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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.'"
No i didn't RTFA, but one of my biggest concerns has always been remote central management in the enterprise structure. IT can't always make "house calls" to each and every computer, there has to be ways of remotely accessing, configuring and maintaining the systems and I haven't seen much that supports OSX. Even with Linux there are tools that allow you to do that, and most all central configuration tools are Windows based.
That is going to be a big hurdle to adoption from an IT standpoint.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
"Hi, I'm an ex-con, and I'm your new CFO." It just doesn't fit.
so is linux
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blah blah blah
Yes, it is in fact just another dopey Mac commercial.
Sure we'll all run on down to the Mac store this afternoon.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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. :)
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).
... 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.
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.
What do they mean by "openness" here. (Just curious - don't interpret this as troll.)
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....
Should read:
'[A] key element in corporate Macintosh adoption is the importance of a 100% homosexual workforce.'
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.
What exactly is open about a mac?
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a ctive_directory.html
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!
When you can run my tool suite on the MAC, for real, with the performance I am getting, I'll listen. My major tool won't run right on Vista yet, and they expect it to run on the MAC? Yeah right. When you have $2500 software tools, THEY drive the selection of the desktop.
Support? The last time I called support was because I needed a new mouse. The one I had been nursing along for 7 years, thru a couple of processors finally broke down. I support my own machines.
A key element of me picking up a new macbook pro as my main development machine was all the hardware working. The wireless card can't see any networks on channel 13! do they really think that people who buy expensive hardware never visit Europe? The wireless performance is worse than my old powerbook.
To add to the fun if you look at the Ubuntu Linux forums you will see that people with the exact same model are having very different problems installing. Ranging from processor timing issues to hangs to non-responsive keyboards. It's not enough that it's a piece of shit, it's a NON STANDARD piece of shit which is totally unacceptable for a corporate environment.
Up to this point I have had really good experiences with Apple gear (running Linux) and I don't intend to give up because of one bad machine which could be an exception, but right now I am not feeling like my money was well spent.
Beep beep.
The reasons for people to switch from heroin to liquor are as personal, or unique, as is any shift in religion. For some, the motivation is to move away from needles. Others are influenced by mates desire for the style and functionality of alcoholism. But whatever the reason for the migration, the attraction must be backed by frivolous intoxication and gratious nudity.
Thank you.
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.
...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.
This here is one of those cokehead executives I was talking about in my other post.
Q.E.D.
"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.
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.
Why should a company buy macs when they can cost $1000 dollars more then a regular pc. Also there is more expense then just the computers alone. There is the expense of buying all new liscences for the programs that have mac counter parts. Then the cost of getting custom programs redone for the mac os.
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
"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
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.
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?
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.
IF you think your mac is supposed to do anything more practical than looking pretty, GTFO.
FORD: "Found On Road, Dead"
FORD: "Fix Or Repair Daily"
FORD: "Frequently Overhauled, Rarely Driven"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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
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!!!!
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.
"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?
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.
Granted, I didn't RTFA, but this just seems counterintuitive. I can see Macs infiltrating the graphics or marketing depts of corporations, but there are better alternatives for "real work". Can you do *real* .NET programming on a Mac? Any other development, or if you're just looking for generic office PCs (word processing, spreadsheets, email and web), why wouldn't you use Linux on commodity hardware? What does the Mac offer other than the intangible "experience" that would be hard pressed to justify to the bottom line?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!!!
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!!!
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
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".
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.
[...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
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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
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?
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?
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.