IBM Open Sources Mac@IBM Code (9to5mac.com)

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from 9to5Mac: At the Jamf Nation User Conference, IBM has announced that it is open sourcing its Mac@IBM provisioning code. The code being open-sourced offers IT departments the ability to gather additional information about their employees during macOS setup and allows employees to customize their enrollment by selecting apps or bundles of apps to install.

Back in 2015, IBM discussed how it went from zero to 30,000 Macs in six months. In 2016, IBM said Apple products were cheaper to manage when you looked at the entire life cycle: "IBM is saving a minimum of $265 (up to $535 depending on model) per Mac compared to a PC, over a 4-year lifespan. While the upfront workstation investment is lower for PCs, the residual value for Mac is higher The program's success has improved IBM's ability to attract and retain top talent -- a key advantage in today's competitive market."

Comments

This is going to be good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm popping some corn. I'm guessing all the macOS haters will be coming out to say how IBM can't add, or something, and screwed up on Apple computers being cheaper to own.

Re:This is going to be good

[sittingnut]

source for this ad is 9to5mac.com. enough said.

Re:This is going to be good

[Bert64]

Technical people often prefer macs due to the unix underpinnings.. There are also quite a lot of companies that offer the choice between windows or mac but won't let you run linux, which pushes technical users towards the mac.

I guess...

[Rick Zeman]

...IBM forgave Apple for ditching the PowerPC chip.

Re:I guess...

[dfghjk]

IBM abandoned that market before Apple did. IBM, in fact, never entered it, only making a single product at Apple's begging long after Moto/Freescale had totally failed to support the general purpose CPU market.

I don't know what's worse, the complete ignorance of people on topics like this or their belief that they are qualified to comment on it. IBM's interest in PowerPC was entirely embedded and didn't care at all about that PC space. That's why they donated their work to Moto who proved entirely incompetent.

Re:I guess...

[Henriok]

Except you're totally wrong. IBMs POWER processor are entirely PowerPC to this day and have bee so since the mid 1990s (POWWER2 was the last POWER processor that was not PowerPC). The latest POWER9 is using the third version of the PowerPC instruction set. You are right though that they hardly cared for PowerPC the desktop space, and entirely right if you meant the consumer computer space.

Re:I guess...

[dwywit]

Yes, "I don't know what's worse, the complete ignorance of people on topics like this or their belief that they are qualified to comment on it" is ironic, hmmmm? I mean, all you have to do is type POWERPC into a search engine.

Re:I guess...

[jeremyp]

Well, I suppose, to many IBMers, PowerPC based AIX servers probably do look like embedded, especially compared to a z-series mainframe.

You probably shouldn't have talked about other people's complete ignorance though.

Re:I guess...

[mlyle]

I don't think he's wrong-- I think you two are talking past each other.

The '970 family was a purpose-built processor for Apple, and the first and only time of IBM selling processors in quantity to other vendors. IBM basically didn't use it themselves (yes, it showed up in a couple blade server platforms early on).

Yes, it was an offshoot of IBM's successful POWER processor lineup.

Mac Support Cost about $0

[Anonymous Coward]

In my limited experience supporting my family, Mac support costs is approximately $0 per year. I bought Macs in order to enjoy peace and quiet and it worked. The odd little problem that surfaced, everyone were able to handle themselves. Their IT skill level? Accountant, teacher, construction worker, police constable, retired butcher...

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[Anonymous Coward]

Their IT skill level? Accountant, teacher, construction worker, police constable, retired butcher...

If you had Windows machines, that retired butcher's skills might come in handy when the inevitable frustrated user rage sets in.

Re: Mac Support Cost about $0

[sg_oneill]

It kind of depends. My sister took straight to it. Never had a single call from her since she switched. She's a smart cookie though.

My father however endlessly complained. Why is the menu at the top (why is it stuck to the window?) why did Apple chance Ctrl-c (better question , why did wordstar change cmd-c) etc etc etc.

The old boys a smart dude too but never underestime the support costs of preference stubbornness , especially in older folks

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[Anonymous Coward]

With family like that you are an Indian chief away from the members of the Village People.

Wait a minute. Elizabeth Warren? Is that you?

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[aaarrrgggh]

For residential use, yes... but for corporate I have no idea how they pull it off! Just getting SMB/CIFS client connections working reliably borders on insanity. The few (but unavoidable) hooks to the Windows applications makes for a lot of fun too... especially the apps that block installs on RDS machines. And then there is the random shit that just doesn't work on the application level. (I shit you not, a "known bug" of a CAD package is that zooming via an Apple touchpad will crash the program. Hasn't been fixed in two years. Really great when you need to switch back and forth between a windows app via RDS that needs the same gesture to navigate.)

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[Tsolias]

I installed debian stable to a bakery's boy's snsa eee 1000 netbook and he came back asking to change his desktop, too, to debian.
Guess what, debian's support costs $0, runs even on a toaster, has file manager, browser, IM clients e.t.c. and I don't see any reason to choose running firefox on debian, over running firefox on anything else.

IBM and TFA fails to mention all the additional s/w that they have to buy in order to support windows and they fail to mention that moving one "retard" from windows to linux ends up having that retard sperg about how linux is difficult. OTOH moving the same retard from windows to something from Apple, they don't complain, because it's shinny.

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[t0y]

Chromebooks are much more cost-effective in this use case.

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[gtall]

They don't complain so much because the interface to Mac isn't as inelegant as the ones that run on Linux. Personally, I feed like I've been shit on after using Windows.

Re: Mac Support Cost about $0

[c6gunner]

Some Linux "interfaces" are just as shiny as the Mac. Some are more plain but efficient. You want to replicate a Mac, install something like Elementary OS, or just install Gnome 3 on any distro, with a Mac theme. You want something more widnows-like, try Cinammon or MATE. Hell even KDE is pretty decent these days. If after trying all that you still feel "shit on" then I would suggest that the problem lies with your own biases rather than with the "interface".

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[tepples]

I installed debian stable to a bakery's boy's snsa eee 1000 netbook

You dodged one there, as the same company's Transformer Book T100TA has serious problems under Debian. Suspend, Bluetooth, backlight brightness, and camera are all broken, and you might need a separate USB network adapter to download nonfree drivers for the WLAN and audio.

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[aaarrrgggh]

Unfortunately yes... there isn't much else you can do effectively for a heterogeneous network that supports reliable file locking. CIFS/SMB 1.0 should be dead, but going exclusively SMB3 is nearly impossible.

OK this its opensource-ed config recipes only

[Anonymous Coward]

Applause to IBM opensource-ing their mac config recipes but is the recipes only. Appears to me that the actual runtime that executes and applies the config recipes is commercial proprietary config management & deployment suite called Jamf Pro.
See https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-pro/
and https://github.com/IBM/mac-ibm-enrollment-app/

In light of config management via actual FOSS runtimes (Puppet/Chef/Ansible/Salt), this seems like a thinly veiled advert for Jamf Pro.

Re:OK this its opensource-ed config recipes only

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a great alternative to Jamf Pro, look at Munki.
It was developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios and open sourced for everyone to use. It does just about everything that Jamf Pro does, with the added bonus of being open source and very well supported by the authors of the software and the community in general.

I'm going to have to take a look at IBM's framework and see how tightly it's tied to Jamf, or if I could drop Munki in at the back end instead.

Re:OK this its opensource-ed config recipes only

[torkus]

Very thinly veiled indeed.

With that said, Jamf is pretty awesome but needs to be customized. What IBM turned over is immensely helpful to medium and large enterprise for managing their Macs. I'm not a huge fan of several companies managing to advertise together in one post tho.

TBH anyone who manages Mac either has this kind of propaganda success story or reality. Yeah, your support costs are 'lower' because 1) you spent a lot of time and effort to build self-service infra from the ground up in an actual user-friendly way and 2) most of the support cost is pushed back on the end user.

Oh, your Mac crashed? Ok, check the knowledge base wiki that's maintained largely by other users. Ok, looks like you need to do an internet recovery, re-provision, restore your apps, restore your data, etc. It might be somewhat streamlined but the effort still exists. They're just having "not IT" people do it, typically with far less efficiency.

Apple isn't quite actively hostile to enterprise, but they certainly do not operate the same way enterprise expects from every other vendor ever.

Wonder if it's still true today? (Keyboard, etc)

[linuxtelephony]

Given the problems with the "new" keyboards and the rise of the "Pro" models replacing real Pro machines, I wonder if this estimate of savings still holds true with today's Macs. 2015 the MBP still had the good keyboards.

$265 to $535 is not a lot over 4 years. That's only $66 to $134 per year. One keyboard glitch a year and the loss of productivity or time spent cleaning/repairing that and that savings is wiped out.

IBM probably has enough metrics and enough machines to see some interesting trends. I'd love to see the savings breakdown on machines by model over the years, and especially how the new models compare to some of the older ones.

As for my bias, in 2015 I was going to do some traveling and needed a small foot print machine. I had planned on getting the slightly cheaper Macbook model, until I got to the store and typed on it. That keyboard was awful!! I ended up getting the 13" MBP because it still had a real keyboard. So happy I went for the real keyboard.

Re:Wonder if it's still true today? (Keyboard, etc

[ArchieBunker]

I read an article about this a while ago. The summary fails to mention they save a ton in help desk and support staff as well. What strange times we live in when Big Blue once the ruthless king of PC desktops is buying Macs.

Re: Mac Support Cost $0 just need to over pay hard

[Cmdln Daco]

What is the 'life cycle cost' of the recent MacBook with the keyboard defects that it seems Apple will never fix? Any system of that generation is tainted and potential unremarkable junk as soon as Apple decides to drop support.

Attract talent

[110010001000]

If people are joining your firm based on the the type of laptop they are issued, they aren't top talent.

Re:Attract talent

[guruevi]

On the other hand, if companies insist on using Windows even though you're a developer, I'm sure you wouldn't want to work there either.

Re:Attract talent

[sit1963nz]

Rubbish. When you are paying hundreds of thousands per year to top talent, you buy them what ever they are the most productive on.
Add on floor space, support staff, etc etc the cost can add up to be hundreds (even thousands) of dollars per hour to have that top talent
At that cost if you can save them just 1 minute per day by supplying them the computer and software they need, the computing costs work out to be zero over 4 years, paid for well and truely by time savings.

Re:Attract talent

[tepples]

if companies insist on using Windows even though you're a developer, I'm sure you wouldn't want to work there either.

Then how do developers of Windows applications prefer to test the Windows applications that they are developing? I doubt they rely on Wine for testing.

Re:Attract talent

[jeremyp]

Most professionals in other industries use the best gear they can get. Professional photographers generally have good cameras. Professional musicians have the best instruments they can afford. It amazes me that IT professionals, especially developers, are often supposed to put up with crappy hardware. This is the tool you use to do your work. Why wouldn't you insist on getting the best you can?

Re:Attract talent

[guruevi]

VM? Who still develops pure Windows applications? Even Microsoft is releasing their tools on Mac and Linux nowadays.

Re:Macs in use at IBM? For what?

[sit1963nz]

I work in a University.
Macs are used in Chemistry, Physics , Microbiology , Genetics , Bioinformatics, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Computer science, Veterinary , etc etc etc.

But then again we have Linux, Windows too when wanted/required.

Re:Wonder if it's still true today? (Keyboard, etc

[torkus]

Macs are cheaper if you:
- Don't count the user's time to self-provision/install/configure
- Don't buy licenses for things commonly needed in enterprise (AV, HIDS, anti-malware, inventory, etc.
- Actually get residual value from your equipment
- Don't include the back end time spent keeping infra updated around apples quirky behaviors
- Don't count training time and lost productivity if you force people to ove over
- Don't count cost spent upgrading legacy infra/apps that 'just work' on a PC or IE
- Ignore several common security practices that most enterprise consider requirements (though I agree most of them are pretty stupid actually)

In the right environment, sure. In real enterprise where 5 different groups get to impose their will on any effort like this? Not so much.

Re:Mac Support Cost $0 just need to over pay hardw

[Jane Q. Public]

Reviews over the last 14 years or so show that you actually have to buy more expensive hardware to get the same performance from Windows.

Yes, they are expensive. But in most cases It Just Worksâ and you have top-of-the-line performance and lots less hassle.

Re:Mac Support Cost $0 just need to over pay hardw

[Bert64]

The hardware is initially expensive, but also retains value better... A couple of year old macbook still fetches a decent price on ebay and the value only really decreases significantly once it can no longer run the latest osx.

Re: Why? You probably already did like... apk

[c6gunner]

I never get tired of watching APK argue with himself.

Re:Wonder if it's still true today? (Keyboard, etc

[drinkypoo]

What strange times we live in when Big Blue once the ruthless king of PC desktops is buying Macs.

In these strange times, Macs are PC desktops.

Still a Windows license, RAM, and update time+BW

[tepples]

VM?

That's still running Windows: a $199.99 per seat license (source), plus double the RAM to run both the X11/Linux host and the Windows guest, plus time and Internet download allowance spent on keeping each tester's Windows VM updated, especially if the company isn't big enough to subscribe to WSUS or other centralized management.

Who still develops pure Windows applications? Even Microsoft is releasing their tools on Mac and Linux nowadays.

A company that hasn't yet expanded to offer its applications on macOS, which is even more expensive per seat than Windows as you have to use a $500+ dongle (Mac mini) or a $1300+ monitor (iMac). Or do you claim that a company ought to offer its desktop applications to the public exclusively on X11/Linux for some period before expanding to Windows?

Re:Still a Windows license, RAM, and update time+B

[guruevi]

Startup developers get free Windows licenses (Desktop, Server etc) and even Azure time.

Startups rarely develop native Windows clients these days, Windows is indeed an expensive platform to develop against (Microsoft's C compiler - Visual Studio - can cost upwards of $2000 for a team), hence most new apps being web apps and even many desktop apps are simply HTML/JS compiled against all platforms simultaneously.

MinGW is without charge; Windows to test on isn't

[tepples]

Windows is indeed an expensive platform to develop against (Microsoft's C compiler - Visual Studio - can cost upwards of $2000 for a team),

MinGW and Visual Studio Community are available without charge, both natively on Windows and (in MinGW's case) as a cross-compiler that runs on GNU/Linux. But they still require a $200 copy of Windows on which to test the resulting executable, with all the associated costs (even apart from that of the Windows license itself).

hence most new apps being web apps

Which aren't very compatible with browsers whose users who have disabled any script in the browser on grounds that pervasive monitoring of viewers' interests by ad exchanges has poisoned the well.

and even many desktop apps are simply HTML/JS compiled against all platforms simultaneously.

This still requires an instance of all five platforms on which to test, plus a developer license for iOS.

Re:"ZIP" you're pathetic w/ proof hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

> Seek Help? I don't NEED it!

You do need some help taking the next step... which should be off a cliff, tall building, or high bridge.