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Apple Forcing IT Shops To 'Adapt Or Die'
alphadogg writes "Many IT departments are struggling with Apple's 'take it or leave it' attitude, based on discussions last week at MacIT, which is Macworld|iWorld's companion conference for IT professionals. Much of the questioning following technical presentations wasn't about Apple technology or products. It was about the complexities and confusions of trying to sort out for the enterprise Apple's practices. Those practices include the use of Apple IDs and iTunes accounts, which are designed for individual Mac or iPad or iPhone users, and programs like Apple's Volume Purchase Program, which, according to Apple 'makes it simple to find, buy, and distribute the apps your business needs' and to buy custom, third-party B2B apps."
He actually made computing cool.
First, who gives a shit? Second, he didn't make computing cool - he used cool to sell consumer electronics. That's not 'computing' any more than watching TV is 'computing'.
You are obviously of superior intellect to the OP.
an iTunes account have to do with the business workplace and enterprise computing - no iTunes on company computers - problem solved!
Apple is still a niche player. IT shops can easily buy elsewhere, and bring in policies that lock out employee-owned devices. How is this a good business model for Apple?
I'd love to try OS X on my PC in a VirtualBox VM. But, alas, the Apple EULA forbids it. So, they're loss, I suppose.
apple does not have real server hardware at least come at least let sever run in a VM on any base hardware.
The mini sever lacks alot of stuff a real sever has and the mac pro lacks some of the same stuff as well + it's a very poor fit.
Linux mentioned, CHECK. Claiming King Geek in front of a nation of geeks, CHECK. Apple Fanboi posing as a Geek, priceless.
So you think because a few million people run Apps that the entire corporate infrastructure, the existing mainframe, unix, windows, and linux systems, and EVERYTHING ELSE is going to change to make ROOM for Apple in the enterprise?
Sir, you SERIOUSLY underestimate your importance to North American enterprises. Even Microsoft isn't that ignorant of their REAL place in the IT industry.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Oh you're gonna get it with that comment :)
But you have not said anything about how this applies to IT shops. How do I buy 30 licenses for (lets say OmniGraffle). How does one then assign those licenses to the 30 people that need them? Then later I fire #14 and hire a new person? So far the options are: 1) Buy the app under the employee's own Apple ID. But then #14 takes a copy of the software when he leaves. 2) Buy the app under the employee's corporate Apple ID. But then #14's Apple ID isn't in the company anymore, and nobody has that license. 3) Buy the app under some anonymous corporate Apple ID. (emp14@example.com). When I replace #14, the replacement gets _all_ of the Apps that #14 had. And #3 has another problem that IT would have to retain (and manage) the passwords to all of the emp## accounts as the App literally has to be bought under that account, so IT would need to change the password, attach a credit card, buy the app, detach the credit card, change the password back. Previously, one would buy 30 licenses of OmniGraffle, download the .dmg file, install on the appropriate 30 machines.
The problem with Apple is there is no customization in either hardware or software.
Lets say I want a phone with a physical keyboard running iOS. I can't have it. On the other hand, I can have a wide variety of phone form factors on Android and even Windows Phone 7. Want a really thin phone with no keyboard? They've got it. Want a phone with a sliding keyboard? They've got it. Want a keyboard just on the face of the phone? They've got it. One size does not fit all.
Lets say I want a cheap computer for web browsing, e-mail and office use. If I get a PC, I can get a laptop for about $330, sure it isn't really high end, but it will do what I want. On the other hand, if I wanted to get the same thing running OS X it would cost me, what? $600 for an iPad which isn't close to a full fledged computer? Or $1,000 for a cheap Macbook?
Or lets say I want a minor customization, putting the window buttons on the left side like most people are used to. With Linux, switching the window buttons are easy, a quick Google search will tell you how to rearrange them. On the other hand, there seems to be no way to do it on a Mac. Lack of customization is what keeps me away from Chrome and also Mac OS.
Yes, Mac OS is nicely designed, but there is simply no customization. Even Windows offers more customization. After all, the operating system is there to stay out of the way, part of it being that I should be able to customize it how I want to, something that OS X doesn't give me.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
" try to make your stuff more like Apple's products"
you mean dumb it down? make each new version make the older version obsolete? or sell the white version for a $100 more?
You call that dumbing it down, I call it making stuff more accessible. Compare GIMP to Photoshop. Is it really dumbing it down or spending just a few seconds thinking what other users want to do, and improving the interface to do it? Your product might be the best and most powerful in the whole world, but if no one can use it, what good does it do?
Back in the 1980's they failed to come to grips with what Business Users expected of a PC - thus Microsoft's fortunes were made.
Repeat?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have tried apple products, they suck. The reason why linux isn't as pretty and easy to use as os x is because there are not PAID linux devs, not like you have for windows or os x, and there is no unified force behind it. linux is a bunch of neck beards who all have their own idea about how the OS should be. That is why there is a million and one distros. Apple isn't the answer though, they just go the opposite way and tell you what you need and how you need it. They over price it all, and pretend they invented everything, apple sucks.
Then use OSx86.
Apple does`nt want to play nice? I`ll set them right up there on the shelf next to the eight-track player. Besides, now that Jobs is gone, Apple is just circling the drain. They all but abandoned their notebooks to chase iPhone and iPad sales. Give it a couple of years. It`ll be "Apple who?"
coincidentally a person mentioned in TFA is named Kevin White...
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
"Take it or Leave it"?
I would choose to leave it. Apple products, while "cool" and "neat" for the individual user, don't often work well in large enterprise environments.
This is just a fact of life.
Until better management tools are made to "manage" the apple devices / environment, they will still be a secondary (or greater) choice for enterprise environments.
Apple is saying 1 of 2 things, but I don't know which: 1. We created these products without enterprise in mind, like, at all. BUT, we are pretending that this oversight was actually an unconscious foresight: We meant it to be this was, so, do it our way or don't do it, but just don't complain. 2. Or, although we were aware of the enterprise IT paradigm, we purposefully decided to ignore it and do it the Apple way. Strangely, the apple way seams to be to make enterprise deployment of their products almost impossible.
Apple markets their devices to consumers first, and they provide enough support for businesses so their stuff is accepted. This is why Apple paid Microsoft and licensed the ActiveSync protocol, so their devices would get past the corporate blood/brain barrier (which before that, only Blackberries and Windows Mobile devices could cross.)
It is just not in Apple's model to do that much for the enterprise. The XServe did not sell well so it got pulled. Same with Apple's SAN hardware. Even the old Mac Pro doesn't seem to be selling well, and has not gotten a refresh in a long time.
Apple knows that it makes its bread and butter selling to the dedicated fans who have been camping out for days at their stores for the latest iGadget. They know that trying to pitch to the enterprise will have a "meh" response at best.
Another example of this is how Apple handles product releases. As an IT person, I can sign a NDA in blood, and get a roadmap from IBM or Oracle about what they plan to do for future products, when to make sure funds are available for model refreshes, and timing budget constraints. Apple doesn't offer this. There is no way to time when to have funds ready for a product refresh when it comes to Macs or iDevices.
[1]: Ideally, Apple would make a Mac Pro case that could work as a tower, but also fit horizontally into a rack with just a simple drawer style mounting kit (similar to the venerable Ultra 450s.)
I'm not sure GIMP is better than Photoshop. At the very least, Photoshop has a much more organized UI, which I can navigate through much easier.
Best of both worlds would be an "Advanced Mode", where you can change all the settings, but for the average consumers, most settings may be hidden away, and make the whole thing "just work". Unless something goes wrong, or you want to tweak something, you may never even have to see all the settings and variables.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
I have for audio recording and video production in school. We got two brand new G5 towers the week they came out, and I did really enjoy using them. BUT I would never own one myself. I game way too much to ever bother with a Mac. Since I do build my own systems, why would I ever spend so much money on lower quality parts? My $1000 budget rig in the office is more powerful than a $2700 Mac.
Sounds like they've got "Firefox-Unity" syndrome.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Apple does`nt want to play nice? I`ll set them right up there on the shelf next to the eight-track player. Besides, now that Jobs is gone, Apple is just circling the drain. They all but abandoned their notebooks to chase iPhone and iPad sales. Give it a couple of years. It`ll be "Apple who?"
Considering the % of their revenue coming from non-personal computers, I'm surprised they haven't abandoned them. But to pick up the revenue they'd sacrifice they'll need to find a new market nitch to exploit. Better think fast or Samsung will invent it first.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nice troll.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Seriously, try one of Apple's products. It's not hard to see why they're so popular.
Exactly. There are plenty of top notch technical people who like Apple. I was skeptical myself until I tried their products. Now I have several, and I'm very happy. I still use and develop for Windows and Linux. There is nothing about Apple products that magically make you stupid or incapable of using other platforms. Hard core anti-Apple people are generally those who speak from, at best, second hand knowledge.
Care to explain your comparison of GIMP and Photoshop? Your arguments are ambiguous.
Remember that Final Cut Pro X was designed to be "more accessible", and we all know how that turned out...
4) Go to Omni and purchase a Quantity Discount for up to 30% off. Or a Large Volume Discount for whatever price you happen to negotiate.
https://store.omnigroup.com/main/86705d974e0553dcffffffff/
Just like you did before.
The Mac isn't a walled garden. If software is suitable for enterprise use, then the software vendors will have a volume licensing option. The Mac App Store is designed to make finding, buying and installing apps easy for consumers. But it's not the only way of supplying Mac software.
I took the plunge and replaced my PC for 2 months with a Mac. My conclusion was that OSX was easily as fine as the Emperors New Cloths.
He swore to destroy Android. He got his chinese sweatshot workers jumping to their deaths in herds. He got the apple police to kick in the front door of a journalist. He lied about the antenna.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Que fanboy.
Recently I had to deal with Apple's App Store. Our agency's purchasing people had no idea how to handle the App Store as the purchase has to be done from the user's computer. I spoke with an Apple government rep and he admitted that things are not set up for companies unless you're buying at least 30 (?) of something. Our purchasing folks ended up giving me the department credit card (now, there's trust!) and let me make the purchase from my cubicle. Not that hard to deal with, but certainly not standard procedure...
I not only "tried" Apple gear and products, I have and still support them. I probably know a lot more about Linux and about MacOS than you. I guided a professional organization through the transition from MacOS9 to MacOSX and on. I know Apple intimately. I can tell you that what people think Apple is, often isn't the case. Most of it is hype and misplaced perceptions.
When you break a computer down to how it serves the interests and needs of a user, even you have to admit that Apple more or less requires that the user shift their needs and interests to fit within the Apple framework of products and services rather than the other way around. Apple is not particularly adaptable nor is it flexible. And if you disagree with this view, then you already disagree with Apple -- they say the same things themselves. "We tell users what they want" sound familiar?
It was about the complexities and confusions of trying to sort out for the enterprise Apple's practices
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
I am a nerd with a decent understanding of Linux, Windows, and OSX systems. I have tried Apple's products, and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. The action on iPods and Macs feels sluggish - there's a half-second delay between when you swipe or click the action and when the action begins to occur.
Why are Apple products slow for being on cutting-edge hardware? The only explanation is the condescending genius of Steve Jobs - it was his design decision to slow down his gadgets on purpose as if to say, "hold on a sec and get ready -- you're about to have your feeble minds blown while the fucking application launches."
I can say that this car "Bugatti Veyron " http://fastestcarsintheworld.net/ is the best car ever, and forever, especially compared to any regular ford or chevo.....but, BUT, but....do you want me to continue??? Yep, the same, the price.
There is nothing fanboy about what he stated, they did have their most profitable quarter ever and the second most profitable quarter of any company, behind Exxon.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/24/technology/apple_earnings/index.htm
Gone!
Yes. Apple used to service the server market with rack-mounted Xserve servers, and a seperate build of OSX of servers. Then a few years ago they pulled out of the server market, withdrew the Xserves and rolled the server version of OSX into the main version.
You can run a workgroup or webserver from a Mac Mini. But Apple aren't really pursuing the enterprise server market any more.
He jumped the queue for a liver then wasted it.
Why on earth did that post get a Troll mod? Troll mod doesn't mean "I disagree".
Since we can develop our software for any platform that supports web standards, we develop in HTML5 and do application testing on open platforms. We have a single iPad2 for application verification but it is PIN-locked with no iTunes account. No apps other than the what comes out of the box, and all parental restrictions enabled. No movies, no iTunes, nada.
We develop for business and government use. Our clients are choosing Android by 3:1 for this reason.
While you argue proud in the Windows fan boy playground? Kinda callin' the kettle black here bro pot.
Seriously, try one of Apple's products. It's not hard to see why they're so popular.
Of course you can see why they're popular, but it's not price or ignorance that keeps people from owning them, it's that it's never a one-size-fits-all solution.
And for Linux devs - try to make your stuff more like Apple's products.
Why? If you want stuff that's like Apple's products buy Apple's products.
Apple needs to be more hardware and AIO hdd's need to be alot easys to get to the HDD all other AIO are easy to get to the HDD.
Some places need to be Multi vendor for the hardware WIndows runs on any hardware so apple needs to be a little more open at least have a desktop mid tower.
The mini is small and limited + it's harder then just about any other system to get to the HDD and next to other systems the price needs to come down at least $50 - $100 and the basic mini should have 4gb ram but for other stuff the MAC pro is over kill for people needing more power where you can get say get a dell OptiPlex for a $8000 or less that is better the base Imac + add the fact that in business screens get reused alot and AIO's are a poor fit.
Also that Less then $800 dell comes with a better CPU, 3 Year ProSupport with 3 Year NBD Limited Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis, more video card choice, more CPU choice and ROOM FOR A 2nd Hard Drive.
Let's say you need a good system to do photo shop, cad and so on. You can pay $2500 for a system 3gb ram (to low for pro work) or you can get a good dell for $1200-$1500 with about the same CPU power, more ram, and lot's more video card choice.
Now apple needs a desktop system (non a AIO for $1000-$1500) it just way to much at $2500 to get a good non AIO desktop.
Apple laptops need better pricing and bigger screens at the lower end $1800 to get a 15" screen?
Note the "lets say OmniGraffle". Pick an app which is only distributed via the App Store. Say, the Blink SIP soft phone. Both the Lite and Pro versions are only available through the App Store.
We all know apple's the one that failed to adapt their enterprise offerings & is now dying in the sector because of that fact.
abbreviation
acronym
Same old thing. People who prefer echo chambers to discussion.
Given they've just released the 2nd largest results of any company in history, the "Apple is just circling the drain" comment seems to be monumentally delusional.
Next to that the comment "They all but abandoned their notebooks" is merely ludicrous. (Mac sales grew 20%, mostly notebooks, against a general PC trend which was down 9%.)
Until better management tools are made to "manage" the apple devices / environment, they will still be a secondary (or greater) choice for enterprise environments.
While I agree that Apple is very much sitting on its hands here, there is no way to ignore iDevices. It's almost like an "Occupy IT" movement. And the users are relishing our squirming and cursing. And while I'm an sysadmin myself, I'd almost say we deserve it to be on the receiving end this time. It's a comically reversed situation to how it usually works: Users are requiring simple things, you know they aren't that simple and you can't do anything really but learn and work and adapt and curse. Wow, that *hurts*. *They* are the ones who traditionally had to swallow what we rained down on them.
Now *they* are smug and wave their iPads ("it just works") and we have to find a way to make them work and to manage them. How unfair is this? Now *we* are clicking through iTunes for *them*! What goes around comes around, really.
They had their most profitable quarter ever, the second most profitable quarter in US history, the fourth most profitable quarter in the world...
And the most profitable quarter in their entire corporate history, for ever and ever. Doing my part to help that happen :)
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Yes, they should sell everything and give the money back to the shareholders. Right?
It's spelled "cue". And he's giving the true verifiable facts against your delusions. Given that you are saying what you wished were true rather than what is actually true, it seems you are the fanboy. Though from that post we neither know nor care which particular company it is you're shilling for.
Surely even from behind the iron curtain of the RDF, that blatant pandering to Apple fanbois while feigning geek cred must be fairly obvious trolling. Then again, perhaps not.
He's not trolling. Genuinely, most people that criticise Apple products have never actually tried them. One of the secrets of Apple's unprecedented success of the last 10 years is are the physical Apple Stores where people can go and try the products out for themselves.
Let me share my experience with OSX and "how great" it is.
Last summer, as part of some volunteer work I was doing, I was tasked with locking down about 100 user laptops. About 60-70 were Windows based, 1 was Linux, the rest were Apple.
The tasks were to set up full disk encryption (or as close as possible with the host OS), some kind of email encryption, set up the mail client, set up a Cisco (or equivalent) vpn client, and make sure the computers were generally up to snuff (updates and whatnot).
The Windows machines took maybe 3-4 hours each, if that. I spent the better part of a day and hashed together a program that automated 90% of the work, including the installation of many of the programs (through AutoIT scripting), which made most of the process hands-off. There were about a bazillion options for automation, forcing updates, scripted certificate installation, etc. We could have used a WSUS server, if we had desired (though we did not). The various OSes (XP, Vista 32/64, 7 32/64) basically worked the same; though there were some "if {os}=" clauses that had to be used, it was mostly for picking the proper executable (32bit Cisco vpn vs 64 bit).
The Linux machine was of course a PITA, since we did not know ahead of time we would be dealing with it.
Then there were the OSX computers. They were a gigantic PITA. How? Let me list the ways:
And there were various other quirks which branded OSX in my mind as "decent, with a decent CLI, but vastly overrated"; but the big issues were that the system really wasnt designed to be administered quickly in batches, and the documentation was very often less than stellar. For all the flak Windows gets for its registry, at least every bit of it is documented, and you can find articles out the wazoo about how to automate X on windows.
People talking about the new wave of OSX boxes on corporate networks are either bad admins, way more clever at this kind of thing than I am, or ignorant reporters. It might be a different story if there were a capability (on both the Windows Server, and the OSX client side) to launch logon scripts, and if those scripts could install printers and map network paths; call me when that happens.
I am an IT admin in a library. Getting Apple setup with some resemblance of control is a pain. Its great at home but once you have to try to manage say 10 of them it sucks. With windows i can control everything with group policy.
Apple is trying with their parental controls and preferences BUT they are not even remotely there yet.
Like others have stated if the app you need is on the app store you are in trouble. It takes you begging and pleading for a credit card number from accounting or the business office. Most of my configuration on a mac involves me going to each mac and changing the configurations. Apples own preferences for time off are wierd. sun -thurs night and fri -sat. They make it so difficult to manage macs in a network.
Dont tell me well script. I dont have time to spend time writing scripts for something that microsoft has a gui for.
Apple needs a TON of work on the managing side of OSX.
PS We do not have the money to buy 3rd party solutions for 10 machines.
'more accessible' is just a new speak term for "hide messy reality from user". this is not more accessible, it's LESS. it builds up a fantasy of expectations not inline with reality that blow up later when the user tries to interface with something/someone outside the apple garden. Of course, he blames that item/person for not playing by the rules he was sold when he bought is iThingy, but reality is NOT the apple garden. apple's assumption that correctly designed devices don't require user-configurability doesn't take into account the unrealistic input/expectations it breeds in its users. even the best engineered and objectively marketed equipment just breaks sometimes and an accessible way to service/fix the issue is needed. such garden mentalities can be ok for short term/extremely limited use items that have low expectations associated with them, but things like phones and computers are trending AWAY from such status.
the fallacy of equating an assumed incomprehensible complexity with unneeded complexity is what's killing growth in technology, especially in the consumer space. By all means, offer an easy to use interface for simple functions, but oversimplifying complex operations does nothing for the user when the designer's assumptions about said complexities fail the user. not only is the user left without what he needs, but he has no way of learning how to get it, and anyone he might ask for help is denied access to what they need. this is why apple sells the attitude along with the product.. it pushes the 'blame/pressure' from apple/its users onto everyone else to get into compliance..ie buy an apple. this is good for apple obviously, but bad for technology/society as a whole.
Why on earth did that post get a Troll mod? Troll mod doesn't mean "I disagree".
oh come on, a completely off-topic gushing post praising apple by a self-proclaimed linux expert and geek that suggests linux should be more like apple and that we would all look like nerds and geeks if it weren't for steve jobs because apple contributed so much more to general computing than linux or windows. I don't think anyone disagrees that apple make good products for a particular market (I certainly use them - OSX and an ipad - for particular things) or that they have contributed enormously to the industry but obvious troll is obvious, if thinly veiled. Also if you switched Apple for Microsoft in a post like that there would be endless replies accusing the poster of 'shilling' or 'trolling'.
[The 2007 Mac OS X 10.5 Server EULA] permits OS X Server to run in a virtual machine (VM) as long as each VM is stocked with a different license and the physical system is Apple-made. The new rules don't apply to the client edition of Apple's operating system, which is still barred from being virtualized.
The Golden Master version of OS X Lion (10.7) just released to developers includes the final end-user licensing agreement (EULA) which reveals that users can run up to two additional instances of OS X Lion on their same machine without a need for extra licenses. From the 10.7 EULA:
(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software.
So apple needs to make a license change so you can use VMware on any hardware useing any base OS with out getting in license issues.
First, let me point out that Apple's model isn't even a fantastic fit for a family, using my own experience. In order to buy music through iTunes, which we do a fair bit of, we need an AppleID. For all the convenience features (like automatically downloading music that any of us buys, for instance), we have to use the same AppleID on all the computers/devices that we use for storing the music, listening to it, or loading it on the phones/iPods/etc. And even with iCloud, this works reasonably smoothly, because you can set one AppleID for your music and another for everything else, so that you can still share music but not, say, email.
OK, but that means that our playlists are shared (which we can deal with by using folders for our individual playlists), but so is the metadata. Mostly, that's a good thing, but what if my wife and I and my sons want to all rate the same song differently? Out of luck: the rating is shared. I could go on about what should be shared and what shouldn't, but the point is that Apple does not make it easy to share some things and not others even within a family. I imagine that trying to work AppleIDs and iDevices into an enterprise must be quite the nightmare from that point of view.
There are solutions to some such problems, and certainly different IT shops have different ways of doing things, which means that for some (including my current one), it's easy while for others it's a complete nightmare. Fundamentally, if you have an IT shop where integrating is easy, there's little reason not to do it. If you'd need Apple servers, or more control over devices (say, if you're regulated, or a government entity), then you're probably out of luck and should tell users — yes, even users like the C-level types — that they're welcome to use whatever they want, but IT cannot support it.
In some cases, this means that IT shops as we are used to them will have to dramatically change to accommodate their users. And in some cases, it means that the users will have to live with the restrictions. I can see some shops moving to a model where internal users are treated like external users, except that they have access to different resources through their (untrusted) network connection to the servers. VPNs would be unnecessary: just connect to resources directly over the network, "local" or remote, and be done with it. In other words, I could see some shops moving to a model that protects the data, but not the desktop. But I think other shops will likely have to dig in their heels, not because they want to be difficult, but because they cannot allow the kinds of practices that Apple would require. (Think of trying to manage a bank's customer data when you couldn't properly audit the machines used to access that data, and then think of trying to explain that to a bureaucrat.)
But in the end, I think that the general purpose computer in a decade or so will be far less common than today. Thin client devices, tablets and the like will replace a lot of computers simply because of cost, maintenance, training and business utility advantages intrinsic to the types. And that means that IT shops will lose a lot of the control that they have now over the user experience. They'll still keep control of the centralized data stores, certainly, but that may be the extent of it for a lot of shops. And that's not necessarily a bad thing: in truth, how many users really need something as powerful and flexible as a laptop? Maybe 10% — maybe? Well, why not make things cheaper and easier for the other 90%, even if it does make IT's job harder in some ways?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Note the "lets say OmniGraffle".
That's why I gave you info on Omnigraffle.
Pick an app which is only distributed via the App Store. Say, the Blink SIP soft phone.
It looks like Blink will even give you a pre-configured and branded version if you want to approach them for a volume licence.
http://icanblink.com/inquiries.phtml
As I say, the Mac is no more a walled garden than Windows or Linux. Software vendors can supply you with software any way the choose to on any of those platforms. Some obviously choose to only do so via the Mac App Store, because if you're an indie developer it's so much easier. But any app that's got the potential for enterprise use is going to be supplied by the company in a form that is accessible by the enterprise.
Right now, Apple-(and Steve Jobs-)bashing seems to have the fashionable appeal of . . . well, of a new iPhone or iPad.
Because it's another high-UID first post from an account with no posting history written with a tone that sounds a hell of a lot like our friend bonch.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I think it all started with the XServes. Yeah, yeah... maybe they weren't an IT hit, but in the College of Education at Penn State, we used them on the Mac side of things. There was 8 at the time I left, some doing OpenDirectory just pushing the ActiveDirectory information from the Windows Server box, as well as hosting Mac software packages, scripts, etc for remote deployments/installs... and others doing tasks such as DeployStudio for quick imagine considering we had over 200 Mac laptops the students used while doing student teaching and other tasks. Each had to be re-imaged on return, and we had different packages for the various models of the MacBooks, iBooks, etc, etc over the years. Some images were even setup to push Mac OS X with bootcamp'ed Windows 7 all in one shot. Extremely handy.
But alas, Apple pulled the plug on the XServes, and replaced them with Mac Mini's and the like. Not too surprising they are doing this too.
I have an iPad 2. I'd swap it for an Android tablet tomorrow if I could. I'm sick of Apple telling me how I can (and can't) use the product that I bought.
Apple -- they say the same things themselves. "We tell users what they want" sound familiar?
Yup. Users want a mouse. And guess what, they do. Users want windowed operating systems. And guess what, they do. Users want a controlled market place with safe apps. And guess what, they do. The few people here who claim they prefer a market place with porn and viruses aren't "users" in the sense of the general market. The general market is quite happy with Apple. Apple isn't forcing things down people's throats so much as trying to guess what the inarticulate and confused user really wants, then delivering that and trying to convince the user that they asked for red but got blue, and they really wanted the blue all the time and were confused previously. In most cases, they are right. That's like being mad at a mind reader for being right...
Learn to love Alaska
I only wish it were a few years ago.
The announcement came in November of '10, three months before they killed off the Xserves (one year ago -- last January).
I'm now surviving on two Xserves (one '08 and one early '10) and a small stack of Minis (due to my two G5 Xserves falling apart last year). We've got big iron on the other side of the house with everything virtualized -- and I'm running Minis...
Apple is not courting enterprise, it's the other way around. The prom queen isn't hurting for dates.
#SickNotWeak
I actually own some apple hardware. It's really nice stuff but then it costs a lot of money so it should be. What bothers me is that the OS isn't what it could be. It's better than Windows in my opinion but really I remember putting Snow Leopard on my Dell 1545 just for kicks. It ran well on there and everything worked well and I played with it a week and then wiped it and went back to Linux. I had a Powerbook at the time that I used for iMovie and a couple of other Mac applications, I loved the hardware it was really nice but I really didn't like Leopard that much. I can buy nice Intel hardware a lot cheaper for similar equipment without the apple on the case and after I wipe the malware it comes with off and install Linux I'm much happier than I am with OS X. I'm not sure what's up with the interface but it seems sluggish to me....like their is lag in it or something. I still use OS X occasionally as I picked up a 2008 macbook for iMovie but with Openbox getting better I'm thinking of selling it off. I want to like OS X but it's so hard to. Maybe I'm just spoiled.
You write, "a decent CLI, but vastly overrated" about OS X.
Be honest, how well versed are you with Unix and the command line?
It does not take great genius to detect an obvious shill.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I agree. He's not trolling, he's just making a horrible argument.
But it's true, Apple *helped* bring computers out of the nerd dens. Let's travel back 30 years, give or take a few. The Apple II was the first truly mainstream "personal computer". The Mac was the first commercially viable computer that was "friendly".
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Considering the % of their revenue coming from non-personal computers, I'm surprised they haven't abandoned them.
The reason they have not abandoned them is because it allows people to buy their flashy new iDevice and pretend that it is good for business and therefore a business expense. If they entered the personal computer market as you say, then they become little more than games consoles with the patronage to match.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Been there. Did that. Have the burnt out remains to prove it.
Apple is great at marketing. Apple is great at doing less and calling it more.
However, some people really need to do more. It's fine if Apple plays the role of "corporate IT for consumers". Corporations and power users don't really need that though.
Apple products are somewhat ok if you don't test the boundaries or use them too creatively. Otherwise all bets are off. This appears to be a manifestation of that very problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The Cisco VPN client is supported on 10.4, at least the older pre-AnyConnect IPSEC based one.
So what you're saying is that you have experience administering Windows boxes, but not much for other OSes? Excuse me if I can't take your experience as neutral, fact based review of Apple products (or Linux for that matter) if you were unable to find the FileVault encryption options in the Security Preference pane. In = 10.6, that's user home folder encryption, in 10.7+, it's one-click full disk encryption. And the Registry being less arcane than plist files...? And apparently you haven't looked into Automator at all...?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
It's pretty obvious from the posts on this thread why Apple doesn't want to help these people out. Lot of hate here. If I had to deal with people, I think I'd have the same "take it or leave it" attitude.
You really sound like someone who's supported Windows for years, learning the little details like hashing together a program to automate your workflow.
Yet you don't have any clue about the Mac, and that makes it hard. Somehow, that's OS X's fault.
VPN issues are VPN company issues. Ask them to write the software?
There is full disk encryption. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4790
What the hell is launch on startup? Google shows nothing. Launch at login is a user preference that's been around for a decade. It doesn't make the computer slow.
Never had any issues importing certificates across all those versions of OS X.
defaults settings are well documented. http://secrets.blacktree.com/
There's also things like radmind that would probably be much better at doing what you want. But your ignorance led you astray.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The built in encryption on OSX is FileVault, and in Lion it does full disk encryption.
The preferences vs registry thing just sounds like Windows was easier for you than OSX because you know Windows. The registry is a the very worst feature of Windows, and I don't know anyone that didn't learn computing on Windows that would dream of praising it.
He may be stellar with Unix and the command line.
However, this is not Unix we're talking about here.
This is a proprietary OS built on top of Unix. Any assumptions you might be able to make about automating Solaris or Linux go straight out the Window.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
try replacing your hard drive without 3rd party software or hardware, try replacing your video card without that extra 128K BITS (yes bits) of bios on it, try compiling GCC without downloading their version of it and signing up for a service, try to use your software when they arbitrarily change architectures again .... for the 5th fucking time.
Apple is great for users that have not owned apple products, most of the (normal) people I talk to feel that, yes the apple experience is great, but no they would not buy one again due to its cost, maintenance, and software headache for a GP computer.
All of that stuff is included in a modern Linux distro by default. I'm on Fedora and for the Cisco VPN client, all you need is to "yum install vpnc".
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
You are a poser and an idiot. Photoshop is a professional tool. It is complex and expensive and you probably don't have the first clue about how to effectively use it. You also probably would never be willing to pay what Photoshop costs.
Bad example.
iPhoto would be a more on-point example but it does such a hopeless job at simple things like red-eye removal that it even makes Gimp look good.
And Photoshop is not even an Apple product.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The registry is a the very worst feature of Windows, and I don't know anyone that didn't learn computing on Windows that would dream of praising it.
Well, I certainly wouldn't praise it, but I learned computing with stuff that was somewhat more arcane than the Registry (machine language, memory-mapped registers, etc), and I don't see how the Registry is all that much worse than the myriad forms of preferences on your typical Unix system. Mac OS X is more sane than most, but between how Mac OS X handles preferences and how Windows handles them it seems like six of one, half a dozen of the other to me.
Breakfast served all day!
It was the whole "general good" thing which was waaay too flowery IMHO. ya ever notice what trips the shills is always buzzwords? its like there is some script written by a PHB and they have to get "enhanced experience" or "synergy" or "vertical integration' in there or the shocky monkey hits them with the cattle prod.
As for Enterprise and Apple? no, is that clear enough? Apple made it clear when they killed their X-Serve server line and made FCP into iMovie Pro that they didn't give a flying crap about the enterprise they are a CONSUMER company, okay? CONSUMER, not business. Not that i blame them, its a smart move as their financials show quite clearly. they are THE consumer electronic maker to beat, much like Sony was with Walkman in the 80s with everyone trying to whip off knockoffs just hoping to pick up some of the scraps. But they gave up on the enterprise awhile back folks, if their stuff works there? Fine, but don't expect them to really give a crap one way or the other as you're not the target market anymore than IBM is gonna waste time trying to sell mainframes to high schools. Frankly business is small fry compared to the worldwide consumer electronics market and that is why MSFT is getting ready to shoot themselves in the face with Win 8, aka WinTab, because they are so desperate to get some of the action.
So the bottom line is if you manage to get that iPad or iPhone to work for your enterprise fine and dandy, just don't expect Apple to waste any real effort to make you happy, you just aren't a big enough fish. Sorry.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Right, because buying a third party accessory that connects via wireless that needs its separate charger that makes the phone more bulky is really the most elegant solution! Plus an extra price tag!
No thank you, I'll stick with my nice Android phone with things like that built in standard.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I dunno, how many people wanted voice commands on their phone before the iphone 4s came out?
I think Apple tells people what they want quite successfully.
Its not that these people secretly wanted it but didn't know it - more like they didn't want it until they saw it, and then they wanted it.
Its clever, and it seems to work very well for Apple.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
He used to park in disabled parking bays.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Just throwing a guess out there, but I think a simple explanation for the slowness is that many iOS apps are webkit-based. That means launching those apps requires loading all the support libs for webkit first, which takes time, then running the app via an interpreter instead of just native binary execution.
And it's doing that all with 512MB of ram.
...I'm used to this. They have a very heavy hand, and can be extremely constricting. Ver frustrating, at times. It does not make Macs popular with programmers or IT people. However, it does make Macs popular with users. It has never been a bad idea to be an Apple developer. It has garnered me all kinds of hate over the years, but a lucrative career, as well. You say "Tom-AY-toe," I say "Tom-AH-toe"...
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
And the games are better on a $200 console than either of those.
Hey, now wait a second. I started off with an Apple IIe. I was using Apple products long before...
Oh, fuck me.
#SickNotWeak
If you're talking about the window buttons like Mac's dock. Mine sits hidden on the left. Windows toolbar also allows this. But, I think your point still stands.
some people in life are creators, some are mere followers.
And in general, more creators use Macs than any other platform. Musicians, film-makers, writers,actors artists, photographers etc, etc..
say you hate the default iphone on-screen keyboard.....
yes, I really do hate it, along with the dumb "we think you meant this" autocorrect.
The iphone/ipad are great products, but without the ability to customize, it becomes useless (and painful) to me.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Your friendly neighborhood grammar nazi.
I do hope that was intended to be funny. Hard to tell round these parts.
Ah, OK I didn't look at the posting history. Yeah, bonch is doing nobody any favours. His views are basically right, but he's he's behaving like a spammer or a shill.
Apple's philosophy is that they control the devices they sell. Enterprise customers insist that the enterprise control all of the devices on their network. Apple refuses to design/sell devices that they do not have control over. This is an irresolvable conflict.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Well the only thing that ever impressed me about Apple was during the PPC era their memory management seemed better than both Windows and Linux. i'd go over to the printing shop and watching someone with windows struggle with this huge graphics file while Apple never seemed to struggle...but then they went Intel, Windows went x64, and now even the print shop is using Windows 7 quads because you can get so much more powerful hardware at such a cheaper price. Kinda pointless to worry about who has the tightest memory management when the workstations have 16Gb of RAM ya know?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because there is no `Shill' mod.
VPN support was completely inconsistent. There were no options for 10.4; 10.5 had no built in client, but could use Cisco VPN; 10.6 had a built in client and could use the Cisco client; and 10.7 had built in client but could NOT use the cisco client (due to awful 32-bit compatibility).
So how many versions of Windows did you support?
Let's see...Mac OS X 10.4 was released in 2005. On the Windows side, that would be Windows XP SP2. So I assume you had a mix of machines running everything from Windows XP SP2 to Windows 7, right?
From the sounds of it, you also had a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit machines on the Mac side. Did you have this same thing with the Windows machines?
The OSX kernel is a lot slower than the linux kernel. The iOS interface will generally crush most Linux interfaces doing the same sort of work. You aren't being detailed enough to compare though.
A good way to test is run your XWindows Linux stuff under quartz-wm.
The trouble with the 'unix and the command line' approach is that it usually falls over in a screaming heap and then punches you in the face the minute you try to do anything that interacts with the OSX-specific Apple stuff running on top of the BSD. If you are really lucky, there'll be some obscure utility(probably a completely different one than in 10.N-1...) hidden away somewhere; but no guarantee, and quite possibly no documentation.
If you just want to open terminal and interact with straight ports of various unix CLI programs, it'll probably work OK(unless you do something that conflicts with the OSes shipping version of something, in which case you have my condolences). If you want to make the GUI layer behave with your bash-fu, things get more exciting....
'This manager, who requested anonymity, noted a related problem: for individual apps over a certain amount, "gifting" them to users under VPP can be considered "compensation" under federal income tax rules`
Jeez, you'd think a business manager would be proficent in federal income tax rules as they relate to such contracts. Is Apple seriously expected to now impart tax law advice?
'Another "tip" from a speaker on the same panel, John Welch, director of IT at The Zimmerman Agency, was a reminder that "In signing up [for VPP], you have to create a new VPP [iTunes] account even if you already have existing ones."'
From reading the VPP_Business_Guide, I gathered this:
Important information about your Apple ID
* Once your enrollment information has been verified, you'll be asked to create a new Apple IS specifically for the Volume Purchase Program. This Apple ID will be used solely for the Volume Purchase Program and cannot be used with other Apple programs or services.
AccountKiller
Why do you only have like 5 posts, and every single one of them talks about what a visionary Steve Jobs is? It seems you created your account last week, when you "bought your first Mac".
We use PGP full disk encryption.
OSX machines can be administered via. OSX admins or Unix admins. Trying to admin a Unix, be it Solaris, AIX, Linux or OSX like a Windows machine is genuine a load of suck.
1) OSX versions have a 2 year lifespan. You cannot write your instructions in typical Windows "click here" style.
2) FileVault included does Full disk encryption on OSX. Prior to 10.7 PGP WDE worked fine.
3) The way to script changes in you would click through is using the AppleScript browser and automater. You can read off from there the various changes possible. Other than that, yes you need to use defaults and you can google that stuff.
4) The way you are supposed to do what you were trying to do is with OSX server which offers automatic admin and config.
some people in life are creators, some are mere followers.
And in general, more creators use Macs than any other platform. Musicians, film-makers, writers,actors artists, photographers etc, etc..
As a musician, I've never recorded in a studio that used Macs. I don't know of any recording studios that do have macs.
./ talking about how they are all moving away from final cut pro
I don't personally know about film-makers - but there was a recent story on
I doubt you can back up your assertion about writers at all - most fiction writers of my generation started with wordperfect and moved to MS Word, and most tech writers use latex for serious stuff.
Actors don't create - they read other peoples lines - who cares what computer they use - it is meaningless to bring them up in this context.
Artists? Do you mean Sculptors? Painters? What do computers have to do with those tasks?
Photographers? Photoshop is platform independent
Your comment is full of fail. Most creative folks start from a position of no money - and that generally means the cheapest possible computing - which means no macs. I never got where this meme that creators use macs come from - IMHO it is just Apple advertising BS.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Abstract: Apple is making boatloads of money selling stuff to people. Reconfiguring the company into an enterprise services firm is an unacceptable risk.
'Waaaay back in the day, I was invited to an Apple roadmap presentation for the various big Mac users in the greater LA area (mainly aerospace corps). Dating myself, the main heads up was the upcoming Mac IIfx. The current sealed lips paradigm wasn't always graven in stone.
But, that was before Windows 95 almost ate Apple's lunch, and Macs got kicked to the curb across "the enterprise"... almost simultaneously across North America. Almost as quickly, the ecosystem of Mac-related enterprise solution vendors ditched the platform. When Jobs returned to refocus the company's direction, the focus was on what he had left to work with: consumers (with bones thrown to graphics/video/audio pros). You could see this in his original product mix: iMac, iBook, the restyled G4 mini-towers, and eventually the iPod.
This ended up working so well that quite a few consumers really wanted to haul their Apple gear back to the enterprise... which is how Apple first got there, one MacPlus at a time. Now, with the iPhones and Pads, people aren't just sneaking their toys in, they're putting in purchase orders, and the IT departments are forced to adjust.
It's not completely unreasonable for them to ask Apple to rework their products to make this a bit easier. It may happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath: Apple isn't equipped to service the enterprise, and doesn't want to spend the money to make it happen. The boys and girls in Cupertino would need to spend tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars to set up the hardware/software/people infrastructure - more or less from scratch - to provide reasonable enterprise marketing and support.
And why? There's not all that much profit in selling to the enterprise, except in services. Virtually *all* of the non-Asian computer vendors have reconfigured themselves into enterprise services companies that just happened to sell some hardware/software for them to integrate, and the Asian companies are on the same path.
Apple, meanwhile, is making a boatload of money selling hardware/software to people. There is plenty of foreseeable risk and little known upside to reengineering themselves into the likes of IBM/HP/Dell.
Luke, help me take this mask off
You weren't able to take Apple's "Xserve Transition Guide" seriously when it suggested that you could put two whole Mac Pros on a shelf in only 12Us of space?
Never let it be said that Cupertino lacks a sense of humor...
Two alternative suggestions for you:
1- Upgrade users to Lion for $29, unless they're already on Lion. Everything you need is then built-in (or already was). Dirt cheap vs. your time. Probably require users to do it first. I assume you're not supporting Windows 95?
2- Hire an admin with OSX skills, as you clearly lack them. Not to worry, there are still plenty of jobs for people who like to hack away at the Windows registry.
It's really nice stuff but then it costs a lot of money so it should be.
1996 calling, it wants it's mime back. I dare you to configure Dell, HP, and Leveno products so it will have similar specs to a Mac then compare prices. I did precisely that before ordering the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on. Of them the cheapest was a brand I hadn't heard of before, it was $50 cheaper. The Dell, and I tried Alienware which Dell bought out, cost about $200 more. HP's offering cost more too. Because I planned on installing Ubuntu to dual-boot I also checked out compatibility. The one thing that makes it more difficult to install Ubuntu is using EFI, the GUID Partition Table (GPT), and installing Ubuntu on an HFS+ formatted partition. I'll install Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) onto the internal HDD, Oops, there another problem I'll install Oneiric Ocelot (Ubuntu 11.10) onto a USB external drive which presents it's own problems.
What bothers me is that the OS isn't what it could be. It's better than Windows in my opinion but really I remember putting Snow Leopard on my Dell 1545 just for kicks.
That's your personal opinion, others love Snow Leopard. My MBP came with Tiger and it was about 4 months after Leopard came out before I upgraded. The only reason I did was because Java 6 would only run on Leopard, at least without a bunch of hacking. And as I was a member of Apple Developer Connection (ADC) Leopard was free. When Snow Leopard came out it took me a couple of months before buying it, heck it only cost $29. But it took a few more months before I actually installed it. Although Lion has been out for a while, released on 20 July 2011, I still have not bought or upgraded to it.
I want to like OS X but it's so hard to.
I do like OSX, what I have a harder tyme with is liking Apple. It makes, er designs, terrific hardware a programs great software. With the exception of the Mac though it only takes others ideas then releases its own products. And even with hardware Apple is falling behind. While consumer Macs have had more than one revision since the summer of 2010 the Mac Pro has not been upgraded. Try looking for a Sandy Bridge Mac Pro and you won't find one. One rumor has it Apple will Kill Mac Pros just like they did to the XServe. Since they did they've pushed shops to use Mac Minis for servers, but a Mini can't handle tasks the Pro has no problems with. Of course other rumors have it that Minis with Thunderbolt can have external graphics cards as well as storage attached enabling them to be used instead of Mac Pros. As it is now I'd like to get another MacBook Pro but I don't think I will buy any other Apple product.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Hopefully you got a chuckle. I only use that line when pointing out that someone tried to correct someone else and got it wrong.
Grammar mistakes don't really bother me, I make plenty and we usually know what the original poster means. It just bugs me when someone acts all high and mighty correcting an error and gets it wrong.
People have been wanting voice for years. I have used voice recognition 10+ years ago. It sucked. It's an option in Windows (I gave it an honest try a few times, and it was mostly unusable, as there was always too much background noise or such that I couldn't ever get to the level where dictation worked better than 50%). People have been wanting it for a long time. My 5 year old phone has voice dialing. People want voice. They knew they wanted voice. Everyone who's seen TNG and watched characters effortly ask the computer to do something wanted voice (and voiced my Majel as well). They know they don't want voice as done by anyone else previously, as "call home" worked less than 50% of the time for me, and calling "Nick" got my home number more than "home" ever did. But lots of people have used voice commands in some manner or another (or at least owned a device capable of it). Taking "old" ideas that failed from poor implementation previously and doing them right and selling the idea that Apple does it right is what they succeed at. They target wants that nobody else is addressing, and try to then convince people that it is what they were missing. Since voice was done so poorly before, people wanted it, but didn't really want it anymore, as it could be as bad as the last time they tried it.
Learn to love Alaska
No, what I am referring to is the minimize, maximize and close buttons that seem to be non-moveable in OS X despite being easily editable in nearly every WM for Linux and I believe there is a program or registry value you can use to move them in Windows.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I took the plunge in 2004 and replaced my PC for four years with a Mac.
I mostly use PCs now because I mostly use laptops now, and my current desktop runs Linux (it's just a server these days).
OS-wise?
I prefer Linux for my server goodies (unless I really want it locked-down hard, then it's FreeBSD all the way). I recently put Linux on my laptop (HDD crash, gave me all the excuse I needed to get rid of Windows on it, etc).
Sometimes, I miss using OSX: It gave me a slick-assed UI coupled with a nice and powerful terminal environment. It's efficient as hell. I can get good apps for it (and until recently, OSX or Windows were your only real choices for CG hobby work).
But...
OSX has its disadvantages (file/folder merging, anyone? And yes I know about ditto - it sucks. Also, a dual G5 tower makes an excellent (and literal) room-heater in the winter, but a lousy one in the summer). It has its advantages (e.g. running OSX 10.3 for six years straight without bit-rot or needing a re-install, and still having the latest apps to that time run just as snappy on it).
Linux has its disadvantages (for the love of all that is holy - WTF will it take to get a DECENT .pdf editor!?). It has its advantages (I can modify the unholy shit out of it to my tastes - BTW, I'm installing fluxbox on this thing when I get a few spare hours this week).
Windows has its disadvantages (...do I need to count them all? Really? That's like 3 hours of typing...) It has its advantages (you can get apps for anything in it, and they generally work if you need them to).
Long story short? The OS wars are pretty much over. Your OS is just about as exciting as the engine in your car. Nobody outside of a few hobbyists really give a shit anymore about what's under the hood, as long as it runs.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This is probably a big problem in big IT shops. They hire Windows experts by the truckload at a large discount. They don't need to know much, they just need the right certificates and be able to play politics (ie, don't rock the boat). So they end up with people who know all the right stuff about Windows that they learned in night school, they've been constantly bombarded with MS marketing literatures about the right solutions to use, etc. Ask them to do something with Macs or Linux or BSD and they're completely baffled, this is outside of their realm of comfort (not to mention the looks of horror when someone is using DOS or Windows 3.1 for legacy purposes).
To be fair they do learn a lot of Windows skills and are instantly able to take these skills to the next company they go to and instantly be productive. Learning about Macs does not help their lateral mobility that much.
It happens in management too, we had the only IT people who knew Macs well laid off despite a significant chunk of our company using Macs exclusively.
Of course Apple support is ludicrous as well. Bad hard drive means you literally take the machine to an Apple Store ($TM) and wait for a replacement, and Apple Stores ($TM) are not set up to deal with enterprise users and are more suited to trying to up-sell accessories.
Seriously, try one of Apple's products. It's not hard to see why they're so popular. And for Linux devs - try to make your stuff more like Apple's products.
How close can they make it to Apple's products before they get a letter from Apple's legal department to cease and desist because they infringed on Apple's perceived IP?
Hopefully you got a chuckle. I only use that line when pointing out that someone tried to correct someone else and got it wrong.
Apparently not only then...
Nice editing technique to create an out of context sentence fragment. I admire your technique.
So your assertion is that actors use computers in some way to create their performances? I guess I am ignorant.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Dude, the whole job of software is to "hide messy reality from the user", otherwise the user would still be doing everything by hand. We have a fantastic device that can do many millions of things faster than a human can do one. Don't get me wrong, Apple certainly errs on the side of over simplification and preventing power users from configuring what they want. But building in systems that permit users to avoid worrying about external(to them) complexities is nearly the whole point of what we do.
I also disagree with your statement that the "fallacy of equating an assumed incomprehensible complexity with uneeded complexity is what's killing growth in technology". On the other hand, I totally agree with your subsequent statements surrounding what Developers *should do*, however I see no evidence of the drain on growth in the market.
If there is a market (money) need for the power user UI, the market will eventually produce it barring severe ongoing shortage of qualified engineers. When there is a shortage of workers, they will pick to work on either the most exciting, or the most profitable targets.
Power-User UI is what you expect from internal tools. The software industry's infancy was basically *internal tools* packaged and dumped into the market. The fact that power-user UIs are disappearing (are they? -- at least in relative concentration vs simpleton UI) is a symptom of the maturation of the software industry, for maximizing breadth of reach. The unnecessary sharp edges of Power tools are what gets polished and removed as various products improve.
Physical analogy: Circular saws usually have a finger guard around the blade these days. The finger guard does sometimes get in the way of work. Is this a sign that the tool has been dumbed down? Or that the design was polished for market appeal? Internal tools get the job done at the expense of such polish. Published tools in a mature industry have exactly the sharp edges they need for the people they are selling to.
Gravity Sucks
Sorry to hear that the Ipad2 is useless to you. Is your unit still in good condition?
Can you send it to me? I would be happy to "dispose" of it for you.
I'd swap it for an Android tablet tomorrow if I could. I'm sick of Apple telling me how I can (and can't) use the product that I bought.
When I learned Apple would be releasing a tablet I was excited about getting one. But when the iPad was released my dreams were dashed. I imagined a 17" MacBook Pro with a built-in digitizer, like Wacom's. I guess the only way I'll get one is if I get a Mdbook Pro, which hasn't been released yet, I hire some one to make one, or I make my own. Since I don't have the money I guess the only tablet I'll get is an Android. Then I hope I can install OSX and Ubuntu on it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Apple products are somewhat ok if you don't test the boundaries or use them too creatively.
That's really sad... Apple's slogan used to be "Think Different."
Their product line used to cater to creative folks, and it brought them to the level of success they have today. It's a darn shame.
The Mac Pro is limited by Intel's release schedule. Since it uses the Xeon line, and not the Core i7 line, Apple is kind of stuck with whatever cpu's that Intel comes up with. If they were to release a new Mac Pro with Thunderbolt and USB3 on it (possibly due after IvyBridge), they'll probably sell a bunch due to pent-up demand.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Apple products are somewhat ok if you don't test the boundaries or use them too creatively. Otherwise all bets are off.
I haven't found anything I could do in Windows or in Ubuntu I can't do on a Mac. Hell I can install both Windows and Ubuntu, or other Linux distros, on my Mac. I've been doing prep work planning to install Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) on my internal HDD and Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) on an external drive. Tomorrow I plan to actually do the installations.
Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac. That is what task not what specific application. For an office suite I was using NeoOffice but now I use LibreOffice. For those who need it MS has MS Office for Macs. For development I have can use Xcode, Eclipse and Bluefish. Databases? I have choices there too. Graphic arts and photo editing? Many firms only use Macs for those. I have Photoshop Elements 10 installed on my Mac but I'm hoping to upgrade to Photoshop CS5.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Frankly business is small fry compared to the worldwide consumer electronics market
I will assume you meant that the "worldwide" business market is small fry compared to the worldwide consumer market. But I keep hearing this and nobody ever posts numbers to back it up. Do they exist? Perhaps I'm just naive, but I don't see how that's remotely possible. I could be convinced that the consumer market for computers is marginally larger than the business market due to the fact that a lot of households now have more than one PC/laptop. But "small fry"?
The consumers I know buy a PC/laptop and use it until it dies. While the majority of the medium to large businesses I work with are constantly refreshing their PCs and laptops (in chunks, not all at once). Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning the validity of focusing on the consumer market. It is clearly working for them. But how does that make the business market "small fry"?
Way to stick it to them! Obviously their ignorance and incompetence is keeping them from being a star like 'your shop'.
suicide death at foxconn apple factories is LOWER than at foxconn factories for Dell, HP, and others the NYTimes reports.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Is it really dumbing it down or spending just a few seconds thinking what other users want to do, and improving the interface to do it?
That's why GIMPShop exists? Because GIMP has a better interface that Photoshop?
Your product might be the best and most powerful in the whole world, but if no one can use it, what good does it do?
Thousands if not hundreds of thousands if not millions of people use Photoshop. How is that "no one can use it"? Can GIMP use and edit photos in 32 bits per colour channel? Don't bother answering I will. No it can't!!! The best GIMP can do is 8 bits per channel for a total of 24 bits. People, that is photographers and other artists have been asking for higher colour depths for years but will GIMP developers ever allow it? Again no. In 1998 Robin Rowe offered higher bit depths but GIMP devs refused to use it. So Robin forked GIMP and released FilmGIMP. It is now called CinePaint. And while it has 32 bit colour depths GIMP is still using only 8 bits.
Eight bit per colour channel is fine for the web, at least right now, but it seriously is lacking for professional print work.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But any app that's got the potential for enterprise use is going to be supplied by the company in a form that is accessible by the enterprise.
This is still a problem for small to medium sized businesses, who may only have need for a small handful of one-off things. I'm feeling the same problem with the 5 or so iPads in our environment (although, I'm not sure there is a good solution on the Android side either, but I've been looking into the Lenovo ThinkPad tablets). Anyway, I have to say I'm not sold on the process they use from the IT side...then again, trying to get VPN to work on the "just works" Macs made me want to jump off the roof. How is it the "too complicated" Windows was so much easier to do that on when Mac has the client built right in? So, maybe I'm not the best person to judge Apple objectively.
RTFA is Known to the State of California to cause cancer.
Or lets say I want a minor customization, putting the window buttons on the left side like most people are used to.
Should I assume you mean right? I don't know many people outside of Mac users who are used to them on the left, and even some of them hate that.
RTFA is Known to the State of California to cause cancer.
OS X 10.5 and later on Intel is official Open-Group-certified UNIX. It's not "built on top of UNIX", it is UNIX.
Steve Jobs kick my dog!
We report to our boss, not yours, this includes every time a user refuses to do something we tell them to do.
It's all a big laugh until your boss, or your boss' boss, gets an iPhone. Then comes the knock on the IT office's door.
Actually, the Boss got Android.
Any IT senior I've known who uses Apple doesn't stay in that position very long. Nor do they use their personal devices to set company policy. Yes I know the Dilbert myths, but in reality that doesn't happen. All I have to do is point out the cost of operating Apple products and whatever complaints the boss has disappears quickly.
I'm sorry to have to destroy the myth for you, but Apple really has no place in the enterprise despite the attempts of fanboys to delude others otherwise.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Well, I see it this way: there are two basic kinds of people hunters and gatherers. This is a broad generalization as we all do some of both but it works as a rough behaviour categorisation.
/. This board has a much higher than average hunter population.
Apple does great with a gatherer since they show you something that is nice and pretty and the gatherer takes it. The hunter on the other hand has a very good idea of what they are looking for and for these people Apple usually is not a great fit. I see the same sort of thing when I go shopping (malls are made for gatherers, outside entrance stores are made for hunters). Mind you this is not to say gatherers are bad and hunters are good or the other way around just that they have different behaviour. If you know what you want Apple is not likely to be your choice since it has little flex to meet those criteria. If, however, you don't know what you want Apple presents a good set of functionality in a pretty package (this is not being derogative but appearance does matter more when gathering in general). This is a very simplified view but it does seem to hold up in general to what I have observed. Apple is fortunate as there seems to be a lot of gatherers out there. I also think that is why they are not so popular on
Just my observation
I probably know more about computers than your typical Slashdot geek.
So you're a kernel programmer who build AI neural networks in your spare time?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wait, What??
What do Actors create?
I was actually a fairly big fan of Apple (except for the one button mouse & price tag) and normally used them rather than the Windows machines. UNTIL I spent about 4 months with 3 different iPhone 4/4Ss and had to do support for VIPs. For me, the iPhone is a POS.
As a "phone" is just sucks. Odd rectangle, poor speaker (thou mic is good), poor contacts interface, poor call logging, and poor battery life. Excellent screen, but lots of lost real estate. As a camera, not bad. As a smartphone, extremely limiting. Over simplified desktop, single task oriented, no widgets, and I couldn't believe that they didn't have the pull down before iOS 5. As a net surfer, horrible. Safari is extremely single task oriented in a world of multi-tabbing (thou Dolphin is a nice fill in). Email is 5 years back too with poor setting options (ex: encryption, load images), and attachments handling. Again, the entire system is designed with a "Do one thing at a time" mentality, which is great for initial users, but extremely limiting once you get used to it (1+ month). And the software quality/reliability... great for a desktop, but poor for a phone. iTunes on Windows is also poor (Mac edition works great).
Apple as a vendor is just simply arrogant and poor at partnering. My company is as big as GE and until we had multiple countries complaining about bugs in the iPhone, we didn't even get a "we are looking into it" response from Apple. They just acted like the bugs didn't exist. And I thought MS and Oracle were bad. At least the later have armies of barely useful consultants where one might know the temporary work around.
What rocks about the iPhone is it is an excellent music player, and the apps ecosystem is very well done. But the former doesn't need a full fledged iPhone and the later doesn't work well in an enterprise setting.
Don't get me wrong, I think the iPhone is better than most out there (alts: the Atrix 2, Galaxy S 2, Xperia X10), but it is far from what I would expect from Apple's normal quality. I already have requests to switch back to BBs after a month (of course) cause as our CEO told me "I just kind of need it to work all the time." Odd, you would think he was talking about his Windows laptop and wanting a Mac.
Oh please. Checkpoint/Pointsec works perfectly fine on OSX for full disk encryption. All the other stuff you mentioned was just because you're unfamiliar with it. Well, guess what, if you're unfamiliar with something, and you complain it doesn't work well... what was that old saying about a workman blaming his tools again?
I haven't touched 10.5 for quite some time now, but I know 10.6 and 10.7 supports VPN natively (it's even called Cisco VPN for god's sake), so why install a 3rd party client?!?!
My Macbook pro works perfectly fine in my company of 6000 people, and is the first Mac on the network that IT bought. My boss have never used a Mac before in his life, and was vehemently against Macs being introduced onto the network a year ago, is now using a MacBook Air as his primary machine (his office doesn't even have a windows box any more!), and on top of that, bought 3 more Macbook Airs for his wife and 2 daughters within the past 6 months!
Macs are different from Linux and Linux is different from Windows, and XP is different from Vista and Win8. You just have to understand they're not the same.
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Role-Constantin-Stanislavski/dp/0878309810/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328073281&sr=1-1
Mac OS X has built-in encryption (called File Vault), built-in VPN (managed in the network control panel), and one-click VPN configuration files for your users to click on. A tool called Automator which surprise automates things even if you don't know applescript. If you don't give them administrator access, most things are locked down anyway. --Sam P.S It is not quite as good as windows policies.
and I don't see how the Registry is all that much worse than the myriad forms of preferences on your typical Unix system.
Simulate a disk failure by changing two bytes randomly, one in the registry blob, the other on the disk where /etc lives.
On windows you now can not boot even into safe mode to fix it.
You must now lay hands upon the system physically. If it's a coloed server, enjoy your flight!
At best you can boot from alternate media and copy your backup registry blobs over. Of course the last couple apps you installed will now be missing from add/remove programs, with no way to safely uninstall the crap it littered into the system32 folder. Can't reinstall either because the installer thinks it's there. Can't run uninstall because it doesn't see the registry entry.
After playing with that mess, you can boot into windows again with 'only' a long period of downtime.
At worse your backup registry files are 6+ months old and nothing shy of a reinstall/reimage will get things working again.
On unix you just made one single program not run on boot, and you open it in one of a billion simple text editors (even vi) to find the problem in the config, conveniently named after the program that won't start. You'll see the two odd bytes wrong. Hit delete twice and replace with what should have been there. Restart service (On your already running in every other way system). Close your SSH window and let it be.
That's why the registry is worse.
No, it's not in good condition, did I mention fragile?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I'm not a google employee, but I'd be curious to know what made you think I was. Or did you just hope to discount my post for long enough for most of the interest to wain, apple shill?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Users want a controlled market place with safe apps. And guess what, they do.
Really? I don't know anyone who wants a company telling them what programs they can and cannot run on their computer.
The general market is quite happy with Apple.
Well that explains Apple's almost non-existent desktop / laptop market share, their stagnant phone market share, and their rapidly falling tablet market share.
trying to convince the user that they asked for red but got blue, and they really wanted the blue all the time and were confused previously
You work as a used car salesman, don't you? Someone walks in and says they want a Mustang and you spend hours BS-ing them about how they REALLY want this old DeVille instead and that they really wanted it all along but only wanted a Mustang because they were too stupid to know that they wanted a DeVile.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
They can make it up with volume, apparently...
If Apple was smart, they'd contract with M$ to develop solutions for AD... wait, what am I saying .. never mind
Lets try this again. Apple needs to build a LDAP compliant network Management server that plugs into AD network and just blend in, and manages all the iDevices for Enterprise. It would do even better if said server would also allow AD like policies on managed Macs. Perhaps Apple should consider acquiring Dell just to get KACE and port it to an iServer of some sort.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I don't think anyone ever said iOS or Macs are for everybody. If your usage and their usability matches, great, if not, go get something else. Pretty simple concept.
Okay, I'll bite. I think he meant "Cue fanboy," in the way that a director on set would say "Cue woman in red dress." You could also queue your fanboys.
Or, we could all be mistaken and he could be trying and failing to type in Spanish (to keep this on topic, one thing that Macs have always done far more easily than their counterparts running other operating systems is allow easy typing of accent characters). "Qué fanboy?" would be appropriate in this case also. Perhaps he was indicating that he expected a fanboy remark, and was surprised to see facts (on Slashdot!) causing him to remark "What fanboy? I don't see no stinkin' fanboy!"
London Perlmongers moved almost enmass to Macbooks (and PowerBooks before that). Hardcore enough for you?
You forgot the "Lame" comment at the end ...
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm not a google employee, but I'd be curious to know what made you think I was.
I took you at your word. That may have been a mistake.
My Doid X has voice commands. It isn't Suri, but it does what I need it to do. Suri, from everyone that I know with a 4S, is just a lame gimmick that needs work.
Here is a typical "show and tell" of someone showing me Suri: "Suri, what kind of underwear are you using" .. I don't even want to know.
Me: Walks away
5 different people used similar lame "question" to show how "cute" Suri was. They didn't even bother trying to do something they normally would need to do, that my phone doesn't do. Nothing. The best try was "find Starbucks" which my phone did fine too.
I'm sure that Suri does things that my phone can't, but I haven't seen it do it any better.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Again, could you clarify what you're talking about? I don't recall making the claim of being a Google employee. I do make a humorous post once in a while, but it's not usually anything subtle that I'd expect someone to mistake in that way.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Apple cancelled the X-Serve, and it pissed a bunch of us off, but to be honest, Apple abandoned the server market before I started there in 2003. Many people tried in the intervening years to get Apple interested in building a server class OS, and there was never any interest by management, because, frankly, the market just wasn't there.
Apple in the enterprise these days is about individual devices, with back end services running mostly on Linux, and mostly on Dell and similar hardware. They are about the UI and the very nice devices that present that UI between the back end and the human at the device. The point of sale system in Apple stores is one great example of how well this works.
Frankly, the OP sounded like sour grapes: they paid to got to an Apple-themed show, MacIT, put on by IDG, with not a single Apple speaker, and not supported by Apple since Steve decided MacWorld wasn't relevant ...and immediately following that same MacWorld, another IDG show that also didn't have a single Apple speaker or even booth.
I can understand IDG putting on the show, don't get me wrong; reflected glory can be as useful as the real thing when you are trying to put on a show for people who want a show. It'd be great if the post-Steve Apple decided to participate a bit more at one or both of them, instead of letting non-information leave a bad taste in people's mouths..
But an IDG MacWorld with no real Apple participation isn't going to be able to communicate Apple information better than an Apple sponsored WWDC. And maybe an Apple sponsored WWDC isn't going to be much better, without Steve to take the stage.
But then the writer wondered why people were unable to answer questions about enterprise deployment for Apple products. The answer is that obviously, they were not trained to be able to do so, and in the cases where the people knew what they were talking about, they were unable to deliver the Apple message effectively or communicate it clearly, even if it weren't palatable.
The answer they were looking for according to the article? http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf There it is: How to run the software you use to deploy the same set of applications, certificates, and security profiles to a bunch of iPods, iPhones, and iPads. MacBook Air and iMacs and MacPros? Those are just desktop machines and laptops; very pretty ones. Manage them like any other.
-- Terry
Undoing some mods posting this... but my hackles are a bit raised...
And the games are better on a $200 console than either of those.
How so? Console games are lagging pretty far behind PC games these days thanks to running on ancient hardware. My middling video card (ATI 5770, bought for less than $100 a little under two years ago) blows the GPUs in the 360 and PS3 out of the water. I can play at a decent FOV, I can have weapon models that take up less than half the screen, I can play at a decent frame rate, and generally my games don't look like crap. Furthermore, I get the magic ability to mod my game, and tweak my controls to my liking, and I don't have to waste money on a single tasking bit of hardware that will end up sitting unused in a corner 90% of the time. Also, PC games actually go on sale... its amazing.
I actually can't think of any bonus that consoles have, for the computer literate, at least. I have the money to buy any console I want, and have been tempted from time to time, but I can never actually come up with a reason to do so. Every console game I've wanted to play has been ported to PC, with generally higher quality. My middle of the road PC can out perform every console out there. I haven't had any issues running games, and have never had a "red ring of death", or my computer maker (me) pull features out from under me, or artificially restrict my access to my property.
Sure, there are genres of games that generally work better on consoles, like racing games and fighting games; but I generally don't enjoy them enough to warrant $200+, plus the cost of games.
So, how are consoles better than PCs for gaming?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
with all of that, i just have to ask, does your precious apple have a 'command line'? do you even know how to find it, or did they 'cut you off' from your freedom, and your human dignity? i just have to ask you, if you hit ctrl-alt-t on a mac, what happens? do mac users even know there is a command called 'ls'?
Er... OS X has a command line, and its almost as full featured as the ones in Linux and BSD (OS X sitting on top of a modified Unix kernel and all). Back when I pretty much exclusively used Macs I used Quicksilver with a plug in that allowed me to input terminal commands via a quick shortcut (i.e. [cmd]-[space] "ls") It was amazing, and so far there is no alternative to it on any other OS (grr... Windows or Linux needs Quicksilver, Adium, TextMate, and OmniOutliner; the only things I miss ab out OS X was the quality of the 3rd party software).
I know, you might have been being sarcastic. It is the internet, there is no way to tell sarcasm from ignorance.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
"Because they (Apple) have done much larger good for general computing than Linux and even Windows have ever done."
I will not even begin to explain why this is probably the dumbest statement I have ever read. I began working in computers before Microsoft was a company, and in all my years I cannot think of a SINGLE thing that Apple has "created". But they have managed to get a lot of very dumb people to buy into an idea which ties them to a restrictive platform at the expense of every single good programmer and their ability to improve on existing technology. Now they will attempt to get businesses to give up their employee assets and allow Apple to know and control every facet of the workplace. Yep, Brave New World.
You must be a blast at parties.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
You work as a used car salesman, don't you? Someone walks in and says they want a Mustang and you spend hours BS-ing them about how they REALLY want this old DeVille instead and that they really wanted it all along but only wanted a Mustang because they were too stupid to know that they wanted a DeVile.
No, that's completely different. That's not based on actual studies and such that determined that people who ask fro a DeVille actually prefer Mustangs. Instead, that's fraud where the salesman lies to sell whatever makes him the most money. Sounds more like you hate Apple and will make up whatever shit you think best insults Apple or anyone who doesn't join you in insulting them.
Really? I don't know anyone who wants a company telling them what programs they can and cannot run on their computer.
I think you are lying. People love consoles, often in favor of PCs. You are honestly asserting that you know nobody who owns a console. I don't believe you. I think you are lying to insult Apple. And failing miserably at it.
Learn to love Alaska
On the other hand... how many things do you see out there that you can drop an iPhone into, versus how many things you can drop an Android phone into? The huge number of different form factors of Android phones works against it here. You'll never find, say, a toy car that lets you plug your Android phone into it to work as a webcam so you can have a driver's-eye view. Lack of customization has its advantages.
iPad1s seems to run around $350-400. And will do surprising amounts of office work. I can't get my Real Work done on mine because I'm an artist, and there's nothing on the iPad yet that holds a candle to Illustrator, but people whose dayjob is writing text can do just fine on an iPad plus an Bluetooth keyboard. I do a lot of my email and web on my iPad these days.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Growing up in the 80's, almost everyone I knew that had a computer, had a C64. One friend had a TRS-80, and one other had a TI-99. The only place I ever saw an Apple II as a kid was in the classroom. It was archaic looking compared to the Commodore at the time.
I had a ZX81, and later a Spectrum. A friend had a Vic 20 for a while. My brother in law had a BBC right up to the early 90s. When he got an Apricot, and later a succession of PCs.
Another friend's dad had an Apple for business use. Not sure which one. And that was the first Apple I ever saw. Around 1982-3..
Fast forward a few years to 1989, and I played around with a Mac at a training site, where there was one Mac for playing with, and the PCs for serious work. Someone donated it I think.
I have yet to see my third Apple computer outside a shop.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Why are you comparing your $1k budget rig to a machine released in June 2003 (We got two brand new G5 towers the week they came out)
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Apple was all but dead when computers and, more importantly, the Internet started getting very popular. Apple hasn't done anything for computing other than hold it back.
Nearly every mobile phone had voice command support before Apple started making mobile phones.
Ive used various linux systems for the past 6 or so years, rolled my own live cd (buntu based, but with a bunch of boot script tweaks, and stuff ripped from various one-off distros), supported solaris servers, supported BSD systems (pfsense, freebsd)-- and I DONT just mean the web-GUIs, etc etc. A lot of the stuff I have done has tended to be outside the box (or webGUI), so I have a pretty decent experience with the CLI.
I wouldnt call myself expert, and there are a good many commands I dont know, but generally if I come across a problem I can find a solution. I did manage to work out a semi-working automation script for OSX, but there were several things that just couldnt be done (in contrast with the linux boxes Ive dealt with, where it could). Im not really sure what you want in the way of proof, im sure you wouldnt find whatever I offered satisfactory (so Im not sure why you asked).
And really, whether im an expert or not doesnt address the woeful VPN and encryption support on OSX. Glad to hear they have better support in 10.7, not impressed that the cisco client isnt working, and definately not impressed that Truecrypt doesnt work from boot. Dont really care whose fault it is, either.
Perl? You're kidding, right.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
He got his chinese sweatshot workers jumping to their deaths in herds.
The same factory your M$ Xbox is made?
I wasnt aware that bog-standard *nix had an /Applications directory, or that it pushed "defaults" as "THE" way to automate system preference changes.
As parent said, a lot of those assumptions go straight out the window with OSX. Last I checked, neither Linux nor BSD supported booting off of HFS+ out of the box.
What really sucks is that there doesnt seem to be an equivalent to something like AutoIt for automating GUI interaction. There are some built in apps, but they seem to have spotty support and dont really give full GUI control. Thats the thing that REALLY got on my nerves-- with AutoIT, I can literally automate any task, with enough patience. With OSX, thats just not true.
We didnt want home folder encryption, we wanted whole disk encryption. Theres a gigantic security difference, especially when it comes to stuff like temporary log files and paging files.
And yes, the registry is less arcane than plist files, because the registry is fully documented. Google "how to change wallpaper registry" for example, see how many zillion hits you get. I did look at automator, and hours of documentation, and it wasnt sufficient for what we needed to do.
Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac.
How about virtualization? How about terminal services? How about configuration management?
I was wondering about Suri too.... when it came out, everyone was all excited about it... and I was standing there thinking, "but, my Android phone has had something similar for a looooooong time".
The voice recognition on my Android is actually pretty amazing. OK, it doesn't speak the results back at me, but I can use voice to do language translations, websearches, dictate SMS messages and a million other things... and as long as I speak clearly it gets it right every time, even with background noises. Yet.. along comes Apple saying "Look what we invented!!" while showing something that everyone else has had for months/years already, and then getting all the credit for inventing the new idea/technology.
Wait, its someone elses issue that 10.5 OSX doesnt support a bog standard IPSEC connection? What world do you live in?
That full disk encryption is for Lion, which was a whopping 5% of our Mac userbase. Call me when theres a solution for Leopard or Snow Leopard. And the idea that we should implement different solutions for our different platforms is absolutely absurd, and demonstrates the issue I was talking about.
I dont remember the full details on the certificate, the import went fine on the newer OSes but not on older. I believe it was a trusted root cert that we were trying to import to the system store, and it the commands simply werent fully implemented on the older OSX (10.4,10.5?)-- I might be misremembering.
The defaults command is documented; but that site is incomplete. For example, how would i disable sleep mode with defaults? That particular setting doesnt seem to be documented, and is a pretty big security hazard if you are using any kind of encrypted containers. Or how would i disable network sharing? How would we completely lock the firewall down? Those do not seem to be supported.
You can call it ignorance, but it isnt terribly impressive when your example of "well documented" is a third party site that DOESNT document the things we need to do. Why no apple.com link?
No, they really aren't.
Can you explain to me why the registry is worse than gconf or defaults? Thanks in advance.
A friend of mine bought a refurb Dell because of the last update to MacOS. Apple breaking MacOS even more than it already was pushed him to put his Appple computer into the closet and buy a Dell.
Oh and btw Lion was brand new last summer. Its wonderful that FDE finally makes it onto the scene 10 days before our work but thats not exactly impressive and doesnt really answer the question of securing the other 95% of our mac computers-- unless we should have yet another difference between the platforms?
No, most "creators" don't, actually.
Face it, Apple's desire to move into the enterprise space is about on par with most people's desire to have unprotected anal sex with someone who's not only HIV positive, but has full-blown, late-stage AIDS.
Apple simply doesn't have the mindset or resources to take on enterprise computing.
With Joe SingleUser and Bob SmallBusiness, if something doesn't break Apple's way, or they feel that it's not in their economic best interests, they can bury the project with little to no repercussions.
With enterprise computing, large chunks of money and contracts with performance clauses would place far FAR greater demands on Apple to actually deliver. And, if they couldn't, killing the project is nearly impossible without some form of highly visible financial harm to the company.
Additionally, while lots of money IS coming in, the margins are FAR lower than Apple's consumer presence. Apple's shareholders want their fat dividend checks.
The only areas where Apple fits into business are places they're already slam-dunk entries. Content production and the like.
That's without even getting into the reality of real IT groups responding to pushes to transition their business to Apple almost universally going something like this:
*GUFFAW*
"Oh! You were serious?"
*Insane Laughter*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Because consumers are frankly destructive little shits dude. that corporate machine isn't as likely to have the dog use it as a chew toy, have little Suzy knock it off the table, have dumbass Dennis leave it plugged into a straight outlet during a storm, all of these things i see fairly often. And many of the SMBs I know have actually slowed down on hardware refreshes as they see no point to get rid of a perfectly working multicore for another multicore. For the vast majority of business uses a circa 2006 Pentium D with 2gb of RAM is frankly "good enough" because they are actually doing work on the things, not gaming or playing HD video. Now fortune 500 is a totally different beast, but then again that's a lot smaller market than worldwide consumers friend. But those "supercorps" tend to stick with a single vendor and buy bog standard workstations, not the best money selling those.
So I can tell you even with my little shop I see on average 3 times the business from a home user than I do a corporate, they just don't break shit like the home users do.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
We supported XP vanilla through Win7 x64. We automated things with WPIW, and it wasnt really an issue at all. Updates were a breeze to do (admittedly they were on OSX as well, though hillariously enough they took longer on OSX).
So yes, for the record, we supported 10 years of Windows OSes with less trouble than 5 years of Mac OSes.
I blame apple for not supporting IPsec in a 5 year old OS. Should I be blaming someone else for that?
it is not a good idea to hide the complexity of a task when the task is complex. simple assumptions can be expressed in the form of sane defaults, templates, or 'wizards', but that's not what apple does.
I didn't say drain on the market. I said it's killing growth in technology. I meant innovation/new ideas/new capabilities.
the issue is that the terms are slipping.. since when is a windows 95 styled desktop a power user interface? what replaced it? huge icons inside dropshadowed boxes, limited multitasking, and no filesystem management. hell even things like quitting applications to save battery power are apparently 'power user' capabilities now. brilliant! it's dosshell with pretty graphics. what you call 'maturation' I call slipping back to childhood...or maybe a mid life crisis.. those 'sharp edges' are there because they reflect the realities of whatever processes are involved in the task the program was written for. now, killing unneeded functionality is very different from the claim that apple devices represent new processes that don't require those sharp edges.
Both. the 'market appeal' being that most people are too stupid to keep their fucking fingers away from a spinning blade. ie they can't be bothered to use it properly. the net result is that people who bought the saw with the guard will now never be able to do the things the unguarded saw allows them to. now if these people show up at their employment and demand that they be allowed to use their guarded saws when the work requires more flexibility than that and/or the blades or power requirements are different.... this analogy kinda sucks because we're not talking about risk to life and limb (in most cases) here. we're talking about fitness for a task as well as investment in future capabilities, in both software and user. this requires a learning curve at least somewhat higher than today's kludged speak'n'math interfaces to complex problems.
Most machines on Leopard arent gonna support Lion. Good luck convincing users that its a good thing that they need to purchase a new, $1000 macbook to run Lion.
Its super clever of you to imply that all I know is Windows; obviously its not possible for someone to have expertise in both *nix and Windows, without being enamored of OSX's failings.
First, you should have standardized the machines and OSs.
Not possible. These were not our machines, and we were volunteers.
On VPNs, you sent everyone to use Cisco VPN by default. This is what Windows users do, this is what you do Macs. You don't futz with multiple solutions for no reason.
As stated, OSX Lion did not support the Cisco client, and OSX Leopard required it (no IPsec support).
Set the two solutions up we did, but it added extra complexity to training the users. We couldnt just say "make sure you have a lock symbol by the clock", since for half the systems it would not be there. It also complicates auditing, etc.
Filevault has been around in OS X since 10.3. and in 10.7 supported full disk encryption.
But it did not support it in 10.5, or 10.6, which made up the vast majority of our userbase. Im not terribly impressed that theyre just adding this, and that until the majority of our userbase is on 10.7 we cannot use it either.
I'd bet money you had problems because you clearly don't know what you were doing on the macs, because anything you listed would not have been a problem to a knowledgeable mac admin a year ago.
Fair enough; I would be greatful if you could kindly inform me how to script disabling Sleep mode, turning off all forms of network sharing, remote access, bonjour, etc, and enabling the firewall.
Apple doesn't do studies. There has been a lot about Apple's approach to innovation and product development lately. We have all read the bits from Jobs about his philosophy on things. He had clearly stated that the user doesn't know what they want and that Apple does. It's 3:30am here... I'm not going to waste minutes googling to find links to which demonstrate what I know I have read before. Apple doesn't do studies.
Let's just be clear on what people are saying about Apple and what they are not saying. People are saying that Apple's approach to controling the user experience is a poison to user choice and user freedom. What people are not saying is that Apple's approach makes them unsuccessful or unpopular. What people are saying is that, at least in the personal computer/business computer market, Apple has always been self-limiting. Apple will not play to the expectations of others whether they are individuals or businesses. It's not that they cannot. It's that they will not. It is their philosophy and their strategy.
In a way, I applaud that approach. They are not, at least in this respect, the vicious carnivors we see in corporations everywhere else who use "growth" as a metric of success. Apple knows their PC market is saturated and will not grow. They seem okay with that. Meanwhile, all others seem to think that if they are not destroying others, they are not getting ahead or making enough money.
Of course, Apple's approach to the mobile market is completely vicious and carnivorous... they see all other players in the market they feel they created and seek to destroy them.
Apple is unmistakeably territorial. Sometimes there are territories it would rather not exist in and others they believe they own.
Simulate a disk failure by changing two bytes randomly, one in the registry blob, the other on the disk where /etc lives.
On windows you now can not boot even into safe mode to fix it.
You must now lay hands upon the system physically. If it's a coloed server, enjoy your flight!
I wasnt aware *nix systems could boot with a corrupted fstab or grub.conf. Silly me.
And it seems to me if it was colo'd youd be using KVM-over-IP or similar, if not running on ESX.
Here is my case. I switched from Windows to Linux. I also own an iPad, and iPhone, and I own an Android phone and Honeycomb tablet. The Android stuff is crap. It really is. The iPhone and iPad are much much better.
But back to the story. So I switched to Linux on the desktop. I needed a new notebook, and thus looked around for the best deal. It ended up being a MacBook Air since the Windows counterparts were nearly the same in price I wanted an OSX for its Unix. I don't regret any of my purchases. I even like OSX...
BUT... This is the big BUT... OSX has some real issues...
Trackpad: With Lion what a piece of kaka! I mean come on I am doing finger contortions trying to get things straight. I keep getting told, "once you get the hang of this it is so smooth and silky.." Really? I actually think a mouse, and in particular a Mighty Mouse is pretty good!!!!
User rename: I don't want Joe Smith... My username is joesmith... Whenever I flip into root mode using sudo the dialog box keeps coming up with my real name instead of my logged in name. Sorry, but that will not work!
File Explorer: Oh you have got to be kidding me on Finder as being the best way to navigate a hard disk! I often need to do some exploring, and the likes. Wow it is such a royal pain in the arse! And don't even get me going on copy, paste, cut...
Widget desktop: I by accident click on one widget once too often. So I thought to delete a widget from the desktop you select it and hit delete. Oh wait NO DELETE KEY! Ok, right click? Oh wait using the trackpad! Well I plugged in my mouse hoping for a delete, and learned there is no way to delete a widget. The solution, and I am not kidding here is to unselect the widget from the list, which deletes all, and then single click it to add a new one again. ROTFL! Come on Apple!
I am not dissing Apple and thinking it is crap. I rather like my OSX air. It is a nice piece of hardware and software. Truly is! But what gets me right now are the fan boys that every feature Apple produces no matter how good or bad is some great inspiration on productivity! I say bull crap! Some things are crap and the sooner we start talking about the sooner I can get back to work!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I should have clarified-- the single Linux system was a PITA because it was one off, and because we couldnt plan for it in advance, not because it was terribly difficult to secure. I just had to secure another one, and the biggest pain about it was having to reinstall the system to get the full disk encryption into place; everything else was pretty quick and easy.
Apple products are fun toys, but not for serious work unless that work can be done though a web interface or with office 200x. The walled garden approach means these things can't be adapted to my users needs, and that's a show stopper.
Windows sucks so bad I'd love to use something else but that something else isn't mac. All my technical users have Linux workstations, they love having an OS they can script on.
I tried Mac. They suck.
We thank you for your informed, reasoned, and thorough commentary.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I call it dumbing down. It gives me a nearly irresistable urge to break Apple products in two on the edge of a table.
Have you talked to someone about your anger problems?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
'more accessible' is just a new speak term for "hide messy reality from user". this is not more accessible, it's LESS.
I bet you wish cars still had hand cranks, manual chokes, and on the fly, manual advance adjustment.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I think the OP was saying it's possible to google for just about anything windows related and get useful information on what part of the registry you should change and what that change does. He was not saying the windows registry was a good thing, just that it's not too hard to get information on it.
Sadly a lot of this information doesn't come from Microsoft themselves but it's useful reference all the same.
Then how do I upgrade my 150 Snow Leopard licences to Lion. I can't buy Lion from anywhere but the app store and I can only buy 1 copy per machine. Do I need to open 150 app store accounts or do I download it once and then install it on all of the 150 Macs. Who do I pay for the 150 licences or do I just not pay for them and hope that Apple never audits work.
defaults settings are well documented. http://secrets.blacktree.com/
Oh, the irony!
What are you trying to automate? I use cron a fair bit on both Linux and OS X.
I have an iPad 2. I'd swap it for an Android tablet tomorrow if I could. I'm sick of Apple telling me how I can (and can't) use the product that I bought.
Then do it. Why did you buy an iPad? It's no secret that iPads are "closed". This speaks more to your poor judgement in determining your needs before you buy something. How is your poor judgement Apple's fault?
Any IT senior I've known who uses Apple doesn't stay in that position very long. Nor do they use their personal devices to set company policy. Yes I know the Dilbert myths, but in reality that doesn't happen. All I have to do is point out the cost of operating Apple products and whatever complaints the boss has disappears quickly.
You're assuming that the IT senior can tell the rest of the organization what to do. That's most certainly not universally true; some organizations (i.e., all the universities I know) devolve budgets in such a way that central IT has very little power in this area, and great heterogeneity results. Servers are usually Linux, but with a smattering of other platforms, desktops are mostly Windows, and laptops are dominated by OSX though with a fair number of Windows and Linux installations too. (Laptops are important in the university sector because so many people have to travel for work.)
The real key to success in this mess is to ensure that all important services aren't locked to particular platforms; having interfaces that conform to standards (what a great many people have long been arguing for) makes this (relatively) easy.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
And THIS is where you are wrong. You are forcing apple on how to do things whereas apple must tell you how to do said things. If said things cannot be done on apple, it means no proper way has been invented yet to implement said things and you should reconsider doing said things at all. Until of course said things are presented by apple in an new cool way, then your teen daughter will have vpn client on her iphone and the world will be a better place. Apple fanboi
No, it's not in good condition, did I mention fragile?
Be specific. Is it a broken display? That's about the only complaint I have ever heard about iPads/iPhones being fragile and quite frankly if one buys a device that expensive and doesn't put it in a proper protective case, a broken screen is one's own fault. The only other complaints I have heard are the occasional flaky button and sometimes they'll stop charging and syncing with a PC but neither of those faults are that unusual with other mobile devices. I know a guy who repairs iPads so if you don't want it I'll join the queue of people who'd be happy to "dispose" of it for you.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Most software is over-designed with features and options. 95% of users (not techies) are much happier having a simpler interface that easier to learn and use.
It is *very* difficult to hide complexity in software...most techies and designers usually avoid the problem by just adding options, abstraction layers, and complexity (this includes things like file systems, disk formats, encryption, and power saving options). Providing something functional yet simple that will still appeal the the majority is not easy.
Apple usually gets this right (not always), which is why they generally make great consumer devices. It does not appeal to technologists or the enterprise though, because they usually want more options, extensibility, or customization.
This trend happens in everything. A Model T ford exposed its implantation to a far greater extent to the driver. But most people these days just get in a car with very little of its deeper implementation or working exposed. Most people dont drive cars that they customize (although "commercial" or "trade" versions are usually still available for those that do). Apple devices are consumer devices. Dont expect from them all the same things you get from Linux or Windows.
OSX is a UNIX the same way Windows NT4 with Interix installed was a UNIX.
I choose to change the bytes that define /etc as a directory.
Untrue. You can boot to last known good, which restores the most recent back of the registry (taken after every successful boot).
And when he visited Xerox Parc, he stole a box of raisins.
Performances.
Better in that MP cheating is far less prevalent.
Also, SSX is PS3 only.
Other than that, fuck that shit. I have all 3 current gen consoles, and they're barely getting a look in. If a game is available on the PC, I'll never get the console version.
Ever tried "opting out" out of using the "nouveau" driver in preference for legacy nvidia driver blobs with Fedora 16? Spent three weeks trying to figure out why it wasn't working. Couldn't understand why removing one video driver would insist on removing the entire X-windows system. Fortunately, Ubuntu saved the day...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Maybe try Automator? It's included with OS X.
A quick rule of thumb:
If the company you work for is large enough to have an "IT Department", then the company you work for is too large, period. It's time to go find a job in a smaller company.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
We're glad you've come here. We've been worried about you lately and want to talk to you about getting help....
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Can you even buy a "full"-version of OSX outside the Mac App Store now? I thought the USB-stick they're selling is just some "upgrade"-thing.
While this is true, it doesn't take policies and politics into account. We have three acceptable options that have been approved. WIndows Server, Fedora (I have to keep my Debian projects in my cubicle) and OS X Server. *BSD is not welcome to the party.
I can also virtualize OS X Server and migrate said image to real iron -- but licensing doesn't allow for it and the higher seats insist on remaining compliant.
#SickNotWeak
Apple doesn't give dividends.
I tried voice control on my Nokia. It was SHIT. Siri is far more advanced, and not only does it understand voice commands, it also understand context and hooks into various services on the phone, rather than simple number dialling.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
And none of them actually worked.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Oh please. Of all the *nixes I have used (and I'm including SCO Openserver, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and AIX) every single one has a different way of setting configuration changes. /Applications is just another directory, like /opt on a sun box or /usr/local/ on a FreeBSD or Slackware box.
If you can't deal with that then give up your IT job and go back to flipping burgers at macdonalds.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I wish my company was "circling the drain" to the tune to $30B profit in a year. That would be a horrible downward spiral for my stock options.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
If you haven't seen them positioning Mac as a content creation platform, and iOS as a content consumption platform, you're not paying attention.
The two lines compliment each other, and neither is going away any time soon.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I am a geek with good understanding about Linux. I probably know more about computers than your typical Slashdot geek.
if you know so much about Linux, why is this in one if your four only posts on slashdot:
Either tell me what I gain from using Linux, or I'm not even going to try it.
and if you have only four posts how do you know enough about this community to say that you know more than 'your typical Slashdot geek'
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
You haven't looked into automator, or applescript then.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
More often than not, they end up with chumps who couldn't find the cause of a problem (Windows, or otherwise) if it bit them in the face.
In my experience, the unix admin typically ends up solving the Microsoft problems if they have anything to do with networking, storage, virtualization, or hardware diagnostics. Which doesn't really leave a lot left for the solitaire expert to deal with.
I've met a couple of MCSEs who know what they're doing, but for the most part they're idiots.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
More to the point, supporting 3 or 4 different versions of Windows (like he was trying to do with Mac OS back to 10.3 or whatever) would be just as hard, given that there's both 32 and 64 bit registry hives to deal with, varying degrees of registry option support between 2k, XP, Vista and 7, and a myriad of different hardware setups to deal with.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The chances of /etc/fstab or grub.conf getting corrupted are fairly small. They're also easy to fix. Having 1-2 bytes in a registry hive that is multiple tens of megabytes in size is another matter.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
All that stuff is included in a modern OS X by default. I've used VPN stuff on OSX since at least leopard, which came out in what... 2007? 3 versions ago? No need to command line install anything.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
OS X server. Next.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Windows can't do virtualization properly. Configuration management can be done with OS X server. I'll give you terminal services, but windows sucks pretty bad at that, too.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
About what? The career? Being an Apple programmer since 1987? The lovely hate? The unpopularity of Macs with many programmers and IT folks? The popularity of Macs and Apple products with end users?
Did I say something to hurd your widdle feewings? Did you program Macs, and end up regretting the career choice?
Did I write something that reduced your eloquence to that of a potted cactus?
Was that why you went AC?
Have a nice day.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
Try it, it does. You can use your real name, or your username.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Not really "super clever" when you've posted things that have been debunked in single line replies, like seemingly being ignorant of Apple Script and Automator, for example.
It sounds like the biggest problem was that you weren't in a homogeneous environment (for each OS, I mean), so you ended up with a mix of Lion, SL, Leopard and (possibly Tiger) machines. That's going to be a support nightmare on any OS if you're dealing with software spanning several generations, including a CPU architecture change.
The oldest machines that will run Lion have Core 2 Duos - so pretty much any Intel Mac released, with the exception of some of the very earliest ones that have Core Solo and Core Duo chips. That rules out some of the base, early white Macbooks, early intel Minis and revision 1 of the Macbook Pro (early 2006 stuff). Anything else made by Apple from mid to late 2006 onwards will run Lion. Whether they'll want to is another matter entirely (Preview.app in Lion is a step backwards in speed and stability over SL, for example).
All of those things are well supported too.
There's very little difference between the major OSes now - using one over the other is mainly a matter of preference.
Take augmented user records, for instance (used in an AD/OD setup). They worked with 10.5 and 10.6 clients, but stopped working with 10.7 clients. Can I get a simple answer "why won't they work with 10.7"? No. Only Apple mumbo-jumbo. Thanks Apple.
www.itjerk.com
All of the "upgrade" versions of OS X are full-blown installers. There's no difference between them. In terms of the EULA, an upgrade can be sold for less, but there's physically no difference in the installer compared to a "full" one.
You can check this by doing a nuke and pave - any Lion installer will happily put a full and fresh copy of Lion onto a virgin partition. There's no need to go up through earlier versions of the OS and then upgrade. There are also no serial numbers or activation, so no step asking for a legit proof of ownership of the earlier OS.
Apple will sell you Lion from the Apple Store. No need for the App Store.
Have you heard of Google before? Also, you forgot to log in.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD256Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDAzOA
Or simply get it from the App Store for $29 then burn the installer to a CD or USB drive of your own choosing. Volume licences are left up to you - not going to do *all* the legwork for you.
If your $1000 budget rig wasn't more powerful than a machine released 9 years ago then I'd have been very surprised.
Registry files are much more documented than plist files and much easier to handle.
You can use vbs, bat (both reg add/del or regedit /s), or hand-made ADM/ADMXstraight group-policies, and then there's the ability to make changes and compare changes before and after. Group Policy can then be applied, and then reapplied if using loopback processing. Oh and group policy management console is free.
The beginning of my Mac support was installing a bunch of software and creating a library of .plist files for each modification. (~ 2G or plist files now, covering almost any app you could ask for). Not all .plist files can be scripted by sed or fed through plutil before scripting. Once the plist files are imported into Workgroup Manager, they end up as a combined .com.author.app entry. You can't easily name the policies it creates because you can't properly name and nest policies. Lastly, the Workgroup -> Computer Group -> Computer -> User policy precedence does not fit with shared computers. I've learnt to deal with management issues by demanding Caspar and ARD be installed onsite - which is not cheap in the short term but well worth it in the long term.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
You can turn off autocorrect. It's in the Settings app.
What else don't you like about the on-screen keyboard? Or is it just a dislike of on-screen (non-physical) keyboards in general?
FFS, you can buy Lion from Apple Licensing. Contact the local Apple support number and say "I want 150 copies of Lion. What's the number for licensing?" and see how fast someone drops their company kool-aid cup and complementary skivvy to get the deal.
We buy it for schools all the damn time.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
Your examples aren't needed to be locked down if the users aren't admin.
You need admin credentials to change sleep mode.
You need admin credentials to enable sharing.
You need admin credentials to do anything with the firewall.
It's not supported via the method YOU think it should because it's an authorization security not a defaults setting change.
Again, your ignorance hangs you up. Go take a week long training class on the OS since you're going to support it. You might learn a few hundred things.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I don't get it. Most IT shops won't touch Apple, and those shops are doing fine. I have worked in IT for over 30 years. I have never seen Apple having much clout in enterprize level IT, and I still don't.
this. best /. post ever.
They didn't roll server into Lion. They took a couple of features and pushed everything else server-related into iCloud or other online services.
Compare the services list from Server Manager 10.6 and Server Manager 10.7 - it's about half as long and all the juicy bits are missing :(
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
"Apple needs to build a LDAP compliant network Management server that plugs into AD network and just blend in, and manages all the iDevices for Enterprise. It would do even better if said server would also allow AD like policies on managed Macs."
Uh, except for the iDevices for Enterprise bit (which I'm not entirely sure about), they already have-- it's called Mac OS X Server. It will replicate AD info for authentication purposes and use separate Open Directory info for management of the Macs on the network. This technique is generally known as the "golden triangle."
You could also use a product called Centrify DirectControl, which as I understand it basically translates AD group policies and applies them to non-Windows systems. I have not used this myself, but it's something that may be worth a look if someone reading this has a need.
~Philly
> I haven't found anything I could do in Windows or in Ubuntu I can't do on a Mac.
Reliable file sharing.
Media playback. You end up falling back to "Linux tools" in order to get a reasonably complete solution.
Using the contents of a video camera after they have passed through another OS as files. This one is just sad and obliterates any rhetoric fanboys like to spew about about MacOS being Unix.
Keeping your crayon inside the lines (like office software) is not the problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's been bugging me since posting... I forgot to add using defaults or Automator (compiled or otherwise) as CLI system management tools.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
I am a geek with good understanding about Linux. I probably know more about computers than your typical Slashdot geek.
Says the guy with the 2.5mill /. ID. I didn't even know we were up that far.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I'm pretty sure the EULA forbids that, too...
Stop! Dremel time!
Apple doesn't give dividends.
Like I said. =)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The biggest problem is that everyone seems to think that changing the OSes was possible. It was not-- this was volunteer work for volunteers who needed laptop security, not a corporate scenario where we could swap everything out on a whim just because Apple took years to get IPsec support and full disk encryption.
The oldest machines that will run Lion have Core 2 Duos - so pretty much any Intel Mac released, with the exception of some of the very earliest ones that have Core Solo and Core Duo chips.
Aside from how irrelevant it was (limited time frame for work and training doesnt lend itself to an OS upgrade), there were several PowerPC macs which could not run Lion.
This really is amusing / alarming / disquieting-- apparently there are IT folks out there who think that "just upgrade the OS and / or machine" is a suitable rebuttal to "your 5 year old OS doesnt have consistent IPsec support". Quiz of the day, if this was volunteer work for volunteers, what makes you think theres a budget for buying 20 or so new macbooks? Especially when we could have spent 40% of the cost and just gotten them core i3 Windows PCs and had a ready to go solution that was homogenous with the rest of the platforms (Linux, Windows)-- supporting PGP, Cisco client, and Truecrypt?
Is this enforced software and training diversity with a 250% markup somehow supposed to contribute to the whole Mac experience?
Yea, not an option when these are unmanaged macs and we are discussing scripting the fix. Im also not convinced that OSX server can change those particular options, as even defaults did not seem capable of that.
I would mirror your sentiments on both the damage ratio between home and professional uses, and also on businesses not buying as much new hardware. Our company used to run a 3 year cycle on computer replacement, but now we only replace when it can't be fixed. Also, I worked at BestBuy about 4 years ago, and when you had business customers at all, it was usually a software issue. With people in general, it was often physical damage.
The chances of disk corruption on a 20 meg segment of a 500GB journaling filesystem partition likewise seems small. This whole discussion is retarded, a few bytes corruption at the start of the drive or in the partition table or in the kernel (which is NOT a few bytes) or in any number of other places could likewise hose the whole system or cause a worse situation (malfunctioning libraries, etc-- how would you like to deal with a corrupted 'bash' that crashes whenever you try to do command completion?).
And, not sure if youre aware of this, but theres this nifty path on windows, C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack....
Does fstab make automated backups? No? Pity. (and I know you can cron a job to do it, but you can likewise schedule ERUNT to take registry backups)
true there was a small little bit of time when they did not do this, but they did it for 20 some odd years, and they currently do it now, grats your moms 5 year old toy computer was in that magic window tween 1999 and 2006
I second the motion.
I like how noone seems to have read what the situation and requirements are, and have offered solutions that are only tangentially related.
The users all HAD to have admin, because these were their laptops. We were locking them down and training them on secure access to a system. We could have gone in through the GUI and made the changes, sure, but we were looking for a way to automate it to lessen the tedium of the whole process.
And for the record, we're well aware of what admin credentials are needed for. I used sudo to launch the scripts, entered the password, etc, but defaults was not able to properly change the setting until we manually opened the GUI and saved changes.
The problem with Apple is there is no customization in either hardware or software. Lets say I want a phone with a physical keyboard running iOS. I can't have it. On the other hand, I can have a wide variety of phone form factors on Android and even Windows Phone 7. Want a really thin phone with no keyboard? They've got it. Want a phone with a sliding keyboard? They've got it. Want a keyboard just on the face of the phone? They've got it.
I'm not an Apple fan, and even I am tired of seeing this one-sided argument. Yes, Android has device-diversity, but Apple has accessory-diversity. You've got a much much much broader aftermarket selection for iPhone (and in the tablet world, iPad) then you do for Android. It's not just cases and docks either... there are a lot of neat gizmos that can only exist because Apple has forced a standard connector and case size on its third of the market. I'm not saying that the two benefits are equivalent--different consumers will value different choices--but don't pretend that all the customization/choice is in the Android camp.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I'm not saying anything is a suitable rebuttal, just noting that your situation is not an ideal way to handle enterprise support to begin with (a range of OS versions spanning many years).
Also, you can drop the "250% markup" nonsense - it's not helpful, or accurate.
I'm also not "IT folk", so I guess I'm not qualified to comment anyway.
If there's no budget to get everyone onto hardware that supports the extremely specific set of criteria that make up the security and IT policy, then either those machines simply do not get onto the network, or you change the policy if it's vital that they do (or learn a little bit more about OS X since you seem to be missing some key bits of information about it, eg, automator, apple script, remote admin etc).
What did you honestly expect when the Mac platform went through an architecture change and a move to fully 64 bit across the span of machines you had to work with? If you had PPC hardware in the mix then we're talking pre-2005 machines. I'm no "IT pro" but I'm guessing that 2005-era PCs are similarly not all that hot on running Windows 7.
I'm not trying to make excuses for the Mac platform, simply offering up an opinion that your task as described was doomed to fail from the start, or at the very least be a huge support nightmare due to generational differences between hardware and software - OS X is not the only OS to be affected by this.
I've gotta throw this in:
I'm puzzled why everyone keeps hammering you with pretty silly insults re: your supposed lack of knowledge.
You seem to be honestly statinga point, presenting your problem fairly, and getting lots of people taking cheap shots at you for your request. With a few honest replies.
I guess this is why people don't ask for advice on slashdot. You're likely to get fifty "you suck, you're an idiot, hire someone else, "XXXX" rules!" (where XXX is OS of choice)
Every time someone makes a crack like that, I imagine an old boss of mine who loved putting everyone down. Fat, no social skills, sitting in a filthy office berating others.
You really sound like someone who's supported Windows for years, learning the little details like hashing together a program to automate your workflow.
Yet you don't have any clue about the Mac, and that makes it hard. Somehow, that's OS X's fault. VPN issues are VPN company issues. Ask them to write the software?
That was his complaint. You had to set up VPNs differently for every version of MacOS. It's ridiculous. I've used a Mac for work for OS 10.4 and 10.5, and have had a personal Mac for 10.6 and 10.7. The VPN setup/connection process is still annoying.
There is full disk encryption. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4790 What the hell is launch on startup? Google shows nothing. Launch at login is a user preference that's been around for a decade. It doesn't make the computer slow.
He may be referring to the Lion preference that restarts all of your closed apps automagically after a reboot. It does make your Mac slower. I can attest to that. Even when you don't have any applications for it to restart. My MacBook now takes twice as long to boot into Mac OS as it does into Windows. I can also boot up my old Dell XPS 1530 (core 2 duo) into Windows 7 (from a cold boot) faster than my Sandy Bridge MacBook (i7 quad core) can wake up from sleep. That's with an SSD in the windows machine.
Never had any issues importing certificates across all those versions of OS X. defaults settings are well documented. http://secrets.blacktree.com/
There's also things like radmind that would probably be much better at doing what you want. But your ignorance led you astray.
I agree that the person was definitely not a skilled Mac admin, but they aren't as common as Windows pros.
Windows can't do virtualization properly.
Lol what? Hyper-V plus SCVMM is pretty damn good. I'll grant that it's not as good as a fully decked out VMWare solution with vCenter, but its a hell of a lot less expensive too. OS X on the other hand can't do virtualization at all. Its against the EULA. Sure there's some token attempt (two total virtual instances per physical machine! We're cooking with gas now!), but its not even worth mentioning.
Configuration management can be done with OS X server.
No. Configuration management is more than just managed preferences and ARD. Where is the OS X equivalent of SCCM? Where is the automated image creation and deployment workflows? Where is the automated software packaging and deployment? Where is the support for Intel AMT style boot to shutdown remote control?
I'll give you terminal services, but windows sucks pretty bad at that, too.
If Windows sucks at terminal services, then everybody does, because Windows is the undisputed best in the market by far. Look, I'm not saying Macs aren't great computers for single person use, they are. In fact, I'd say they are better for that purpose than other brands. But they simply have no place in a large enterprise environment. I welcome the day when Apple changes that, but I don't see it happening any time soon.
1. You never specified that they needed admin access. "because they were laptops" is bullshit and ignorance.
2. How do you actually expect to lock down a machine where the user has admin access, regardless of OS?
3. defaults doesn't do everything. It's a hack. The proper way would be to edit the settings in the proper plist files. Which is all that defaults changes anyway. Again, ignorance showing.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Physical analogy should probably have more details, such as the Apple saw not only has the finger guard but also restricts you to apple certified wood with approved cut angles. Also,while the diamond tipped blade cuts most things quite well, it is welded to the machine.
Come to think of it, this would probably sell.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Why don't Foxconn's Apple employees commit suicide as often? Better working conditions? No. Too mainstream.
Wake me when I can run XServer on VMWare .. legally. I'm not buying Apple hardware in violation of server consolidation.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
1) please reread, paying attention to posessives:
The users all HAD to have admin, because these were their laptops.
2) since you seem to not be getting it, the goal is to lock it down so that if a third party snatches their laptop or is on the same network as them, there will be no data leak. The goal is NOT to have the users have to think about these things, but to configure them such that a laptop will not go to sleep with the encryption key in memory, for example.
3) defaults is the way Apple recommends you CHANGE those plist files:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/defaults.1.html
That 250% markup is based on doing a once-every-6-months comparison between the costs of low, mid, and high-end Mac laptops to equivalently specced Windows laptops. 6 months ago, for example, I specced a HP laptop with a top end sandy bridge i7 for about $1000, while the equivalent (actually lower-specced) mac was $2000.
Currently, you can get a sandy bridge i3 laptop for $370, while Im not aware of a mac laptop under $1000.
And by the way, yes, i dont blame the PPC machines for not running Lion. I do blame OSX for being a PITA to work with across the platforms, when XPSP2 (2003) had no such issues.
You made some post about your Google salary.
Nobody but you cares about your particular project. I'm just setting the record straight that the current version of OSX includes a full disk encryption feature.
They already did this - it's called Mac OS X Server and it does exactly that and more.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
You're probably referring to this:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2630894&cid=38762218
I didn't accept their offer.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I'm also not aware of any i3 Mac laptops.
I assume those HP laptops had metal cases? Either way, $2000 is not 250% bigger than $1000. Are you in charge of purchasing?
Oh my, there are B's about with mod points it would seem.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I call it dumbing down. It gives me a nearly irresistable urge to break Apple products in two on the edge of a table.
Have you talked to someone about your anger problems?
Oh yes. They said "best thing to do is remove the source of the irritation". So when it comes to Apple products, I just say no.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
He got his chinese sweatshot workers jumping to their deaths in herds.
The same factory your M$ Xbox is made?
Haha, that's funny. For reasons that most likely escape you.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Oh I see so when I have trouble with one of the 500 wintel machines I have been maintaining for 7 years without a registry issue, it will be a pain in the ass. Thanks for the heads up!
I admit I haven't used it much, but compared to the features on my android phone keyboard (I've used the default keyboard but I prefer swype), it falls short:
1. need to push another button to access numbers.
2. need to push that same button to access all punctuation and special characters. i believe you can double-space for a "." but I wouldn't have known this without being told, and in any case in the short time I was typing it just never came natural...maybe in time it would?
3. autocorrect can be turned off, but that's hardly what people want. the autocorrect system on android keyboards is much better - you can see the word it will use along with a number of alternatives as you type. you can also tap on a word you previously typed and correct it in-place. With the android default keyboard, if you type a word and it autocorrects it, you can backspace and it will put the word you actually typed back there.
4. there seems to be no way to go forward or back by a single character - you have to try to tap on the exact character you want to change, which is near impossible with my fingers (which are not _that_ fat). Android gives you a little marker you can hold and move. swype used to include an arrow-pad but not sure if they still do - the android built-in solution works for me.
5. no swype (or similar) for iphone. seriously - swype is awesome. not everyone likes it, granted, but the difference is that i'll type out entire emails using it whereas with the normal keyboard I just wouldn't bother. not only is typing faster, you type less mistakes because it can more correctly know what word you were typing.
If I used the iphone some more I could probably come up with more, and probably even get used to it more too, but the above are things I picked up just while attempting to type one SMS. I think they are real disadvantages.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
But $1000 is 250% of $400. 200% is about the best case ive seen, it gets worse from there.
Are you seriously quibbling that the markup is ONLY 200% in some cases, or that the metal case somehow justifies the cost of upgrading 20 macbooks at a cost of $20,000 just to get consistent IPsec support?
This, here, is my gigantic issue with OSX. It has great things about it; I love the way it stores applications, and the built in Unix-y bits; but that someone would try to argue that it really is worth paying an extra $1000 for a metal case and some shiney seriously boggles my mind when the discussion is centered around the appaling lack of security options pre-Lion. Who the hell cares if it has a metal case if its going to compromise security when the thing is seized?
It does not take great genius to detect an obvious shill.
Have you seen Apple's sales figures?
They hardly need shills.
1 and 2: Are you using a custom keyboard on your Android? A Google image search on "android keyboard" suggests a button push is needed for numbers and punctuation too. I'll need to play with a co-worker's Android phone tomorrow to see for myself...
Double-space does type a period and space. That's just something that comes with experience. I see many Android keyboards come with comma and period on either side of the space key, that's not a bad idea.
Special characters: I assume you mean brackets, parentheses, etc and not accent characters (which on the iPhone you just hold the key for a moment, and all possible accents pop up as options). It's not obvious from the image search I mentioned, how else do you type these on your Android?
The iPhone was my first cell phone and thumb-typing device. It all came naturally to me within an hour.
3. iOS 5 has some of those autocorrect features: it gives you the word it'll replace it with if you hit space or any punctuation, but no alternatives. If you tap that or any word it thinks is mis-spelled it usually gives you alternatives and corrects-in-place (actually this annoys the hell out of me, I usually want to manually correct a single missing letter, so I tap at the end of the word and start typing, but the entire word was selected for correct-in-place so my typing replaces it entirely). It kind of has the backspace-to-undo-autocorrect, but you have to select the "wrong" spelling from a popup bubble.
Auto-correct now also recognizes when you meant to type multiple words. I just typed "briwncdog" and it AC'ed to "brown dog". That's come in handy a number of times.
4. iOS gives you a movable text cursor too, which I think is analogous to the marker you mentioned--just tap and hold on the anywhere in the text field (not just over the word you want) and a magnifier appears to help position the cursor. Lack of arrow keys is occasionally annoying, but with limited screen space I get that they can't put one in, nor should they have (essentially waste 2 button areas for left/right, but any time you're moving more than a couple characters the touch-select is faster anyway). Lack of a forward-delete option is annoying though; Apple could easily add one by holding shift before pressing backspace to "reverse" its direction.
5. Not enough experience with swype to say if I like it or not. Played with it about five minutes, wasn't enough time to re-train my brain to "type" words out using just one thumb, it kept twitching to the letters it would be expecting to type had the other thumb been in play.
I personally don't think Apple has a place in the Enterprise - they cater to consumers, and they don't care about anything in the Enterprise unless it is something that is necessary to make things work for the consumers (i.e. ActiveSync). The attitude that really irks me the most (and Apple seems to be especially bad about this) is the one that every device is disposable. If a device is lost or stolen, just buy another one - phone, tablet, computer, whatever. They clearly do not care about environments where data loss is a concern. "Remote Wipe" is the general answer to this question - you know, since Remote Wipe is impossible to avoid from the device end [/sarchasm].
With BYOD is becoming more and more common, however, and the big issue I have with that is that there is very little visibility into the device itself - how does IT know that a device being brought in by a person is "safe"? Sure you can write policies that say you have to properly maintain your own equipment, but those only let you fire someone (maybe) after the damage has been done. What happens if someone roots their iDevice (or Android, or whatever), sets up the root user with a password of "password" and sets it to be accessible from any network? How do I enforce any measure of security in that type of environment? Sure, some Mobile Device Management applications give you kind of a protected, encrypted environment on the device - which is good for IT - however, I have yet to evaluate any solution that users considered as usable as the native interfaces (granted, it's been a couple of years since I've looked - maybe this problem has been solved by now). And, in the environments I've been in where BYOD was tolerated, IT could not force users to install any applications, and IT could not restrict BYOD devices access to ActiveSync. I guess you can just assume that every endpoint is unsafe, but it can get a bit expensive to properly protect an environment like that - either in terms of hardware, software, labor, or some combination of the three.
Granted, some of these same issues exist on corporate liable devices as well - people can still mess with the device they are issued. However, at least the enterprise can generally enforce things such as requiring users to use some kind of secure MDM environment rather than ActiveSync. Or, if you choose to use ActiveSync, at least something like a Remote Wipe is a little less controversial.
I agree with the OS being "under the hood" nowadays, however for some reason I still spend a lot of time on the command line. That pretty much rules out Windows, or anything that does not have Bash and the GNU coreutils.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
1 and 2 - I just checked and the default android keyboard has a "." right next to the space bar, and if I hold that down I get the rest of them.
numbers - you can see little numbers on the keyboard - so that if you hold the key you know you will get that number. I'm not sure what holding letters does on an iphone, but I sure dont want to hold every single one to see what magic characters are hidden behind it.
3. this seems like a half-way mark, but still not as good as selecting the alternative word right up front. more of a niggle I suppose - but the multiple alternatives approach in a horizontal list in android is much better than a vertical list. swype originally had a vertical type list and I hated it.
AFAIK android doesn't autocorrect multiple words - that sounds like it would be useful.
4. maybe I didn't try this - it wasn't obvious...next time perhaps. swype allows you to long-press the "123" button (the one that shows the numbers and symbols keyboard) and it gives you arrow keys. its a very cool feature.
5. it took a bit of practise, and like everything once you're used to it it is very useful. I cant argue that people would find the same with the iphone keyboard - it does seem to be a good (fast) keyboard for thumb typing. I just find it less useful than other keyboards I have used.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
sorry, point 5 - my wording was a bit funny...
I meant that I accept that people would find the iphone keyboard just as good after getting used to it...
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Re: numbers... I saw that from the Android screenshots but didn't know that's how they're invoked. I can see how that's fine for one-off numbers, but if you were typing a phone number for example surely you'd still want to switch to a proper row of numbers rather than hold each letter/number key to type the number? Or is the pause before it switches to a number that brief?
To clarify: on an iPhone if you hold down a *specific* letter that's known to have accents, those accents appear above the letter and you slide your finger over to select one. Holding "e" reveals éèêë etc, holding down "a" reveals áàâä etc.
3: On Android if there's multiple suggested corrections I assume the first on the list is auto-selected if you just hit space? Yes multiple suggestions up front would be nice. It does this with Chinese character input so it's not a foreign concept to Apple.
BTW on the iPhone the after-the-fact suggestion bubble for also lists multiple suggestions horizontally, not vertically.
4. It's possible you tried just tapping to position the cursor, instead of press and hold. It only takes 1/5 a second for the magnifier to come up, but a tap and immediate release places it either at the start or end of a word.
The arrow keys on Swype sound useful. My take on why Apple doesn't include it, is that they've previously thrown out old ideas to force people to adapt to new technology and UI. The original 1984 Mac keyboards had no arrow keys either, forcing the user to learn to use the mouse, then a radical concept for consumers. After people got used to it (or enough people complained), they eventually added arrow keys back in. Then there's the original iMac which dropped all legacy ports, and the iPhone which completely did away with the desktop metaphor.
The decade-long failure of Windows tablets to gain traction with consumers suggests that including legacy input methods and UI paradigms just means normal people won't bother learning the new ones. Of course maybe there just weren't sufficient advantages with the new methods for the average user to learn them.
5. Yes, once/if we put the time in we should be proficient in either system.
Thanks for this exchange, it's been informative.
You are spot on. We have over 3000 employees and I just finished having my IT guys clear out any apple products including iphone's. If I see one on my network, I take it and throw it away.
All of that stuff is included in a modern Linux distro by default. I'm on Fedora and for the Cisco VPN client, all you need is to "yum install vpnc".
Wait a sec - "all you have to do is install it", so its build in?
Fandroids hate facts.
Well, let's say the software in question in FCPX & Compressor?
Apple has a Volume Purchasing Program.
Linux has its disadvantages (for the love of all that is holy - WTF will it take to get a DECENT .pdf editor!?).
I personally don't give a rat's ass about editing PDF's. I see all too much fluff in the Linux world, uproar over KDE and GNOME and other pointless stuff, while the lack of a usable modern filesystem is an ongoing hassle. Yeah, sure btrfs blah blah blah, it's going to be ready RSN, sure it is, really. Shiny new ext4 can't even handle a filesystem >16TB, and having to layer the anachronistic MD an LVM systems separately is like going back in time fifteen years.
At home with the kids.
lets all go back to Motorola Flip-phones and DOS. Those were the good ole days.
Any IT senior I've known who uses Apple doesn't stay in that position very long. Nor do they use their personal devices to set company policy. Yes I know the Dilbert myths, but in reality that doesn't happen.
Disagree. I've done I.T. sub-contracting at pretty much every Fortune 500 company in the SFBay area and I can't count the number of times I've ended up having to aid members of in house I.T. departments in their efforts of integrating serial modems for laptops from the early 90s into their networks because some ancient corporate officer has been using it since time immemorial and can't be bothered to be required to upgrade.
And let's not even get into the amount of hours I've spent wrestling with serial printer integration! :P
All I have to do is point out the cost of operating Apple products and whatever complaints the boss has disappears quickly.
Whereas all I have to do is point out the financial costs of lost time and productivity from wrestling with configuration hassles and cleaning out malware on Windows, the savings on non per-CPU client site licenses, cost of repeated upgrades, and cost of staff training for updates.
I'm sorry to have to destroy the myth for you, but Apple really has no place in the enterprise despite the attempts of fanboys to delude others otherwise.
I'd hardly describe myself as a fanboi of any technology, but I've definitely seen a slow but steady growth of Apple technologies in I.T. departments over the last decade and as this article shows, I'm clearly not alone in that observation, either: http://goo.gl/vY1lM
I'm honest enough to admit I lie to myself.
That Galaxy S ad was quite descriptive of "creative", as a term.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Cross-compiling for embedded devices.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
To clarify: on an iPhone if you hold down a *specific* letter that's known to have accents, those accents appear above the letter and you slide your finger over to select one. Holding "e" reveals éèêë etc, holding down "a" reveals áàâä etc.
Ah, ok. Android actually shows you the special character that will be accessed by long-pressing a letter, so you know what you'll get. great for brackets etc where you only need one or two.
of course, for multiple numbers or symbols it is quicker to use the 'symbol' button to access all of them.
Thanks for this exchange, it's been informative.
No problems. thanks to you too :-)
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Yup, once you buy more than 10 or 20 licenses. I have legitimate post production clients where there are about 6 seats of FCP.
The bottom line is, Apple doesn't care. You do it their way or not with their tools.
Or what if I wanted to buy 20 licenses of Pixelmator for a client of mine? Any smartass ways to work around that? /jussi
and the mac mini, you're still looking at big premiums for those systems.
MacBook Pro 17 inch
Price: $2,499.00
For small office: Dell Precision M6600 Mobile Workstation
Starting Price $3,305.00 Instant Savings $792.00 Subtotal $2,513.00
The small and medium business 2.40 GHz quad core model is the same. And for large enterprises Dell doesn't show a 17 inch laptop with a quad core i7, it shows 2 dual core 2.50 GHz i5s.
Shall I go on and post other OEM configurations and prices?
The iMac is a desktop with zero upgrade ability.
The same applies to all other all-in-ones whether Apple, Dell, HP, or any other. The same with the Mac Mini.
One thing I leared about apple computers: NEVER, EVER 'configure' your systems with apple hardware. The prices goes through the roof.
I actually agree. I've even had an Apple employee tell me that if I want more memory or a bigger disk, to buy them from someone else. Before I ordered my MBP I asked about adding more memory than the base amount and he said if I wanted more then I should get the memory from another store.
Macs are hundreds more expensive than their PC counterparts at best.
Again, look above. Mac compare pretty fairly with Windows OEM PCs, more expensive than some but cheaper than others.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I think Apple's of the mindset that as long as they're expecting developers to build on Macs for iPhone and iPad, as well as use Lightroom/FinalCut/etc. in production environments, there's a need for the Mac Pro.
Have you read any comments forums about Final Cut Pro X? Just a couple of days ago I read some, they almost all agreed to properly run Final Cut Pro X the current Mac Pro were lacking. On Final Cut Pro X’s professional exodus. Can Mini run Photoshop CS5 and Final Cut Pro? More: Apple’s Just A Twitch Away From Killing The Mac Pro Line Forever.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
True until you realize people have to know of and look for GIMPShop. That's also why people aren't switching from Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.10?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac.
How about virtualization? How about terminal services? How about configuration management?
Virtualizing? Let's see. There'e VirtualBox, VMWare's Fusion 4, and Parallels. I don't have it setup right now but I'm going to try to use VirtualBox so I can run my dualboot Ubuntu installation in a virtual machine while running OSX. If that does not work then I'll try Fusion 4. OSX has terminal. Being based on FreeBSD many of the commands are the same as in Linux. Look at that, there's even Open Source configuration management software that runs on OSX.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
> I haven't found anything I could do in Windows or in Ubuntu I can't do on a Mac.
Reliable file sharing.
I quite easily share files between OSX and Ubuntu. And though I haven't installed them yet I'm getting ready to install both Ubuntu 10.04 and 11.10 to triple-boot my Mac. When I do I'll be using the same partition for users in all OSes.
Media playback. You end up falling back to "Linux tools" in order to get a reasonably complete solution.
Apple's Final Cut Pro, which is the video industry's leading video editing software burns Blu-Ray disks. What's that? A video of of someone burning a Blu-Ray movie with Final Cut Pro 7? However you can still run Linux tools on a Mac. OSX includes X11. With Fink you can install software that uses the Debian tools dpkg and apt-get. Or Mac Ports to install .rpm packages. Then there's Homebrew for those who Mac Port drives to drinking.
Keeping your crayon inside the lines (like office software) is not the problem.
AH, you're right. The problem is people not knowing the truth, or not admitting to it. Fact is is a Mac can run Linux, OSX, and Windows software. Which is within what I said above, "I haven't found anything I could do in Windows or in Ubuntu I can't do on a Mac."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
well every time I see it come up it starts with "I am used to photoshop but because of XYZ I cant get the newest version, the gimp seems ok but ..."
Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac.
How about virtualization? How about terminal services? How about configuration management?
Virtualizing? Let's see. There'e VirtualBox, VMWare's Fusion 4, and Parallels. I don't have it setup right now but I'm going to try to use VirtualBox so I can run my dualboot Ubuntu installation in a virtual machine while running OSX. If that does not work then I'll try Fusion 4. OSX has terminal. Being based on FreeBSD many of the commands are the same as in Linux. Look at that, there's even Open Source configuration management software that runs on OSX.
Falcon
You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't. Try virtualizing more than two instances of OS X on the same server by any method without violating the EULA. Oh wait you can't. Try doing anything remotely useful with OS X and virtualization, the single most important and transformative technology in the IT world today. Oh wait you can't.
In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out. Terminal services refers to the ability to have one server host multiple remote login gui sessions, each with their own desktop and user settings. I refrained from calling it "Remote Desktop", because you'd probably come back with Apple Remote Desktop, misunderstanding the conversation yet again. ARD is just VNC with a few bells and whistles thrown in.
Didn't disappear.
Don't get your panties in a bunch.
Still, there's nothing tangible that an actor 'produces'. Just a talented robot following it's programming. I don't call that producing anything.
well every time I see it come up it starts with "I am used to photoshop but because of XYZ I cant get the newest version, the gimp seems ok but ..."
Once in a while I'll hear or see that however a more common remark as to why people switched to GIMP from PS is because they learned GIMP does everything they need. For them I say bravo, they're not locked into a single vendor and they're saving money. However GIMP isn't suitable for every graphic artist or professional photographer. And for them I would suggest they try CinePaint and or Krita before buying or upgrading PS CS. They're both deep paint editors.
I haven't followed my own advice yet, but then again I haven't used Linux much and I haven't spent the money on PS CS either. Though I did for Photoshop Elements (PE). When PE is no longer adequate and CinePaint and Krita don't work either, that is when I have to get PS CS, I'll buy an older upgradable version on eBay, or somewhere else, first then upgrade. But I'm hoping CinePaint and or Krita is be fine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't.
You did not say "run OS X virtually" or any such wording, you said How about virtualization? Let's now look at virtualizing OSX, Google is your friend...
That's 5 of Google's more than 150,00 results. Are you again going to say I didn't understand what you meant?
In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out.
Just like you didn't spend the fives seconds to Google virtualize OSX. You didn't bother doing what you accuse me of not doing, Google terminal services osx. When I just did Google suggested "terminal services osx" and "terminal services osx client". I'm sure you're competent enough to look at some of the results yourself, if not I see no reason to continue.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't.
You did not say "run OS X virtually" or any such wording, you said How about virtualization? Let's now look at virtualizing OSX, Google is your friend...
That's 5 of Google's more than 150,00 results. Are you again going to say I didn't understand what you meant?
You apparently didn't bother to *read* any of the links you gave, otherwise you'd find out that all of them are illegal methods as they are violations of the EULA, and your last link even explains why they are illegal. Again, you can't virtualize OS X client prior to Lion at all, you can virtualize OS X Server and OS X Lion client, but only if you are running on OS X as a host OS, ie not VMWare ESX or Citrix XenServer, or Microsoft Hyper-V, or any other bare-metal hypervisor, in other words, a useless non-feature.
In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out.
Just like you didn't spend the fives seconds to Google virtualize OSX. You didn't bother doing what you accuse me of not doing, Google terminal services osx. When I just did Google suggested "terminal services osx" and "terminal services osx client". I'm sure you're competent enough to look at some of the results yourself, if not I see no reason to continue.
Falcon
Again, you clearly didn't bother to give even a cursory glance at the results. Half of them are forum posts asking if OS X will ever have the ability to host terminal services (because it doesn't at the moment), and the other half are TS *clients* for accessing *Windows* terminal servers. The one relevent link, iRAPP, explicitly says that in order to conform to Apple's EULAs, they only allow multiple connections to OS X Server, not Client, which misses the entire point of having terminal services in the first place, and again makes it nothing more than VNC with a few more bells and