A CIO Today editorial notes that security concerns are most often cited when IT managers consider a switch to Linux over Windows, but difficulty in replicating Microsoft Office functionality is a barrier. Why not use Macs? In addition to software-side security advantages, there are distinct security advantages to using a non-x86 platform as well. And you can still run Office.
Sure, it’s cool to run Office on the Mac, and darn helpful, but that’s not the only app needed and there are some Windows apps that have no Mac or Linux analogue.
And what are those missin apps?
I do admit the need for CAD/CAM software on the Mac, but other than that…
Jb
There no list, because the missing apps are specific to the person or the industry. CAD only matters to engineers and architects (and only those who don’t want to use the CAD software that is available on the Mac). There are many industry-specific apps that only run on Windows, like apps for Realtors in a particular area, for example. But the majority of general-purpose business computers do not need or use any software that’s not available for the Mac.
In no particular order:
– costly hardware, dells or hp’s become pretty cheap when buying in the hundreds.
– no easy hardware maintenance, friendly techies can switch out any pc part on the cheap. Try that with mini Macs.
– vendor lock-in, going from hardware where you can play several vendors against eacho ther to a single vendor.
– existing custom applications
– retraining all staff from endusers to application developers and all those MCSE’s, at astronomical cost
Probably it’s worth it for a small <50 desktops company, for the rest I have my doubts.
Head down to real street. Do you honestly expect companies to throw away their heavy investment in x86 for macs?
If its essential to run Ms Office its far far cheaper to do so via Wine/crossover office on linux.
Macs will always be a luxury computer for a very small minority unless they decide to make it run on x86 – thats the reality and it wont probably happen with Apple’s current management.
In no particular order:
“- costly hardware, dells or hp’s become pretty cheap when buying in the hundreds.”
PCs cost less because they give you less. I’m always surprised when people make blanket statements that PCs cost less because it implies that they cost less for the same configuration as that of a Mac. When a Windows-based PC is equipped with the same components in both hardware and software the Mac always comes out to be less expensive.
“- no easy hardware maintenance, friendly techies can switch out any pc part on the cheap. Try that with mini Macs.”
While the gist of what you are saying is true, as its sometimes more important to upgrade hardware than it is to replace it (Apple’s require buying *some* replacement parts from them.) The fact that Macs break down less often makes general maintenance less of a factor.
“- vendor lock-in, going from hardware where you can play several vendors against eacho ther to a single vendor.”
Apple typically makes some of the best hardware in the industry… and because they are less expensive… the vendor lock in issue isn’t really the big stigma that people make it out to be
“- existing custom applications”
If that specialty custom app can’t be had by any other means there’s always VPC or any one of the many other (less expensive) emus
“retraining all staff from endusers to application developers and all those MCSE’s, at astronomical cost”
The cost is over inflated as navigating OS X’s UI is just as easy if not easier than Windows.
“Probably it’s worth it for a small <50 desktops company, for the rest I have my doubts.”
The 200+ client comp newspaper i work at recently made the conversion and it went over without a hitch.
Macs will always be a luxury computer for a very small minority unless they decide to make it run on x86 – thats the reality and it wont probably happen with Apple’s current management.
The Mac Mini is $499. It is not a luxury computer. It will do what most businesses need it to do with out all the high IT overhead their Windows counterparts require.
at least around here, word is important, but outlook is why we run office, and outlook isnt in the mac version.
i love how the arguements in this thread totally ignore any advantages to macs, such as
-improved efficiency
-improved reliability
-smaller tech support department
-emulation for windows in house apps, and native support for unix in house apps
-0 downtime from virii
im not saying that the mac is a good idea for the business, as most businesses want “cheap, and good enough”. and some of tyrs points are valid, such as high cost for low end machines (i would like to point out that apple sucks at the low end, but at the high end they are quite competitive), the fact that mcse are a dime a dozen, etc. I think a better arguement could be made for a hybrid shop.
” The Mac Mini is $499. It is not a luxury computer. It will do what most businesses need it to do with out all the high IT overhead their Windows counterparts require. ”
Are you kidding? The ONLY mac that a business could use would be a powermac. You can use an emac/imac at the cash register or something, but when you have people actually WORKING on these things, you cant use a computer that slow.
Also,assuming mac mini performance is acceptable to a company, they can get similar PC’s from OEM’s for much less than 499.
Another thing, openoffice is available for linux for free, and it should satisfy most businesses. Office v.X costs $399 for standard and $499 for professional. So the cheapest mac with office would cost $899. Assuming they already own pc’s and office for windows licenses, switching to linux with office would cost them $0.
If all your worries are Office compatibility the Mac Mini will run it with flying colors.
Sorry, you don’t need a powermac for email, webbrowsing, etc…
Sure there are certain things that require more horsepower, but the Mac Mini is a far better machine that those cheap POS pcs most companies go with.
what is the Linux outlook equivalent, and I don’t mean e-mail client.
Ahem, are you really trying to tell people there is no CAD software for Mac?
It is Evolution.
http://gnome.org/projects/evolution/
evolution of Kontact.
” Sorry, you don’t need a powermac for email, webbrowsing, etc… ”
true, but youre not supposed to be checking your email and browsing the web at work anyway. youre supposed to be working, and you need a fast and snappy computer for that. but like i said before, a linux pc that does let you browse the web and check email costs much less than a mac mini.
About half of the people I work with (at a software development job) could use a Mac Mini. Hell, half of the computers here are of lower spec (in raw CPU/disk/memory) than a Mac-mini. Sure, *some* of the developers might need more power, but when everyone here is using sub-1GHz PCs with 256-512M RAM, a Mac-mini isn’t a downgrade.
your saying that an iMac is underpowered?!
Do you actually work in an office?
The majority of my work is done on a 1gig PIII, why? because it works! Most of what do is web based stuff (i dont video edit nor compile much code)
Trust me a 1gig g4 is faster than a 1gig PIII
An office will only upgrade when the ‘old’ hardware no longer fulfills the needs of the user..
Hrmm… that’s odd, my G4 800mhz handles everything I throw at it just fine. I do software development on it using XCode and Interface Builder. I think if it can handle that, then it should have no problems handling what most businesses use computers for.
Another thing, openoffice is available for linux for free, and it should satisfy most businesses. Office v.X costs $399 for standard and $499 for professional. So the cheapest mac with office would cost $899.
Good call, too bad you forgot the fact that OpenOffice.org is cross-platform and also works on OS X.
Yesterday I walked into the law department at the university I attend, and was shocked to see macs.. everywhere. I did not see a single PC, and the techs apparently really like it.
“at least around here, word is important, but outlook is why we run office, and outlook isnt in the mac version. ”
Microsoft’s exchange compatible email client for Mac is called “Microsoft Entourage”
[i]”im not saying that the mac is a good idea for the business, as most businesses want “cheap, and good enough”.”
The price of the Mac mini is below the corporate average price for desktop computers
As a Unix developer, I was able to justify my workplace getting me a Powerbook, and we have entire departments that mostly use Macs (digital pre-press, typography and design, and legal). On the whole, though, my workplace is pretty Windows-centric on the desktop. The two applications that have no drop-in replacement on OS X are:
1. Visio. I loved the product, and even Microsoft hasn’t managed to over-feature it into the ground yet.
2. Microsoft Project. I hate the damn thing, but a lot of the upper management people think that it’s an essential piece of software.
Aside from those specific applications, there are a number of applications that are called “browser based”, but are actually Active X based, which means that they only work with Internet Explorer running on Win32. For example, the help desk uses Trak-It to manage trouble tickets. Well, unless you’re running IE on Win32, you can’t access the ticket database (okay, this is really an advantage for me, but it does mean that the help desk people can’t use Macs as their primary desktop systems). Accessing a MS Project Server has the same requirements.
Vendor lock-in is evil, but I don’t have any solutions to propose, unfortunately.
“Are you kidding? The ONLY mac that a business could use would be a powermac. You can use an emac/imac at the cash register or something, but when you have people actually WORKING on these things, you cant use a computer that slow.”
The Mac mini is hardly slow. I was using this fast of a processor for office productivity as far back as 3 years ago and it was overkill even then.
“Also,assuming mac mini performance is acceptable to a company, they can get similar PC’s from OEM’s for much less than 499.”
And yet the mac mini costs less than the average corporate PC purchase
“Another thing, openoffice is available for linux for free, and it should satisfy most businesses.”
And they have the option of Open office on the Mac as well as MS office.
“Office v.X costs $399 for standard and $499 for professional. So the cheapest mac with office would cost $899. Assuming they already own pc’s and office for windows licenses, switching to linux with office would cost them $0.”
Whenever a new PC is bought they spend approximately $600. They also have to buy licenses for those computers… each costing the same as the Mac mini… so in effect… the PC will cost more.
How about security thru actual programming talent? You ‘dis Apple’s software engineers by claiming this “obscurity” thing is bigger factor than it is. My guess is that Windows is as it is because the Redmond folks are a bunch of lazy “spaghetti”-chefs. Their products would seem to suggest that that is the case.
I think it’s an error to say the mac mini wouldn’t be powerful enough for business applications. Comparing my powerbook to my dad’s 2.4ghz P4, CPU intensive applications like digital ICE as easily comparable with my 1.5ghz G4. In the end, productivity software like office, email and web browsing are a synch and these machines are by no means limited to ‘office only’ apps (take ilife, which is included free). I suppose the mini now makes it possible for Apple to play to the ‘nuts and bolts’ business user – and re-use their existing displays for example.
In the end, a G5 would only be required by high end graphics/video applications and right now those who need a computer for such things have probably already bought Macs for the purpose.
dont get me wrong I love my mac, but the mac mini is far from cheap. from dell you get a p4, monitor, keyboard and mouse for 499. you’ve got to add that into the cost. as far as performance is concerned, my g4 800 iMac, and g4 800 power book are still doing just fine and i am deffinettly pushing it’s limits.
For Mac “Visio” try OmniGroup’s OmniGrafflePro. It reads Visio 2002 and newer documents when they are saved in the Visio XML drawing format. It also exports to the same format so my Windows cohorts can open and edit my flowcharts. (I’m an Oracle developer.) It has to be the Pro version.
For MS Project, I use PMX from JTech Softworks. It imports MPP, MPX and MSPDI formatted project files. It exports to MPX and MSPDI files so you can share them with Windows users.
These two titles are about as close as I’ve seen to being “drop in” replacements for Visio/Project. You can find them at
http://www.versiontracker.com.
“ont get me wrong I love my mac, but the mac mini is far from cheap. from dell you get a p4, monitor, keyboard and mouse for 499.”
dont get me wrong I love my dell, but the dell dimension 3000 is far from cheap. from Apple you get a G4, more universal connectivity – Firewire AND USB (unlike the Dell which only gives use USB), It supports DVI AND VGA (unlike the dell which only supports VGA, a 56k modem (unlike the dell which gives you no modem), OS X Tiger (unlike the Dell which only gives you the consumer version of XP which is not an equal comparison… Pro should be used instead) and also gives you iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand), AppleWorks, Quicken 2005 unlike the Dell which gives you none of that…) for 499.”
“you’ve got to add that into the cost.”
Agreed. Add in the cost.
Thanks for the suggestions. I will check out the Pro version of OmniGraffle, though I was moderately underwhelmed by the non-Pro version.
I’ll also keep PMX in mind, though I’m not a Project user here and I doubt I’ll convince any of the Project-users to switch, I guess someone might ask me if there is something similar for OS X.
How about security thru actual programming talent? You ‘dis Apple’s software engineers by claiming this “obscurity” thing is bigger factor than it is.
Linux has a long list of security features. Strong priviledge separation, excellent auto-update (for all programs not just core system bits), SELinux, ExecShield, Mudflap …. where is Apples own list?
They seem to be content to let their fanboys go “ra ra it’s UNIX so it must be l33t” yet let huge security holes like the isync suid root binary and the Safari exploits go unfixed for months.
I love the way people are trashing vendor lockin from Microsoft at the same time as praising Apple. Hello? Does anybody apart from me think that’s totally stupid? Apple are even worse at vendor lockin than Microsoft are. By far.
They’re both as bad as each other and this is Apples real weakness when it comes to the corporate desktop: you’d have to be crazy to migrate from something bad (from the business POV) to something equally bad or worse.
you are talking at least 600$ including the monitor. for 600$ you can get more then the mini from dell. not to mention that apple already had the business, and lost it, and people are going to be more warey because of that. you need to be offering something substancially less expensive, not slightly more expensive to entice it back.
“you are talking at least 600$ including the monitor. for 600$ you can get more then the mini from dell.”
As my response illustrated…
you get more in some areas and less in others. When a Dell system is equipped with the same components in hardware and software as that which comes standard on a Mac, the Mac always comes out to be less expensive.
“not to mention that apple already had the business, and lost it, and people are going to be more warey because of that.”
Don’t get me wrong… PCs have a genuine advantage in allowing consumers to buy inferior or non existent hardware and software to allow the PCs to be less expensive. Its an advantage that ought not be undermined but THAT was the reason why Apple lost one of its core markets… not because of having an inferior solution.
“you need to be offering something substancially less expensive, not slightly more expensive to entice it back.”
Apple’s computers are indeed less expensive, but that is a moot point because your statement is wrong anyways. A company wins markets or retains markets by offering advantages that their competitor does not that the end user needs.
PCs currently have one advantage over Macs and that is the ability for consumers to buy less and spend less. But as long as Apple continues to sell computers for less money than comparably equipped PCs while also offering unique advantages that Windows can’t or does not match its a moot.
I recently started my own business, and I’ve been really surprised by how good the mini mac is. It’s practically silent and barely warm to the touch. And as far as I’m concerned, it is disposable hardware. I’ve been running it in the base configuration with 5 or 6 apps at a time, and it is only just starting to swap (and I’m talking about running my Java IDE, Lotus Notes, Domino Designer, Safari, and iChat in 256mb of RAM). I bought my first employee a powerbook specifically because we can run our apps and do our development on OS X and I don’t have to worry about the viruses, malware and insecurity of Windows, but now I wouldn’t hesitate to buy the mini mac instead. He works on the other side of the world, but by using iChat and Lotus Notes we talk and edit the same documents in real-time for several hours a day and it is almost like we are in the same room.
And I’m no Mac fanboy – I was using PCs exclusively for the best part of 10 years (I’m an IBM Certified Engineer and a MCSE). I would love to be using Linux, but some of our core apps aren’t there yet (hopefully IBM have seen the light and Domino Designer will be as functional on OS X and Linux as it will be on Win32). Another friend quit her job as a developer recently to run her own distribution company – she was a Microsoft die-hard, but is running her business on the Mac (and she is so enthusiastic about the Mac that it really surprises me coming from her).
“- no easy hardware maintenance, friendly techies can switch out any pc part on the cheap. Try that with mini Macs. ”
Maybe you have a point with the Mac Mini, but then organizations with friendly techies aren’t going to be buying Mac Minis. As for Easy maintenance, I can change the DVD/CDROM drive in my G5 in about 60 seconds starting with the cover on. If there is a PC that is that easy I haven’t seen it yet.
Bill
“I love the way people are trashing vendor lockin from Microsoft at the same time as praising Apple. Hello? Does anybody apart from me think that’s totally stupid? Apple are even worse at vendor lockin than Microsoft are. By far.”
I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but with OS X you also get a little program called X11. Which just happens to run quite a bit of Linux stuff. If there is a MS equivalent I don’t know about it. So just how does this qualify as vendor lock-in to the same degree as MS uses?
Apple 1 MS 0
Bill
I could scarcely believe my eyes after having read that article. It’s great at telling only half the story:
+ The point made about the “inherent” security in PPC execution vs. x86 execution, while not wrong, is at best a very minor point. Moving to a different architecture won’t get you very far if the vectors are the same, and removing these vectors (so that either buffer overflows/privilege escalations don’t occur in a particular piece of code, or won’t get anywhere even if they do) is very much a software issue, not a hardware one.
+ The CPUs in question (G4 and G5) are Power-derived, not PowerPC-derived as the article states. Power-derived CPUs are PowerPCs.
+ The Macintosh edition of Microsoft Office lacks Access, Binder (though they can be unpacked), and some crucial Exchange compatibility from the Outlook-equivalent that’s bundled (name of Entourage). Shops where the use of Microsoft products poses a barrier to migration use these features, which means that Microsoft Office itself is still a barrier.
+ It’s true that a new Macintosh, when compared with an equivalently-configured new PC from another vendor, will be competitive on price. But that’s part of the problem; you have to “configure up” most PCs to match the configuration. This isn’t endearing when purchasing computers in volume for most businesses, because being able to not “configure up” can mean thousands of dollars (or whatever currency) in savings. Consequently, buying a Macintosh – particularly one of the higher-end models – can be considered more “forward compatible”, something which is naturally a very low priority for businesses.
+ The article quips “Macs run more functional software”. “more functional” than what?
+ The comparison between the G5 and Xeon processors regarding cluster supercomputer performance is somewhat dishonest. Sure, theoretical GFlops from a G5 is just over double that of a Xeon. Perhaps the author could have alluded to the real-world G5 clusters that are producing excellent performance results against many architectures, not just the Xeon.
+ The article then gets into a spot of rumourmongering regarding the use of Radeon 9600 GPU-based daughtercards. As anyone who has watched or dealt with Apple for any long period of time will know, a rumour is a rumour with Apple until it’s announced.
+ The article doesn’t discuss the main barrier in any detail, being custom applications that are overwhelmingly developed in Windows-specific suites such as Delphi and Visual BASIC. Redevelopment, while not something that can be avoided forever, is something that most businesses put off as long as possible because of the cost and the potential for downtime after deployment.
Now, I realise the article is not aiming for technical excellence. It also has a laudable goal (in my opinion): Macintosh platform advocacy. I am a user and advocate of the Macintosh, and Mac OS X in-particular. But advocacy needs to be upfront and tell the whole story, not only parts of it.
Please consider.
“Sure, theoretical GFlops from a G5 is just over double that of a Xeon. ”
Delivered FLOPS aren’t. Not even close.
“Perhaps the author could have alluded to the real-world G5 clusters that are producing excellent performance results against many architectures, not just the Xeon.”
In real world tasks, G5 clusters have not been shown to be superior to the Xeon, Opteron, or Itanium-based clusters.
I find it interesting that Apple used SPEC (incorrectly) to claim the G5 was vastly superior to the P4, but still – after nearly two years – has not submitted scores to SPEC.
The G5 isn’t a bad chip. The architecture is fine. It’s just not superior at the present time – and wasn’t then.
“Ahem, are you really trying to tell people there is no CAD software for Mac?
”
None of the good ones, no.
Whaaat? I am using a mini right now. I use it 2 days/week when I work from home. What are you talking about “it’s too slow”? Have you USED one to do actual work? :/
I use mine to tunnel into work, map to several windows drives, use our CVS repositories, etc. I use SubEthaEdit for development (and other tools), etc. The one app missing is Outlook, but guess what? There’s a WEB interface that is nearly fully functional as compared to the native client application.
Too slow… Two years ago I was using a 400mhz machine at work running Windows 2000, before they began upgrading… my mini is 1.42 ghz. I am so sick of the “macs are slow” argument, it is hogwash.
I also use my mini for personal development projects using REALBasic, Python… I also run 3 websites on it that make use of Apache/PHP/Python and MySQL…
And wow! I can even use a browser to read and respond to posts on OSNews!!
From: digitaleon (—.lns1.cbr1.internode.on.net)
Sure, theoretical GFlops from a G5 is just over double that of a Xeon.
From: JCS (68.159.141.—)
Delivered FLOPS aren’t. Not even close.
My point exactly. Hence why the article is dishonest.
(I also noted after seeing your post that I incorrectly forgot to captialise to GFLOPS, whoops!)
From: digitaleon (—.lns1.cbr1.internode.on.net)
Perhaps the author could have alluded to the real-world G5 clusters that are producing excellent performance results against many architectures, not just the Xeon.
From: JCS (68.159.141.—)
In real world tasks, G5 clusters have not been shown to be superior to the Xeon, Opteron, or Itanium-based clusters.
That’s quite true, but I think we have different perspectives on this. I categorise the G5 as giving ‘excellent’ results because it is able to remain comparable despite some disadvantages against the other processors listed.
I find it interesting that Apple used SPEC (incorrectly) to claim the G5 was vastly superior to the P4, but still – after nearly two years – has not submitted scores to SPEC.
I would speculate that the situation Apple finds themselves in hasn’t changed over the past two years. That situation being poor SPECint performance when pitted against the P4 (which has many optimisations for integer operations), and the continued use of a compiler which even their own variant of is not fully optimised for the architecture.
The G5 isn’t a bad chip. The architecture is fine. It’s just not superior at the present time – and wasn’t then.
Agreed. But here’s hoping for the future, even if it only means a game of leapfrog with Intel, AMD, and other players (since that has its’ own benefits).
Microsoft Office on Mac OS X sucks because it crashes all the time. It almost feels like MS have made their mac programs crashy on purpose.
– costly hardware, dells or hp’s become pretty cheap when buying in the hundreds.
Example? Considering that one can keep a Mac alot longer, and upgrading to the latest operating system, without the massive draw back of the PC, the costs even themselves out.
– no easy hardware maintenance, friendly techies can switch out any pc part on the cheap. Try that with mini Macs.
Easy. If something were to go wrong, its either going to be:
1) Memory – takes *ANY* standard DDR memory
2) Hard Disk – takes *ANY* standard laptop hard disk from *ANY* vendor
3) CD ROM – takes *ANY* slot loading CD Drive
– vendor lock-in, going from hardware where you can play several vendors against eacho ther to a single vendor.
Interesting, I can ring up and play the Apple sales rep against the Dell rep if I want – no lock in here. The only lock in that exists is in your mind.
– existing custom applications
Silly boy, why did you get them written in VB?
– retraining all staff from endusers to application developers and all those MCSE’s, at astronomical cost
Easy – give them the necessary manuals and software for them to use at home – its up to them to get up to speed – not up the speed – fired. Simple as that.
Yeah.
I kind of agree with that. I do as much as I can with iWork and export it. If someone sends me a Word document I import it first. I stay out of Word unless there is some sort of formatting that requires it.
@kaiwai: Why VB? It is a very powerful and easy-to-use tool to quickly develop applications. We have lots of custom VB and PowerBuilder applications in-house. I am using REALBasic right now (at home on my Mac) for a simple artwork management tool. A lot of hard-core developers would poo poo it, but damn it is easy to use! Yeah, the smallest app is 1 MB because of the RB library… blah blah.
hasn’t anyone yet realized or considered the fact that having an application that locks you into Windows-only, IS in fact vendor lock-in ?
Why aren’t you people who have this problem pressuring the vendors of these win32-only apps to port them cross-platform so that you can use their so-called-essential software on the system of your choice?
Has everyone forgotten that the current Macintosh of today runs ALL the software?
o All the MacOS apps
o All the open-source apps (and if it doesn’t, it IS open-source, either patch it or submit bug-reports so it can be, don’t just bitch)
o and under emulation (of more than one variation) the win32 apps. (which is a fine solution to get the needed functionality temporarily while you look for a more compatible replacement. it’s not THAT slow anymore. )
“(which is a fine solution to get the needed functionality temporarily while you look for a more compatible replacement. it’s not THAT slow anymore. )”
Your needs are clearly modest.
Whilst it’s amusing to read all the comments by the Mac Mafia, it’ll always come back to tyr’s point (3rd post).
In the corporate environment, taking into consideration all the different tensions and pressures, this just ain’t gonna happen. Period.