Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
Just one example, of course. Though it certainly was pre-OSX. I hope now someone will tell me how OSX is the OS Messiah, and that there has never in history been a single support call on an OSX machine. Because it's based on UNIX, which many of us also don't have years of experience supporting.
Let me simply ask this: Does Apple Computer have a support department. If so, why? They never need support!
Again, I will reiterate, none of this is stating that Mac's suck. Apple makes great systems. But anyone who says they never need support is either wearing blinders or has a *very* small sample size. *All* OSes have problems sometimes.
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
I supported close to a thousand macs for well over a year. Were there perhaps 30 people out of 1000 who rarely called us for help? Almost certainly. That doesn't change how often the phones rang every day.
And I was only on phone support. We had 2-3 field service techs dedicated to mac support who were kept constantly busy every day.
I've supported macs, pcs, a dozen or more flavors of UNIX. Every computer system has problems, and every computer system has even *more* problems the moment end-users start touching it. There is no idiot-proof system out there.
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
Such BS about no support calls from Mac users. I worked helpdesk for a company that at the time *did* deploy Macs to all employees instead of Windows PCs. Several hundred employees from clerical to sales to engineering. The half-dozen of us on the helpdesk were kept plenty busy taking support calls from people having problems on their macs. (Ask me how many times I've walked someone through rebuilding their desktop.)
Macs are perfectly fine systems, but those of us who have *actually* had jobs supporting them know that this "mac users have less support needs" idea is pure weapons-grade bolognium.
I'm trying to think of all the greatest games I've ever played, and I didn't play any of them on consoles. The Ultimas, Planescape, Wasteland, Fallout, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Half-Life, Deus Ex (the original, not the crappy sequel), Baldur's Gate (the RPG, not the diablo-esque action games), No One Lives Forever...I suspect I could go on to a very long list of outstanding games, most of which were not available on consoles.
This is my greatest fear in the age of console-dominated gaming. The truly great games will be less likely to see the light of day in favor of yet another platformer or pseudo-fps with terrible controls.
The whole PC gaming market is small potatoes next to the console gaming market, and it's only getting worse. More and more games are developed for consoles first then ported to PCs later time permitting.
I don't think the game issue is as important to the broader market as it used to be. To hardcore gamers it may be, but that doesn't seem to be indicative of the larger market.
This is cold comfort for those that really loved the great RPGs, with consoles dominated by Japanese-style RPGs, and with a tendency for console games to be "dumbed down" a bit. (See Deus Ex:Invisible War). Not to mention I couldn't aim a reticle with my thumb if my life depended on it, so an FPS on a console is unplayable for me. But that's the price of progress.
If anything, the bigger problem is that most people in corporate work *have* to use exchange/outlook and MS Office apps. And while there is Office for the Mac, and other alternatives, the compatibility between them all is not perfect.
The point about single vs multiple points of failure is the most important to me. I frankly don't care which networking methodology is the fastest/most efficient/whatever. What I (and virtually all large companies) care about is *uptime*. It is far far more important for the network to be up than fast. Of course, fast is nice and you want it to be as fast as possible, but in the end 10 minutes of downtime is more damaging to most corporations than 10 hours of inefficient utilization. Especially when inefficient utilization can be improved through addition of switches, etc.
Now I must confess, I have only a passing understanding of TR. I understand it in concept but have never had to actually manage a token ring network. So I'll gladly stand corrected if someone can convince me that TR has better uptime in a large-scale environment. (Where people foolishly unplug things, trip over things, etc) Even then, I can't imagine it being so great as to convince me to undertake the task of replacing all the NICs/switches/routers/hubs in the company.
Slashdot Mirror
Just one example, of course. Though it certainly was pre-OSX. I hope now someone will tell me how OSX is the OS Messiah, and that there has never in history been a single support call on an OSX machine. Because it's based on UNIX, which many of us also don't have years of experience supporting.
Let me simply ask this: Does Apple Computer have a support department. If so, why? They never need support!
Again, I will reiterate, none of this is stating that Mac's suck. Apple makes great systems. But anyone who says they never need support is either wearing blinders or has a *very* small sample size. *All* OSes have problems sometimes.
I supported close to a thousand macs for well over a year. Were there perhaps 30 people out of 1000 who rarely called us for help? Almost certainly. That doesn't change how often the phones rang every day.
And I was only on phone support. We had 2-3 field service techs dedicated to mac support who were kept constantly busy every day.
I've supported macs, pcs, a dozen or more flavors of UNIX. Every computer system has problems, and every computer system has even *more* problems the moment end-users start touching it. There is no idiot-proof system out there.
Such BS about no support calls from Mac users. I worked helpdesk for a company that at the time *did* deploy Macs to all employees instead of Windows PCs. Several hundred employees from clerical to sales to engineering. The half-dozen of us on the helpdesk were kept plenty busy taking support calls from people having problems on their macs. (Ask me how many times I've walked someone through rebuilding their desktop.)
Macs are perfectly fine systems, but those of us who have *actually* had jobs supporting them know that this "mac users have less support needs" idea is pure weapons-grade bolognium.
I'm trying to think of all the greatest games I've ever played, and I didn't play any of them on consoles. The Ultimas, Planescape, Wasteland, Fallout, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Half-Life, Deus Ex (the original, not the crappy sequel), Baldur's Gate (the RPG, not the diablo-esque action games), No One Lives Forever...I suspect I could go on to a very long list of outstanding games, most of which were not available on consoles.
This is my greatest fear in the age of console-dominated gaming. The truly great games will be less likely to see the light of day in favor of yet another platformer or pseudo-fps with terrible controls.
The whole PC gaming market is small potatoes next to the console gaming market, and it's only getting worse. More and more games are developed for consoles first then ported to PCs later time permitting.
I don't think the game issue is as important to the broader market as it used to be. To hardcore gamers it may be, but that doesn't seem to be indicative of the larger market.
This is cold comfort for those that really loved the great RPGs, with consoles dominated by Japanese-style RPGs, and with a tendency for console games to be "dumbed down" a bit. (See Deus Ex:Invisible War). Not to mention I couldn't aim a reticle with my thumb if my life depended on it, so an FPS on a console is unplayable for me. But that's the price of progress.
If anything, the bigger problem is that most people in corporate work *have* to use exchange/outlook and MS Office apps. And while there is Office for the Mac, and other alternatives, the compatibility between them all is not perfect.
What about 100-VG-Anylan, or something like that.
I remember I had to remember that for the MS Networking Essentials exam, so it *MUST* be true!
The point about single vs multiple points of failure is the most important to me. I frankly don't care which networking methodology is the fastest/most efficient/whatever. What I (and virtually all large companies) care about is *uptime*. It is far far more important for the network to be up than fast. Of course, fast is nice and you want it to be as fast as possible, but in the end 10 minutes of downtime is more damaging to most corporations than 10 hours of inefficient utilization. Especially when inefficient utilization can be improved through addition of switches, etc.
Now I must confess, I have only a passing understanding of TR. I understand it in concept but have never had to actually manage a token ring network. So I'll gladly stand corrected if someone can convince me that TR has better uptime in a large-scale environment. (Where people foolishly unplug things, trip over things, etc) Even then, I can't imagine it being so great as to convince me to undertake the task of replacing all the NICs/switches/routers/hubs in the company.