It is pretty amazing how that works out. Apple recalled a large subset of G4 eMacs because of that leaky capacitor issue in the power supplies. And after a few years of service, a bunch started failing within a window of a couple months. They got repaired for free, of course. But it was fairly chaotic having so many machine machines out for service at a time.
Then again, considering the assembly-line efficiency and relative consistency with which devices and conponents are made these day, maybe it isn't isn't so surprising. It is almost like everything is designed to be disposable.:P
I apologize for the meanness. I guess I just don't understand the point of what you're doing. I mean, what does running LDAP on Ubuntu vs. OSX get you? Can't you use the same scripts and tools against an OSX LDAP server? Do you even use a directory structure more complex than the default/Users and/Groups containers If so, how does WGM handle that?
Still, Open Directory isn't as advanced as other directories out there. I mean, there are no directory level permissions within the directory contents. You can't easily make a user an admin of just one section of the tree (including the servers). I mean, you could manually write some permissions in the OpenLDAP config and restart the service, but that still doesn't apply to the servers. I can't think of other specific examples off hand because it has been a while since I have worked with a large, complex NDS (now eDirectory). But I know that Open Directory is pretty lacking compared to even Novell's NDS 10 years ago.
Is that right? You sometimes use WGM to manage your custom Linux based LDAP solution? HOw does that work exactly because I have WGM open right now and it doesn't even connect to port 389 (LDAP). It connects to port 625, OS X Directory Services. Where did you get the LDAP schema from? And how did you apply it to a standard OpenLDAP server? AFAIK, Apple uses a modified OpenLDAP server.
You may use LDAP to authenticate users (I've done it with Linux), but I doubt you have Macs doing so. And if you do, it is not utilizing any of the features you get from WGM. You can't control application usage, lock out system preferences, define login/logout scripts, define available printers, etc. Also, OpenDirectory uses the password server. It doesn't store passwords in the directory.
I've done the generic LDAP thing to autneticate Linux users, and it works OK but there is nothing "sharp" about the commandline tools for managing users. They are fine for batch operations or for modifying obscure attributes, but using vim to build an LDIF file and then applying it with ldapmodify is a pain in the ass compared to just searching for a user and modifying an attribute or whatever through the a GUI. Don't get me wrong, I'm a commandline guy at heart. I mean, I've been using Linux for nearly 12 years now and DOS for 8 years before that. I know the power of the commandline. But I also know when a graphical application can get things done much more effectively.
I recently got a flat panel display and wanted DVI for my Mac (G4 AGP). I ended up using an old NVIDIA FX 5200 from a PC and flashing it with a Mac ROM. So it would seem that basically any older video card with DVI would do. I mean, it isn't like DVI is new or anything. I think the issue is the PCI-E requirement. But as the GP points out, that was really just a matter of doing some research.
One has to wonder how these Ask Slashdots make the front page. I mean, a simple Google search for "dvi pci-e" gave me a $35 Radeon X300 in the first 10 results.
Real companies with real computers have duplicate systems as backups.
That isn't the WTF here...
Capacity on mission critical systems backups where I work is identical to the primary system.
This is the WTF. What is the point of switching to a backup, which has identical capacity, when the main is overloaded? You just end up with an overloaded backup.:-P
Oh yeah, THATs a good idea. Switch over to your backup system during peak time because the main server, which is probably identical to your backup, can't handling the load. Oh wait, this is probably Windows where such things actually make sense. They probably just needed to reboot the main server. Because as we all know that is quite often the "solution" in Windows.
I had 3 OS X Servers, with upgrade licenses for OS X server, running several desktops.
Explain that again? You had OS X Server with upgrade licenses for server? That doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't just work because debugging is a bitch.
But 10x better than debugging Windows, in my experience. Not as good as Linux, mind. But way better than Windows. Windows is frieken Voodoo. If it weren't for the fact that there are a million people who've probably already had the problem you're having, just about nothing would get solved. I mean, Windows doesn't log shit. And when it does, it is usually some worthless generic "There was a problem in ixrwtf32.dll" type message.
If things don't work, Apple's support options are a joke. Microsoft's knowledge base is huge, Apple's non-existant. AFP548.com does not a network make.
I would agree with this.
The mail systems are just non-standard location wise to make the online resources for the open source projects not quite useful, and Apple provides almost no utilities for debugging things. The resources aren't quite there.
Well, i did get tripped up by the mail system file locations, but I eventually figured it out enough to do what I wanted to do. Fortunately I haven't had to mess much with it because it does, for the most part, Just Work.
The hardware is getting there (Mini is an AWESOME general desktop, small in size with nothing to mess with), Xserve is cool, and Xraid means not needing massive RAID arrays in the box. The software is getting there as well, each rev of OS X Server is using more OSS solutions that have been made Enterprise ready by companies like Redhat, and their software is maturing Workgroup Manager gets much better each revision. But the support options just aren't there.
Maybe, but as a long time Linux user/admin, I have managed to make vendor support less of an issue all around.
Oh sure, that is exactly what I want: An OpenDirectory system that is unmaintainable through common tools and against which OS X may not even authenticate or read correctly. How useful would that be?
Where is the centralized management? How do I, as the IT Admin, lock down a user's rights on a Macintosh without having to log in locally?
All that can be done through Workgroup Manager. You can specify what applications users can run, what preferences panels they have access to. That much is there.
How does someone, with only a network login, log onto a Mac for the first time without the admin visiting the box and setting them up first?
They just do. Tell a machine to authenticate to an OpenDirectory server (it can pick it up through DHCP) and network users can login and they get their desktop from the server. There's no trick to it.;-)
How do I create a central policy the defines the firewall settings on OS-X?
Not sure you can do that through Workgroup Manager. Although it has never occured to me to try. But I imagine that would be one of the little features missing that I was talking about.
How do I centrally change the local admin password on all the workstations without logging in locally or addressing each box individually?
You coudl push such changes out through Apple Remote Desktop with a shell script/AppleScript in one batch. You can select all your machines and have the script run on all of them at once. That's one nice thing about OS X. You get teh full power of unix.
How do I handle websites that my users must go to that only render properly in IE?
This is more an application issue than a management issue.
These are the things that Windows Active Directory and Novel have figured out and done for years. They may not always have the prettiest interface, and are sometimes downright kludgey, but they are able to do all of these things for Windows based computers.
Well, it isn't all THAT bad. You can do most of the things you mentioned. But sometimes "most" isn't good enough. That's what I was saying. And to get that much, you'd have to run the Macs on their own directory or get ALL Macs. There is some AD integration, but then you lose the stuff that Workgroup Manager can do.
Fortunately, where I work, the Mac users don't generally have to share a lot data with the PC users so they can be on different servers.
Then again, maybe I'm just ignorant and Apple has all of these solutions, but I've yet to see somebody who's got them working.
Oh come on. "Got them working?" How do you NOT get Apple stuff working? Say what you want about Apple, but their stuff generally Just Works(tm). It may not be as featureful as Active Directory or whatever, but there is certainly no trick to getting OpenDirectory and Workgroup Manager "working."
Wow. I thought *I* had doubts about Mac in the enterprise.;-)
But do the vast majority of enterprise users need more than MS Office (or the equivalent thereof), a calender/organizer, email, and a browser?
When your calendar is Exchange, it can be a bit of a pain. AFAIK, Entourage has limited Exchange integration. But I could be wrong. I dont' use it personally.
Now, in the IT Department, I can see the need, but most business computers are little more than dumb terminals.
The problem is that it is often an "all or nothing" kind of thing. While highly technical environments with savvy admins can deal with a heterogenous set of clients, it is often simpler to just install the same thing on every computer. That is why MS Office is so big. Really, only very select group of people use the advanced features of Word/Excel and everyone else could get away with something much simpler and cheaper, but it is easier to just install it on everyone's computer and be done with it. It is better than trying to deal with document interchange problems. And Microsoft knows it.
Well, Parallels works MUCH better than Virtual PC. So having "Intel Inside" makes the mac that much more possible in the office. The new Parallels beta even has "coherence mode" where you can run Windows apps without the Windows desktop (it is there, just hidden) so your Windows apps are mixed with Mac apps. But still, I can see why virtualization is often more of a pain than it is worth. For one thing, it uses quite a bit more RAM.;-)
LDAP isn't the problem, per se. It it is the way it is implemented. Apple needs to utilize the hierarchical structure and implement partitioning and add directory level permissions. For example, you often want to make localized admins that only have rights to particular parts of the tree and the users/servers/services therein. These are the kinds of things I miss from my Netware/NDS days. NDS was awesome.
Never having worked in a "Microsoft Shop," i wonder what kind of support the actual OS vendor really supplies. I mean, sure, they've got to have a really good online knowledge base, but do Windows admins really spend much, if any, time on the phone with Microsoft? As far as I know, companies just hire consultants to give them support when inhouse staff can't handle it.. even when using Windows. Why wouldn't your clients rely on your for on-site support if they went with Microsoft? Who else would they call?
I think it is about features and options. Xserves and XRAIDs are great and easy to manage because they're relatively simple. But because they are simple, they lack at lot of flexability and options that enterprise users need. I mean, seriously, there is basically just ONE external RAID option for Apple servers. There's hundreds for PCs/Windows. If Apple products just happen to fit what you want to do, great, but Windows will continue to be the default platform of choice just because there is so much choice out there. And it isn't just Microsoft. We're talking Dell, HP, IBM, etc.
I like using OS X on the desktop and all, but I'll be the first to admit that OS X is not ready for the "enterprise." Things one might take for granted on Windows such as ODBC are very poorly implemented on OS X. Other examples where Apple is lagging behind is their supposed "directory services." Yeah, it is LDAP, so technically it is a directory (hierarchial), but for the most part it still acts like an NT domains. That is, it is basically a flat user/group space. Workgroup Manager does not work well with large user sets. It is not at all suited for larger corp environments where you might have a large directory with partitions and such that span WAN links. Although I have not personally used Active Directory much personally (I'm an old Netware/NDS/eDirectory guy), I get the feeling that is much more mature and featureful than OpenDirectory.
Heck, Apple has only just very recently adopted ACLs for filesystem permissions... and they are still pretty clunky to manage. Like you can't just go to a folder on a server and "Get Info" and check permissions inheritance and such. You have to go through Workgroup Manager or figure out how to use long chmod strings.
The list goes on and on. I think Apple is going to remain the "odd man out" in corporate environments. At least until Leopard. We'll see what Apple comes up with then, but Apple still seems to be focused on home/niche professional users. I don't see it becoming a general office platform for some time.
Besides the lack of stability, there are also issues with inconsistency. I won't belabor this too much because I've gone over it frequently in the past, but there are no less than three visual styles used (Mail, iTunes, and everything else)
I admit that iTunes stands out like a sore thumb, but otherwise there is Chrome and then regular Cocoa. That's it. I don't see what you're talking about. It is Windows that is full of every conceivable visual style known to man. I can't tell you how many Windows apps I've used that insist on trying to stand out from the crowd by adopting some silly style and overriding default widget styles.
and even menus are inconsistent. In some cases if you click a submenu in a context menu, it opens the submenu. In some cases you must hover to open it, because clicking will actually close the menu. What gives?
Wow, maybe it is because I'm coming from primarily a Linux background, but I've found OS X to be nothing but consistent. I mean, that is really its biggest strength for most users. Well, simplicity and consistency. Windows is, by comparison, totally screwed up. From the ground up. I mean, just look at the filesystem layout or the registry. It is like applications compete for the number of unique places that they can toss files during installation... such that cleaning up after them requires specialized tools if for some reason the "uninstall" doesn't work. The vast majority of OS X apps that I use simply drop a bundle in/Applications and that is it.
If you truly believe that OSX will make you more productive, then you are simply a fool, with one exception; if you want to use Apple's bundled applications. Unfortunately they are unintuitive as all hell. Apple is the only company that makes it harder to burn a DVD that just jumps in and plays than to make a DVD with animated menus. But if they do what you want, and you take the time to learn their many idiosyncrasies, it is definitely the cheapest way to get a production studio in a box.
Almost everyone I've talked to that has "switched" to OS X ahs found it nothing but intuitive.. ESPECIALLY the built-in Apple apps. Well, except for the Windows "power users" who are simply too entrenched in Windows Voodoo to recognized simplicity and elegance when they see it.
I certainly see your point. However, the first time an application is distributed isn't an update. A user just goes to website (most know how to do that!), and clicks a link. From then on you could do updates automatically from the application without ever visiting the site again. You also do not have to code up an installer program unique to every platform.
As a user, I don't really care about other platforms. Apparently the advantages/differences are mainly for the developer and not the user. Sounds very typical of Java. That is most likely why Java in general never really made it big on the desktop.;-)
You mean like just about every other application I download and install?
web start application doesn't get installed like a traditional application. the executable jar files are stored on the server and cached locally, giving the best of both worlds.
And exactly how is it different than an OSX application checking for updates on startup (Adium, iTerm, Firefox, Textmate, for examples) installing, and then restarting? That is the best of both worlds if you ask me. I get a fast, native looking apps with automatic updates. What more can you ask for?
Is that really a huge efficiency boost? I use Windows Search even less than I use the Start Menu. It's very rare that I don't know where to find something on my own machine. Does anyone else use the Search function that often? For what are you typically searching?
Not Windows, but rather OS X... I use the search a lot. Mostly because it also searches my email and contents of documents (quickly)). I probably wouldn't use it much if it only searched file names.
Ok, so if a webstart program is really just a regular local app, what does the "web" have to do with it? How is it at all different from any other Java app?
This was only months ago. And I believe they required the web site access for the authentication. The website was the main part of their business. You had to go there to buy and trade "runes" for your character. You'd get a unique web start item after you authenticated. If you tried to run an old webstart file, you wouldn't be able to authenticate to the game. So perhaps it was a problem with the way they choose to do authentication (single-singon with the website) and not so much web-start, but still, I don't really see the point of using the webstart at all. Why not just implement it like a normal app with a built in updater? I know Cocoa apps have libraries you can use to distribute and install updates from the developer. Similar to what Firefox does. What does webstart really do for the user?
Java web-start seems clunky to me. I played this game for a while (can't remember the name) which had half the game on a website (character management) and the game itself as a Java web-start thingy. Whenever I wanted to play, I have to go to the website, login, and download the little stub file. It was frustrating because I just wanted to be able to run the game from the Dock. Going through the browser to run a local app was awkward. Once you take your app to the Java VM, the browser just seems to get in the way. Might as well run it as a local app like everything else and implement a built in updater like Azureus.
I don't happen to agree with the articles inference that "paying monthly fees..., has become less abhorrent." I find it still mostly abhorrent, but rampant. The fact that it is everywhere indicates control of the market more than it indicates consumer-oriented services. When a population of users unshackled from monopoly-offered "pricing packages" and schemes freely endorse a paradigm, fine. Until then, I'm not convinced pay-as-you-go is desirable, or even makes sense.
I depends on the contract. But "pay as you go" does imply (to me) that there is no contract. You just pay month to month. So in that sense there i no lock-in except for whatever document formats are used. And that is the case whether you rent or own the software. Also, it should be pointed out that there is some value in always having the most recent version of software. Although in the case of Office, I think that value is minimal. I know plenty of people who still use Office 2000 and it works just fine for them.
Um, I'm not sure how $15/month is going to make the software any more appealing to people who can't (or won't) pay for it all up front. I mean $15/month is still pretty steep for a lot of people. No better than the $200 or whatever the full package normally costs. In fact, pay as you go usually ends up costing the consumer more in the long run. I mean, that is why companies want to do it. Recurring revenue means more $$$ from each individual.
Rather than buying a package once for, say, $250 and using it for several years (yeah, there are a lot of people still using Office 97 and it works just fine for them), people end up paying much much more in "rental" fees over time. I'm not saying "pay as you go" rips people off. Clearly there is added value in always having access to the latest version of theh software. I'm just saying it costs more money in the long run. You have to weigh the value in always having the latest version against paying more. In the case of Office, most people do just fine running the same version for several years and only doing periodic upgrades.
While I agree that something like X would be better as far as usability is concerned, the problem is maintaining application state. The stateless nature of HTTP is both a blessing and a curse. Generally speaking, the web server doesn't have to keep much in memory for the user. And if the user isn't doing anything, the server isn't doing anything. We can assume that that a good chunk of users will be idle at any given time, so not keeping the state in memory is an crucial to supporting large numbers of users. How many simutaneous complex X11 apps can one server (well, "client" in X11 speak) can one server host? Certainly not a number similar to a web server.
That said, it does kinda suck to see the lowest common denominator take over web applications. HTML and Javascript? Yuck! It is almost like driving a car powered by a model airplane engine. I'd almost rather see Java applets out there. It is too bad that Java doesn't integrate better with the browser and that there are so many Java versioning problems. I mean, it is pretty annoying when one applet requires one version of the Java VM and another applet requires a different VM. Fortunately OS X allows me to switch between them fairly easily, but I shouldn't have to.
This almost makes the Microsoft solution seem reasonable: "By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange".
Well shoot, is that all? Sounds like a deal to me. That is, what, about.6% of your average office user's salary? And not that I'm a fan of Microsoft or anything, but I have to admit that Office and Exchange are pretty featureful. And lets face it, even if half the employees don't utilize the features, there's always a handful who need the advanced features of Excel or Word. You could pay the hefty per-user licensing and have a few people using Office and everyone else using Google apps, but then you have the ol' document interchange problem. Every now and then, a non-Office user needs to open some ridiculously complex spreadsheet sent by the CFO or whatever. Google certainly isn't going to handle it. Or you coudl just get a site license and not worry about it at all. Microsoft Word may be overkill, but so what? How many people these days can't open up Word and write up a simple document?
Of course, OpenOffice is another option, which is still, in my opinion MUCH more featureful than Google apps. Lets face it, businesses really do need the features.
Google is following the same old tired fallacy which states that "all you have to do is implement the 10% of functionality that 80% of people use, and you have a Microsoft killer." Just because it is Google and it is web based, doesn't mean it is any more of a challenge to Microsoft.
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It is pretty amazing how that works out. Apple recalled a large subset of G4 eMacs because of that leaky capacitor issue in the power supplies. And after a few years of service, a bunch started failing within a window of a couple months. They got repaired for free, of course. But it was fairly chaotic having so many machine machines out for service at a time.
:P
Then again, considering the assembly-line efficiency and relative consistency with which devices and conponents are made these day, maybe it isn't isn't so surprising. It is almost like everything is designed to be disposable.
-matthew
I apologize for the meanness. I guess I just don't understand the point of what you're doing. I mean, what does running LDAP on Ubuntu vs. OSX get you? Can't you use the same scripts and tools against an OSX LDAP server? Do you even use a directory structure more complex than the default /Users and /Groups containers If so, how does WGM handle that?
Still, Open Directory isn't as advanced as other directories out there. I mean, there are no directory level permissions within the directory contents. You can't easily make a user an admin of just one section of the tree (including the servers). I mean, you could manually write some permissions in the OpenLDAP config and restart the service, but that still doesn't apply to the servers. I can't think of other specific examples off hand because it has been a while since I have worked with a large, complex NDS (now eDirectory). But I know that Open Directory is pretty lacking compared to even Novell's NDS 10 years ago.
-matthew
Is that right? You sometimes use WGM to manage your custom Linux based LDAP solution? HOw does that work exactly because I have WGM open right now and it doesn't even connect to port 389 (LDAP). It connects to port 625, OS X Directory Services. Where did you get the LDAP schema from? And how did you apply it to a standard OpenLDAP server? AFAIK, Apple uses a modified OpenLDAP server.
You may use LDAP to authenticate users (I've done it with Linux), but I doubt you have Macs doing so. And if you do, it is not utilizing any of the features you get from WGM. You can't control application usage, lock out system preferences, define login/logout scripts, define available printers, etc. Also, OpenDirectory uses the password server. It doesn't store passwords in the directory.
I've done the generic LDAP thing to autneticate Linux users, and it works OK but there is nothing "sharp" about the commandline tools for managing users. They are fine for batch operations or for modifying obscure attributes, but using vim to build an LDIF file and then applying it with ldapmodify is a pain in the ass compared to just searching for a user and modifying an attribute or whatever through the a GUI. Don't get me wrong, I'm a commandline guy at heart. I mean, I've been using Linux for nearly 12 years now and DOS for 8 years before that. I know the power of the commandline. But I also know when a graphical application can get things done much more effectively.
-matthew
I recently got a flat panel display and wanted DVI for my Mac (G4 AGP). I ended up using an old NVIDIA FX 5200 from a PC and flashing it with a Mac ROM. So it would seem that basically any older video card with DVI would do. I mean, it isn't like DVI is new or anything. I think the issue is the PCI-E requirement. But as the GP points out, that was really just a matter of doing some research.
One has to wonder how these Ask Slashdots make the front page. I mean, a simple Google search for "dvi pci-e" gave me a $35 Radeon X300 in the first 10 results.
-matthew
That isn't the WTF here...
This is the WTF. What is the point of switching to a backup, which has identical capacity, when the main is overloaded? You just end up with an overloaded backup.
-matthew
Oh yeah, THATs a good idea. Switch over to your backup system during peak time because the main server, which is probably identical to your backup, can't handling the load. Oh wait, this is probably Windows where such things actually make sense. They probably just needed to reboot the main server. Because as we all know that is quite often the "solution" in Windows.
-matthew
Explain that again? You had OS X Server with upgrade licenses for server? That doesn't make any sense.
But 10x better than debugging Windows, in my experience. Not as good as Linux, mind. But way better than Windows. Windows is frieken Voodoo. If it weren't for the fact that there are a million people who've probably already had the problem you're having, just about nothing would get solved. I mean, Windows doesn't log shit. And when it does, it is usually some worthless generic "There was a problem in ixrwtf32.dll" type message.
I would agree with this.
Well, i did get tripped up by the mail system file locations, but I eventually figured it out enough to do what I wanted to do. Fortunately I haven't had to mess much with it because it does, for the most part, Just Work.
Maybe, but as a long time Linux user/admin, I have managed to make vendor support less of an issue all around.
-matthew
Oh sure, that is exactly what I want: An OpenDirectory system that is unmaintainable through common tools and against which OS X may not even authenticate or read correctly. How useful would that be?
-matthew
All that can be done through Workgroup Manager. You can specify what applications users can run, what preferences panels they have access to. That much is there.
They just do. Tell a machine to authenticate to an OpenDirectory server (it can pick it up through DHCP) and network users can login and they get their desktop from the server. There's no trick to it.
Not sure you can do that through Workgroup Manager. Although it has never occured to me to try. But I imagine that would be one of the little features missing that I was talking about.
You coudl push such changes out through Apple Remote Desktop with a shell script/AppleScript in one batch. You can select all your machines and have the script run on all of them at once. That's one nice thing about OS X. You get teh full power of unix.
Or have your machines under Radmind http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/ management and push out new password file updates through that.
This is more an application issue than a management issue.
Well, it isn't all THAT bad. You can do most of the things you mentioned. But sometimes "most" isn't good enough. That's what I was saying. And to get that much, you'd have to run the Macs on their own directory or get ALL Macs. There is some AD integration, but then you lose the stuff that Workgroup Manager can do.
Fortunately, where I work, the Mac users don't generally have to share a lot data with the PC users so they can be on different servers.
Oh come on. "Got them working?" How do you NOT get Apple stuff working? Say what you want about Apple, but their stuff generally Just Works(tm). It may not be as featureful as Active Directory or whatever, but there is certainly no trick to getting OpenDirectory and Workgroup Manager "working."
Wow. I thought *I* had doubts about Mac in the enterprise.
-matthew
When your calendar is Exchange, it can be a bit of a pain. AFAIK, Entourage has limited Exchange integration. But I could be wrong. I dont' use it personally.
The problem is that it is often an "all or nothing" kind of thing. While highly technical environments with savvy admins can deal with a heterogenous set of clients, it is often simpler to just install the same thing on every computer. That is why MS Office is so big. Really, only very select group of people use the advanced features of Word/Excel and everyone else could get away with something much simpler and cheaper, but it is easier to just install it on everyone's computer and be done with it. It is better than trying to deal with document interchange problems. And Microsoft knows it.
-matthew
Well, Parallels works MUCH better than Virtual PC. So having "Intel Inside" makes the mac that much more possible in the office. The new Parallels beta even has "coherence mode" where you can run Windows apps without the Windows desktop (it is there, just hidden) so your Windows apps are mixed with Mac apps. But still, I can see why virtualization is often more of a pain than it is worth. For one thing, it uses quite a bit more RAM. ;-)
-matthew
LDAP isn't the problem, per se. It it is the way it is implemented. Apple needs to utilize the hierarchical structure and implement partitioning and add directory level permissions. For example, you often want to make localized admins that only have rights to particular parts of the tree and the users/servers/services therein. These are the kinds of things I miss from my Netware/NDS days. NDS was awesome.
-matthew
Never having worked in a "Microsoft Shop," i wonder what kind of support the actual OS vendor really supplies. I mean, sure, they've got to have a really good online knowledge base, but do Windows admins really spend much, if any, time on the phone with Microsoft? As far as I know, companies just hire consultants to give them support when inhouse staff can't handle it.. even when using Windows. Why wouldn't your clients rely on your for on-site support if they went with Microsoft? Who else would they call?
I think it is about features and options. Xserves and XRAIDs are great and easy to manage because they're relatively simple. But because they are simple, they lack at lot of flexability and options that enterprise users need. I mean, seriously, there is basically just ONE external RAID option for Apple servers. There's hundreds for PCs/Windows. If Apple products just happen to fit what you want to do, great, but Windows will continue to be the default platform of choice just because there is so much choice out there. And it isn't just Microsoft. We're talking Dell, HP, IBM, etc.
-matthew
I like using OS X on the desktop and all, but I'll be the first to admit that OS X is not ready for the "enterprise." Things one might take for granted on Windows such as ODBC are very poorly implemented on OS X. Other examples where Apple is lagging behind is their supposed "directory services." Yeah, it is LDAP, so technically it is a directory (hierarchial), but for the most part it still acts like an NT domains. That is, it is basically a flat user/group space. Workgroup Manager does not work well with large user sets. It is not at all suited for larger corp environments where you might have a large directory with partitions and such that span WAN links. Although I have not personally used Active Directory much personally (I'm an old Netware/NDS/eDirectory guy), I get the feeling that is much more mature and featureful than OpenDirectory.
Heck, Apple has only just very recently adopted ACLs for filesystem permissions... and they are still pretty clunky to manage. Like you can't just go to a folder on a server and "Get Info" and check permissions inheritance and such. You have to go through Workgroup Manager or figure out how to use long chmod strings.
The list goes on and on. I think Apple is going to remain the "odd man out" in corporate environments. At least until Leopard. We'll see what Apple comes up with then, but Apple still seems to be focused on home/niche professional users. I don't see it becoming a general office platform for some time.
-matthew
I admit that iTunes stands out like a sore thumb, but otherwise there is Chrome and then regular Cocoa. That's it. I don't see what you're talking about. It is Windows that is full of every conceivable visual style known to man. I can't tell you how many Windows apps I've used that insist on trying to stand out from the crowd by adopting some silly style and overriding default widget styles.
Wow, maybe it is because I'm coming from primarily a Linux background, but I've found OS X to be nothing but consistent. I mean, that is really its biggest strength for most users. Well, simplicity and consistency. Windows is, by comparison, totally screwed up. From the ground up. I mean, just look at the filesystem layout or the registry. It is like applications compete for the number of unique places that they can toss files during installation... such that cleaning up after them requires specialized tools if for some reason the "uninstall" doesn't work. The vast majority of OS X apps that I use simply drop a bundle in
Almost everyone I've talked to that has "switched" to OS X ahs found it nothing but intuitive.. ESPECIALLY the built-in Apple apps. Well, except for the Windows "power users" who are simply too entrenched in Windows Voodoo to recognized simplicity and elegance when they see it.
-matthew
As a user, I don't really care about other platforms. Apparently the advantages/differences are mainly for the developer and not the user. Sounds very typical of Java. That is most likely why Java in general never really made it big on the desktop.
-matthew
You mean like just about every other application I download and install?
And exactly how is it different than an OSX application checking for updates on startup (Adium, iTerm, Firefox, Textmate, for examples) installing, and then restarting? That is the best of both worlds if you ask me. I get a fast, native looking apps with automatic updates. What more can you ask for?
-matthew
Not Windows, but rather OS X... I use the search a lot. Mostly because it also searches my email and contents of documents (quickly)). I probably wouldn't use it much if it only searched file names.
-matthew
Ok, so if a webstart program is really just a regular local app, what does the "web" have to do with it? How is it at all different from any other Java app?
-matthew
This was only months ago. And I believe they required the web site access for the authentication. The website was the main part of their business. You had to go there to buy and trade "runes" for your character. You'd get a unique web start item after you authenticated. If you tried to run an old webstart file, you wouldn't be able to authenticate to the game. So perhaps it was a problem with the way they choose to do authentication (single-singon with the website) and not so much web-start, but still, I don't really see the point of using the webstart at all. Why not just implement it like a normal app with a built in updater? I know Cocoa apps have libraries you can use to distribute and install updates from the developer. Similar to what Firefox does. What does webstart really do for the user?
-matthew
Java web-start seems clunky to me. I played this game for a while (can't remember the name) which had half the game on a website (character management) and the game itself as a Java web-start thingy. Whenever I wanted to play, I have to go to the website, login, and download the little stub file. It was frustrating because I just wanted to be able to run the game from the Dock. Going through the browser to run a local app was awkward. Once you take your app to the Java VM, the browser just seems to get in the way. Might as well run it as a local app like everything else and implement a built in updater like Azureus.
-matthew
I depends on the contract. But "pay as you go" does imply (to me) that there is no contract. You just pay month to month. So in that sense there i no lock-in except for whatever document formats are used. And that is the case whether you rent or own the software. Also, it should be pointed out that there is some value in always having the most recent version of software. Although in the case of Office, I think that value is minimal. I know plenty of people who still use Office 2000 and it works just fine for them.
-matthew
Um, I'm not sure how $15/month is going to make the software any more appealing to people who can't (or won't) pay for it all up front. I mean $15/month is still pretty steep for a lot of people. No better than the $200 or whatever the full package normally costs. In fact, pay as you go usually ends up costing the consumer more in the long run. I mean, that is why companies want to do it. Recurring revenue means more $$$ from each individual.
Rather than buying a package once for, say, $250 and using it for several years (yeah, there are a lot of people still using Office 97 and it works just fine for them), people end up paying much much more in "rental" fees over time. I'm not saying "pay as you go" rips people off. Clearly there is added value in always having access to the latest version of theh software. I'm just saying it costs more money in the long run. You have to weigh the value in always having the latest version against paying more. In the case of Office, most people do just fine running the same version for several years and only doing periodic upgrades.
-matthew
While I agree that something like X would be better as far as usability is concerned, the problem is maintaining application state. The stateless nature of HTTP is both a blessing and a curse. Generally speaking, the web server doesn't have to keep much in memory for the user. And if the user isn't doing anything, the server isn't doing anything. We can assume that that a good chunk of users will be idle at any given time, so not keeping the state in memory is an crucial to supporting large numbers of users. How many simutaneous complex X11 apps can one server (well, "client" in X11 speak) can one server host? Certainly not a number similar to a web server.
That said, it does kinda suck to see the lowest common denominator take over web applications. HTML and Javascript? Yuck! It is almost like driving a car powered by a model airplane engine. I'd almost rather see Java applets out there. It is too bad that Java doesn't integrate better with the browser and that there are so many Java versioning problems. I mean, it is pretty annoying when one applet requires one version of the Java VM and another applet requires a different VM. Fortunately OS X allows me to switch between them fairly easily, but I shouldn't have to.
-matthew
This almost makes the Microsoft solution seem reasonable: "By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange".
.6% of your average office user's salary? And not that I'm a fan of Microsoft or anything, but I have to admit that Office and Exchange are pretty featureful. And lets face it, even if half the employees don't utilize the features, there's always a handful who need the advanced features of Excel or Word. You could pay the hefty per-user licensing and have a few people using Office and everyone else using Google apps, but then you have the ol' document interchange problem. Every now and then, a non-Office user needs to open some ridiculously complex spreadsheet sent by the CFO or whatever. Google certainly isn't going to handle it. Or you coudl just get a site license and not worry about it at all. Microsoft Word may be overkill, but so what? How many people these days can't open up Word and write up a simple document?
Well shoot, is that all? Sounds like a deal to me. That is, what, about
Of course, OpenOffice is another option, which is still, in my opinion MUCH more featureful than Google apps. Lets face it, businesses really do need the features.
Google is following the same old tired fallacy which states that "all you have to do is implement the 10% of functionality that 80% of people use, and you have a Microsoft killer." Just because it is Google and it is web based, doesn't mean it is any more of a challenge to Microsoft.
-matthew