“Can I run my business on Macintosh?” David Coursey answers the question in his editorial at C|Net.
Mac vs. PC: Which is Better for Business?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The PC is far and away better for business. There are more applications, cheaper machines, and a large and mature business infrastructure that supports PC’s.
This is not to say some businesses cannot be run using the few Mac business software programs. Many small businesses use one of the several accounting packages available for Mac. There is also some vertical market software for dentists and membership organizations.
The PC achieved a 97% market share in no small part because it’s a tremendously good business computer. The basic architecture is flexible and capable, enabling many price points and solutions.
Until Macs are cheaper and have an open architecture supporting multiple vendors, they will always be a small and specialized ecosystem compared to PC.
see subject.
I could not have said it better myself.
It appears that the site AD engine is down.
OSnews without ad’s … Whoa!!!
See reality. For almost any business, PC is a better investment than a Mac.
I think the main question to be asked is what will your employees work best with. Far more likely then not your employees will be windows users. So having them find a mac on their desk will probably cause a good deal of greif for many of them. The employee might just be stubborn about the switch, but it will for sure effect their work.
For a small business, if I was starting fresh, and there was no legacy apps to deal with and no missing apps I would go for Macs. But If your talking more then a few dozen of them the cost is going to get high fast. Then I might think more towards having a fleet of identical computer put together and buy copies of XP pro for them. Don’t get into mass licenses for them.
Another issue is what your business does and how much of the computer use the customer sees. If it’s something where people generaly feel like they are paying to much for something, seeing macs there might make them not approve of things as much and maybe take their business else where. People are very sensitive to this. If people feel like a company is just good at wasting money instead of lowering prices they can leave with a negitive feeling towards a place. A mac on a desk is not going to make you look smarter to the costomer, maybe even dumber by the impression apple gives of it’s users by the switch commercials (are the gone, haven’t seen them in a while, good thing).
I don’t buy that macs save any money in the long run to offset cost. I do think though that with OSX apple is off on a fresh start and if you have no reason to chose one OS over the other it makes for a nice begining. With legacy stuff out of the way you would only be talking a grand maybe more to have a mac over a windows box, and for a few computers thats not a big deal. But if you are an existing business and have tons of software going and stuff custom written for windows and all the employees are well into their grove with what they have, then there is no reason to switch, a switch would be a bad thing then.
i would go linux
“i would go linux”
well that wasn’t a option for the topic now was it.
And even if it was it would not be an option. There is no reason to go with it. The cost of the OS relitive to the computer and the users salary and so forth is so small it doesn’t matter much on that front. The loss in productivity would also be a killer (just a few hours of relearning time just paid for a copy of XP pro, and it’s going to take an employee a long time to learn things) , unless your doing something very unix centric with employees that are good with it linux it is going to suck for them. And really most all the reason people say open source os’s such as linux are so great just don’t matter to businesses. They want to get stuff done easily and fast. Open source code and super customization don’t matter. And administration for a dozen computers is not much of an issue. If you can’t just get up and walk around to them to do what needs to be done you’re just lazy.
Also on mac and windows you can be sure any new app that might come out will be avalible, not so true for the mac side but not to bad. For linux you’re probably going to be waiting for someone to write it. And then I doubt there will be much support. Keap linux on the servers, keap what keaps employees happy on their desks.
Sorry, i guess the topic didn’t say mac verse windows, though the article stuck to that path. to be honest the title is confusing, it’s saying macs vs everything else and macs.
There are some disadvantages, and some advantages. Just saying “no”, without examining the needs is absolutely stupid. It just shows that you are some mac-hating zealot.
More expensive hardware is a disadvantage. Very low security risks are a advantage. Easier to integrate in a unix/linux network, versus lack of some vertical-market applications. Easy (network) administration and setup versus learning curve for the user (although pretty low). Higher productivity because of a better user interface versus higher speeds because of a better processor.
If I would start from scratch, I would atleast identify the different kinds of employees and their needs. A secretary doesn’t need a mac, she will be fine with a linux system. A graphics designer will be better of with a mac,.. Road-warriors in your company may want to use a powerbook with a pretty good combination of features and battery life, where an accountant with a specific need for an application will need some windows box.
Yeah, the system administrator will actually have to manage a heterogenous network, and do some work. Maybe that’s why people blindly say “no, i will never use X, and will only look at Y”.
At this point they all run Mac OS 9.2, MicroSoft Office 98, Eudora 4.3, and Filemaker 5. Most of the computers are G4 450s. At this point our TCO is pretty low.
I would love to take all of these to OS X (I haven’t used 9 at home for a year and a half), and have had a couple of fully set up test boxs running for months but I still can’t justify the change–although as we are doing more work for Sun, it would be nice to be able to deploy OpenOffice onto the client computers rather than using an OS X box to do conversion to MS Office.
We have one important Windows box, a Pentium 4 running NT 4 and Quickbooks. Apparently the Mac version of Quickbooks is missing one important feature. From my perspective in hindsight haveing a dedicated Quickbooks box is actually a good thing.
As to what your employies know, most of ours are Mac users, but interestingly enough we have recently aquired a couple of interns still in college. At least one confided to me that he isn’t “really a Mac person”. I just think it is amusing that our schools have choosen to teach only Windows because “that is what they will be using in business”, and here we have a student who is forced to use what we give him even though his schooling didn’t prepare him for it. But then as OSNews readers probably realize, teaching one OS is bad.
“Very low security risks are a advantage.”
Just can’t resist here. One day my boss sends me a .doc.vb file and tells I need to figure out how to open it. There was one period of time where we were getting massive amounts of macro and other virii from customers and contacts. It kind of amused me to be reading through one and seeing everything hardcoded to C:.
In some cases we probably passed these along without ever knowing since everything worked except for the payload.
The biggest liability I see (as Admin) to our buisiness is MicroSoft Office. Make sure that Quick Save option is off, boys and girls!
It’s too bad PC = Windows for David Coursey, he should know better.
I’m always amazed to hear Windows users point to loss of productivity as a disadvantage of free operating systems, considering they always have to worry about BSOD, viruses, spyware, frequently rebooting or reinstalling the OS each time something goes bad. Just tell me how it feels when (for instance) you can’t book passengers because your system just crashed in front of them.
Employees have to put up with whatever equipment is available to them. They don’t arrive with their own list of what they think should have been bought in the first place, since they weren’t there when the business was started.
At work, we deal with contractors who use either Macs or PC, depending on their choice and finances.
Back in the 80’s Apple, Atari and Amiga were far supirior to the PC, but the market chose the PC for various reasons. Nowadays not only is the PC better value for money but there also is a far greater choice of S/W one cane use. MS and Intel rule ….. unfortunatly.
This article is talking about small buisnesses which often implies no IT department. In these situations the ease of use of an apple can be a huge advantage.
On the topic of cost you should factor in the fact that Macs tend to have longer lives than PCs. At my office we have an 2si from 1992 which is still in (limited) use. Also because apple system software doesn’t require activation codes I am able to keep almost all of the computers using the same version OS without haveing to buy 5 upgrades. I know that isn’t particularly legal (when the family licence is available in Aus I will buy it instead) but it is a great convenience.
Back in 1987 i had to buy a computer and i was adviced to get an IBM compatible machine, since it was (still is) the industry standard.
So I went and purchased a Victor PC:
8088 Prcessor 4.75/8MHZ
512 KB Ram
Hercules Video Card 720×320 Pixel
Monochrom 14″ Monitor
DOS 1.x or 2.x
Windows 1.x (no Apps.)
20Meg HDD
Very ordinary compared to Apple, Atari or Amiga …. but it was the standard used throughout the corporate world.
BTW, you can run a business on Apple machines, but the costs are too high and there are less qualified people able to mantain them. I don’t think it would be worthwile for the majority of businesses, anyway, otherwise Apples marketshare would be much higher. I stress “majority of businesses” to prevent a flamewar ….
At the end of the day, the Mac is not a business computer.
Apple markets Macs as some sort of revolutionary machine. They cater to teenage druggie girls, disaffected rich people, artists, musicians, video professionals, etc. Apple features all sorts of celebrities in their ads.
A Mac is marketed as everything but a basic computer that does the job. Most business people don’t sit and sip green tea with the Dalai Lama. Most business people just want a machine that runs the apps they care about.
Business PC’s are just computers. They don’t come with a culture. They come with a good price tag and they run all the business apps your business will ever need. Parts are cheap, repairs are cheap, apps are cheap. Microsoft Office costs a fraction of what it costs on Mac.
Some people really really want to use Macs as business computers, so you see a few business apps. Not many, though. And Apple certainly hasn’t focused on business apps. Apple is about Luxury Computing, Digital Entertainment Hub, pro video, pro audio, and other non-mainstream endeavors.
As long as Apple’s culture remains as it is, the Mac will never be business compatible.
It has everything to do with IBM and nothing to do with any other extenal forces. Back in the 1980s the old “no one ever got fired for using IBM” was reigning supreme. People chose the PC because it came from a conservative company such as IBM and had the necessary applications for business. Apple however was concertrating on the hobby, education and graphics market. For better or worse, that is where they have stayed.
However, if today you were to say that Macs are not adequate for business one would be tempted to give the person speaking a good ear bashing. Mac’s have everything a busines requires, Microsoft Office, 4D relational database, heaps of Macromedia and Adobe software titles, easy to use developing tools etc etc.
Why haven’t the market jumped on boad? stagnation. Most people follow the crowd, Sure, there are some who don’t mind peeling off and prepared to “rebel against the machine”, aka, the status quo, however, most see that there are tonnes of other companies using PC’s, so they the busines owner thinks it is a safe bet.
One thing I can agree with are people who say there isn’t enough enterprise management tools, which is true. Apple really does need those tools, for example Novell Zenworks is a great tool when managing thousands of computers and making sure that each has the latest updates and patches. Maybe in the future Apple can team up with Novell and see if their management tools can be ported to MacOSX.
not much content in the article… kind of like this post
>I’m always amazed to hear Windows users point to loss of productivity as a disadvantage of free operating systems, considering they always have to worry about BSOD, viruses, spyware, frequently rebooting or reinstalling the OS each time something goes bad.
BSOD: I remember those. Only saw them on the very-BETA Win95 with shitty drivers, though. Never saw such a thingy on Windows XP.
Viruses: I remember viruses too. Those were the days, man. Gettin’ pirated DOS games on floppy disks together with the lasted viruses like ‘Taipan’. But since I switched to Windows I haven’t seen a virus anymore. I really miss these little critters sometimes.
Spyware: You can install spyware on any OS.
Rebooting: Now this is the biggest BS. I only need to reboot on Linux when something goes bad because apps can totally lock up the system there. Ok, “totally lock up” may not be 100% correct. Maybe I could “SSH from another box” but I ain’t that geek. On Windows XP I can kill any bad process right from the box it runs on. Because unlike Linux Windows XP doesn’t allow apps to lock-up the keyboard an all such funny stuff (at least it never happend to me).
‘Crash and reboot’ are things I only experience on my RedHat/Mandrake systems. Windows XP is rock stable.
You’re full of it.
>BSOD: I remember those. Only saw them on the very-BETA Win95 with shitty drivers, though. Never saw such a thingy on Windows XP.
Yeah, XP might not have them. But 95, 98 and ME did. Not just 95 as you seem to claim.
>Viruses: I remember viruses too. Those were the days, man. Gettin’ pirated DOS games on floppy disks together with the lasted viruses like ‘Taipan’. But since I switched to Windows I haven’t seen a virus anymore. I really miss these little critters sometimes.
Viruses: I remember viruses too. Those were the days, man, a couple of months ago. Gettin’ packets through the Internet together with the viruses like SQL Slammer. MM-mm.
>Spyware: You can install spyware on any OS.
Yeah, but in Linux you type: ps axu (or gps) and kill the spyware. Or you could just prevent it from ever starting–you let random programs go into your /etc and modify your runlevel scripts? Kinda stupid if you ask me.
>Rebooting: Now this is the biggest BS. I only need to >reboot on Linux when something goes bad because apps can >totally lock up the system there. Ok, “totally lock up” may >not be 100% correct. Maybe I could “SSH from another box” >but I ain’t that geek. On Windows XP I can kill any bad >process right from the box it runs on. Because unlike Linux >Windows XP doesn’t allow apps to lock-up the keyboard an >all such funny stuff (at least it never happend to me).
Yeah, uh-huh. Windows XP doesn’t let apps lock up the keyboard. In fact, it has a really awesome NoLockup feature: when an app sends a lock_up_keyboard() call, it doesn’t let it! Those MS wizards.
As the original Poster stated, The market has spoken. Natural selection has occurred, and nothing we say is going to change the past.
I have used both macs and pc’s, and at the end of the day i go right back to my pc. I have never NEVER had problems with programs locking up left and right, and I have been using windows since version 3.1 . Get good hardware, and good software, and you will have a rock solid machine for a good price. End of story.
Sure, a mac can be fun to play with, but at the end of the day, if it doesn’t do everything you need it too, and costs 3x as much, then what is the point?
I was inclined to agree with your post until the “3x” the price comment.
“I’m always amazed to hear Windows users point to loss of productivity as a disadvantage of free operating systems, considering they always have to worry about BSOD, viruses, spyware, frequently rebooting or reinstalling the OS each time something goes bad.”
Luckily for me, I’m one who does not need to worry about any of that. Windows is easy for me. I never get BSODs in my Windows XP usage, I never got a virus on Windows 9x let alone XP, spyware? There’s nothing suspicious leaving my machine. Frequently rebooting? What for? I turn my machine off when I’m finished using it, and that’s the only time. Reinstalling? The only time I considered doing that was when I thought about dual booting with a free OS but then thought better of it. No need to fix something that ain’t broke.
I often wonder why some people have such trouble managing to use Windows. I guess they must be novices or something?
Well, I suppose 3X may be a bit high if your talking off the shelf computers, which I suppose is a fair comparison, since Macs are only available “off the shelf”. Personally I build my own pc’s. I am currently running a Dual Processor Athlon 2600 system, with 512mb of ram, and 300gb of storage. Total price? With windows XP professional, it set me back 635$. The machine was 450.
With some judicious shopping, you can build a really nice machine for a low price in the pc arena.
But you have a valid point, and no, they are not 3x as much when your comparing apples to apples (er macs to IBMS?)
Nope, seasoned IT professionals like me have to contend with all those problems for our company’s employees all the time.
Walk into many boutiques in NYC and you will see them using macs. I know of a lot of ART dealers that uses them as well since there is a guy locally who wrote an Application specific for them.
But there are programs for specific types of businesses that are not on the mac.
So it’s a yes/no.. If the Application you need to run is there, yes you can use the mac. If not then the PC is the best for you
“However, if today you were to say that Macs are not adequate for business one would be tempted to give the person speaking a good ear bashing. Mac’s have everything a busines requires, Microsoft Office, 4D relational database, heaps of Macromedia and Adobe software titles, easy to use developing tools etc etc.”
None of these are the problem. The crucial question is the accounting software. Can you get an accounts program (Sage or similar) which is approved by your local tax office?
Obviously you can type letters and reports on a Mac, that has been easy since the Mac first appeared.
Where I was working once I bought 3 pcs and one apple for the place. I left that job to concentrate more on my studies. The last I heard the apple may be put in storage because no one knows how to use it. Which is amazing to me how could people who use pcs not figure out an apple. I just think people are lazy to try out or to scared to try something else different. Learning to use a apple is a joke and very easy. Mind you this was a a maxed out ram apple with the fastest cpu and gfx card when it was bought. Hey, if they dont want it I will take it
I dont care if it is good for business or not.
>But you have a valid point, and no, they are not 3x as much >when your comparing apples to apples (er macs to IBMS?)
I just like to see real facts/numbers rather than gross exaggerations. I have both a Mac and a PC. Like you I built the PC myself for around $600 including XP. My iMac was $1199. I then sprung for an LCD monitor for the PC, around $400. Yes, the PC was cheaper, but it wasn’t 1/3 of the price of the Mac.
It would be nice to build our own Macs, but sadly I doubt we’ll ever see Mac hardware become a commodity like PC harware.
The market spoke about the technology and products in place over a decade ago. Certainly early-90’s PCs were better for business than early-90’s Macs. Now people aren’t making even comparisons but will have to find a significant advantage to prompt a change.
Furthermore, this article was not asking “is it better to..?” it was asking “can I…?”. That’s a totally different question than what you were answering.
The answer is clearly “yes, with some caveats”. First, with Macs it will be more expensive in hardware purchases (but, depending on your experience and needs, support costs may be cheaper). Second, some of the software you want to use may not be available on the Mac (ex: Microsoft Project or a full featured replacement).
I wouldn’t recommend to anyone to drop their existing infrastructure and spend money to replace it with Macs. However, for a business just starting up it is certainly something to look at.
What shouldn’t be forgotten is that you can do BOTH. The health club I go to uses PCs for their registration and billing system and Macs for their security cards and account system. They all seem to work well together.
I recently had my 1st appointment with an acupuncurist (SP?) for my back problems (bad back, nuff said), and their entire office is ran on Macs! (Mac PC’s tied into a Mac server)
They looked like bargain Macs for that matter (emacs and such), and when I asked the receptionist about them, she said they love them!
I asked if they supported their machines themselves, or if they had a loval support company, and they said that when they’ve needed support, they have a local group who comes in, but evidently that’s not a common thing (ie, the Mac network doesn’t need a lot of intervention).
It kind of stands to reason… the acupuncurist is also a regular doctor, but he and his collegues (there’s several doctors in his “clinic”) share office space with a new age/holistic health place which is quite renowned in this area (“Creative Wellness”, if anyone’s a local), so I kind of chalked it up to the typical “hippies love Apples and VW’s” mentality. Still, it was kind of impressive and unusual.
As the saying goes, “Whatever works”.
Because unlike Linux Windows XP doesn’t allow apps to lock-up the keyboard an all such funny stuff (at least it never happend to me).
It can if you’re using a USB keyboard. Some misbehaving drivers can lock up the entire USB bus in XP. Not sure if this is an issue for other OSes but I thought I would bring it up.
(the driver in question was for an HP USB Scanner – I could scan the image but I couldn’t save it!)
did someone actually say ms office cost a fraction of what it does on the mac. the only way you truly save money on it is if you but the “standard version” i think even a small biz would go with the pro version. um wait the mac doesn’t have a standard version. M$ is juicing the the windows lovers just like it does with to choice between xp home and pro. and the “discount” on the standard version isn’t even that much. look here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/538476/ref=br_bx_c_1_…
as for the price for the price of PCs versus Macs, all i can say is you get what you pay for. and if can get 3 Pcs for the price of one mac, more power to you but like cheap cars they won’t last very long.
Do people really need a lecture in the difference between “can” and “should”?
None of these are the problem. The crucial question is the accounting software. Can you get an accounts program (Sage or similar) which is approved by your local tax office?
I thought that’s what all the excitement was about when Quicken released Quickbooks for OS X. I don’t know about “approval” but I know businesses that are running just fine on the Windows version….
Well, as a bonafide Unix architect, I would have to say that working with Macs have been a delight. I use my Powerbook G4 500 exclusively when onsite at my customer’s location. With Office v.X, Virtual PC 6, Omnigraffle, and Adobe Acrobat, I pretty much match up against the best configured PCs out there. Customers have been impressed with my documentation so far and wondered how I did my diagrams with Visio. I told them I used a Mac drawing application instead. They were impressed!
It all depends on your comfort level with the machine and the software. I would argue those who proclaim that PCs have more software. True, there is much more variety for PC users but the quality of software is there with Macs. For Unix users, Macs are a true joy to work with. The Terminal application is a godsend, combining the power of GNU utilities with the elegance of an Aqua enabled interface. Crash free, stable, predictable…..need I say more?
Macs do need more speed however. Hopefully, we should have options available to us by the end of the year. I think the lack of good performing hardware is made up in the design of the operating system and interface to the user. I don’t think I would look back to PCs after working with Macs and OSX.
The Terminal application is a godsend, combining the power of GNU utilities with the elegance of an Aqua enabled interface.
It’s mostly (Free)BSD tools. You wouldn’t want RMS yelling “It’s GNU/Mac OS X, it’s GNU/Mac OS X!”, would you? 🙂
David Coursey is an idiot. Always has been and always will be.
ROFL Micael! I agree with your first sentence – the Mac is not really meant to be a business machine. Well, I’d say not for big business. I do think very small businesses are well served by Macs. As the articles mentioned, networking is easier to set up, for one thing. Most people don’t know this, but the AppleWorks User Group has hundreds, maybe even thousands of templates for the various AppleWorks modules people have made. As others have said, there is also Office and Apple’s back to two small biz accounting programs. So, yes, small businesses definitely can go with Macs.
People often claim that Macs last longer than PCs but I can’t see any reason why they would. I can accept that older Macs such as the IISi were well built but the later LC Macs were fairly low quality. Modern desktop Macs are mostly made from the same (generally crappy) components as mass produced mainstream PCs. The motherboards are different but are I assume made by an OEM nmanufacturer such as ECS. The graphics cards are ATI or nVidia. Maxtor harddrives etc.
I don’t think I will find Kingston RAM an Asus motherboard or a Sony LCD panel inside a Mac.
It would be reasonable to expect a Mac to physically last about as long as a mainstream PC such as a Compaq or Dell but not as long as a high quality PC clone.
The reality is modern Macs aren’t BMW quality – more like a Hyundai Coupe – a flashy exterior covering cheap mechanicals.
He calls Frontpage a webdesign program, LOL.
Frontpage can’t even generate decent html.
He also has been several times inside MSHQ.
You know what I really wish and I sent David an e-mail about this so dont worry you people arent the only ones hearing it. I wish David would quit writing these PC vs MAC articles. Macs have their customer base, PC’s have theirs. I have learned you cannot tell a Mac user their computer sucks and you cant tell a PC user their computer sucks. People are all defensive, I disagree with many points in his article, like this one
<quote> and easier to be creative with.<quote/>
Saying that having a Mac makes you more creative or that it is easier to be creative with is like saying Rough Rider condoms make you better in bed and yes some people do think that. David discovered Mac, great, he likes the mac, great, now quit evangelizing, David used to write good articles but now it seems all he writes about is Mac vs. PC. He needs to go back to writing informative articles and not this crap he has been writing as of late.
PCs are only a value to a company when they want to goof off and blame the computer for their own stupidity. I am much more productive with a Mac. It has the stability and processing power of UNIX and it doesn’t get screwed up.
Windows
With Windows, I had the most success with ME, but it didn’t manage memory well – I tripled the memory and didn’t notice a difference and it always went out of memory even though the program RAM usage didn’t add up. On Windows, my DVD player didn’t work right for me. Some programs conflicted with other programs and wouldn’t run simultaneously.
UNIX
Thanks Microsoft for turning me back to UNIX. It was a no brainer. I started looking in to programming to decrypt Office and fix the bugs because it kept crashing all the time. And thanks to the inability of BSD Mall to get the programs compiled right I am no longer using free software.
Macs
I find the Mac much easier to work with – I don’t have to fiddle with all the internals to get it to work right. It has never crashed. And there are plenty of low cost applications. And there are many Mac only applications. You get a complete Integrated Programming Environment with OS X, CD burning built into Finder, a virus safe email program, text editor with intelligent spell check – ignores the code and can manage text files in multiple OS formats automatically, image and music management program, movie editing program (much better than Windows movie maker, plus all the the things the PC manufacturers add to their computers like office suite, money management software, games.
I think some people only ue their computers for reading email. Then maybe you do not get too many problems. I have had a lot happen to me on WIndows XP. Keyboard lockup (Couldn’t Ctrl-Alt-Del), mouse stops moving, BSOD, Viruses, (Nimda anyone), and spyware has a habit of installing itself on your windows XP too.
Honestly, give me your computer, and I swear I will make it go dead in no time. With Windows XP, with an antivirus program, and yes have it updated to the latest fixes too.
How many of you copied MS Office to your home computers – then installed it for a friend – “only because you hate Bill Gates and dont want him to get the money”.
How many of you paid for legal software costing over $100 – Photoshop, Access, Visual C etc…
Windows are accepted in business only because MS made point of ignoring piracy until Office became a defacto standard and then they go after businesses for illegal software.
India and China are examples of this rampant piracy. Every home computer I saw in India used a pirated copy of Office. And most businesses were trying to be legal by using Educational versions of MS Office!
In contrast I would boldly generalize that most Mac users have paid for the software on their Macs.
AM
Want to run your business with a minumum of hassle? Go Mac! nuff said….as productivity is key and productivity, integration, and speed, yes speed and reliability are all on the Mac side imho. on the PC side? Cheap computers…..is that an advantage? Really?
Feature for feature, Macs today are often priced lower than name-brand PCs. If not, you can nearly bet they are within $100. However, the Mac’s real advantage is in ROI – a term businesses are familiar with. ROI considers both costs (including TCO) and benefits. Key determinants of ROI include availability+security+productivity+minimized TCO. The Gartner Group has found that over the life of a Windows 2000 workstation its TCO alone is over 4 times its initial purchase price – that’s roughly $6500 on a $1500 computer, 70% of which is labor related. There has not been a study on Mac OS X, but you can bet it would be lower based on the following: Experts tend to agree that Mac OS X is more stable than XP, any kindergartner knows that Mac OS X is more secure than XP, Mac OS X is easier to use, has far better graphics and networking, and costs less to administrate. One XP advantage is that it, at least until Mac OS X Panther is released, has quicker boot time and a speedier interface. A lot of businesses are unnecessarily frightened into thinking they must use Windows for business, when in fact Mac OS X would provide them a much higher ROI. Mac OS X is also the most multi-platform compatible. Except for highly specialized businesses, every application a business would need is available for Mac OS X. There are already over 6000 written that are native to Mac OS X. Businesses would be very wise to give Mac OS X a serious test flight and crunch the ROI numbers themselves.
I get so weary of the assertion that, because there is numerically more software available for Wintel boxes than for Mac, the Mac platform is inferior. C’mon kids. We run a consulting firm on an all-Mac basis and do quite nicely, thank you. Our business runs on “the basics” of software. We don’t NEED 50,000 software packages. And if, unexpectedly, there were some oddball PC-based software that were to jump up and bite us, there’s always VirtualPC. So let’s keep that numerical “superiority” in perspective, OK?
The PC and it’s software base did not just materialise overnight. Vendors and software suppliers have spend billions giving businesses what they want and that takes time.
The Mac’s main markets have been more consumer and creative / vertical business markets. Take a look at publishing. The Mac still has a huge presence even though the Windows steamroller has been running at full speed trying to erode it’s market share.
Now Apple have a UNIX based OS with all the strengths that brings and dedicated developers. The market will ALWAYS provide what business/users want when it is required (necessity is the mother of all invention), and not before. Right now, software publishers / vendors WILL NOT invest in Mac for business use until we start seeing large scale servers/desktop MAC deployment populating office space.
The other argument is one of training. Most employees will have used a PC at some time in their life before leaving school/Uni. Therefore it is naturally easier to use Windows when they start their working career. I also think that moving from Windows 95/98 to XP is as bigger a learning curve as going from XP to OSX.
Apple is very good at seeing opportunities and making something out of them – look at MusicStore. They are not stupid and will refrain from betting the house on wishful thinking.
A more realistic timescale like 5 to 10 years should see Apple and the Linux community eroding Microsoft’s share significantly. Apple’s low key push into server space is genius – i.e. don’t make too many big waves as to attract your huge monolithic competitor and invade by Stealth. Linux has done this so why not Apple.
{ Want to run your business with a minumum of hassle? }
Go Linux, works the best out of box and you dont have to spend a ridiculous sum of money just to get the hardware.
{ Go Mac! nuff said }
BWAHAHAHAHAHOHOHOHOHOHHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE
{ as productivity is key and productivity, integration, and speed, yes speed and reliability are all on the Mac side imho. on the PC side? }
I moved all my people from Windows onto Linux and have had amazing increases in productivity, and my tech support calls have gone down alot. Linux is fast, Windows is fast its all in what you are comfortable in using.
{ Cheap computers…..is that an advantage? Really? }
Why dont you take your head out of Steve Jobs ass and look at the facts. There are more advantages to PCs than just price. You get compatibility with thousands of devices, they are easier to repair and cheaper to maintain. If something breaks I fix it, if any of the Macs break I have to send them back to Apple to get them fixed. God forbid we lose a server and I have to go 10 days without it, I dont have to be locked into a specific hardware platform which means I can buy HP tommorrow and run all of my Apps, Next week I can go with Sony and run all of my same Apps. Try going from PC to Mac, you have to either totally rewrite your code or you have to hunt down Mac versions of whatever software you want to run. No thank you, my time is important to me. Yes cost is a major issue to most businesses. People are moving away from proprietary UNIX to Linux that can be run on any platform. Linux is very cost effective whereas the Mac drives you further in debt.
Why one platform?
Picture this scenario: most of your sales force is running Windows. They do PowerPoint presentations for clients. Your engineers work on your servers, which are running Solaris or AIX or Linux. Your graphic designers and ad folks are still running classic Mac OS 9.
What’s to stop the top brass, CEO and board members, from running TiBooks with OS X? They can’t communicate via email with the rest of the crew? There’s a problem connecting to the office printers somehow?
This myth of “One OS to Rule Them All” has got to suffer its long-overdue death. File formats and communications protocols, people, that’s all that matters!
“Where I was working once I bought 3 pcs and one apple for the place. I left that job to concentrate more on my studies. The last I heard the apple may be put in storage because no one knows how to use it. Which is amazing to me how could people who use pcs not figure out an apple. I just think people are lazy to try out or to scared to try something else different. Learning to use a apple is a joke and very easy. Mind you this was a a maxed out ram apple with the fastest cpu and gfx card when it was bought. Hey, if they dont want it I will take it
I dont care if it is good for business or not.”
Well for one Macs arn’t that simple, I personaly think they are more complicated for many things then windows. But still it comes down to what your used to. If you go mac to windows your probably find windows hard, and the other way the opposite. I would be also curious why you bought the mac. If it was bought just to be another computer and not fill in a specific purpose and was the only one, then it’s rather obvious why it got boxed up. No point in having the freak computer around. I don’t think it was people being lazy, it was probably more of an issue of no point messing with it when you have all the windows boxes around.
Mac hardware does not last any longer then x86 stuff. aside from board and cpu its all the same so that leaves few parts to cause differances. If people keap a mac along any longer it might just be an issue of cost, it cost more, so they want to use it longer, or they can’t justify a new Mac.
Also look around, the fact that old x86 hardware is still fine and running good is the reason the wintel world is in such a sales slump. you can run WinXP just fine on a 4-5 year old 400-500mhz box, now look at macs, how many people find running osx on a 4 year old mac very good. Once apple makes there next cpu jump a huge chunk of the mac world is going to dump there old macs and move up. Stop the last longer BS, cause it’s just that. How long they last or are in use is issues completely outside of the hardware and even the software, it’s far more a user and just randomness thing.
How many of you paid for legal software costing over $100 – Photoshop, Access, Visual C etc…
Me. And I’d have to imagine I’m not the only one.
In contrast I would boldly generalize that most Mac users have paid for the software on their Macs.
I don’t know if that’s a fair generalization. The way Mac executables work (no ‘installation’ necessary) makes it very easy to make copies of applications.
Take a look at used Macs selling on eBay. You’ll see a lot of them with pre-installed software for “evaluation purposes only”.
Do you really think that people buying those machines are scrubbing the drive when they get it? (Not that there aren’t windows machines selling the same way, but typically, without at least a copy of the install CD and a working serial number you’re out of luck if you need to update the system or repair a file.)
I’d be willing to guess that there is more software piracy TOTAL on the Windows-side of things solely because of the larger market, but unless I can see otherwise, I’d be inclined to believe that the percentage of piracy/total users is about the same across the board.
The world works like this. The bigger liar you are and the more money you have to promote yourself the bigger market share you will get. Everyone i know that has a pc accepts viruses and all the hassles, reloading of the operating system, stuff that just dont work, herky jerky mice, applications that work “good enough”, crappy hardware, lies about performance, and all the rest of the pc crap because the get “SOLD” it not about the best product, it is, who sells better. I put the pc sellers in with the get rich guick scams how many people bought them, and the zillion “miracle” diet plans. Yes you can run a business “PC & MICROSOFT FREE” and no you do not have to make any sacrifices. If you want to know how ask me. simple easy and fun! No pc’s allowed!
If you do not need certain windows applications a Mac network will be cheaper hands down. I designed a windows network and to get quality business machines by IBM or HP the cost was much higher than a store bought PC, and you need XP pro. Then come the servers which are cheaper hardware wise but Windows server and software is very expensive. If you can get away with it Linux is much better in the server enviroment for apple desktops or Windows PCs. If you are talking about a small office apple is the obvious choice because it is cheaper trust me on this one I ran the numbers on the last job I did and they were cheaper. I still did a windows network because the software necessary was windows only but still a 35 PC office cost $100,000 to set up and then $25,000 per year in matinence every year there after plus upgrade costs. The Mac network was like $60,000 and $10,000, albeit it was not quite an even match up emacs vs IBM 1.4 ghz P4 units but it was close enogh you do not need that speed for typing in MS word. Also the macs came with monitor the PCs were using old ones. Plus an additional server was in the windows setup. But still windows is good because it makes people like me money.
To say that Macs are “never” good for businesses is an oversimplification and usually from someone who has never used one for any period of time.
What is important is how you set up your business plan and what markets you are competing in. Generally, for creative professionals and certain markets of AEC, the Mac is and should be a viable alternative. For financial services, I would say definitely not. If you are in a cross-platform shop, you have your choice.
Also, the size of your business makes a difference. In big corporations with an IT department, Windows is king and performs well under these circumstances. For small businesses, you have more flexibility to choose depending on your product and you clients. I can see many circumstances that an all Mac business model would work and equally many where it would fail… but I do think its a viable alternative given the right circumstances.
To call David Coursey “an idiot” for considering a Mac for small business (and he does specify “small business”) is unfair and naive.
in some enterprises you need :
– visio (not avaible for mac)
– ms-access ( not avaibe for mac)
– Reuters-client ( not avaiable for mac)
– notes – client
a.s.o.
it depends on your needs, i guess.
in my opinion the mac is dedicated to grafic-artists (and similiar) and teachers, and to people having a “digitale lifestyle” with intention of painless consuming something, like the apple music store. (I’m shure, Apple will start a video – on – demand – shop in the very next time, all movies from pixar, for shure)
but for business, you need sometimes some apps not avaible,
sometimes you find workarounds, like openOffice, MySQL, a.s.o, but then you don’t need OSX, these “workarounds” mostly are not to easy to use as Mac users would expect. So, for that, you can use Linux or BSD. In an Enterprise you will have some admins which will provide you your environment according to the corporate standard. You will find people experienced to admin linux, Windows a.s.o. . You will not have enough people advanced in administration OSX.
So what ? apps, tco, personal makes it.
Munich-comunity-facilities will choose linux on a standard pc platform provided by IBM, why not osx and,for example, OpenOffice ? easy to imagine….you cant stuff your IT-Department with OSX people, they are not existent.
No Chance, too expansive hardware, not standard.
For small Enterprise with a small range of Applications, why not ? But large scale Enterprises ? Oh no…no chance.
rgds frank
Macs of course. No need for an IT department(sorry fellas
The initial and long run costs are *way* lower for Macs than PCs. PCs cost too much to maintain. It’s always been like that. PCs are the budget breakers.
Most of arguments presented for not using a mac are very circular. Don’t use a Mac because they have low market share. Don’t use a Mac because its different and that productivity will suffer.
The fact is moving from Win 98/Win 2K to Win XP will cause some productivity decreases, even for seasoned PC users. Most users only have a cursory understanding of how to use the box they are given to do there jobs.
The fact that the Mac provides such an intuitive interface mitigates some of the productivity losses that the typical user is likely to suffer. I am not saying that there won’t be any productivity lossess in the short term, but that in the long term(w/in a couple of weeks) the employee will be just as productive if not more.
In the past year I’ve watched a number of windows users(myself included) become acquainted with the mac. The only individuals that have missed a beat in making the transition are windows power users, who have to be open to learning a new way of doing things. Your normal users don’t miss a beat.
Having worked as a consultant to small businesses, I can honestly say that there is very little(with the exception of Quickbooks(sometimes) and possibly some specialized windows only business domain apps) that a small business would need to use windows.
For small business, the benefits of “administrator” free networking, reliabiltiy, decreased security problems and virus concers, can be a big boom for a small business.
In terms of pure costs, a windows based environment is a better value however, the Mac does come with a very compelling suite of well integrated software(including AppleWorks, iCal, address book) that a small business can put to work for itself. Don’t get me wrong this may not fit the bill but in many cases it probably will.
On another note, although I love linux I would not recommend it to any small business that is not made up of developers and sys admins. On the other hand linux could be used very effectively by large businesses. Given the fact that a large businesses has the resources to outfit a linux machine to perform specific tasks(ie. call centers, claims operators, etc.)
Microsoft biggest asset is that it has a lock on file formats. In the cases that it can’t lock the format then it contorts(ala html via IE) to make it “mandatory” to use windows. The only solution to this is for big buyers such as the government and large businesses to insist that there software conform to OPEN industry standard formats. Instead of using the closed .doc format then we should insist on documents being sent around on an open standard format. That way word processors could compete on the features and suitabilty that they bring to the table now and not on the file format.
Rodney
I manage a wide-area network of close to 200 Macs. Many of our departments use highly-specialized Windows-only software for one or two applications. Everything else is very standard fare – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, FileMaker, Web, E-Mail, etc.
We simply set up a Windows 2000 Server on a thoroughly built-out box and got Terminal Server licenses for the users that need access to those 1 or 2 Windows-only applications.
With Mac OS X and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connector, we can use those vertical-market applications right alongside our Mac applications. It’s pretty seemless (except for things like drag-and-drop between Mac/Win applications, which many of those veritical-market applications don’t support well anyway). It’s seemless enough to where many people assume that they’re using a Mac-version of that application. Performance is very good since both the data and the application reside on the same PC and therefore we’re not sending large amounts of data across a busy network. Plus these RDC connections work over a slow WAN or even dial-up, extending our reach even further than if we were in a typical Windows-centric environment.
We also still use Citrix metaframe which is more feature-rich than RDC and supports other OS’s (Mac OS 7-9), but we’re moving more towards RDC for cost reasons.
We’ve been a Mac-based organization for more than 10 years now. We typically buy low-end iMacs and often get refurbished. We typically spend around $800 for a low end eMac or iMac and pass it through the agency for 4 to 5 years or more. I have found that the quality of the hardware, OS and software, longevity of the machine, and capability to use any available application (Mac, Windows, or Unix) makes a strong case for the Mac.
Employees in general seem to enjoy their Macs and even an old iMac is a new and exciting experience for someone used to a beige box. Mac users are genuinely excited about their platform and each new revision of the OS. This encourages more exploration and self-motivated education.
The issue is really much simpler than Mac or PC. In my experience, PC users are usually more resistant to change than Mac users. It is usually a struggle to get PC users to move from 95 to NT to 2000 to XP and on and on, same for Office 97/2000/XP, etc. This is why so many PC users are content with Office 97 running on Win98. It’s a “good enough” mentality coupled with a mistrust of their computer that translates into “don’t change my desktop.” On one level it does make productivity-oriented business sense to keep your employees plugging away in a legacy application or OS that they’re used to, bugs and all. Unfortunately this is exactly the kind of Excel-jockey training (as opposed to education) kids are getting in schools. However, when it comes to intellectual capital-building business sense, a company that encourages staff to expand their boundaries and learn new skills is bolstering their adaptibility, flexibility, and reducing their resistance to change, making their company on the whole more responsive, nimble and competitive.
I get a kick out of the comments from those in the old-school data processing mindset that publishing is just a niche market. Sez who? This is a huge (and hugely profitable) business run almost exclusively on Macs. Want to talk software availability? In publishing, Windows is an ugly stepchild with poopy pants–hardly anyone wants anything to do with it. For most of the mainstream publishing tools, the Windows port is a last minute afterthought with limited support from third-party vendors. Adobe’s doing better with providing basic platform parity than Macromedia or Quark, but the availability of necessary plug-ins for Windows is still minuscule compared to Macs. We have developed some elaborate workarounds to make Windows fit into a publishing workflow, but it still offers fewer options for our needs. So the next time you read a newspaper, book, or magazine, rest assured that it was almost certainly created on a Mac.
Scott
You should let your people have which ever platform they wish and then provide them with support. The mac is equally good in business as the PC. If is wasn’t for the reverse engineering of the bios we would have a 2 company world. Apple and IBM… Just support whatever the users want. That is the best way to go and not that hard to do.
considering they always have to worry about BSOD,
What ??? Do you at least know the difference between the 9X based kernel and the NT based kernel ?
viruses
Have you ever heard of anti-virus ? And that many of them are excellents ?
spyware
Have you ever heard of Ad-Aware ? So automatic you don’t even notice it’s there ?
frequently rebooting or reinstalling the OS each time something goes bad.
Again : have you *EVER* heard of the NT-based Windows ? Like XP for exemple ?
Just tell me how it feels when (for instance) you can’t book passengers because your system just crashed in front of them.
It feel like it’s time for replacing that old crappy 9X installation, and update for something better, even NT4 is a great and cheap choice if all you need is a booking computer.
“It can if you’re using a USB keyboard. Some misbehaving drivers can lock up the entire USB bus in XP. Not sure if this is an issue for other OSes but I thought I would bring it up. “
Well, that’s not the OS fault for a second. That’s a driver issue, and *NO* OS in the world can do anything about it. Can be Linux, BeOS, or whatever, if the kernel ask a driver for the keyboard state, and it’s refusing to answer, there’s nothing you can do about it …
People have been knocking Quickbooks for OS X. Can someone quickly highlight the things you can do with the Windows version that you can’t with the OS X version? Are these major issues or just convenience things?
Thanks
“It can if you’re using a USB keyboard. Some misbehaving drivers can lock up the entire USB bus in XP. Not sure if this is an issue for other OSes but I thought I would bring it up. ”
Well, that’s not the OS fault for a second. That’s a driver issue, and *NO* OS in the world can do anything about it. Can be Linux, BeOS, or whatever, if the kernel ask a driver for the keyboard state, and it’s refusing to answer, there’s nothing you can do about it …
The keyboard and USB drivers are from Microsoft. The driver for an additional device was provided by another company. However, that device was interfacing through through the Microsoft Windows XP USB drivers.
So, yes, there is something Microsoft can do about it. Many drivers come from hardware manufacturers but there are also many that deal with generic hardware that are written by Microsoft (they aren’t “device drivers” but they are drivers nonetheless).
If Microsoft wrote their USB drivers to allow a USB device to lock out the entire USB bus that’s a problem.
Now, the real question is, was this a requirement of the USB spec or was this just a shoddy implementation?
I don’t really expect an answer here – I was just sharing a keyboard experience
🙂
“I’m always amazed to hear Windows users point to loss of productivity as a disadvantage of free operating systems, considering they always have to worry about BSOD, viruses, spyware, frequently rebooting or reinstalling the OS each time something goes bad. Just tell me how it feels when (for instance) you can’t book passengers because your system just crashed in front of them.”
In the past four years running Win2K and WinXP I’ve had exactly two BSOD – one caused by Adaptec’s SCSI driver, the other caused by LinkSys’s USB ethernet driver. Neither were caused by a fault in Windows.
On the other hand, I’ve had three panic traps in MacOS X in less than a month. My MacOS X system is nearly clean – the only thing installed on it is Codewarrior for development.
Everyone in my development team has had these so it’s not hardware specific. All the Macs are graphite or later.
I’ve had MacOS X eat my entire system at least five times now. I’ve never had Windows do that. Not once. Currently my graphite G4 has developed a weird ‘I’m not going to boot into X every time’ situation and guess what – the only way to fix it seems to be to reinstall the OS.
Meanwhile, I’ve not had to reinstall WinXP to fix anything on my four PCs ever.
Viruses? Spyware? Do they exist? Yes. Do I worry about them? No. I have an antivirus and an antispyware app installed. Cost like $20 and it works. End of problem.
Sorry, my experience is that the stability of MacOS X is overestimated while the stability of WinXP is underestimated.
As to Coursey’s article – he trots out the usual excuses. Sorry, but AppleWorks isn’t the same as Office. It’s just not a replacement unless you have very minimal needs. Office for Mac is good – but it’s not as powerful as Office for Windows. Filemaker Pro is good, but it’s not as powerful as Access – which is actually considered a low end database package on the PC.
Yes, you can find apps which sort of fill the same niches, but the examples I see tend to be bizarre and out of class comparisons. The real question that keeps getting missed is: if I’ve built up a company around known software, why should I abandon all that just to move to a more expensive, almost as annoying system where I have to replace all my software with generally inferiour or more limited versions? That’s not good business sense.
From a business perspective the question isn’t “how do I get people to use Macs”, which seems to be the view most Mac users take, it’s “what do I get from switching to Macs that will improve my business and will offset the cost of switching”? That’s the question that Apple and Mac fans can’t really seem to answer.
MacOS might be simpler (and MacOS X definitely has problems there), but isn’t just not THAT much simpler. Moreover, most business use of computers tends to be very repetitive. People get systems which are locked down and they do the same thing all the time. Simpler isn’t a real selling point here. Consistency (another things MacOS X isn’t good at) and training compensates for that. And typically the software being used is either specialised enough or complex enough that training would be required on either platform.
On the other hand, PCs ARE cheaper. Sorry TCO isn’t the issue that most Mac fans think it is because most Mac fans don’t work the same way PC users do. PCs are commodities both as the system and parts level. The price for upgrades on PCs is so low that it’s worth upgrading over time. The cost to replace a motherboard on a PC is typically less than $150 and that gets you the most recent system. A similar upgrade on the Mac, if it’s even possible (which it rarely is) is typically 75% of the price of a new system!
In the PC world, continuous upgrade is the norm and is cost effective. It’s also the norm to carry parts stock. You can’t really do that with the Mac either.
I could go on – there are a thousand reasons why Macs aren’t particularly good business PCs. Oh – one final one – yes, if you want to use Unix, with a PC you can dual boot Unix. Or you can do exactly the same thing Coursey recommends – get Virtual PC for Windows and install Linux or BSD on it.
Cheers.
What kind of business? If you going for multimedia Apple with its App’s and with Adobe is a no-brainer. But then again a PC is a good investment too. I guess it matters what your doing. My college teaches all the multimedia stuff on mac(FCP, PS, Quark, etc).
I think part of the problem is that Coursey is forgetting he is talking about SMALL businesses. What small business needs to use something like MS Exchange Server? My ISP, which hosts my domain, provides me with up to 25 email addresses on my domain, for free. I have DSL, and all my computers hook up using DHCP. They check email independently of any server on my end. Now I can see if I exceeded 25 computers on my network I might need something more robust, but then I would be in a whole different class of small business anyway. And I’m pretty sure my ISP could provide more email capability if I paid them extra. What I get now is included in the cost of the domain hosting. So this argument that a small business needs some piece of MS software is absurd. I use Macs to run my business because they just work. My newest computer is a 3 year old G4. My file server is an old Power Computing clone I bought back in 1997. It runs all day every day, and it has never crashed. I can’t imagine any Windows computer doing that. So I run my business on Macintosh.
Part of my job is to be an MS .Net 2003 developer. I have to have a PC to do development and testing on at work. However that is all I use the PC for.
I bring a Ghz TiBook with me to work everyday. On the TiBook I have found apps which I just don’t think I could live without for the other engineering related tasks I am responsible for, or are required by the development process.
OmniGraffle Pro is by far the best diagraming application available. It’s very intuitive, it’s very extendible, and it produces amazing results. Visio is no substitute for this, and Visio was available to me for free as part of the Enterprise Architect version of .Net 2003. I paid out of pocket to get OmniGraffle Pro.
Charting and Data plotting… Aabel. That’s it, Aabel. It is the end-all-be-all of charting apps. If you can find me a better, more flexible, more powerful, and more beautiful charting application I’ll mail you a crisp $100 bill.
FastTrack Schedule 8 is an EXCELLENT project tracking package. It has been indespensible for my work as I’m in charge of multiple products and development cycles. I had come over from using MS Project, and there is simply no comparison. There were several VERY annoying aspects of MS Project which I just learned to work around, or take into account when analyzing a project schedule. I just assumed these were problems with pretty much any schedule app. Well I was wrong I tried a demo of FastTrack Schedule on the TiBook one day after being completely frustrated with setting up some resources in MS Project. I’ve never looked back. MS Project is a TERRIBLE product, perhaps one of MS’s worst products. Though in all fairness I never would have realized that had I not used FastTrack to give me a point of adequate comparison.
The tools to run a business are available for the Mac. In some cases the available applications are significantly more innovative or impressive than, what some would call, their Windows counter-parts.
So far the only thing I’ve found lacking on the Mac platform has been CAE software. I’d love to see Mastercam, CATIA, Think3, or I-DEAS make their way to the Mac platform. However in all fairness the products put out by Ashlar Vellum are astounding in terms of quality and consistency of the solids modelling engine. In the 3 months or so I was using, what at the time was called Vellum Solids, I was never once able to create a bad model. I could drive any fillet along any edge, blend multiple fillets at varying intersections, etc. That was something I was never able to get out of any of the packages I’d used on any Windows or UNIX platform.
FINALY SOMEONE IS SPEAKING UP ABOUT THE MAC PC DEBATE
now if only they did it 10 years ago it might better
We’ve got Linux vs. Windows, PC vs. Mac, and Morality vs. Microsoft today. Whatever soap opera you want, just about every website is serving it up.
Actually, I do think a business should also have Unix and/or Linux. I don’t see any good reason for a business to use a Microsoft operating system.
For one thing, you know it’s insecure, but you don’t know if its safe to apply Microsoft patches until after you apply them. And some of the patches reverse previous security updates.
That is the single most awesome and correct thing I’ve heard for a while.
http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/ellenfeiss.html
Thank you Eugenia Loli-Queru (you love this as much as I do – comeoooon you dooo.)
go to your corners
Mac
http://mac.oreilly.com/
Win
http://www.sysinternals.com/index.shtml
🙂
All right, everyone meet here at 7, OK?
http://www.macwindows.com/
Don’t forget they all end up here:
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/index.html
God love you – come out swingin’
It’s amazing to read the prejudices, misconceptions, etc. regarding macs supposedly being not “business” compatible. I am a scientist using a Mac in a big company, almost conpletely PC. Why are almost all businesses on Wintel? Simple. Because the IT people care only about two things: bottom-line prices and keeping their job. I see the cheap PCs we buy fail every day of work. They are just unbelievably bad. (BTW, I just got a new PowerMac G4 dual 1.25 and the machine is a dream. Compared to a cheap PC, it seems to come from another planet. Yes, it’s more expensive, but it’s worth it IMO). Let’s not forget that it came to this not by chance or by “free market”, but because of the deliberate, deceiveing, anti-competitive, unethical, and illegal actions of M$. IT people have a lot to gain from maintainig the staus quo: From job security to (probably) money they one way or the other pocket from M$ and vendors. Factor in the cost for support, M$ licenses, repairs/replacements and suddenly PCs aren’t much cheaper than Mac. In the long run, I am convinced Macs have a lower total TCO. Finally, many people are just ignorant, they know nothing about Macs (or any other OS), and are too lazy to look at a better alternative. A certainly better way would be a mixed environment of many OSes rather than a uniform Windoze landscape.
>Thank you Eugenia Loli-Queru (you love this as much as I do – comeoooon you dooo.)
Love what? drugs?
I don’t even get an aspirin when I might actually need it. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I never got drugs in my life. I dislike any kind of non-eatable/ugly chemical.
So, no. I don’t love any of this.
1) Netcraft stats are all very nice, however, you have failed to point out the percentage that use Apache 2.0.x. The vast majority of webservers still use 1.3.x, and whether you like it or not, it would be an unfair comparision if I were to compare IIS 6.0 to Apache 1.3.x, hence, the reason I bought up the issue of 2.0.x
2) IIS does require patches, however, from my experience, if the server is hacked, 99% of the time, it is the administrator not doing their job, namely, ensuring that the server has the most up-to-date patches installed.
3) Servers don’t patch themselves, and unfortunately I have seen plenty of so-called “computer experts” fail to even install something as basic as Service Pack 3, heck, it is even on a free CD Microsoft is giving out which is labelled, “experience Microsoft here!” which INCLUDES SP3 AND IE SP1.
4) Microsoft has to walk a fine line between providing backwards compatibility and fixing issues. It is YOU the consumer that depand backwards compatibility so in the end only YOU have YOURSELF to blame for many of the Windows issues. Thank goodness Microsoft finally ignored the whining chorus and finally did something about Windows 2003 Server, then atleast we have a operating system which has finally had the crappy parts ripped out of it, and given a dam good security audit.
Amazing, given the number of Windows viruses that go around, that anyone can think PCs have a lower TCO. What you spend on the Mac you save on the antivirus, quite apart from anything. Plus you save yourself the pain of having to restore all your work from backup because a virus did manage to sneak through and zap everything, or simply because one got through and now you have to reinstall. There are, let’s see…. 0 viruses for MacOSX.
People can and do run whole businesses on Macs. PCs can help here, but if it was my money, I know I’d rather ensure that it can’t all get messed up by one slightly-less-trained worker clicking on an attachment.
Also, think of this: if there are fewer apps of the trivial sort for the Mac, that means less chance for people to waste time, hmmm?
Charles
{ >Thank you Eugenia Loli-Queru (you love this as much as I do – comeoooon you dooo.)
Love what? drugs?
I don’t even get an aspirin when I might actually need it. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I never got drugs in my life. I dislike any kind of non-eatable/ugly chemical.
So, no. I don’t love any of this. }
Thats great Eugenia, you will live longer 🙂
Amazing, given the number of Windows viruses that go around, that anyone can think PCs have a lower TCO. What you spend on the Mac you save on the antivirus, quite apart from anything. Plus you save yourself the pain of having to restore all your work from backup because a virus did manage to sneak through and zap everything, or simply because one got through and now you have to reinstall. There are, let’s see…. 0 viruses for MacOSX.
People can and do run whole businesses on Macs. PCs can help here, but if it was my money, I know I’d rather ensure that it can’t all get messed up by one slightly-less-trained worker clicking on an attachment.
Also, think of this: if there are fewer apps of the trivial sort for the Mac, that means less chance for people to waste time, hmmm?
Charles
I completely and utterly agree with everything you said. Do you know what is even better? there is no floppy drive, meaning no Jane or Joe Bloggs bringing their favourite Solitaire game from home and try to run it on the work PC’s when they should be working. As for locking down MacOS X, every new user by default, IIRC, does not have administrator privilages vs. the administrator for everyone direction Windows XP took. From the point of view regarding integrating into a hetrogeneous network, Mac’s, *NIX and *BSD win hands down. CUPS for printing, LDAP + NFS + OpenSSH (for extra security) for file sharing, what more can anyone ask for?
I write custom business software for clients who run all combinations of Macs and PCs, and the clients who acheve the lowest TCO are using Macs. The initial added hardware cost is soon made up by the near-zero admin costs. My favorite example is a regional airport transportation company that runs a 24 hour office using a custom, 5 user client-server app that I wrote for them in 1992. I hear from them about this or that tweak or change to the software about once a year. They have no technical or admin staff, and run their entire business on $800 emacs. Their server and workstations NEVER crash, and they are saving the costs of a part-time admin person that the same system written and run using MicroSoft tools would require.
Amazing, given the number of Windows viruses that go around, that anyone can think PCs have a lower TCO. What you spend on the Mac you save on the antivirus, quite apart from anything. Plus you save yourself the pain of having to restore all your work from backup because a virus did manage to sneak through and zap everything, or simply because one got through and now you have to reinstall. There are, let’s see…. 0 viruses for MacOSX.
It’s always interesting to watch industry and community reaction when that first virus hits. The question, though, is how the press will react. I had a fairly hard time even finding out if Mac OS X in fact does have a perfect 0 virus record, though they certainly have more antivirus software for OS X than most people would consider normal for a virus-free platform (a quick look shows that they clean up Win32 and *nix viruses for the most part, and mostly from email attachments). I remember when Linux got hit the first time, mostly because I was in college trying to find a computer I could finish a CS project on at the time, and every *nix computer on the campus network was pretty much dead in the water while people tried to figure out what the thing was doing and how to get rid of it.
That being said, I’ve had a total of 2 viruses actually running on one of my computers over the years. Both of them I had found out about before they got anywhere near my computer, and I set them off to test my antivirus software. The most I spend on Antivirus software is $50/year, and I usually don’t install it unless my computer’s acting strange. Outlook’s blocked out most files that can carry a virus for the last 2 years, and I don’t run IIS (because I have no need for a website beyond what my ISP provides, or websites that I do work/have worked on are hosted by someone else).
I remember my Dad got a virus on his 486 running MS-DOS because someone gave him an infected floppy disk. It was a fairly nasty one and took him a while to clean up, but he never borrowed a disk from that person again and never had a problem again.
Other than that, the corporate mail server has a virus scanner that blocks attachments at that level, in case anyone is running an unauthorized email client on the network (since the authorized email clients would be Outlook XP and Outlook2k w/ SP2+ iirc, either of which will block attached executables). I doubt it costs them nearly as much to license the antivirus software for the corporation as it would to switch from Dell to Apple (though who knows, Apple’s notebook prices tend to be better than their desktop prices as far as comparing to x86, and we use a lot of notebooks…).
All depends if all the applications are available for the Mac that you will need to run your buisness Mac is better. Holds a better long term investment and holds value.
OK …Now let us review …
(I’m referring to this weekly Mac vs PC thing we got going on here.)
http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/ellenfeiss.html
(Hmmmm I thought this was all cleared up …14 and doing her allergy meds, may be not the best choice … ley’s try:)
http://www.j-walk.com/ss/jokes/ellenfeiss.htm
Thank you Eugenia Loli-Queru (you love this as much as I do – comeoooon you dooo.)
(The weekly PC-Mac dukeout, thus the attempt at humour below)
go to your corners
Mac
http://mac.oreilly.com/
Win
http://www.sysinternals.com/index.shtml
🙂 <—–
All right, everyone meet here at 7, OK?
http://www.macwindows.com/
Don’t forget they all end up here:
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/index.html
God love you – come out swingin’
I got rooted a few months ago (a show of hands) and was REALLY UPSET, I came here and started reading a thread similair to this one and it dawned on me it was not so bad. (yes-backups)-(drinking ONLY ice tea!)
The humour that runs through this particular and ancient battle gets really funny (reading between the lines, etc)
I’m avocating smiles, not allergy meds, er, drugs.
All apoligies.
None the less:
Thank you Eugenia Loli-Queru.
🙂
Did everyone forget that Apple Computer happens to be a big corporation running their business on Macs?? How on earth do they do that if Macs aren’t compatible with business? The Cupertino HQ is probably at least 99% Mac. Also, have you been to an Apple Store lately? Their retail system is 100% Mac. Granted, they use internally developed software for POS, but there are other apps (POSIM) readily available for everyone else. People who say you can’t or shouldn’t run a business on Macs are just plain stupid. In my work, I’m finding that more and more small to medium sized businesses are switching to Mac, especially in the retail world. As previously mentioned by a few people, long term operational costs are much lower, and tech support is less often needed since there is virtually no down time. In contrast, IBM/Microsoft based POS systems tend to need some sort of support on a daily basis.
Truth be told, Pc’s are cheeper than mac’s and there is more sortware avaliable, but thats not what makes people tick. For instance have you ever, ever heard somebody yell I cant wait to work on my pc there’s so much software avaliable for it, please. Working on a mac inspires one to do great things. What do you feel better diving a farrarie or a toyota, thay may be more expensive but it payes off with inspiration, most of us spend about 6-7 houre’s a day infont of our computers, so what not spend a little extra and enjoy the experiance. Every piece of software needed to run a business is avaliable on OSX for mac thats not a problem at all, OSx is beautifull, stable and fun to use.
Windows Xp is a bad copy of OSx, terribel usability, ugly and totaly uninspiring. Mac aslo keep thier value in terms of resale price ALOT better than pc’s. Buy a pc today and in two a years time its worth nothing, sell your mac within the same period and get a least half your cash back.
My 2c worth hope it helps