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This is not how corporate workstation work. A corporate desktop is not like an home PC. It is not a single entity. It is a node in a bigger picture. It is connected to a domain, share folder using that domain, have a domain connected mail client and is usually using a standard disk image that can be replaced remotely. If the corporate Network use a full Microsoft stack (Active Directory, SharePoint, IE6(...), Windows Server) and Windows applications, making a transition to the Mac take a -lot- of IT resource for what it worth. By a lot, I mean 3000+ person-hours, so around 65000$ not invested anywhere else. If this is not done, the Mac will have limited integration and will probably run Windows is Parallel Desktop or VMware for most tasks. Even there, it will still be an alien.

Mixing -workstation- type is usually not cost effective. Mixing servers is fine, but not workstation.

I guess the fact that more and more applications are web-based helps a lot in that regard.

Also, dropping some Microsoft solutions in favor of web-based ones might save a lot of licensing cost over the long run.

Only to a limited extent, in that it moves the problem from "out of the question" to "expensive."

This isn't a problem unique to Mac OS. Similar problems are holding Linux back as well.

While I agree that it would be a big effort for some IT infrastructures, Mac integrate with Windows pretty well. At my work, I use a Mac for development and my macbook pro is joined to the Active Directory domain, using all the standard Microsoft tools with few issues.

Yes, but in most organizations in standard roles, management wants to limit what a user can do. This to avoid maintenance nightmare. Many companies where there in the 90ies when Windows did not provide so much maintenance functionality. OS X is, in this respect in the position of Windows in the 90ies. Of course, on company laptops, or as developer machines, OS X works fine (outside some compatibility problems).

I don't know where you work, but where I work, the desktops have a much longer lifespan than 2 years. Heck, we're still running some pentium 3 desktops that are probably close to 10 years old.

This. Your company must be very rich to throw good computers away after 2 years. Everywhere I've ever went, it's possible to see lots of machines being 5-years old or more, and I can guarantee you that they were not worth $1000 (no serious GPU, 512MB or 1GB ram...).

Unless, of course, you think that to be usable, a computer must run the latest release of the OS you put on it. But if we forget for a moment how disputable this is (fixed purpose machines which work well in their current setup only need security updates, not feature updates), I've heard that Leopard was not exactly light on resources at release time either. More like competing with Vista for the title of most bloated OS of these times So it's likely that lots of macs were not able to run it.

Plus, in terms of upgradeability, Linux and BSDs used in combination with the right software beat them all by a large margin.

Edited 2011-05-22 07:28 UTC

I do most dev on a Pentium III with a 1GB of ram on Windows 2000/XP ... Legacy Code.

2 years!? I wish.

In all the companies I worked so far, the PC were used until they died, without any chance of possible recovery.

Even then, their working parts were used to keep other of the same age running.

$500 Dell will serve 4-6 years with no issues. I've had done application development on 5 y/o Dell Optiplex and those machines are still going to be in use for at least 3 years.

My desktop is 4 y/o and I am still doing heavy Java development on it. Average users don't even need half of what I have. And I have an energy efficient setup with an underclocked CPU.

If you are a larger client with Dell, HP or Lenovo, you'll get a service contract that will b**chslap AppleCare. I go for Lenovo, for their global warranty and subtile design.

The one's that I worked on were in property of (Finnish company HQ'd in Espoo) and that's Global Technology Services(for the BigBlue)

I imagine it is the same company I worked for in the last years.

The reality is that more powerful computers really don't help most users. A few, like developers, can benefit, but most peoples computing needs were well met by 90s computers. New convenience features might require more resources and those features might be helpful to productivity for some users but in the majority of cases any computer produced in the last decade running an appropriate set of software for its specs will be sufficient for almost every user.

What drives workstation replacement is maintenance costs. How much to get spare parts? How often does it break? Do we still have an image for that? Can our management software still manage it? As long as we get get parts cheaply and it doesn't require constant attention and we can still reimage and manage it, it stays.

Yes. from selling 100'000 Macs to corporations to 200'000 is not big news.
I bet most of them ended up in the iOS development department, not on the tables of regular back-office employees.

I would vote +10 if it was possible, lot of people are neglecting the aura effect of iDevices (developing for iDevice requires a OSX system, developping a .Net application doesn't anymore require a windows compatible system). Pretty much like blackberry's were surfing on the exchange wave.

But as discuted in this thread OSX is incompatible with some of the enterprise wide tech, and most system administrator lack OSX expertise (if any can be acquired, as they "just work" and most of their owner rely on Apple store genius to solve their issues).

And I would add that OSX would be a security nightmare (not as much as windows though) for security administrator (some of the high security firms block USB usage, comes only with wired connection, I'm am not knowlegable enough on Mac OSX to block usb port and the access point function of mac osx). Plus the built in backup system is pretty much only compatible with time capsule (without resorting to unreliable hack) which are individual backup devices and not enterprise wide ones.

Yes there is but who cares?

Then 6 months later.

"Knock Knock"
"The BSA. Open up we are doing an audit"

After they've gone.
"Now what idiot persuared me to allowd those Express Editions to be used? You are FIRED"

You can deploy code with the express install ... it is only the academic license they don't allow you to deploy code with.

This crippling is to MS's detrement. We write high performance multi threaded software on linux and compile for windows using the express compiler. We don't want visual studio. Any performance hit on their platform is on their heads. That and almost all of our customers run the software on linux anyways. There's a couple of stubborn ones who have more money than sense.

The professional editions are actually quite cheap.

Only the academic versions of Visual Studio you can deploy production code with.

We had two Copies of VS 2010 ultimate for £100 each. Sql Server 2008 R2 Developer Edition is just over £100.

The most expensive software we use is usually from Adobe.

The professional versions of VS cost around €1000 per seat.

In Germany it is €796,68 actually
http://www.amazon.de/Microsoft-Visual-Studio-Professional-Englisch/...

Not for us it doesn't ... Microsoft quoted us £100. It ultimately depends on your licensing vendor.

Even so ... it is still cheaper than the price of an iMac. $1000 is approximately £700

Average core 2 workstation costs about £400 with a Windows License ... so even if we take into account the full price with no discount (and they are easy to get), it still comes up to the same price as the iMac.

And you don't even need a dev copy of SQl Server because they include Express as part of the VS2010 install.

Also where are you going to deploy this code to? Most people have Windows Workstations, if you develop on XCode everyone would have to have a Mac and that would be expensive.

Edited 2011-05-22 10:31 UTC

I use them, but they are quite crippled:

- No ATL
- No MFC
- No ALM tools
- No 64bit compilers (you can get them on the free SDK though)
- No Sourcesafe
- No optimizing compilers
- No VS Plugins
- ...

But you can go a long way with the Express editons + Windows SDK.

I was with you until "No sourcesafe" - that's a GOOD thing.

I'm sorry, you're comparing VS to XCode? Seriously? Then Eclipse C/C++ on Linux will beat you on price.

In any case, if you're developing for Windows you'll need MSDN and Windows, unless OSX comes with MSDN subscription and a Windows license.

You are right in the sense that I was speaking about different target audiences, maybe I should have make it clearer.

I was just discussing it as a concept.

On the Windows world, if you are doing development usually that means buying VS. The free SDK + Express editions won't be enough if you need ATL, MFC, and many other Microsoft specific tools.

While on Macs the full development environment comes with them.

So when comparing PC with Mac prices this is something that is usually overlooked.

Now, I am a Windows/Unix developer so don't take my argumentation as blindling defending Apple.

And I agree with the majority here. Most likely those Macs are for developing applications for iOS devices.

In Europe most ads I see for Objective-C developers are for mobile application developers, not desktop.

No you are wrong.

A Mac is about £1100 for the cheapest iMac.

The dev machine I do not use for Legacy development is a Core 2 with 4GB of ram and Windows XP cost the company about £300.

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate is £100 from our licensing partner, Sql Server 2008 R2 Developer is approximately £100 as well... £600

Only if I was developing on a Mac Mini it would be cheaper.

I don't understand how you can pay just £100 for VS.

Nowadays I develop mostly in Java, but back in the day I was doing heavy Win32 development, we needed to pay at least €500 per year for MSDN licenses with the volume license programme, if I remember correctly.

We don't require a volume licensing agreement, since there are only 2 people that use VS (one being me and the other being my collegue) and you can get various discounts depending on your organisation's status.

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying.

No worries.

I do come across pro MS on here ... but it normally because I don't like some of the misinformation about Microsoft ... I have made a very good living out of knowing microsoft technology and for me the additional cost of software is very small compared to what I have gained career wise.

I wasn't specifically having a go at you if you felt that .. since you seem fairly balanced with your opinions regarding these subjects.

Wow you are comparing core 2 system with i5/i7 iMac for the price? And top of that Windows XP? Come on. be serious.

It's called choice and using the right tool for the right job. If you need nothing more than a core 2, why should you buy an i5 ?

Let me guess 'a run' is some kind of build system for software development ? I've always thought creating many/new processes in Linux is much faster than in Windows.

But it is good to see large companies doing pilots like these. This was exactly what Ballmer was afraid of when he said Linux is their biggest competitor.

The biggest fear is if Linux gets a foothold and they don't buy PC's with Windows pre-installed anymore.

If Linux is good enough for a companies, it should be pretty easy to replace many systems with it. Because I think there are no per-PC license fees for Linux, just support hours used and similair subscribtions.

The only hurdle is hardware support/drivers (if you have an installed base you probably have older better supported hardware ?). Usually though these companies have a lot of systems of the same brand/model so it should be pretty easy to do.

Maybe it is even possible to keep some of the older hardware in service ? That was the biggest hurdle for a lot of companies to not deploy Vista and stay with Windows XP. Windows 7 in that regard is better.

If Microsoft would mess up like they did with Windows Vista again then I think we would see a lot more of these pilots I think.

Well, cross-compiles for us are certainly must faster on Linux than on Windows - but for targeting Windows itself, nothing we've found is faster than Visual Studio 2010. It's also among the fastest when you're just trying to "sanity check" a multi-megaSLOC C++ build with no particular target in mind - just checking algorithms and interfaces and such. We haven't tested on Mac yet, but I don't expect any speed records there - OS/X is famous for usability more than performance.

The "run" I referenced wasn't a build, though, but certain in-house "heavy" applications written in C++ and others in Java that implement business and engineering logic. When we get to certain hard real-time environments, of course, Windows is a non-starter, while some Linux products feature real-time extensions such as SLERT (nice!) that for us fit the bill better than embedded environments such as VxWorks.

Even though Windows 7 doesn't suffer the same insanity that afflicted Vista (sure, YMMV if you're a Vista fan - but we tested it thoroughly, and it was deployed only very lightly here to this day, so this is not just my opinion), I think we'll see more Mac and Linux pilots anyway. .Net is very nice, but cross-platform development is now well-understood and very efficient. There's no reason to enslave your corporate IT budget to Microsoft (or Oracle or Adobe) when you can leverage competition to manage pricing. It's just... prudent.