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Macs Gaining a Bigger Role In Enterprise
rev_media tips a short article up at InfoWorld giving some numbers on the increasing Mac presence in businesses. "We're seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs," notes the operations manager for a global advertising conglomerate. They "now [support] 2,500 Macs across the US — nearly a quarter of all... US PCs." Another straw in the wind: "Security firm Kapersky Labs has already created a Mac version of its anti-virus software for release should Mac growth continue (and the Mac thus [find] itself prey to more hackers)."
I think a lot of us really hoped that eventually people would really get what a mess Microsoft's products are and then OSS would really take off. Instead what I think is happening is that Apple may really see some growth.
I don't know if this means much but my department of 80-90 has gone from zero to about 20% mac in the last year. I don't see that adoption rate slowing down either. Now in the server room it is a mix - Windows, AIX and Linux. With Linux growing the fastest. But on the desktop I don't think anyone is full time Linux only. Even the Linux users all have a windows or apple machine.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
thats right you can't be an elitist snob if everyone had one.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Perhaps it's just IT people looking down the road and seeing the same thing some end users saw with XP:
Like many others, I didn't like where it seemed Microsoft was headed with Product Activation and DRM and decided that long-term, I would attempt to migrate away from Windows. I might not have as quickly if I hadn't gone into "creative services," but that was my thinking at the time.
I can imagine IT departments are now experiencing a similar sensation: Even if Vista (like XP) isn't a terrible thing in itself, it points toward a rather unpalatable future for the platform.
There is a slow but undeniable exodus underway. To Ubuntu and Fedora go the more technically focused, to MacOS go the more user-focused. Windows' arbitrary relevance becomes ever slightly moreso every day.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
I know this is dangerous to say on Slashdot and all but here goes.
You are VASTLY overstating the importance of open source on a mobile platform such as the iPhone. Its a friggin $500 phone. You think the masses who are buying it are going to care if they can use open source software on it or not? The big draw of the device is its interface and ease of use. You can release zero cost programs via the AppStore if you want and to the user thats really all that matters. The vast majority of the computing using public can't program to begin with so whether its open source or proprietary is wholly irrelevant.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I think to understand the renewed interest in Macs in enterprise requires a look how IT departments got themselves into the sole-sourced software platform pickle to begin with.
The story begins with IBM doing a piss-poor job of protecting their hardware. It seems everyone forgets that IBM had every intention of locking up its hardware just like Apple did with the Mac. But they blew it. Some guys cloned the hardware and the commodity PC was born.
Corporate IT departments, believing that having multiple hardware sources was key keeping down capital expenditures, rejected the Mac because it was sole-sourced. They opted for the commoditized IBM-PC hardware platform. But, as they preached the importance of having a diversity of hardware suppliers, the same IT departments insisted that it was imperative to "standardize" on a single operating system and a single office suite. "Standardize", in this context, is just a different way of saying sole-source.
In other words, the dogma was (and still is, for the most part) that computer hardware must be multi-sourced and software must be single-sourced.
That strategy has bit them in the ass. It turns out sole-sourcing your software platform is just as probamatic and expensive as sole-sourcing your hardware platform. Having put all their eggs in Microsoft's basket in the persuit of minimizing hardware cost, IT departments are now stuck in an ever-deepening hole of increasing and recurring licencing fees to a single vendor. And they are completely powerless because they single-sourced their software platform lost all leverage with their supplier.
Perhaps some IT departments are finally questioning the wisdom of that strategy and are bringing some Macs into the mix.
Apple finally has a viable alternative, mostly because OS X is mature now and they've to x86-compatible hardware. Combine that development with the continuing creep of web-based alternatives to embedded applications and you've finally have an escape route from sole-sourced software platform hell.
A wise CIO, in my view, would take advantage of this opportunity by moving to a more heterogeneous computing environment. Re-introducing platform competition in the corporate computing space is the only way for IT departments to regain pricing leverage with Microsoft. It will cost a little more up front. Mac hardware is more expensive. But, that extra upfront cost will be more than offset by the gains from being able to exert price pressure on Microsoft.
My thoughts exactly, and it doesn't have anything to do with elitism. This will be a long post, so please bare with me.
First, a Disclaimer: I am a sysadmin in a shop that uses mostly Macs, and a few Windows Machines, and I've been using Macs since 1990 and OSX since the first public beta in 2000.
Second, Apple, like anything or anyone else, is as vulnerable to the abuse of a powerful position as, say IBM was in the 70s and 80s, and Microsoft has been up until now. Apple has already started showing signs of that abuse, which I'll now point out.
Third, Apple originally touted OS X as a very open Unix like variant. They had all sorts of technologies that were there to draw developers and Windows users to the platform. Built in Java and C/C++ APIs as first class development language along with Objective-C. As Apple became more comfortable with their position and had less fear of Developers being unwilling to move to the platform, the first dropped Java as a first class language (no more Java-Objective-C API bindings) two years ago, and last year dropped the C/C++ API's further development.
The net result of this is that if you want to develop a native 64 bit GUI application on OS X, you must use Objective-C. ObjC is a fine language, and now has Garbage collection, amongst other things, but it is very very difficult to port ObjC applications to other platforms. In a way, it's like Microsoft's
This means huge costs of major software developers who have, for the most part, been developing in C/C++. Microsoft Office, Adobe CS3, Maxon Cinema 4D? They're all C/C++. There will be no 64 bit version of Adobe CS4, the next CS iteration, for OS X, Adobe has said. It will literally take them years to port their code base to ObjC. Personally, I wonder why they bother. Given that the Ubuntu Linux desktop is now very smooth, is getting fantastic reviews all around the net on mainstream publications, It would be a perfect time for Adobe and others to port their apps to Linux (with far less effort and far lower cost than porting to ObjC). Putting some of the money saved into a major marketing push for Linux would help the uptake.
It would also scare the living hell out of Steve Jobs (apart from making him go off on one of his major Ballmer-esque tirades again) and, it would force competition on Apple, which Apple seems to think is now unnecessary due to the major fuck up that is Windows Vista.
Fourth. Apple is almost wholly dependent on the final opinion of Steve Jobs. That is often very good, as the man has a sense of taste, unlike Steve Ballmer, who doesn't, but, because Steve Jobs is only human, that sometimes results in extremely poor decisions like the OSX 10.5 Leopard Desktop and GUI design. The default galactic image background is very bad for designers who need a neutral background to work on. The fact that Apple made the default Dock in 10.5 a weird faux 3D thing that is very difficult to use due to the changes, making it often very hard to see what applications are running. The new pop-up folders in the Dock are next to useless for most things, and the translucent Menu-bar could have only been a Steve Jobs decision, driven, like the 3D Dock by the perceived need to compete visually with Vista. Apple only offered changes to this when users rebelled in outrage.
Fifth. Apple's server offerings are to a large extent just wrappers around open source technologies. Their Open Directory is just a wrapper around OpenLDAP, SLAP, and a Berkley Database as data store. Their Email server is just Postfix for SMTP and Cyrus for IMAP. The problem is that due to the Apple GUI management bindings, it is next to impossible to customise these software packages. This is somewhat symptomatic of Apple's approach. They make some things very easy, but others very, very hard.
Apple needs competition. Without competition, Apple tends to lose their solid grounding and become a bit more like Microsoft, given to market lock-in and arbitrary decisions that make no sense.
Here you've made one of those foggy claims that sound authoritative but carry essentially zero meaning. Let's put the discussion on a more solid footing.
It's unlikely, under any meaningful measure, that Linux is exactly as vulnerable as any other operating system, and of course it's nonsense to suggest that its vulnerability would change with popularity. Not that you said that, but it happens that many people drag that red herring along right about now, so let's dispense with it too.
On an architectural basis, you could claim that the degree of vulnerability of a given Linux distro will be similar to other Linux distros or other Unix variants, and you could point to what set of design decisions contribute to the relative strength or weakness of these classes of systems in general. That's a very useful and clarifying basis for debate.
Or you could compare a specific point of design or implementation between two different systems. But it's meaningless to just wave your hands and claim that one entire system is or isn't "more secure" than the other, without establishing the terms of reference. For example, a system which allows "default permit" to operations such as software installation, or which fails to separate privilege, is less secure with respect to these design principles than one which enforces privilege separation and "default deny" on operations which might compromise security.
Another approach is to look at incident statistics. Normalized per unit of a given operating system in the field, how do systems rank in terms of actual compromise? To date, Linux ranks below OpenBSD but vastly above Microsoft Windows.
I agree with your point that you can't just sit on your hands and expect any given system to be invulnerable. You have to be vigilant. It doesn't follow that all systems are therefore created equal.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
I cleaned up forty Macs that were all infected with dozens of worms and viruses.
You're a flat out bald faced liar. "Dozens of worms and viruses" simply don't exist on OS X, and especially not in the wild. Maaybe you're cleaning up old OS 9 installs, but even then it's pretty hard to imagine--and by now that's a 10 year old OS. More likely is that you're a Microsoft shill desperately trying to prop up Vista, and aren't even aware that a whole other world of possibility exists. In this case your ignorance of reality makes you easily identifiable, and your employer should get their money back.
OS X is theoretically susceptible to a virus and worm--no doubt. However, the fact is that none have yet been written. Someday OS X may be targeted and your story will be more believable--but until then your post isn't worth reading past the first line.
Liar liar pants on fire.
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$tar -xvf