SMB
I can understand that one doesn't want to change a working system, but in todays world, NIS really doesn't have any place anymore - at all.
Do you really want all your l33t users try
ypcat passwd > file &&
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"Enterprise" people often fall into the trap of assuming that windows is there only to provide a framework for a web browser and word processor. The fact is that an enterprise of 1000 employees probably has something like 500 applications that they rely on. Some bullcrap answer like "well just dual boot/emulate into xp for the things you need" doesn't fly with users, and doesn't work with all applications. (especially big industrial type apps) As your people get more specialized, so does your software.
Knowledgeable support is a biggie because there are farms churning out bajillions of windows support people. Finding somebody that already knows the Mac Infrastructure is difficult and costly.
Lastly, Macs are expensive. If I were going to introduce a new client into my enterprise, how do I pitch $3000 workstations against something like $300 thin clients or $800 PCs that already work in our environment? (another horrible idea, but I digress)
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I can use both, but I HATE using PC's for any creative jobs!
A little background for you:
I often work as a Photogpher/Video Editor. But I've also worked as an on call PC tech, setting up networks, VPNs, mass deployments, all the fun stuff. I've bench tech'ed, networked and fixed 1000's of PC's. I know Windows inside and out, but I won't use it for creative jobs, and I try not to let others either.
OS X deals with media files much better then Windows, 'cus OS X leaves them alone. Color-Sync is nice too.
All the "Apple's hardware premium is a rip-off" arguments don't stand up once you start REALLY using Macs in creative enviroments. Even the best PC's cost you time due to tech issues that just don't happen as often on Macs.
As far as tech numbers go, I currently manage two multi-media labs of Macs, solo, which takes our IT department 3-4 PC techs to handle the same numbers on a per Lab basis. Oh, and I have more software packages per computer too.
Ya my spelling is shit, but I should really get back to work, I'm snowed under with all these Macs. Oh wait, I think I'll go create somthing instead.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Thanks for the response and this looks like it would address at least some of my concerns (User directories), but it might not cover Applications and system settings that they've configured (each user is administrator of their own box, yes it's really required).
I also read the PDF on "System Imaging" but was sad to see that the literature only covered system imaging for installing/configuring new boxes. I'm looking at duping live boxes, this may be possible, just wasn't covered in the PDF.
In addition, in the "User Management" PDF it looked like you had to setup a domain, which requires an XServe (or something running Mac OS X Server) and a domain which is a bit more overhead than I would like. Doesn't mean I won't do it, but if I told you that "Sure you can do this fairly simple thing in Windows, you just need a domain", I'd probably laugh at you. Nothing personal, I know a Windows domain can't be the same thing as a Mac one, etc. etc. I'll read about Mac domains etc. etc. and make the right choice.
-Steve
Depends on the encoding you use. zlib+rle isn't much slower than tightVNC's encoding. If I remember correctly, RealVNC didn't use a great encoding by default when connecting to my mac. The biggest problem with VNC on a Mac is all the animations and eyecandy -- it slows things down. If those could be turned off or tuned down for a VNC connection, it could be pretty quick even over a slow connection.
We do it with Open LDAP on linux. I've heard of other places doing it with AD. All you need is the right schemas. LDAP is LDAP.
Ugh, bloody ACs.
Use. Radmind. Now.
If you really really really love packages, use ARD and be a twit, but at that size, you really need radmind. If you need per seat licenses, either write some code to do it in postscripts or write code to automate the builds. Really though, you should be able to negotiate with the vast majority of your vendors into being able to use KeyServer. Radmind is many, many times better than SMS. Even ARD+OpenLDAP is right up there with SMS if done right.
Why don't you use the group policy in LDAP? You can push settings to (almost?) every plist on the system. 60 minutes is an insane refresh rate. 2 weeks is more reasonable.
You guys aren't looking for an OS X admin, are you?
If you're a brave schema-forging soul, you can also push out policy for Macs via Active Directory. More information at AFP548, and at other places around the net.
I agree what NIS and NFS in osx suck. I do understand why they picked LDAP over NIS though, and given their track record, I really doubt that they'll fix it. There really is not good reason for NFS to suck so bad. (though, NFS on linux sucked until recently (and NIS on Linux still has some problems last time I heard))
/etc/fstab, and it has init scripts, they're just weirder. Why not hang out at 10.4.6? OS X doesn't seem ready for your enterprise environment, but that doesn't mean that it isn't ready for all or even most. I might be wrong, but I'd guess that Kerberos has a lot more penetration than NIS.
OS X works fine with
If you had Kerberos, things aren't great, but they start to look a lot better. You could try to get the macs to auth against samba. It isn't pretty, but I've seen it work. You could also install netatalk on the linux boxes and serve out afp, which works pretty well. You could also either build or buy a NIS->LDAP gateway to keep the Macs happy. While annoying, it's similar to what you did for Windows, just new and different.
I just don't like it when people recommend solutions like using SSH to administer 1000 machines.
You could you ssh+scripts to maintain a 1000 machines. That means that you have to develop and maintain your own policies and management tools instead of having a 3rd party supply/dicate them to you.
IANASA (i am not a system administrator) but I find that home-grown tools are just as powerful and useful as commerical tools when it comes to administration at the small level. (3-5 machines)
Cheers
Ben
You realize that a Festiva is simply a rebadged Kia, don't you? And since the Festiva in question was rusty, it was likely older. Older cars tend to have more problems. Older cars that were cheap to start with tend to not get much in the way of regular maintenance and repairs.
Most cars are rebadged something, possible with some quality control requirements. Ford put their name on it, so it certainly reflects on what else Ford might put their name on.
And since the Festiva in question was rusty, it was likely older. Older cars tend to have more problems. Older cars that were cheap to start with tend to not get much in the way of regular maintenance and repairs.Yeah, and how does this reflect on the brand again? I posted the anecdote because it was funny, not because it is logical proof that Ford makes inferior machines. For that I look at the longterm reliability ratings of their vehicles, which to date have been pretty poor in comparison to say, a Honda in the same price range.
Hi, I am working for an educational institute and out of 800 computers 50 of ours are Macs (7%), currently they require around 25% of the engineers time. We have integrated the mac's with our Windows 2003 AD system and have had no end of issues. Mac's may be ok if they are on a stand alone network but beware of integration, especially when the Mac OS or your 3rd party integration tool are updated.