“Not too long ago, ad agencies, design firms and other creative companies were about the only businesses that widely deployed Macintosh computers to their employees. But for a number of reasons, word of the benefits of Apple hardware – and software – on enterprise desktops is now spreading.”
Leopard has a number of improvements, especially at the server side, to really boost enterprise usage further. Can’t wait!
I work in a large Mac install and I can tell that they a piece of %$@@! We have so many problems with them that I can’t even count.
Software drives the Enterprise market and not the OS or even hardware.
This sounds like a term paper on Mac viability in the corporate workplace – fine. Not that Macs are not great, but I wonder how many fortune 1000 deploy Macs over their entire organization. Software compatability has been a consistent issue with competitors of MS.
… but I’m not gay.
Methinks NotParker has hijacked tomcat’s account.
“””
Methinks NotParker has hijacked tomcat’s account.
“””
No. NotParker was irritating. But he had a certain sense of style.
This is not NotParker.
But, while we are on the subject, I have been watching science related media lately. (thesciencechannel.org is a nice place to start, btw.)
And one thing I keep noticing is that most of those science luminaries that I admire… show up with Macs.
Another thing that I have noticed is that they all hook up their laptops to the hall’s video and sound system and have presentations going on as they give their talks.
The Mac users’ presentations *usually* go off without a hitch.
But when a speaker brings along his Windows PC, the talk is full of words and phrases like “Woops!”, “Oops!”, and “Oh, I didn’t mean to show that yet”.
The presentation, which is, in itself, usually pretty unimportant IMO (And I wish they wouldn’t waste the time), starts to actually detract from the talk.
It’s subtle. You hear a bit of laughter from the audience, and the speaker proceeds. (I’ve never heard anyone comment that “Windows Sucks” or anything like that.)
But it is predictable. (I’ve made a bit of a game of it.)
Now, I’m a Linux on x68 hardware sort of guy.
But I do notice these things as I’m watching.
Good show, OS X on Apple hardware!
I suppose, while I’m at it, I should mention that I do happen to be Gay and also happen to use x86 hardware.
(As if there were some connection between sexual orientation and choice of processor! 😉
Give me a break! 😉
We don’t need another little-endian vs. big-endian debate. ;}
“””
We don’t need another little-endian vs. big-endian debate. ;}
“””
Pervert. 😉
Edited 2007-03-09 21:51
The sad truth is that gay people use PCs too. Maybe the notion of this will make you go and hang yourself on a tree.
You do realize, don’t you, is that your statement implies you’d like to be gay?
Personally, I can’t see even that going far towards redeeming your personality!
what’s wrong to be gay?!
gay people are just NORMAL people like you and me, and you can’t expect they live the same way you like to live.
The learning curve and disparity of Linux distributions is too high for easy general office use.
You can stop reading here, folks!
The learning curve for distros like Freespire and PCLinuxOS is no more difficult than Mac OS X and Vista.
The learning curve for distros like Freespire and PCLinuxOS is no more difficult than Mac OS X and Vista.
Exactly my point, Your Flaming Majesty 😉
Indeed. Such a statement really does kill the arguement. Not to say that Macs aren’t enterprise ready, I’m sure they are depending on your organization. But so is a linux distro, if you chose one appropriate for your organization.
Attempting to disprove all of the alternatives when trying to prove your point is an easy way to ruin a good argument. It’s an amateur mistake that most politicians, executives, and editorial journalists quickly learn to avoid. The point being argued is that Macs are more than ready for enterprise adoption. Pointing out the flaws in other alternative systems–and even in Windows–is only pertinent in the context of discussing a superior characteristic of the Macs.
For example, the author could have said: “Macs offer a relatively hassle-free migration from Windows and a lower learning curve than other alternatives such as Linux.” Only the most zealous Linux fanatics would complain about this, whereas saying that Linux is “too difficult” is sure to get a rise out of many casual Linux users.
My opinion is that Macs are a decent choice for tech-savvy SMBs, while Linux might be the smarter option across the board. The worst IT decision an SMB can make is to handle integration, management, and support in-house. These companies shouldn’t need an IT department, just a technician or three with enough skills to recognize problems and work with the service provider. Regardless of how easy and streamlined their environment, there are always complexities, and SMBs normally don’t have the resources to deal with this crap. They need a solution that has comprehensive enterprise-class support, especially for the software stack. The smallest and largest businesses need the best support, while the middle might decide to go at it themselves.
My impression (and I could be wrong) is that the comprehensive enterprise support options for Linux platforms are better than those for Macs. As the article suggests, Macs are perceived as consumer products, and I think that this is reflected by the service that Apple provides. Linux is an ecosystem where perhaps the only value is in the service, so vendors are competing to offer the most compelling service contracts for businesses of all sizes.
In addition, the most overlooked market for non-Windows solutions is the retail sector. Microsoft has been asleep at the wheel in this area, and Macs aren’t a very good fit, so many larger retailers have already jumped ship to Linux and similar platforms. Blades and thin clients are the new terrain, and Linux is poised to dominate, from the databases to the POS terminals and terminal servers. Apple is nearly invisible in this area.
In summary, by making a better consumer desktop, Apple has finally succeeded in making a fine corporate desktop… for yesterday’s corporate IT environment.
You can stop reading here, folks!
I agree, that’s a pretty uninformed statement for the author to make. If a user in a general office environment has to deal with *any* learning curve (beyond what is required for performing ones’ job duties), then I would seriously question the competence of that organization’s IT staff. In that type of situation, end-user workstations should be properly-configured (and locked-down) by IT, long before the staff ever touch them.
For typical office/productivity tasks, a competent IT pro should be able to setup a usable workstation for end users – regardless of whether the underlying platform is Windows, Linux, or OS X.
In a newspaper, the writers shouldn’t be running the printing presses – and in IT, regular employees shouldn’t be required to perform sys admin duties for their own workstations.
For sure, think those thousand chimps would have an equal chance of writing Shakespeare on any os.
Well, the problem with Linux (or macs) in the entreprise is really that everything else runs on Windows.
I mean if you have a mac or linux and want to connect to the shared printer on a SMB network you have to manually select the printer driver. If you run XP, it all just works (it will get the driver from the server).
I am pretty sure a WinPC would feel very bad in an all mac office though.
“I mean if you have a mac or linux and want to connect to the shared printer on a SMB network you have to manually select the printer driver. If you run XP, it all just works (it will get the driver from the server).”
Balderdash. You’ve never spent 4 hours on a telephone remotely reconfiguring a customer’s print server due to Windows XP remotely pulling the driver from a Windows 2000 Server.
Wemgadge (tier 1.5 tech support for one of the big 3 PC companies)
Yep, god forbid a journalist doesn’t drink the Linux community kool-aid…
FYI, my problem with this journalist is that he/she is misinformed.
Misinformed?
I use Ubuntu every day and I love it. It’s just not realistic to believe that most office workers can get it. Its great and has been getting better but its still way harder to master than Macs and PCs. For instance, installing Flash 9 which came out a few months ago. Browsing the network. File Transfers over instant messenger. Not good for novices.
Its not that you can’t do 85-95% of what you can do on a mac or PC on Linux, its just the interface is different and takes a significant time and energy to learn. The justification to learn all of this on Ubuntu KDE as opposed to Red Hate Gnome vs. Novell Suse KDE makes it all the more difficult.
I’ve attached the screenshots for installing Flash 9 on Ubuntu – the easiest – which is an auto-install on Mac/Windows. How many people in the office where you are sitting could install flash – software needed for Youtube and millions of other sites?
I realize some people spend their life on Linux. ITs a great platform and an incredible movement. They’ve done amazing things. they aren’t at the desktop level yet.
I’ve tried to deploy 1 Ubuntu and one Fedora/Red Het Linux on 2 separate occasions and its not worth the headache…yet
I use Ubuntu every day and I love it.
Ahh, starting with the “i use Linux every day” tactic. Innovative. (For Microsoftian values of “innovative”, anyway).
It’s just not realistic to believe that most office workers can get it.
Why not? Specifics, please, or I call bullshit.
Its great and has been getting better but its still way harder to master than Macs and PCs.
Fact: Linux is harder to master than PCs and Macs, if you have been using PCs or Macs. Fact: PCs and Macs are harder to master than Linux, if you have been using Linux. Fact: Linux is as easy, if not easier, to master than Windows if you have never used PCs. Non-fact: Linux is harder to master than Macs and PCs.
For instance, installing Flash 9 which came out a few months ago. Browsing the network. File Transfers over instant messenger. Not good for novices.
Right, because “most office workers” do all those things. I doubt most Windows and Mac users do all those things.
I’ve attached the screenshots for installing Flash 9 on Ubuntu – the easiest – which is an auto-install on Mac/Windows. How many people in the office where you are sitting could install flash – software needed for Youtube and millions of other sites?
How many of them could do it in Windows? (WITHOUT help).
I’ve tried to deploy 1 Ubuntu and one Fedora/Red Het Linux on 2 separate occasions and its not worth the headache…yet
If you think deploying Ubuntu is a pain in the ass you must hate Windows.
this is like having an argument with a fundamentalist.
For instance, installing Flash 9 which came out a few months ago. Browsing the network. File Transfers over instant messenger. Not good for novices.
“Right, because “most office workers” do all those things. I doubt most Windows and Mac users do all those things. “
They do. And they do Powerpoint. And they receive powerpoints in the mail that they have to open. And Visio documents. And enter information in PDFs. etc.etc.etc.
I’ve attached the screenshots for installing Flash 9 on Ubuntu – the easiest – which is an auto-install on Mac/Windows. How many people in the office where you are sitting could install flash – software needed for Youtube and millions of other sites?
How many of them could do it in Windows? (WITHOUT help).
Flash install on windows is automatic, meaning you are asked if you want to install flash and you say yes (on IE and Firefox)…again betraying your ignorance.
this is a waste of my time…
this is like having an argument with a fundamentalist.
I’m surprised you’d be so critical of yourself. Or were you referring to me? In which case, I’d say no, it’s like having an argument between someone who knows what he’s on about (me) and someone who knows jack (guess who?)
They do. And they do Powerpoint. And they receive powerpoints in the mail that they have to open. And Visio documents. And enter information in PDFs. etc.etc.etc.
You’ve provided no evidence for the first statement, and the remainder don’t seem to be relevant. Unless you claim that people who run Linux can’t view powerpoint documents or use email as easily as Windows users, which is crap. Visio, I’ll grant you, is an exception, but then a Visio document isn’t something Windows users the world over handle regularly, even if you say they do.
Flash install on windows is automatic, meaning you are asked if you want to install flash and you say yes (on IE and Firefox)…
Hmm, it happens that way on Linux, too.
again betraying your ignorance.
Don’t worry, you’re way ahead of me on that score.
<quote>You can stop reading here, folks!</quote>
Funny you should say that
[quote]You can stop reading here, folks![/quote]
Move right along! Nothing to see here!
The Linux fanbois can’t understand that ten billion choices isn’t always what the user wants.
Move right along! Nothing to see here!
The Linux fanbois can’t understand that ten billion choices isn’t always what the user wants.
The Windows/OSX fanbois can’t understand that ten billion choices exist on ALL the three big platforms. Never heard of Stardock? Litestep? WindowBlinds? FlyakiteOSX? FYI, these all run on Windows.
Knowledge workers shouldn’t be dicking around with computer settings without a good reason on any platform. Just because they shouldn’t be dicking around on any platform, doesn’t mean they can’t – on any platform.
Edited 2007-03-12 12:54
Actually I haven’t heard of a lot of the software you have mentioned. Interesting you don’t seem to pose any similar titles for the Mac yet claim it is true for all sides. Just because UI tweaks exist doesn’t mean very many people use them and it certainly doesn’t contradict my point that people despise choice being forced upon them. People despise anything being forced upon them and to get a usable Linux desktop they have quite a good deal of choice forced upon them. These are simple facts. Arguing with them won’t make them go away.
What you are failing to understand is that the vendors, Apple and MSFT provide DEFAULTS. This concept is utterly missing from Linux.
There is no widespread single popular distribution. There are several “popular” distros depending upon your definition of popular. Then there is KDE vs. Gnome. Which window manager? What system configuration utilities? What package manager? Et cetera ad nauseum.
What you are failing to understand is that the vendors, Apple and MSFT provide DEFAULTS. This concept is utterly missing from Linux.
No, it isn’t. Ubuntu provides GNOME by DEFAULT, Slackware provides KDE by DEFAULT. They aren’t the only examples. Back on Windows, WMP10 provided a different interface from Outlook, Outlook a different interface from Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer a different interface from Firefox… Last I looked, Encarta was different AGAIN. WMP11 provides yet another different one (and if you are using it on XP, it’s different AGAIN from all the others on the OS).
There is no widespread single popular distribution. There are several “popular” distros depending upon your definition of popular. Then there is KDE vs. Gnome. Which window manager? What system configuration utilities? What package manager?
So? Are we supposed to complain that there is no widespread single popular PC manufacturer, too? As I tried to tell you in the last post, knowledge workers should be sticking with what they are given no matter what the platform, unless there is a VERY good reason not to.
Et cetera ad nauseum. The only thing that’s “ad nauseam” is the half-truths and FUD from Linux bashers.
Get out there. Go outside. People can’t use Linux the same way they use Windows or Mac. Install Flash 9? Not likely. Attach files to IMs? Nope…its all of the little things…workarounds.
Multiply that by the 3 major and hundreds of minor distinctions between distros. Should someone learn KDE or Gnome? Why not looking glass :
My mom uses Ubuntu because I made her. I was tired of fixing her Windows issues and didn’t feel like wasting money on a mac. I taught her to use it. It was a f*cking pain. She now can browse the web, do email and limited IM functionality…I won’t put my self thru that again, especially for people I don’t love.
Get out there. Go outside. People can’t use Linux the same way they use Windows or Mac.
And they can’t use Windows or the Mac the same way they use Linux, or expect the layout of streets in York to be the same as that in London.
Multiply that by the 3 major and hundreds of minor distinctions between distros. Should someone learn KDE or Gnome? Why not looking glass :
Yeah, because all versions of Mac and Windows work exactly alike.
My mom uses Ubuntu because I made her. I was tired of fixing her Windows issues and didn’t feel like wasting money on a mac. I taught her to use it. It was a f*cking pain. She now can browse the web, do email and limited IM functionality…I won’t put my self thru that again, especially for people I don’t love.
As someone who uses Linux for pleasure and Windows because I’m forced to, I can tell you that the reverse is also true.
I’m sorry, did you have a point?
Yep. Point is. Linux isn’t ready for mass adoption. Just because you and I use Linux doesn’t mean its for the masses.
People have been using Windows and Macs forever. In schools, companies, as they’ve matured. Linux maybe? What distro? Red Hat Gnome is closer to Windows than it is to Suse KDE. Suse KDE is closer to Mac than it is to Ubuntu…etc.
All versions of Mac work exactly alike. Even Windows versions are very similar. Mate, you are betraying your ignorance with your questions.
Yep. Point is. Linux isn’t ready for mass adoption. Just because you and I use Linux doesn’t mean its for the masses.
And just because we do, doesn’t mean it isn’t.
All versions of Mac work exactly alike.
Umm, no they don’t.
Even Windows versions are very similar.
As are Linux versions. I know, I’ve used more than one.
Mate, you are betraying your ignorance with your questions.
Coming from you, that’s a regular hoot.
Install Flash 9? Not likely.
Where have you been? Adobe released Flash Player 9 quite some time ago:
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=S…
Attach files to IMs? Nope…its all of the little things…workarounds.
Of course it is possible. See http://kopete.kde.org/faq.php. GAIM probably does it as well (couldn´t check it at the moment that I am typing this). I know that it depends on the IM network that one uses but it is not as black and white as you put it.
There are very many positive points about Apple offerings, and if you don’t factor internationalization issues then migration will be probably be quite easy. Mini is awesome, it never fails and if everything’s properly configured is a drop-in replacement, we have a bunch running Windows and MacOSX. It’s so good to get rid of these ugly huge and extraordinarily noisy boxes.
ARD 3 is a wonderful management software, no PC offering comes close to it. You can remotely install software, run commands, observe and control multiple screens at once, and in the new version you also have a color dot that shows whether a particular system is running out of resources (CPU, memory, HDD – you can all see it right there). You can also control what software ran on a machine for a given period of time and for how long – allowing for better understanding of how an employee spends his time at work.
Add to this the OD implementation that lets you control everything instantly – from what software to run or not to controlling access to external drives (you can disable access to usb flash drives for example) and whether you can write recordable discs and such. All in a very easy to understand manner. I say businesses should seriously consider all these positive factors and others which didn’t mention…
I’m not sure what you mean by …if you don’t factor internationalization issues…, but I think Apple has Microsoft beat when it comes to i18n (this may not be the case in Vista, I haven’t used it for more than 2 hours, so I don’t know).
Apple has supported various languages in the default install for a long time, and on an Apple machine, when you switch your keyboard to input foreign text, it is global; unlike Windows, where you have to switch inputs for each program you are running.
Also, I think programming international support is easier on OS X than it is in Windows. In Windows, Asian support in the English OS operates differently than Asian support on an English OS with the Multi-lingual interface pack installed, and both of those are different than language support via an Asian version of Windows. If you get your program running in one instance, that doesn’t guarantee by any means that it will run in all three.
In my experience, Apple is pretty much the same across the board; which is nice.
The standard on OSX is to have each app have as many langauges included as possible. The user just changes the language of his account and upon next launch the application automatically picks the first available language (by order of preference).
This makes it quite easy to have a workstation where different users can login, each in his own language
Sorry, “internationalization issues” maybe wasn’t quite correct. The thing I had trouble with was Mail.app and its support of attachments with non-english characters in their names. I didn’t dig too deep, but it seems there are different ways of encoding these names so sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t (producing garbage instead of a name). Secondly, the fonts – I’ve had lots of problems with MS Office and when people expect a Word or an Excel file to work like a pdf – i.e. show exactly the same on a PC and a Mac, that’s where things start to get hairy. I’m not even going to go over the different notions of “width” in Excel, but it’s enough trouble that Office thinks it must install its non-international fonts that overlap with Apple’s default fonts and create conflicts and what’s worse, don’t work since they don’t contain the neccessary characters. Sometimes someone produces a horrible Word file (e.g. saved in older Word95 format) and Mac Office thinks it knows better than PC Office and the result is garbage again (either off-by-one chars, or even boxes) whenever there are non-roman characters involved. Well, giving your files names that contain non-roman characters is a bad idea anyway, and this is further demonstrated by Stuffit Expander, for example, when you get a RAR file with international files packed inside, it produces garbage in 50% cases, luckily better alternatives exist that can heuristically ‘guess’ the encoding. Again, this could have been easily solved if every developer followed a strict set of standards and if users could be easily educated and less stubborn… sadly, it’s not the case and we have to think ways around that and it’s hard to find a system to all the faults because there are so many formats and applications involved on PC side.
I’m not sure what you mean by …if you don’t factor internationalization issues…, but I think Apple has Microsoft beat when it comes to i18n (this may not be the case in Vista, I haven’t used it for more than 2 hours, so I don’t know).
Apple has supported various languages in the default install for a long time, and on an Apple machine, when you switch your keyboard to input foreign text, it is global; unlike Windows, where you have to switch inputs for each program you are running.
Well, having just seen a Mac, I can tell you that ” and @ are in the “wrong place” on a Mac keyboard (bought in the UK) if you are a UK user, and # is nowhere to be seen. That can be quite inconvenient for touch-typists. Given that, there’s no reason to suspect that (say) they might not just use a “Russian” layout in Bulgaria.
Apple could get much larger market-share gains if they would let Mac OS X run on any PC, not just Macs.
IMHO market share isn’t as important as reliability. The very reason I switched to Macs is because they don’t run on 3rd party hardware so I know that the hardware I have is going to work and if it doesn’t I can just call Apple. I don’t have to call the hardware manufacturer who tells me it’s a problem with the OS then Apple tells me no it’s a problem with the hardware and to call them. I don’t care if Apple doesn’t have a huge amount of market share as long as they are a viable business and continue to develop machines and Mac OS. I care about reliability and consistency and I think that’s what most Apple users care about and why most people switch to Macs.
Apple could get much larger market-share gains if they would let Mac OS X run on any PC, not just Macs.
Ain’t never gonna happen. Apple does not sell software. Apple does not sell hardware. Apple sells a complete, tightly integrated computing experience that happens to include hardware and software components. Strip out either one, and their paradigm falls apart.
I agree and I would definitely love to see this happen. In fact I’ll be the first one standing in line at the Apple store to purchase OS X for my PC. But the argument against that is developers will create some sub-par drivers that won’t work well with OS X causing it to give crashes similar to Windows. But I’m ok with that and I’m willing to give it a shot even with sub-par drivers.
This “bad driver”argument annoys me, as it annoys me in the Windows space.
If the drivers for the hardware are rubbish, don’t buy the hardware. If there is an updated driver you may think is suspect – don’t update it.
I personally only have Mac’s/OSX in my home. But the driver issue in my opinion is not really a problem if it is then use signed drivers only then blame Microsoft. Underlying security is/maybe an issue in Windows and this currently isn’t a problem with OSX. Greater market share may increase this but I remain to be convinced on that score.
How many times are people going to suggest this? They don’t make their money on software. Honestly, I don’t want OS X to start getting a bad reputation just because people are running it on piecemeal hardware that causes it to to run like junk. As soon as OS X is running on a Blue-light special Dell is when it’s reliability will decline. Don’t be looking to buy OS X for your PC, just go buy a Mac. This isn’t 1990 anymore, Macs no longer go for $10,000, there aren’t any excuses.
How many times are people going to suggest this? They don’t make their money on software.
I hear this a lot, but I’m just not quite convinced. Let’s flip the switch here. Since Mac is a hardware company(TM), exactly when will they be willing to sell me Mac hardware sans OSX? Shouldn’t be a problem right, since they dont make their money on software?
Edited 2007-03-10 05:23
Apple make money by selling a highly optimised synergy between hardware and software. Selling one without the other would ultimately undermine their business niche.
Apple’s strongest selling point is that their hardware and software is more or less guaranteed to work together without any noticeable problems (at least in theory). By comparison, Windows and to an even greater degree, linux, are designed to work with a wide range of hardware configurations (there are several billion combinations of hardware these OS’s have to work with), and this inherently imposes a massive degree of difficulty and work for the OS programmer in making sure the OS works properly on even a majority of common configurations, let alone all possible ones.
If Apple decided to sell OSX separately for use on generic PCs, they would run into all of the problems that make life difficult for Windows users (driver issues, hardware incompatibility issues, a bewildering array of hardware choices that even technically savvy geeks sometimes find confusing). This would hurt Apple badly, as their business depends on the idea and image of appliance like simplicity and ease of use, and most of all lack of the problems that plague Windows.
If you want to have a highly optimised OS that is easy for the OS vendor to support, you have to limit the range of hardware configurations to a manageable number, and for the the end user, this means that they sacrifice some freedom in exchange for a high level of reliability and support.
This is just nonsense.
(1) Apple hardware and software are not in any way optimized to work together and never have been. Classic example: you can’t boot the old PPC iMacs from external usb drives. That’s optimal? There are just as many driver and hardware issues with Macs as with PCs. Or to be more exact, nowadays, there are just as many problems with OSX and PC hardware as with Windows and PC hardware.
(2) This is partly because there are so few problems with Windows and PC hardware nowadays. This in turn is because PC hardware is highly optimized to work with Windows. It is just not true that the world of Windows is characterized by driver issues, hardware incompatibilities.
(3) Then we come to the giveaway line: the bewildering array of choices. The choices are not bewildering, any more than the choice in your local supermarket of wines is bewildering, or the choice of ties in your local clothing store is bewildering. Or the choice of books in your local Barnes and Nobles is bewildering. They are responses to market need. Every single one of those choices is there because someone buys them. Its called freedom.
(4) The great problem for the advocates of the closed system and its merits is this. If its so great, why is it that if OSX were available on inferior hardware with less integration, the Mac buyer would flock to it in droves and destroy Apple’s profitability? Why, on the only time they were free to choose, did MacOS buyers run to buy the clones? Was it because the experience of the integrated prison was not so great?
(1) You are kind of missing the point here – whether or not Apple software and hardware are actually highly optimised to work together is largely irrelevant, what matters for Apple is that there is a widespread perception that they are optimised. And bringing up old PPC Macs is just a Strawman argument. Out of the box, Macs work beautifully together (although once you start connecting all kinds of USB peripherals not designed for Macs, you can run into problems).
(2) What planet are you living on? There is no optimisation between Windows and PC hardware, in fact it is impossible for there to be any widespread optimisation due to the staggering number of ways you can combine hardware. Think of how many graphics cards, motherboards, chipsets, soundcards, network cards, USB peripherals, competing standards etc there are and the number of ways you can combine them, and you will soon realise that there is no way that you can optimise them, because you have to make compromises for the sake of interoperability. I can tell you now that you are living in some kind of deluded fantasy world if you think there are “so few problems” with Windows and hardware (do a quick google search on Vista + hardware issues), and it is only because XP has been available for 5 years or so now that most of the major problems have been sorted out.
(3) Really? How many tens of thousands of motherboards are there, each with different revisions and configuration options? Graphics cards? CPUs? For an expert it can be a chore to extensively research all of the choices read through all of the technical documentation to, for a non-expert or novice, the range of choices becomes debilitating. Come on, look around in the real world, once the number of choices exceeds a certain level, people choose either at random or on the basis of non-rational criteria. Freedom of choice is over-hyped and over-rated.
(4) Yes, if you recall the full story, when Apple went down that road before, it resulted in a great deal of damage to Apple financially. Like I said, Apple’s business is based on the perception that they are anything but inferior. If Apple allowed people to run OSX on generic PCs, inevitably, it wouldn’t work properly on some configurations of hardware, and people would blame the OS, just like people do now when Windows or Linux (or any other OS designed to run on generic hardware) don’t work properly with their hardware configuration. Apple’s image of quality and ease of use would go out the window. Just because people like the idea of running OSX on cheap PCs doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
If you want an OS to work well with hardware, you need to test it extensively, and the wider the range of hardware you support, the less extensively you can test it. If you want to ship computers with as few bugs and issues as possible, you have to cut down on the hardware configurations to a bare minimum so that you can thoroughly test it. It is really quite simple maths.
Edited 2007-03-10 23:04
The issue turns on two things. The merits of integration and the merits of choice. They are related.
On the only occasion when Apple buyers were able to choose whether to take their OS with Apple branded hardware or third party hardware, they preferred third party. And it is generally believed that given the choice again, they would make the same choice again. In sufficient numbers to threaten the viability of the company.
What this tells us is that integration has enormous value – to Apple, as a marketing tool. Not to the Mac customers, or they would never behave this way.
The consequence of this incorrect behavior by Mac buyers is that the choice has to be taken away.
We now have to find a rationale for denying the choice, and predictably it is to argue that choice is confusing and bad for you, and you need to be protected from yourself or you will choose what’s worse for you. We throw in some absurd falsities about hardware incompatibilities on Windows, thousands of motherboards being available to confuse shoppers…and so on.
It is positively Orwellian, and it is as false in the area of computing as in politics or literature. Why do we have thousands of textbooks? We only need one correct one. Why do we have thousands of newspapers, and so many TV channels? Why do we not just have one good one? Why do we have all these confusing political parties? We just need the one that represents the people.
Problem is, we are not all identical, we don’t all want or need the same thing, Apple doesn’t know any better than us what we want.
The weird and appalling thing about the cult of Mac is the way that defense of everything that Apple does moves imperceptibly into defense of political views about human nature and freedom that have a very nasty pedigree indeed.
“We now have to find a rationale for denying the choice, and predictably it is to argue that choice is confusing and bad for you, and you need to be protected from yourself or you will choose what’s worse for you. We throw in some absurd falsities about hardware incompatibilities on Windows, thousands of motherboards being available to confuse shoppers…and so on.”
No, the rationale for restricting choice has little to do with protecting end users from themselves or limiting confusion, and it certainly has nothing to do with some kind of Orwellian social control rubbish, it is purely good business sense for a computer Software company that doesn’t have the luxury of a near total market monopoly.
The rationale of restricting choice has to do with the mathematics of testing x number of possible hardware configurations and making sure the system works as advertised, and as close to flawlessly as possible. If x is too large a number, testing all possible configurations thoroughly becomes logistically impossible.
So if you want a computer system (OS+Hardware) that is well integrated and thoroughly tested to work reliably with as few bugs as possible, then you need to look at platforms like Macs.
If, on the other hand, it is important to be able to heavily customise your computer (hardware and OS) and you are not too bothered by having to fix problems yourself, then Linux + hardware of your choice would seem the way to go.
“No, the rationale for restricting choice has little to do with protecting end users from themselves or limiting confusion…”
No, that is not the reason it is being done. But it is the (faulty) reasoning that the defenders of Apple use to justify it.
The argument about the merits of integration is also false. The question is not why Apple does not support a greater variety of hardware. There can be perfectly valid business reasons for only supporting a limited set.
However, this is not a reason for locking the OS to only that configuration of hardware when it is branded Apple. This is not about what Apple should or should not do, its about logic.
If ‘integration’ is so great, then if OSX were freely available and installable (unsupported by Apple) on whatever you could get it to run on, none of the current Apple buyers would change their habits. They would all buy Macs just the same. The argument of the Mac people on this subject is however totally illogical. It goes like this:
The Mac is superior because hardware and software comes from the same company. But if Mac people were able to buy the hardware and have a go at running it on unsupported hardware, they would all do that and Apple would go bust.
Both cannot be true. It cannot be true that integration is the selling point AND that if they had a choice few of the current buyers would buy it.
The reason Apple does not license her OS is quite simple, Apple does not want to enter a market where a destructive price-war is going on led by Dell. This is the same reason why IBM left that market.
There are indeed no technical, reasons to provide OSX for generic PC’s.
The second reason is stealing software is rampant with PC users, for these 2 reasons Apple would commit suicide to enter that market.
Apple lives in a healthy eco system, and this needs to be protected.
Its not about why they do not license the OS. Its about why they lock it to one particular brand of hardware.
It is a quite reasonable decision not to license it. It is a different decision to lock it.
And, if the eco system is so healthy, what exactly is locking the OS protecting it from? This is the logical problem.
You do have a lock on the front door of your house, right? Now what is the purpose of that lock?
“No, that is not the reason it is being done. But it is the (faulty) reasoning that the defenders of Apple use to justify it.” Yes, it is, and no the reasoning is not false, it is good mathematics and good business sense (I am a Windows user by the way, but I quite like Macs as well).
Lets take the old car analogy. You could build a car using off the shelf parts from various manufacturers, and it might be OK, or you can buy a car like a Lotus or a Ferrari, where every single part (more or less) has been specifically designed for that car alone, and have a highly refined product. Now, both vehichles may have their merits, but I highly doubt that Ferrari would want their brand name associated with a car slapped together with generic parts.
In the same way, Apple does not want any part of their brand name to be associated with generic, slapped together PCs (although they are increasingly using off the shelf generic parts for their hardware, they are still heavily modifiying for their OS).
It is branding silly.
Apple doesn’t want OSX to be running on generic hardware because it will run less optimally on systems it hasn’t been tested on, and that will feed back through word of mouth, ultimately damaging Apples branding. It is about protecting the brand name, just like Ferarri or Bugati wouldn’t dream of besmirching their brand name by allowing third parties to re-badge some Daewoo or Kia as one of their cars (it would damage their reputation), allowing OSX on generic PCs would damage Apples reputation. Apple is using good business sense based on previous bad experience with generics – they know what they are doing, and they are entirely correct.
Integration is also a very good thing if you want a highly tuned & optimised end user experience. A console gaming system is much more powerful for the hardware it uses than a generic PC with equivalent hardware specs, because all of the componets have been highly tuned to work together, and the OS is specifically designed for that purpose.
I remember when the Amiga was in vogue, the meagre hardware was highly optimised to the extent that a PC with much higher specs was woefully slower (the Amiga OS was optimised to the hilt – IIRC, parts of it were written in Binary to squeeze as much performance out of the hardware as possible).
I agree “Man up” if you want a mac pay the toll if you want a bmw pay the toll. it is no longer an excuse the whole expensive thing is dead. In my opinion if you want an el-cheapo system then you have to run what you can. If you buy a mac you can run Linux, Windows, and Mac. Sounds like to me people should change their budgets for what they want and not the other way around forcing OSX to run on whatever.
Apple is in business to make money, not increase marketshare. They’re doing pretty well at profits and share price with the current strategy; as opposed to Dell, say.
I live on a small tropical saline-atmosphere Caribbean island. Mac parts are generally unavailable,here, whereas PC parts are abundant. That’s one of the reasons I switched to PeeCee, because I could get PARTS without having to either special-order them, or import them myself. I shall not be buying any more proprietary MAC hardware to run their ever-so-special software, which is no better/worse than anyone else’s, in this advanced year of 2007. If Apple ever brings out a version of their software to run on yer average PeeCee, that effort should do well, even if such software doesn’t run at absolute tip-top Spec.
“Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” “Mac” !!!!
Good God. It’s “Mac”. You even typed it correctly at the beginning
The author of the piece seems rather confused about Apple’s lineup of computers. Because the Mac Pro is a “professional” machine they think that it is also Apple’s “Enterprise” machine. This makes zero sense!
It’s a pro computer because it is intended for people who rely very much on the performance of the computer for their job. An enterprise machine is simply “a computer,” preferably that doesn’t have too many fancy bits that are only of use to home users.
Thus I cannot see any organisation (except things like graphic design) deploying huge numbers of Mac Pros / PowerMacs throughout the company, and I can’t imagine any really have. iMacs, the now dead eMac and Mac minis make far greater sense in enterprise.
Actually the terms “Consumer” vs. “Professional” implies one is for home and one is for work (respectively). The point of the article was to show that Apple’s consumer offering was on par with its professional offering quality-wise.
Unlike the competition.
Years of spyware, malware and virus headaches that affect Windows XP have pushed IT managers to scramble for new options they might not have considered in the past.
Yeh, sure. But most of these bugs are in the propriate user-level components. Definitely not in the Windows Kernel. So why are we gonna face anything better with another propriate approach on the different platform?
The learning curve and disparity of Linux distributions is too high for easy general office use.
My 14 yeared sister does easily work in KDE and loves it, while she spent a bunch of time to understand how things are going in the Mac… Usability is something very individual. But what, imho, is really important – is TCO – i really don’t think Mac here can compete with Linux (at least cause corporations don’t need to update their hardware to move to Linux – it contrast to the {potential} Mac migration …
🙂 If i had to choose between Mac & Lin for my Corporation, i would know what to do
Edited 2007-03-09 17:20
Yeh, sure. But most of these bugs are in the propriate user-level components. Definitely not in the Windows Kernel. So why are we gonna face anything better with another propriate approach on the different platform?
Double duh! These little user-land bugs tend to trash that little kernel and storm through the whole enterprise. This tends to _not_ happen with Unix-like OS’s. Perhaps if organizations decide to fork over a gazillion bucks then perhaps Windows will get a better record – perhaps!
I think the real reason IT departments will stick with Windows is because it’s all they know. What would most techs do if they didn’t go around fixing PC problems all day. I’m not sure a lot of the Geeks in the Geek Squad would know what to do in a secure, stable enterprise enviroment. They are not wired for it.
My 14 yeared sister does easily work in KDE and loves it, while she spent a bunch of time to understand how things are going in the Mac…
lol the old myth of the “even my sister can use” linux again.
In my corporate, we are studying a linux desktop with ubuntu.
And guess what ? Even our system engineers have pains to configure the desktop. Not to speak about the management of desktop after that (+80 000 desktops). With windows, it’s easy to manage and deploy new software / updates, on linux …
If THEY have problems, I am waiting to see the problems that will have the secretaries and all people not skilled in computers …
Until Linux be REALLY user friendly, if linux desktop there will be in my corporate, it will be restricted to the system engineers.
lol the old myth of the “even my sister can use” linux again.
In my corporate, we are studying a linux desktop with ubuntu.
And guess what ? Even our system engineers have pains to configure the desktop. Not to speak about the management of desktop after that (+80 000 desktops). With windows, it’s easy to manage and deploy new software / updates, on linux …
If THEY have problems, I am waiting to see the problems that will have the secretaries and all people not skilled in computers …
Until Linux be REALLY user friendly, if linux desktop there will be in my corporate, it will be restricted to the system engineers.
Then I believe that the best thing that your company can do at this point is to fire all those system engineers as they are complete idiots!
I can’t disagree with the assertion that the parent poster’s 14 years old girl has little to no trouble with KDE since my 04 (four!) years old has no trouble whatsoever to open Iceweasel, click on the bookmark to get into DiscoveryKids.com.br and play the nifty educational games that they have out there.
And when she is tired of playing online, she closes the browser and fire up Tux Paint and start painting her pictures, using rubberstamps and whatnot and only ask us to save her works.
And then, when she feels like it, she opens Camstream and start taking pictures of herself on the webcam and calls me or my wife to show what she did.
And that’s on KDE, often regarded as something too hard for newbies to understand, being that the only thing that I did to make her life easier was to set up her account to logon without asking for a password on KDM and put the appropriate shortcuts on the desktop.
Unfortunately I don’t have a video camera handy or else I would be glad to put this on video and then upload it to YouTube so that you can see this with your own eyes.
I seriously have to wonder about the skills of grown-ups that complain that they can’t find their way around KDE (or even GNOME, that is even easier to grasp by most accounts) when such young child manages to find her way around just fine!
The writing is on the wall, fella: the world is changing and you better get with the program or you will be left behind to dust.
Edited 2007-03-10 14:37
“Then I believe that the best thing that your company can do at this point is to fire all those system engineers as they are complete idiots!”
Linux (and especially KDE) are developing into a direction of wiping out the fine difference between system administrators and system users. This seems to be essential to get access to the home market. But companies should employ people who know what they’re doing. “User friendly” is one thing, “administrator friendly” would be another. Because administrators usually are well educated and professional people, they tend to have a very different opinion of what’s “friendly” to them.
“I can’t disagree with the assertion that the parent poster’s 14 years old girl has little to no trouble with KDE since my 04 (four!) years old has no trouble whatsoever to open Iceweasel, click on the bookmark to get into DiscoveryKids.com.br and play the nifty educational games that they have out there.”
I may assume that this is just because you and your daughter live in an english speaking country. If it’s about internationalisation, KDE (and Linux) still have serious internationalisation difficulties. For example, my uncle installed PC-BSD with KDE and selected german language. Works fine for a moment, but when he installed kmplayer, it was in english. And his german kmail gives error messages in english. For him a “no go” and “my ‘XP’ is better”. I’d love to see him using a Mac, but he simply cannot afford it. On the other hand, a former fellow student of mine uses a Macbook for some years now without any problem – he uses german, japanese and chinese internationalisations.
Then, you’re describing some other activities your daughter does without any serious problem. This is fine and works – as long as the hardware is okay. Here in Germany, most PCs in home settings are a compositum of many different hardware types that usually have problems working with each other. For an enterprise setting, you may asssume that the responsible IT department first thinks, then buys.
“And that’s on KDE, often regarded as something too hard for newbies to understand, being that the only thing that I did to make her life easier was to set up her account to logon without asking for a password on KDM and put the appropriate shortcuts on the desktop.”
This is another part of the difference user vs. administrator, or, to make a connection to the topic, of enterprise vs. home usage. Most Linusi and KDE (and PC-BSD, too) eliminate lots of the security bareers (login, access permissions, prompting etc.) to make the home user feeling more comfortable with the system. In an enterprise, this should not be a problem, allthough I know employees who cannot remember their user name and password and have put a sticker under their mouse.
“I seriously have to wonder about the skills of grown-ups that complain that they can’t find their way around KDE (or even GNOME, that is even easier to grasp by most accounts) when such young child manages to find her way around just fine!”
I think it’s because most “average users” are spoiled by the complicated concepts found in most MICROS~1 products. My neighbor is completele new to PCs and did not have any problems using a KDE system. Because he knows the english language a bit, he even does not get into trouble because of KDE’s malfunctioning internationalisation.
To introduce another thing to the discussion: People who use software X at work want to have this software at home, too. Can you imagine how many pirated copys of “Windows XP Professional” and “Office” we have going around in Germany? If the Mac would be a present mainstream in business, it would be in home use, too.
“I can’t disagree with the assertion that the parent poster’s 14 years old girl has little to no trouble with KDE since my 04 (four!) years old has no trouble whatsoever to open Iceweasel, click on the bookmark to get into DiscoveryKids.com.br and play the nifty educational games that they have out there.”
I may assume that this is just because you and your daughter live in an english speaking country. If it’s about internationalisation, KDE (and Linux) still have serious internationalisation difficulties. For example, my uncle installed PC-BSD with KDE and selected german language. Works fine for a moment, but when he installed kmplayer, it was in english. And his german kmail gives error messages in english. For him a “no go” and “my ‘XP’ is better”. I’d love to see him using a Mac, but he simply cannot afford it. On the other hand, a former fellow student of mine uses a Macbook for some years now without any problem – he uses german, japanese and chinese internationalisations.
I see your point but there are two flaws on it: English is not my native language. But fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Conectiva (acquired by Mandriva) and several other contributors, the level of localization for the brazilian portuguese language is very good. Some applications still have English words on the interface but I expect those to be gradually fixed as time passes by. And it is a problem on Windows as well, since most applications that are worth something usually don’t have a proper translation, with some notable exceptions. I dare to say that Linux (KDE, GNOME, etc.) excels on this regard compared to Windows since I can have my desktop completely in english while my wife and kids can have theirs in portuguese and all that I need to do is to install the proper i18n packages whereas on Windows I would be stuck with one or the other.
The second point is that my daughter is just 04 yrs old so she cannot read yet. The games that she plays at DiscoveryKids.com.br are intended for an younger audience, teaching them concepts such as letters, numbers, animals, sounds, etc. The fact that she recognizes what an icon does just by looking at it on KDE is proof enough that the UI is getting intuitive enough despite what its detractors on the “other side of the fence” say.
Text labels everywhere in this case would be a liability, not an advantage.
And no matter how I look into it, I can’t agree with the assertion that Windows would be any easier for her or anyone who doesn’t have experience with computers: it will be the same WIMP concept on all OSes. Both KDE and GNOME have reached a stage where you can leave someone clicking around in order to discover how to use it.
Edited 2007-03-11 00:48
“[…] since I can have my desktop completely in english while my wife and kids can have theirs in portuguese and all that I need to do is to install the proper i18n packages […]”
I’m from Germany, but I use my system completely in english. It’s obvious for system utilities that they’re not internationalized, same for manpages. But the german translation in KDE and Gnome is inacceptable for me, so I prefer a clean english interface in which I can understand the words, while I have to guess what the german translation means.
There are some problems with Gtk applications, too. For example, if you have Sylpheed (a simple mail client) set to english, the button captions fit well. If you set it to german, the spacing increases without any reason, so the window does not fit on the screen (width) anymore.
The main problem seems to be that the ones doing the translation are not able to handle the german language properly. This is the reason for the bad quality of the german internationalisation. I’m sad I have to say this, but it’s true. (On the other hand, MICROS~1 products’ german versions do not conform to the rules of the german language, too.) But in general that’s no problem because we have a high rate of functional illitracy here in Germany, so almost nobody notices it. 🙂
“The second point is that my daughter is just 04 yrs old so she cannot read yet. The games that she plays at DiscoveryKids.com.br are intended for an younger audience, teaching them concepts such as letters, numbers, animals, sounds, etc.”
In this age, recognition patterns are usually of a graohical nature (“the red box with the cross”, “the green leaf”, “the white ball” etc.). Letters are to be used by individuals with the proper education (as it can be assumed after the first class of the elementary school). But it’s sad to say that – at least in Germany – many people have a problem with reading text, in german or in english. “I haven’t got the time to get along with this, I want it working right now!” or “I just don’t care.” are typical statements. So even grown up individuals tend to describe pictures instead of reading text. Just imagine the fun at the IT help desk! 🙂
“The fact that she recognizes what an icon does just by looking at it on KDE is proof enough that the UI is getting intuitive enough despite what its detractors on the “other side of the fence” say.
Text labels everywhere in this case would be a liability, not an advantage.”
I can agree to this, and I hope KDE 4 will continue this “tradition” and even make it better so KDE will be more applealing even to the grown up individuals mentioned above.
BTW, Kaffeine is represented by a coffee bean, as fas as I remember. Do coffee beans make music or play videos? 🙂
At least KDE mostly uses concrete (non abstract) icons which makes it possible to get a clue of the relationship between how an icon looks like and what the application does it launches.
“And no matter how I look into it, I can’t agree with the assertion that Windows would be any easier for her or anyone who doesn’t have experience with computers: it will be the same WIMP concept on all OSes. Both KDE and GNOME have reached a stage where you can leave someone clicking around in order to discover how to use it.”
I can completely agree with this, allthough I have some guys propagating the opposite. I had newbies sitting infront of a GNUstep installation, newbies infront of a Solaris/CDE system, newbies infront of an SGI octane – no problems.
The only problem with KDE and Gnome is when it’s not working as intended, such as it is with the various “Windows” GUIs when they’re not working. Troubleshooting is much easier on a Linux based platform, from my personal experience.
But I didn’t want to extend this thread to a “KDE and Gnome discussion”. Let me state that the german language quality and the debugging options of MacOS X are superior to those found in MICROS~1 products. This is a fact that makes them interesting for use. Does it really? Hmm… I’m not sure. Companies spend lots of money to ensure the software they’ve ordered works correctly, so there should be no need for debugging enterprise solutions. After all, the main problem resides between chair and screen. 🙂
Edited 2007-03-11 01:11
I can’t help but notice how you keep bringing up the german localization and general illiteracy of the average german citizen often on this forum. Both assessments are somewhat surprising to me given that Germany is a very wealthy country and that SuSE used to put up one of the best distros around on its day.
Also, with KDE being started mainly by german developers, one would think that its german localization would be nearly perfect. I thought that SuSE, which was well known for funding KDE development, had taken care of that.
The illiteracy problem is a huge problem here in Brazil, but as a third world country under development, that is practically taken for granted. I simply can’t imagine Germany with such a problem!
And by the way, looks like we both had nearly the same (what some people call) anedoctal evidences so that’s why I think we share nearly the same point of view.
Edited 2007-03-11 19:19
Allthough I’m going off ttopic more and more (sorry for this), your post deserves a reply.
“I can’t help but notice how you keep bringing up the german localization and general illiteracy of the average german citizen often on this forum.”
It’s because of (1) it is a fact and (2) I’m very critical in regards of language, especially if it’s my own native language. See “functional illiteracy” below.
“Both assessments are somewhat surprising to me given that Germany is a very wealthy country and that SuSE used to put up one of the best distros around on its day.”
SuSE’s Linux distribution is a high quality product, but has several i18n issues as well. Most of them are related to KDE, but I found this situation improving over the years. For example, KOffice and OpenOffice 1 still are able to use standard german, while I think OpenOffice 2 does not support it anymore.
“Also, with KDE being started mainly by german developers, one would think that its german localization would be nearly perfect.”
I’m very sad this is not the case. But maybe it’s because some of the applications are not developed by german developers. But this does not matter beacuse the demand of high quality german language is not very high, even in Germany it isn’t.
“I thought that SuSE, which was well known for funding KDE development, had taken care of that.”
The problem is: Only very few people in Germany have the knowledge needed to make a judged statement.
“The illiteracy problem is a huge problem here in Brazil, but as a third world country under development, that is practically taken for granted. I simply can’t imagine Germany with such a problem!”
To make it clear: The term I usually use is “functional illiteracy”, which describes difficulties in reading and generating text. This does not refer to the unability to read or write in general, but to the proper use of the means of the language. Visit a school in Germany, see the PISA results. Pupils are not able (at an adequate grade relating to their age) to get the content from a text by reading it. Reading abilites also refers to reading diagrams, statistics etc. which is not as good as it should be. The same goes for writing. If you read the daily newspapers, you’re getting mad about the amount of mistakes. I even read a lease contract that was full of errors which affected the content (!) in a way that you had effectively two (!) possibilities of what a certain paragraph would mean; in one possible interpretation, the obligation was on the hirer’s side, in the other, it was on the lessor’s side – you could not tell which was ment!
The society is not interested in language matters. “Oh, it doesn’t matter as long as you get a clue of what the text means” is a typical statement. As I mentioned before, the freedom of orthography is granted by law (by constitution), so there’s no regulative mechanism anymore. Standardized orthography has been completely abolished in Germany in 1996.
To create an analogy in english: Thatt woult be so, as, iff I all One to One oversit woult and the hegivenis is bad. So a Overrushing! (That would be as if I would translate everything directly. What a surprise!) 🙂
Linux (and especially KDE) are developing into a direction of wiping out the fine difference between system administrators and system users. This seems to be essential to get access to the home market. But companies should employ people who know what they’re doing. “User friendly” is one thing, “administrator friendly” would be another. Because administrators usually are well educated and professional people, they tend to have a very different opinion of what’s “friendly” to them.
Since when is clearing out viruses and spyware a task that should be done by users, and not system administrators (assuming you accept that it should have to be done at all, which Windows users do, but others don’t)?
“Since when is clearing out viruses and spyware a task that should be done by users, and not system administrators (assuming you accept that it should have to be done at all, which Windows users do, but others don’t)?”
Proper prevention is the task of the system administrators or OS preloaders. Users usually tend to bypass the means of security and protection others held ready for them. Usually not the system administrators install viruses, trojan horses, spyware and malware. Users do. Why is this? It seems to be this way because users are not familiar with the basic means of system protection such as system administrators are (or should be). So they need to use a system that does not permit them to install viruses etc., in the best case. But users don’t want to be regulated (or advised), they usually know everything better and / or just don’t care. Any idea why there’s so much crap floating around the internet? Ca. 90% of the email transfer volume is spam. Who is responsible? Of course the “inventors” of this mess, but the uninformed and uninterested users as well, because their machines are spreading spam and nobody cares.
I just want to say the following: I fear that when KDE gains more “market share” (oh how I love this term), criminal individuals will invent ways to abuse the easiness of not really needing a root account to install malicious software on a computer. A simple “yes to everything” will open the gates for them, and the innocent user will just confirm, next, next, next, okay, done. Allthough a Linux machine has mechanisms to prevent this, they can be bypassed. And then, the affected Linux machine can to potential damage to others because it’s a powerful system. We’ll see if KDE in the future will be a platform for criminal activity (viruses, spam, data espionage and saboutage etc.) such as “Windows” is today. I hope it won’t, but it largely depends on its users.
I seriously have to wonder about the skills of grown-ups that complain that they can’t find their way around KDE (or even GNOME, that is even easier to grasp by most accounts) when such young child manages to find her way around just fine!
It’s a well-known fact that kids learn much more quickly than adults, and older adults such as the highly-trained engineers that are likely employed at the parent poster’s company are also likely to be even slower to learn new tricks due to their age. Also, your kid being able to run various apps in a pre-configured (by YOU) Debian environment != adults with no Linux experience attempting to CONFIGURE Linux by themselves.
You’re right that the world is changing, and Linux is becoming more viable for enterprises. But in the world we live in RIGHT NOW, for the experienced, older employees that are CURRENTLY necessary for large companies to employ, Macs may make more sense.
Edited 2007-03-11 16:27
It’s a well-known fact that kids learn much more quickly than adults, and older adults such as the highly-trained engineers that are likely employed at the parent poster’s company are also likely to be even slower to learn new tricks due to their age.
While I do agree with you overall, I still refuse to believe that a slightly different looking environment would make that much of a difference to someone who has a college degree and that most likely will be dealing with a CAD application or something along these lines all the time, not his/her desktop.
Older people don’t change anything on their desktop other than the odd wallpaper with their kids or grandchildren and put a few shortcuts here and there. And for that sort of people, the existing *nix desktops are easy enough to use assuming that the applications that they need are available to *nix and this is the only tangible edge that Apple has over FOSS OSes, IMHO.
The people that you are referring to probably fit on the “Power Users” category. These are the only ones that have something to lose when taking the plunge to explore other OSes.
Also, your kid being able to run various apps in a pre-configured (by YOU) Debian environment != adults with no Linux experience attempting to CONFIGURE Linux by themselves.
I am not sure if that was the case that the parent poster depicted and therefore I fail to see the difference. I understood that the IT department was evaluating the deployment of Ubuntu on the company, and that the engineering department was used as a test case. I’m assuming that the engineers didn’t have to install and setup Ubuntu themselves (no sane IT personnel would let anyone do that EVEN on Windows).
So, if they got their laptops properly configured, with all the applications that they needed installed, what else do they need other than to learn the basics about how to deal with their files, etc? What are the differences between them and my daughter in this context?
You’re right that the world is changing, and Linux is becoming more viable for enterprises. But in the world we live in RIGHT NOW, for the experienced, older employees that are CURRENTLY necessary for large companies to employ, Macs may make more sense.
And that’s where we will have to agree to disagree. While I have no doubt that Macs can be used on the corporate IT just fine, the need to acquire new and expensive hardware and the retraining that the employees would need would turn the costs substantially higher than a comparable Linux adoption (even when taking the retraining on Linux into account as well). Again, I think that the only trick that Apple has on its sleeve to fight for a foot on the door on the corporate IT market is a healthy commercial development ecosystem whereas on Linux, it has yet to mature to that point, but it is slowing getting there.
Edited 2007-03-11 18:41
Then I believe that the best thing that your company can do at this point is to fire all those system engineers as they are complete idiots!
I like this kind of comments, you are not aware of our infrastructure but you still give your comments about the skills of our engineers.
Just as configuring the desktop was just to set the wallpaper, and the number of colors of the desktop. Just as configuring a corporate desktop was the same as configuring your personnal desktop.
I think that YOU are an idiot.
In my corporate, we are studying a linux desktop with ubuntu.
And guess what ? Even our system engineers have pains to configure the desktop. Not to speak about the management of desktop after that (+80 000 desktops). With windows, it’s easy to manage and deploy new software / updates, on linux …
FYI, if it weren’t for the fact that my day job requires use of Windows due to imao ridiculous council regulations, I would have terrible trouble doing simple things in Windows like finding the right control panel, simply because Linux would be my preferred platform and is different from Windows.
bah, fix their bugs, then we can talk!
Known duplicate bug since 2005!!!!
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x001D078B): vnode_put(3a7e9cc): iocount < 1
Backtrace, Format – Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.8.1: Mon Sep 25 19:42:00 PDT 2006; root:xnu-792.13.8.obj~1/RELEASE_I386
Everyone has bugs, but …
OS X Panic is the most beautiful OOPS around the block!
When I saw that antialiased picture for the first time i didn’t even think it’s a Panic – I was sure that was a Screen Saver Running!… 
One industry that’s always slow to adopt new platforms is FPGA and ASIC vendors. It took Xilinx forever to develop a Linux version, and it will take another forever to develop a Mac version. Otherwise, I’m very happy with the software for the Mac.
I’m not sure how many of you work in a enterprise with large MAC install. I do. We have over 2000 MACs. I don’t think apple got it yet. We still have a huge problem with hardware, beta versions being pushed out as final releases, lack of software, problem with Cisco devices,etc… I can go on and on and I can list more problems with MACs than any WINTels.
Would you stop capitalizing Mac? Maybe that’s why it won’t work for you. Oh and as for beta software, you mean MS has never done that either?
Let’s be fair Vista is a beta released as a final product let’s not compare beta’s released as final. Need I point out MS track record. Microsoft’s accounting software was released as beta, Vista, Office 2007 which does not operate well with exchange 2003 well at all.
You’re right about that; Windows Vista – beta version for all the end users to find bugs, and the ‘real’ release will be the second half of 2007 when they release Windows Server 2007 along with SP1 for the client.
What I find funny are all the sheeple who went with a complete Microsoft shop when there are cheaper alternatives; take Sun’s Solaris Enterprise System which provides everything that you’d get with Microsoft middleware, but without the price tag.
Couple the SES with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop for the end user, you’ll be sitting there wondering why you poured money down the drain release after release by listening to the hollow promises of Microsoft each hypefeast.
application support. If you can’t get what you want with Apple or Linux, but you can with Windows then you use Windows. Price and training is always a factor, but I really think that if all things were equal, meaning applications were OS agnostic, then Microsoft wouldn’t have the market share they have now.
NOTE: That is a gross oversimplification.
Edited 2007-03-09 17:59
but I really think that if all things were equal, meaning applications were OS agnostic, then Microsoft wouldn’t have the market share they have now.
That’s one of the reasons Microsoft needs to be very concerned. There are 2 main forces that are strongly influencing applications to be OS agnostic:
1. Virtual-machine based languages – as more and more applications are written in Java, this removes the need for a specific OS. To a lesser extent, this is also true with .NET. By abstracting coding to the CLR as opposed to the Win32 API, Microsoft has further removed the dependency applications have on Windows. Mono is an example of exploiting this to run apps on other platforms.
2. Web applications – very few companies are pushing desktop applications anymore. I am a software developer who in the past previously wrote applications that were desktop-based and solely for Windows. These skills are not as valuable now, especially after Microsoft “shot” classic VB. Everyone wants either J2EE or ASP.Net where I live. As more and more applications move to the web, and as rich web-application environments like Ajax proliferate, we again see the underlying OS becoming less important.
Microsoft knows this and is retooling themselves.
[EDIT: spelling errors]
Edited 2007-03-09 18:17
systyrant writes:
… but I really think that if all things were equal, meaning applications were OS agnostic …
This is where Apple has been going all along, incrementally.
In relation to support (on MS products) at one point I asked myself what my time was worth. The answer was – quite a bit.
I’ve had MS customers up until 2005 when I threw in the towel, I could no longer, in good faith, keep taking their money (at 75.00 US per hour). The added embarrassment of patch breakage sealed my decision to drop MS support.
I made recommendations they were not prepared to hear.
Apple was one of them.
Some of them took heed and started migrating, others – I suggested colleagues that had shops with MS teams that could service them.
I was at the point (for my customer) of diminishing returns.
Apple marketshare and presence is inexpressive outside USA and a few countries. Proprietary hardware and even branded PCs are not popular in developing and poor countries.
Linux is the real solution for these countries. Exchanging Microsoft solution (proprietary software on non-proprietary hardware) by Apple solution (proprietary hardware and software) is not smart for deveoping countries.
And if people of these developing countries can use linux on desktops, why not people of developed countries with more mean education can’t use also ?
How many enterprises are there in these “developing” countries?
Err… Hundreds of thousands? There is more to the world than the US and that was a pretty ignorant remark of yours.
How many enterprises are there in these “developing” countries?
You need to travel more. No, not to Fla. or to Hawaii..
you need to get out of The Great White North more, and into the real Third World, where there are enterprises galore, with air conditioned offices(with limo’s parked in their garages)!
You took the words from my mouth, shiva. I never quite understood why some people – mostly in the US – think that Apple will be the one that will take MS down when it is obvious that 1) it won´t make any difference as both companies have similar business models which means that we would be switching one monopoly for another (and Apple ties its software offers to its hardware, which is even worse than what MS does) and 2) the fact that Apple market share/installed base/whatever is indeed irrelevant besides the one in the US and certain european countries.
Not to mention that Apple is not really interested in these markets, otherwise it wouldn´t try to push those outrageous prices for its products out there. And since I don´t see Steve Jobs changing anything on this regard any time soon, I can´t see how Apple is a better proposition than Linux, especially now that UI and ease of use wise both are arguably almost on the same level.
The Mac Pro tower is the only enterprise class machine as far as I can tell.
The consumer line? No thanks. Not interested in being stuck with 1 supplier on the hardware and when a power supply or some small part goes out I don’t want to have to replace the entire machine.
Notebooks? NO PCMCIA kills it for business and the docking stations available or nothing more than 3rd party hack jobs.
In short I don’t see apple doing anything that is going to gain them enterprise business short of the Mac Pro towers and maybe some Xserves.
Ever try and find a ps for a dell 1u rackmount or a compaq dl360 in the middle of the night on a weekend? No company of any notable size near big enough to qualify as an enterprise deals in no-name clones. One supplier of hardware in an enterprise is a plus.
Ever try and find a ps for a dell 1u rackmount or a compaq dl360 in the middle of the night on a weekend? No company of any notable size near big enough to qualify as an enterprise deals in no-name clones. One supplier of hardware in an enterprise is a plus.
Server side is one thing, I’m specifically thinking of desktop systems, which is where we have our largest amount of ‘break/fix’ issues at my place of business.
One supplier is fine and on desktop deployments that exactly how its handled where I work.
With Macs in an Enterprise, I’d guess the machine itself is “disposable”. All macs are pretty much identical to Mac software (with reason)… heck even between PPC and Intel. It would seem the management tools can push a copy of a machine’s software down to a fresh machine if one breaks… rather than spend valuable downtime fixing a trivial software/hardware issue. Then fix the machine on the bench during normal hours. Apple’s tendency to force the issue of external dedicated hardware as opposed to internal bits would help the matter.
While it would be more expensive to keep whole machines around, in most business cases the time/cost would actually be saved and make money. Windows supposedly can do imaging, but my experience watching SMS work in my plant is less than spectacular.. there’s too much “fidget” work to reinstall a fresh box with all the drivers, THEN do the SMS to match it. Our guys end up using Ghost images more often but that requires exact hardware… back to the original problem.
There’s a great case for Linux!!! it should be trivial to take a regular distro and assign workstations to profiles via synaptic that would take care of all the driver/hardware specifics for you. I think it’s out there being done now, but it’s not got the “spit n polish” of being a standard feature like so many other Linux things.
Ummm, I don’t think you can even get a laptop since last year with PCMCIA anymore. Expresscard 34/54 has displaced it and the Macbook Pro’s have an Expresscard/34 slot.
Yes it does. I stand corrected on that one.
Ummm, I don’t think you can even get a laptop since last year with PCMCIA anymore. Expresscard 34/54 has displaced it and the Macbook Pro’s have an Expresscard/34 slot.
You don’t see them in consumer laptops anymore but they are still available in business class notebooks. I just picked up a T60 Thinkpad and it has both a pcmcia and an expresscard slot. Expresscard is still pretty useless at this point because there are very few cards made for it.
the Macbook Pro’s have an Expresscard/34 slot.
Yes, but the regular MacBooks (i.e. those that most companies would find “more economical”) do not. I honestly can’t think of a reason for this other than to sucker people who need an expansion slot into buying MacBook Pros.
I also find it kind of dumb that Apple doesn’t support Expresscard 54. The 34 slot’s narrow width means that more than one port will no longer fit on expansion cards (unless they are made ridiculously thick on the outside) and the death of CompactFlash readers that disappear into the computer (although admittedly CF is going out of fashion). 34-only might have made a smidgen of sense if the remote fit into the 34 slot, but it doesn’t! It’s 4mm too thick! D’oh!
Then again, ExpressCard 34s look sleeker than 54s. And Apple doesn’t like to give its customers too much expandability, now does it? All in all a typical case of Apple picking form over function.
Edited 2007-03-11 16:58
Notebooks? NO PCMCIA kills it for business and the docking stations available or nothing more than 3rd party hack jobs.
RE: Docking stations. Take a look at this:
http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/10_10_06NotebookEx…
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to support Mac ;-(… But at least it goes to show that ExpressCard docking stations are possible/likely to become more available.
Edited 2007-03-11 17:20
I’m not a Mac user and never owned a Mac so I don’t know the answer to this question, but does the Mac have business applications? By that I don’t mean an office suite as I know MS Office and iWork are available. But what about industry specific applications like financial reporting and budgeting, time tracking, medical record keeping, stock exchange, patch management? I know there are a few other industries, I just can’t think of more at the moment.
Yes, business applications are a real problem for alternative platforms like Mac OS and Linux.
Just looking at the office I work in, there are at least half a dozen bespoke software packages in use. A couple developed in house, the others expensively developed by different outside companies.
Over the course of a decade or so, these were developed, improved and bug fixed into a system that works quite well. I doubt that they could all be quickly and easily ported/duplicated on a different platform. This on its own would probably be a much bigger cost, both in time and money, than switching hardware and retraining end users.
There are plenty of niche applications in use in different departments. For example, the company has just implemented a vehicle management system, using trackers in company vehicles (along with Windows software) to monitor and direct employee journeys. Is anything like this available for Mac/Linux?
Then there are the PDAs/smartphones that some staff use. These run a variety of applications, including bespoke software that’s integrated with other applications in use at the company. Who knows how difficult it could be to integrate them into a Mac/Linux based setup?
Even if there are equivalents available for different platforms, don’t underestimate the time it would take to get everything working smoothly and retrain users on the new software. Expect a lot of calls to the IT help-desk when functionality is even subtly different from what they’re used to.
Overall there can be a lot more to switching platform than simply the cost of the needed hardware and software. When a Windows system works well enough, there isn’t much incentive to switch, even if the alternative is free, or superior in significant ways. ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ is a pretty good reasons why a lot of companies stick with Windows despite its deficiencies.
“Applications and Administration
While most consumer PCs are full of bothersome tryout software with a few borderline malware applications thrown in, Apple’s install from the factory is relatively benign and even earns extra style points because the iLife suite of multimedia tools is included for free. There are, of course, Apple apps employees don’t need — PhotoBooth comes to mind. But it’s easy to delete such software before handing out the hardware to employees. ”
I don’t actually agree with much this author is saying throughout this article. Didn’t read at all like an enterprise comparison between one platform and another.
for example:
As far as my experience is concerned, it really doesn’t matter what is pre-installed/shipped on a new computer. As soon as it hits the company IT dept, the machine is generally re-formatted and most likely, an older, more trusted version of the base OS is installed alongside a rigorously selected subset of applications.
As for ‘style points’, I’ve never met an IT guy in our company who gives a rats *ss about style, especially if its for free. Therefore, if its not useful or productive to the job in hand, said software, generally never sees the light of day!
Not a very strong article IMO. Anecdotally, I work in an environment with over 150 machines and not one of them is a Mac.
Horses for courses, that’s all ther is to it.
I don’t thing windows to mac migration is very popular
we see often windows -> linux
quit proprietary system to go to another…. not really a good idea
“I don’t thing windows to mac migration is very popular
we see often windows -> linux
quit proprietary system to go to another…. not really a good idea”
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
You live in a world of illusions!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
Because they lack relationship. Choosing Mac is even more problematic than choosing Linux nowdays, few ground rules need to be explained here. Firstly MS and big PC makers have huge network of different support, and i’m not talking about some silly customer support, no it’s much more. It comes in terms of hardware lifecycle management, onsite and telephone support, technical support both HW and SW, customer propierity software and so on.
Most companies don’t buy support from makers but from partners of them, that offer often full support deal. It’s not odd to see company that has support from HP, servers from IBM and workstations from Dell. All this because cost effiency. And all hardware is taken care by some outside company. It’s cheaper and it gives companies more ground to negotiate with different dealers.
Problem is that there isn’t enough simple telephone support people to support Mac or high level experts to configure diffucult server complexes. I don’t even think Apple has enough resources to take some major companies and could keep up there demand of HW. Apple would need to grow so much in order to meet needs of business consumers that it wouldn’t be wise.
Apple has pretty secure place and pretty secure demand now, they sell top model HW with good return and its solid. Why waste this by trying to grow in more unsecure market with high risks? Linux has advance since companies like RedHat and Novell are already concentrating on making tight relationships with HW makers, support firms and others who take part this big circle.
“Dude! Yer gettin’ a Dell.” … Hey. Do you smell something burning?”
All joking aside. My newly minted Mini is superior to any PC that I’ve ever purchased or built.
Last night, just for the sake of a proof-of-concept, I booted my Intel-based Mini with a Kubuntu live CD. The Linux recognized every single piece of hardware and the Mac harware responded extremely well it. Ran like a bat out of hell!
I’m quite sure that if I had a stroke and then installed McSoft WinTrash it would work as well.
IMO there are alot of issues that will make Apple unfortunately away from the appetite of Enterprise IT wish-list.
1. They cannot get quite powerful computer for 500$, mac mini is a toy afterall; with very weak performance and don’t tell the IT team that mac mini is stuffed with applications, because simply they don’t want these appz for many reasons, but my reason would be what’s the use of the meat if you don’t have teeth! mac mini is underpowered for the software it is stuffed with
2. No Mac Middle or Mac Advanced which would stay between Mac Pro and iMac; IT team won’t waste money upgrading their Computers with newer iMacs while trashing the Monitors on them and of course most of IT people don’t require the state of the art Mac Pro.
So a mac pro like case with 1 CPU is more logical but till now It doesn’t exist
3. MS Office is essential to Mac on the enterprises and as we know MS cannot be trusted not to stop developing for Apple when their threat to MS increases, so, how to solve the problem?! Develop something like it to make Apple more appealing for IT folks to make them more confident in Apple as a platform for Enterprises.
4. OSX Server Performance is lagging seriously in comparision with linux, windows and solaris, probably even vista server; the solution would include many options but I would leave it to Apple to decide (take solaris kernel, linux kernel or other proven free kernels and improve your servers’ performance)
5. Apple still thinks about style in all of its products including the servers which is unnecessary and would add more price to the sytems and IT folks don’t give a d…m about style as they are not inviting their boy/girlfriend to their work sites to see the beautiful servers her/his boy/girlfriend is using during his stressful job.
6. Apple Remote Desktop should be for free if it must enter the enterprise as it is a vital tool for enterprises.
7. What is it with 1U servers, IT people might want different varieties like 2U, 4U even 6U servers where they can stuff them with HDDs before jumping to XRAID pricy upgrades.
8. too many others to mention…but remember it’s just my opinion, and afterall I love Apple for their innovations.
1. Wrong. For enterprises Mini will be more than enough, we’re not talking hardcore gamers here, we’re talking timesheets and spreadsheets which don’t take much processing power at all – have you tested a Mini in an enterprise environment, ever?
3. You have OpenOffice which works great and will soon have an Aqua port.
4. No it’s not. How’s for that?
5. Style is an important thing, you don’t consider your workplace to be a dungeon do you? Noise, size, aesthetic value can all be applied to a workplace, not just your home. If you like your tools you’ll be more productive.
6. It’s not exactly vital unless you start managing 20+ machines but it was designed to serve 200+ installations so the price isn’t all that bad for what you get in return.
7. This is ridiculous. If you want to stuff more than 3 hard drives in a server you NEED a RAID system. be it Xserve RAID or any other RAID. That kind of economy doesn’t make sense – remember, it’s an enterprise and they should have more money to spend on a robust infrastructure than a regular household.
1. They cannot get quite powerful computer for 500$, mac mini is a toy afterall; with very weak performance and don’t tell the IT team that mac mini is stuffed with applications, because simply they don’t want these appz for many reasons, but my reason would be what’s the use of the meat if you don’t have teeth! mac mini is underpowered for the software it is stuffed with
Sorry, have you used a new Mac mini? If not, then please shut up.
Note that I haven’t, either, but I have used a two-year-old iBook G4, which is much less powerful than the current x86 mini, and which had absolutely ZERO performance problems with OS X Tiger and the full gamut of iLife software, including GarageBand and iMovie. Not to mention that outside of PhotoShop, the software that businesses are likely to need is much less demanding than that found in iLife. So I’m sorry, but it seems it is your argument that “doesn’t have teeth”.
1) The benefit of Windows or ‘Enterprise Support Grade’ Linux distributions from Novell or Red Hat are that they have long periods of support.
For Windows, there is up to 5 years of ‘free’ (free used in the most liberal of manners) and 2 years of extended paid for support IIRC, and given the so-so sales of Windows Vista, apparently they’ve pushed out ‘free’ support for Windows XP for another 2 years.
Novell and Red Hat have similar programmes in place for their products – which leaves MacOS X, which pretty much stops getting supported around 6months after a new release is put out; for the average organisation, especially one with thousands upon thousands of desktops, they can’t instantly turn around every 18months to 2 years and deploy a major upgrade; its unthinkable.
For Apple to ‘win over the enterprise’, assuming they want to, they would have to atleast match or beat Microsoft/Red Hat/Novell in their software support policies, and quite frankly, drop the sharade of ‘one more thing’ with keeping things under wraps and not letting anyone know until the last minute – Enterprise customers don’t like surprises, they want to know what and where things are heading in the next 5-8 years.
Microsoft has laid out its plan – Windows desktop with the server playing a more important role as alot of the work is being pushed onto the server as to allow ‘access anywhere anytime’ for employees, whether at work, on the road or at home.
The other camp, ‘everyone else’ with the new opensource java sitting at the core; pushing more work onto the server end as offline capabilities improve; move to more ‘vm orientated’ frameworks as with the case of IBM and its moving of Notes 8.0 to the Eclipse framework and Netbeans with its improved editing capabilities which are equal to that of a Dreamweaver.
2) Applications are key, even outside custom applications, there is a perception inside companies that they *need* to buy the latest and greatest; and its even worse when the IT department is overflowing with money.
If anyone has ever seen “Yes Minister” (and “Yes Prime Minister”) in regard to the purpose of getting money, expanding departments and power struggles; there seems to be very little demands for justification when it comes to deploying many of these so-called ‘enterprise solutions’ like Sharepoint.
At the end of the day, what does the end user do? they write letters, attach them to emails, pushes data into a database and interacts with customers – does all that actually *need* expensive bloatware like Sharepoint to get the job done? does so-called “CRM” software need to be installed when all it really is is a new way of retrieving and presenting customer data off a database – something that could be done by any competant DB programmer in their part time.
3) Pizza box desktop which allow quick and easy replacement of parts when things fail – when the end users OS goes tits up; pull out the old HD and slot in a new one, and off they go.
Upgradability is also a must, as well as that, add more memory if required, replace parts – all in ones are nice but when you need to service them, all hell breaks loose.
4) Software compatibility in regards to connecting to each other is a non-issue; once you biff the Windows boxes, you no longer have to contend with the crap that is SMB; throw away that crap and embrace the joy of NFS, CUPS and OpenLDAP. Got Macs? they’ll work nicely with it. Got *NIX boxes? they’ll work nicely with it. Got a Window box? easy, throw services for UNIX on there and launch NFS client, IIRC CUPS can also run on it too.
SK8T (1.41) on 2007-03-10 10:06:58 NZST in reply to “I’d love to get a Mac …”
what’s wrong to be gay?!
gay people are just NORMAL people like you and me, and you can’t expect they live the same way you like to live.
One thing, as a gay male, I’d love to know is this; how come when two girls are ‘getting it on’ there is hooting and hollering about how hot it is, and yet, when you see two guys snog, there is booing, hissing and all manner of abuse that is hurled?
Here is the scary thing for those people who have problems with us gays – 99% of us don’t stand out like a sore thumb; infact, we probably work with you on a regular basis, and you have absolutely no idea that we’re that way inclined.
RE: hylas
You’re right, I’m in that boat right now, being only doing some moon shine work whilst at university; years and years ago, I might have said, “go with Microsoft” because I didn’t actually care.
Now I’m older (25 and a couple more years to my retirement, wheel out the zimmer frame
), its all about honesty now, I’d sooner lose a customer telling them my honest opinion than going out simply telling a customer what they want to hear.
My experience so far? those who went with Windows came back and realised that although my idea were to cause some pain, it would never measure up to the pain one would experience with Windows deployments – oh, and as for those who say “lock their machine down” – in theory, but in practice you’ll find that a good number of applications are incompatible or worse still, when devices are clipped in, all hell breaks loose in the driver department.
So far, I’ve deployed an xserver running OpenLDAP + SMB + Postfix + shareware front end to fetchmail, add to that some machines running MacOS X, with some Linux ones scattered through there; happy customer.
As one person said about the Linux desktop, “its a little different to Windows, but you get used to it, it has the same sorts of menu’s and everything” – when a 46 year old women with minimal computer training can migrate without too many problems, I’m sure that most people, especially the younger generation, should be able to pick up the skills pretty quickly – if not, maybe they’re perfect candidates for a pink slip 🙂
RE: Dave_K
If you’re tracking your employees car movements, I think the issue that needs to be addressed is the way in which your employees are being managed; if they feel the need to ‘use’ the cars for things beyond their work requirements, maybe they feel under appreciated so there fore, they see that they’re entitled to use the car for more than just work – to make up for the crappy pay or working conditions.
Everything else mentioned there are nothing more than applications that can be pushed into the server by setting up a database and having a pleasing front end with around 500lines of code or so – worse case scenario, probably around six weeks worth of work.
Edited 2007-03-10 14:34
Like it or not, unfortunately the desktop world is windows.
Both MacOS X and linux have the same pratical “problem” don’t run windows applications. If you are dependent of a windows-only proprietary application or a windows-only application developed internally you are f***ed and a migration for both linux and Macs will require experts and time to do this.
The Mac situation is worst because the Mac advantage over linux is the availability of proprietary apps. But if your business already bought windows proprietary applications you will have to buy again and therefore it is better to remain with windows. And you have to buy new Apple machines from the only vendor: Apple.
There are many technical solutions to run windows apps in linux desktops when needed, like using a remote windows server by RDP or Citrix or using some “emulation” like wine.
For internally developd apps, it is easier to find information and developers for multiplatform frameworks (PHP. Java, etc) and even X11/*nix frameworks (Qt. GTK+, etc) than MacOS X developers and information. Outside USA is rare to find MacOS X technical books, courses and developers. Yes, MacOS X core is unix based but graphical framework is very different than X11 framework. Therefore It would be dificult to internally develop graphical apps for MacOS X and if you use a multiplatform framework like java or PHP then linux would be a cheaper solution.
Macs are good business solutions in some niches only, like desktop publishing, music edition, etc where still there are good proprietary apps for Macs and not for linux. But even in this cases windows can be a cheaper solution because it is possible to use it in cheaper computers.
The only advantages of MacOS X are the beauty and the supposed superior usability but these reasons can be sufficient to make some people buy apple computer for their home but these are not rational reasons to buy apple computers for their business.
Have you not heard about Parallels? Or what about Boot Camp? Or even Crossover Office for Mac? All of these will allow you to run Windows or Windows applications.
My mom has a Macbook Pro, she hates the Mac version of Quickbooks so I loaded up Parallels on her computer and set her up with a Dock icon that lets her run… the Windows version of Quickbooks – with seemingly NO performance downgrades. You arguement of not being able to run Windows applications is a non-issue since the Intel transition.
I had to load some firmware on my cell phone using a program called QPST – it only runs on Windows. I loaded up Windows in Boot Camp, configured the software, hooked up my phone and bam – I did an update to my phone and then rebooted right back into OS X.
The advocates will never get it. The goodness of the OS has very little to do with the decision of which OS to use.
If we were starting with a clean slate, Apple might have a chance. But with msft so totally entrenched – forget it.
To go with apple, you would probably need to re-train your IT staff, or get a new IT staff. You would also have to get new applications.
– The IT staff would probably hate the idea, and would advise against it.
– Upper management would not see a financial advantage in making such a switch.
– Dell provides on-going contracts where dell will come and pick up your old PCs, and replace them with new boxes. I don’t know if apple provides a service like that.
– If the slightest thing went wrong: the person who made the suggestion would be lucky to keep his/her job. No matter how many things went right. It’s just the way business works.
– A site license for an application would prbably not cover both apple and windows licenses.
– You would be stuck with the same vendor-lock situation – only worse.
– Apple is more expensive. Maybe *you* think apple is worth the extra cost, but upper level management might find it difficult to justify the expense.
Every point you made could be compared to Linux minus the site license so does Linux not stand a chance.
>>Every point you made could be compared to Linux minus the site license so does Linux not stand a chance.<<
Linux does not stand a chance on the corporate desktop any time soon. Linux is a good OS (IMO) but linux does not have the drivers, or the apps.
Steve Job already tried selling a highly superior OS on the PC market yeras ago. It was NextStep and it was years ahead of Windows 3.1 at that time. NextStep did not gain much market share, certainly less then the Mac!
Steve Job already tried selling a highly superior OS on the PC market yeras ago. It was NextStep and it was years ahead of Windows 3.1 at that time. NextStep did not gain much market share, certainly less then the Mac!
The poor sales of NeXTSTEP for Intel 15 years ago don’t necessarily mean that Mac OS X for generic hardware would be equally unsuccessful.
NeXTSTEP had very little marketing, little mainstream software, was quite expensive, and had very high hardware requirements. For example it’s UI wasn’t designed for anything less than a high resolution 17″ monitor, it required a 486 with 16Mb RAM, and it needed a CD-ROM drive for installation. At the time Windows came on a handful of floppy disks, and ran quite well on a 386 with 8Mb RAM and a 14″ VGA screen. The majority of PC owners at the time simply wouldn’t have been able to run NeXTSTEP even if they’d owned a copy.
Today Apple are a well known brand name, thanks in part to the iPod, and they’re generally quite good at marketing their products. Mac OS X has a decent selection of software and has similar system requirements to Vista. Direct competition with Microsoft would be difficult and risky, but Mac OS X for the PC wouldn’t really suffer the same problems that killed NeXTSTEP for Intel.
I think it would have a pretty good chance of carving out a decent sized niche in the OS market. Whether that would make up for the inevitable loss of hardware sales is another issue. I can certainly see why Apple wouldn’t take the risk when they’re doing perfectly well as a hardware company.
There is no question in my mind that Macintosh systems are interprise worthy.
They are 100% Intel x86-compatable PCs just like my Dell PC sitting in front of me. It can natively run Windows and any other OS that PCs normally support.
Apple’s Macintosh today is synonymous with Dell’s Dimension or HP’s Pavilion line of systems, for example.
The real reason why Apple PCs are not as successful as Dell’s or HP’s PCs is because of the price.
Apple’s latest PCs tend to be high-end (simular to gaming PC hardware) and their prices reflect that.
For a LOT of IT departments who are… lacking in technical knowledge. Apple computers tend to not be something you open up to repair, much less upgrade… they have reduced capabilities for their cost and are made with lowest bid oem parts… Remember this is the company that thought a Rage 128 was bleeding edge technology in 2002, underclocked CPU’s in G3 and G4 laptops so they could skip putting COOLING systems in, and used to get all their hard drives from Conner.
They are a low capabilities box that you slap in and forget about, and when it fails you just throw money at the problem by getting another one. The type of system you give upper to middle management who aren’t smart enough to not click ‘yes’ on everything. – My god – they’re a thin client!
Edited 2007-03-11 18:19
I am typing this from firefox on a macbook pro. I support a university department of 2 mixed windows/unix (flavored) labs, 200 desktop mixed windows/unix (flavored) units, and a small mixed solaris/windows server farm. Oh yeah, we also have one ailing G4. They bought me the mbp to evaluate it for future purchase for our users (some people are now asking for macs based on some clever advertising campaign). I have to say the mbp is a nice machine overall, the os is stable, easy to secure, easy to use, etc. Honestly, I think the same can be said for XP/Vista/Linux (KDE or Gnome, pick yer poison), Solaris, FreeBSD, etc. My recommendation seemed to leave my superiors a bit perplexed though. I told them to wait a year until major operations update their flagship programs, because the simple truth is end-user production software needs to remove itself from Rosetta. This includes MS Office, Adobe CS/Macromedia line, and what I hope will be a usable version of OpenOffice. Until this software is capable of utilizing the updated hardware, I couldn’t, even for a second, justify the cost of the software (and upgrades in six months) on hardware that is priced with a premium tax.
For those that suggest Parallels, I agree it is a very nice utility, but in dollars and cents it just seems silly to me to pay for the license, when *all* the software is already available on a single platform.
Please don’t get me wrong, I love this thing, but the most important component our environment (for me) is enabling the end user to do her/his work with a minimal interruption.
Who provides the DEFAULT version of Linux? That’s one key point that you can’t make go away. So instead of facing facts you switch the argument from operating systems to applications.
Outlook and Explorer aren’t just different “interfaces”. They use different rendering engines and a whole lot more. Again stating options doesn’t prove your point as for the vast majority of those cases the vendor provides a default. IE in the case of browsers. Outlook in the case of mail.
And since the applications metaphor failed to provide the desired results you make another logical fallacy by attempting to use hardware.
If you ask me the lack of a good PC vendor is a threat to the entire industry. When people buy an auto do they just buy any any autos or do they buy from a name they trust? The point that the PC market lacks a stable reliable vendor is totally off topic though.
“The only thing that’s “ad nauseam” is the half-truths and FUD from Linux bashers.”
The pathos amuses me. I’d really expect those kind of words from a fanatic who speaks without knowing the facts. I’ve used Linux on a fairly regular basis myself where it makes sense. On servers and very slow desktops that can’t handle a modern operating system and BSD wasn’t an option. I’ve EVEN RECOMMENDED IT TO OTHERS!11
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You speak so blindly about me as a person in an effort to berate me. My question is why? Did you not like the fact that I pointed out how Linux fanatics try to bury the truth? I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.
Truth isn’t FUD.
There are too many damned flavors of Linux to allow for consumer adoption. If not, how’s about you telling me what’s holding it back? It’s been the “year of the Linux desktop” for a decade now and it still hasn’t broken into double digit adoption. People like you don’t help.
When evangelicals argue hardware against software when pressed with serious dialogue or debate they make a mockery of their causes. They label without facts because some don’t accept the “Linux must dominate the universe” mentality. I’ll probably be marked down by fanboi’s for posting this but I don’t really care.
Can someone help me out here? I love Macs, but I’m just curious why they are so often referred to as “the Mac”.
Do you ever notice that? Why not “a Mac”, or “my Mac”, or “her Mac”, or “his Mac”, or “your Mac”, …? I admit I’m baffled. You don’t see this with other things. People don’t generally say “the PC” or “the Dell”, but time and time again you see and hear people refer to Macintosh computers as “the Mac”.
For example… “I can do that on the Mac.” Why not say “I can do that on a Mac.”, or “I can do that on my Mac.”? Or even “A Mac is great for that sort of thing.”
No no… it’s always (at least more often then not) “the Mac”.
I think I’ll start using this for everything:
The Mother is coming to see The Son. The Car will be used to transport The Mother along with The Gifts for The Grandson. The Grandson is a big fan of The Gifts. Just keep The Gifts coming and The Grandson will be occupied throughout The Day.
Ahh… Is there a reason this phrase “the Mac” is so common? Maybe we just need to branch out a little. Of course the English has never been my strong suit so maybe I’m just missing something. 😉