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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)."
Well when you've got such a low starting point it's not hard to improve is it? i think this deserves a dilbert comic, something like marketing showing a 100% increase when they only sold 1 extra unit.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
After all, as Publicis' Plavin notes, Macs -- which cost the same as equivalently configured business-class PCs -- are cheaper to support because they are easier to support.
To which I might add, "Citation Needed".
I'm a recent Mac switcher with years of Windows experience. It's not all that easy to get OS X to work and play well with Active Directory and Windows networking (or maybe it's the other way around). IT lets me play with the Mac because I'm pretty self sufficient. Most enterprise OS X users aren't going to be particularly savvy - they'll need lots of help (like always).
And finally, the cynic in me wonders how many of those Macs are really running XP / Vista under boot camp while at work... Not that there is anything wrong with that. You'll look cool and all, even if you're running the same dorky programs as everyone else.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
My "introduction" to macs--aside from school--was at my current job. I am a web developer/it manager. I first thought it was odd everyone used macs but after I got used to it I'm glad. The amount of questions asking about their computer locking up or not being able to print or something is practically nil. When something doesn't work it's usually something more significant than just the windows "shut down and reboot" mantra.
EVERY employee uses a mac. From graphics designers (of course) to the IT department to accounts receivable and billing. From an IT standpoint being able to have a native terminal to ssh to remote servers is very handy. Yes I know of cygwin but terminal on mac is just there. We literally only have two windows machines only because of some software that only works on windows.
Are you being sarcastic? Nowadays it's difficult to say. I have just finished to watch Steve Jobs' keynote about the brand new iPhone SDK, which is a heck of a platform for development, either proprietary or open source, and the App Store that will let you distribute your application to every iPhone on Earth.
I'm not sure what's wrong with those Mac bashers around. You know, just stating to not want to be a "Mac fan" because you like tactile response is stupid for itself. Intel based Macs running UNIX plus open source software and a great set of development tools is anything a geek that respects him/herself wants to get his/her hands on.
And before anybody mods me down, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I've been programming for Windows, Unix and Unix-likes (Linux, OpenBSD) on Intel and SPARC for years and never owned a Mac until recently (two weeks ago aprox.) and I'm amazed. I'm currently writing this message from Safari while whatching my terminals (cloning repositories, building software, the usual stuff.)
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
The article asserts in a couple of places some very amusing things: 1. Apple SAYS that it integrates cleanly in Active Directory environments. (In our experience, it doesnn't). 2. "That Apple Enterprise support doesn't exist is a popular myth." (We actually paid for Apple Enterprise support and work in a major metropolitan area. We and our VAR could actually never manage to locate Apple Enterprise support. I'm calling myth.) Admittedly, I'm writing this on my Macbook Pro with an Iphone in my pocket. Supporting a handful of macs is easy. Supporting hundreds is a major pain.
You can cite me: our company has moved 80% mac since 2004. That resulted in 50% cut of IT support personnel, because there simply isn't that much to do. And 80% of the work for the remaining IT support personnel is dealing with the remaining 20% of Windows installations (most of which are a few experts' desk/laptop machines).
My MacBook's HDD died about a month ago (there may have been a bit of abuse that triggered it--I don't put my backpack on the passenger seat anymore) and after troubleshooting it, called it in. The tech didn't waste my time with stupid crap; he just asked a couple questions and sent me a box. It got there Friday evening after work.
Sunday morning, before I had even made coffee, it was back with an upgraded HDD, no questions asked.
I missed one day of work with it. I was back at work on Monday, ready to go.
I was an Apple fanboy back in tha day, then I was a mean vilifier of the Mac, and now I have sold all my PCs and have a 100% Mac house.
You don't notice how bad the user experience on Windows (or even worse: Linux) is until you notice that your computer hasn't done anything remotely annoying for a week--and that you never turn it off, just put it to sleep.
Granted, naysayers will point out that it's a proprietary system that you can't just get any old hardware for, but that's actually its strength. MS can't keep up with the driver issue, and Linux developers most certainly can't. But I still can throw any SATA HDD or PATA DVD drive in my Mac Pro, and I just put a fanless cooler on my video card today. I run all my Windows-only stats stuff under Fusion with no noticeable performance hit, and the thing works like a UNIX machine on a network (i.e. correctly and easily).
I am not a fanboy, I don't think. I made an educated decision to buy a Mac, and it has been really nice. Not perfect. Far from it. I can't stand Apple Stores (pretentious, my god, pretentious). But I am really glad I switched.
It has never occurred to me until your post that Macs may be resisted in the enterprise due to job security.
Somewhere the Maytag man is yawning.
After all, as Publicis' Plavin notes, Macs -- which cost the same as equivalently configured business-class PCs -- are cheaper to support because they are easier to support.
I'm a Mac system admin. You're right and wrong. Macs tend to behave better under stress than Windows does, but there are many problems on OSX, a number of which are related to, very much as in Windows, legacy PPC stuff running under the Rosetta emulator. Apart from which, just as in Windows, if users are allowed to load their machines with crapware, they become unstable I'm a recent Mac switcher with years of Windows experience. It's not all that easy to get OS X to work and play well with Active Directory and Windows networking (or maybe it's the other way around). IT lets me play with the Mac because I'm pretty self sufficient. Most enterprise OS X users aren't going to be particularly savvy - they'll need lots of help (like always). Again, you're right and wrong. The Mac users in our company, which has become 80% Mac in the last two years, tend to manage the basic things much better than the Windows users, but they run into problems in the more complex things. I think the Mac is genuinely easier to use for beginners, but more advanced stuff, like LDAP binding, network homes etc are totally beyond their grasp, for the most part. And finally, the cynic in me wonders how many of those Macs are really running XP / Vista under boot camp while at work... Not that there is anything wrong with that. You'll look cool and all, even if you're running the same dorky programs as everyone else. The only Mac users in our company who use Windows, are me, so that I can provide support, and the users who have apps that only run on Windows, like CAD stuff.To which I might add, "Citation Needed".
I do freelance support work for Macs primarily (though I deal with plenty of Windows machines as well), and I've helped switch several small companies partially from PCs to Macs. Generally, once the "how do I do this" calls stop, and the users get some familiarity, the new Mac people stop calling for months. The die hard Windows people I deal with also tend to be the least technically inclined, and generally I'll see them every few months to fix the results of their incompetence before they either run out of money in the budget to pay me to fix it, or decide that it's me who's incompetent and allowing all these viruses and spyware on their machine and go call the Computer Geeks at 2-3 times my rate.
There are a few people that have made the switch, and end up just not wanting to change the way they've always done things (despite the fact that they'd called me in to totally reformat and reinstall Windows 3 times in the last few months) and who pitch a fit about it, but there just isn't much you can do about them.
Plenty of the switchers I've dealt with run Parallels to run the one or two Windows apps that they just can't be without for whatever reason, but I haven't ever (depsite offering several times) had to install Boot Camp on anyone's machine to effectively switch them back. I have had a couple customers that who exchanged some quite old Macs for cheapass, low-end Windows machines, but that's was for cost reasons primarily, rather than preferring the Windows platform (and they're spending more money on my time as a result).
Want to know what the biggest apple problem in the enterprise is ?
Just try leasing them, on a 3 year lease, and find out at the end of the lease theirs no replacement machines because apple has run down the channel due to a new product announcement, that is yet to happen.
Happens on a regular basis to us, and then the new machines doesn't support the current release of OS X, so we cant deploy until we fully test in any case, as it only runs 10.5.2 or later, not earlier or some such rubbish.
Apple is light weight and no where near enterprise ready.
If so, they're not using them right. Macs are a pain in the ass to administer. They're great for end users, so you do avoid some of the stupid calls once you've answered EVERY question about why they are different than Windows. However, Apple's server product is an abomination. They change behavior with OS updates and you have to buy new versions to get security patches as they phase out after about 2 versions. If you consider the difference in the OS release schedule between windows and Mac OS, it is much more expensive for small deployments. If anything happens to your open directory setup, Apple will tell you to start over. If you're lucky, you were smart enough to export your users so you only have to reset the password for everyone! Combine with that fun things like php not having any modules that are common, lack of java 6, and random crashes with Leopard Server, and you have one of the most annoying products I can think of. The only useful thing about OS X server is the control over client systems. That is why you buy it. At work, we have a FreeBSD webserver because we couldn't get NFS mounting to work consistently between two xserves. The FreeBSD machine has much better uptime and it's a beater Dell Precision 1.4Ghz POS. In apple happy land, you're supposed to use dynamic AFP mounts for everything. It sucks when you're trying to serve web pages! Best of all, if a Leopard client connects to a 10.4 server, it sets an ACL on the home directory to explicitly block access by everything but the user thus blocking serving web pages! (if the user uses their webspace, it's mapped to a ~/Sites directory) I suggest anyone looking at doing Mac deployments consider buying a real server to go with it. It could be BSD, Linux, Windows Server, even Solaris. The problem with Macs is their inflexibility. It's great from a user perspective because it's hard to get into trouble, but when you're trying to work magic common on Windows or *NIX installs... Yes, I'm the Mac sys admin for a university computer science department.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I think the Dock thing is subective. A lot of people I talk to hate the Dock.
A lot of people I talk to love the Dock.
I fall into the latter category. I agree with the GP on the Leopard dock being annoying; hell I developed an app t change it from the default 3D to a more sedate and retina-pleasing 2D one.
But I still like it, and consider it one of OS X's nicest GUI features. Hidden, with the icons on "zoom" mean I can have a tiny dock that I never see unless I need it, and then I can see exactly the icons I want, not the other ones that stay tiny and out-of-the-way.
As for the BeOS thing, yeah, you're probably right. If they had bought BeOS, the same gui people would have worked on it to make it more "Apple-ey", which would mean you'd still have Aqua. Maybe they'd even of put a Dock in there, which I think would be awesome (an Aqua-like BeOS).
But it would have been faster for multimedia which is a BIG thing nowadays (iLife anyone?), and the multi-user thing isn't.
But, that ship has passed, and we've got what we've got: Unix.
It's a good OS. Sure, maybe an enhanced version of BeOS would be better, but we can't say that now.
Maybe, in some dark black-ops like basement in Cupertino, Apple are playing with BeOS still, planning to make it in the "next big thing" when (if) Unix starts to show it's age. Who knows...
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.