What is Digg?Sponsored by HowLifeWorks
New Food Sprinkle Convinces the Brain to Stop Over-Eating view!
howlifeworks.com - How sophisticated scents are helping people control their appetite and lose weight
152 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+46Macs won't run Solitaire out of the box, so they're worthless for business.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -16/+39"The biggest reason if I had to think of one for me to recommend the Mac is quite honestly its stability - it just is very very stable."
I don't understand people who dismiss Windows XP and Vista as unstable. I've been running Windows XP since SP 2 and also have been running VIsta since RC 2. Counting th eusage of both systems, which is extremely heavy - I spend over 8 hours per day on my computer, on average ( not gaming, but doing work, so I'm using many different applications etc. ) And I've had a system crash, maybe once or twice in the last several years. This includes many hardware configurations, etc.
Windows is a lot of things, but unstable is not one of them ( since XP. ) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -17/+34"because of cost alone."
And diversity of software. - Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -19/+36I hear the famed Microsoft evangelist Chris Perillo is having serious thoughts about switching to OS X he's so fed up with Vista - the world really has changed and Apple are coming back with a vengeance.. and not in a culty way, but in a mainstream way IMO. The biggest reason if I had to think of one for me to recommend the Mac is quite honestly its stability - it just is very very stable.
- TheJuggernaut, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21Personally, I hope Macs never do dominate the enterprise environment. Having a monopoly market share makes companies lazy, slow to innovate and a broad user install tends to water features down to the lowest common denominator. (There's something to be said for being the hungry underdog.)
That said, I'd love to see the Mac platform rise to a 20 percent market share, even though that's less than likely. - alecks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15"It sounds to me that your primary issue is the fact that you're using Exchange... that is a problem and I'd suggest getting a real mail server."
a real mail server? like what?
Does it do calendar, appointments, meeting invites, interface well with Voip solutions, public folders, LDAP compatible, etc..etc..???
Name it, i'm actually curios... - joe90210, on 10/12/2007, -8/+211) Macs don't have the same number of buisness apps that PCs do and porting to a new OS is too costly.
2) Apple won't be able to match the price of large volumes of PC sales that PC companies can give.
3) Apple does not have the infrastrucutre to provide enterprise level support for all the companies. - WiZZLa, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15The first page has some good points, but as the article drags onto pages 2-5, there aren't enough points (Mac vs PC in an enterprise setting) to convince an IT manager to switch to Macs instead of the already deployed PCs they may have.
- jonathan4465, on 10/12/2007, -12/+23Mac will ALWAYS exist, and they do a lot of things very well, but they will never dominate the market...sorry. Digg me down.
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14You missed the most important one: Apple cannot provide the support that enterprises need. 4 hour guaranteed turnaround on hardware issues, etc.
- thor2077, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1210-20 minuets? what are you taking about?
Start, Control Panel, Add/remove Programs/ select program/ click remove. done.
I administer both Mac's and Windows. there are some benefits to both. but removing programs as a benefit is just stupid. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Most corporate IT departments are jam packed full of fervent Mircosofties with MCSEs and these guys usually rally hard against most things non-Microsoft. I doubt very much that Apple would be able to make much headway in the corporate market, except in niche areas, and indeed they're not even trying to pursue the generic corporate market.
But give Microsoft credit. The corporate enterprise is one area where Microsoft has worked hard to capture, and their solutions in that space are usually best of breed. It's the one area where they perhaps deserve their success. Still, I can't imagine any semi-competant IT department is in a hurry to upgrade to Vista. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13I'm no fan of Microsoft but if you're rebooting XP up to THREE times a day because of application crashes your company should really look other apps to use because this isn't normal, even for XP. Either that or your doing something seriously wrong with your computer. OR your BS'n.
Basically it's gotta be one of the three things I mentioned - cjvino, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18Dugg down while on my G5 quad core Mac installed at a major Fortune 500 Company (along with hundreds of others).
- ExSlashdotter, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15I'm a network admin for a company thats 80% mac, 20% windows.
We have a full Windows-centric infrastructure (AD, exchange, etc), and the Macs have no problem with that. The Macs can bind to the domain, log in using AD accounts/passwords, and have full Exchange functionality via Entourage. They can mount shares on the Windows fileservers. They've got a Citrix client for the Mac. Many of our internal apps these days are web-based anyway.
It's all about the right tool for the right job. Seriously, for many regular everyday office users, the Mac is perfect. Our IT dept is about 1/3 the size it would normally need to be for a company our size.
I will also say that Apple Remote Desktop *destroys* Microsoft's SMS. - MrSunshine, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14Macs belong in school so substitute teachers won't get imprisoned for being unable to stop Internet Explorer pop-ups.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18@ahhell "That 10% market share is just KILLING Microsoft!"
Its well under 2% worldwide! - ExSlashdotter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Its not just 'type in the computer name and connect to it' like RDC. Its like a much more polished SMS2003.
I've got a scanner list where i can see every machine on the network, who's logged in, what they're running. i can click on them to observe their screen or take control. i can drag/drop applications to remotely install without the user even knowing. I can run reports on what machines have what versions of software, or how long users spend using a particular application. I can Spotlight search any client machine (can tell if they're housing porn in about 3 seconds). I can also drag/drop files or folders right onto their machine. the list goes on. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15Given they would still require Windows to use most of their software - and switching software is a *lot* more complex than switching hardware vendor - essentially all they'd be doing would be changing their dell/ibm/hp/whatever boxes to ones that say apple. What was the argument again? That mac's are enterprise worthy now? Of course they are, they're PC's now.
- insanechemist, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13dugg down while running my small business ENTIRELY from a Macbook (thats ONE Macbook) and having no problem selling and interfacing with some of the largest corps in the world.
- srodolff, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Microsoft makes it money from software. They give a rat's butt about what hardware it's running on.
Vista or XP on a Mac means more money for Microsoft.
Which brings up another interesting point.
How many lifetime Microsoft licenses do you own? I personally probably have purchased 15 since Windows 3.1. And 10 of those are on hardware I no longer own.
Now THAT'S a racket. - cthellis, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11I try to avoid the use of words like "never," though. It's a damn long time.
Who would have thought two decades ago that IBM would eventually sell their personal computer business to the Chinese? - CraigJ, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11@fkr2 - Maybe, but many companies are moving to Web deployed applications - so you won't necessarily need Windows in the future. I know my company is in the process of rolling out new internal ERP and CRM that is web based, and we have over 6000 employees world wide,
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@colincornaby The thing I don't get about boot camp. You'd still need a license to run XP. I find it hard to believe ANY company (enterprise worthy anyways) would actually pay for Macs then turn around and pay for ANOTHER OS license on top of what they just paid.
It might be good for some but it's a stupid move business. "hey lets pay for two OS's when one would do.
Nothing against macs. but bootcamp is NOT an option for business. - sagemane, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9@adrianblack
If you don't use the OS X Software Update Service, mobile home and Apple Remote Desktop on your Macs I'm sure they are much harder to manage than XP machines that -do- use WSUS, roaming profiles, etc. And if you only have 20 Macs it probably isn't worth deploying them, but that doesn't mean that the tools aren't there to support organizations with thousands of Macs. I've yet to meet someone who's tried both that prefers the Group Policy Management Console to OS X Preference Management or GPO .MSI deployment and preimaged machines to Apple Remote Desktop software management and network install images. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11"For example, deleting an app on a windows machine is a 10-20 minute excercise. On a mac, you simply click on the hard drive, click on applications, find the application, and drag it to the trash. That's it."
On windows, you simply click on the control panel, click on add/remove applications, find the application and click "remove". Maybe if you read those instructions a few times you'll get a little faster retard. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7It'll be interesting to see in 5 years which one of you is correct. I know who'd I'd put my money on ;)
- Rued, on 10/12/2007, -17/+22Great article for IT people new to the Mac platform. I know a lot of PC admins that are for one reason or another looking at the Mac platform and should understand that Apple's consumer products are like their annoyware laden PC brethren.
- implementor, on 10/12/2007, -14/+19Vista is going to be the best thing that ever happened to both Mac and Linux. It sucks so hard, that people are going to be fleeing Microsoft in droves to go to other platforms, and Mac is the most likely one, as it is a lot more user-friendly.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@ CraigJ - I keep hearing companies are moving everything to be web based. I'm yet to actually see anything concrete that suggests it's actually happening outside the crowd-imagination of the blogosphere.
I know companies who still keep dos boxes for the old software they need to use. - Skrilla360, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I hope I NEVER have to use a Mac at work - running OS X anyway. I wouldn't mind seeing them replacing all the Dells, but no way OS X would fly. In my industry (engineering) it is just not practical. I have to use BootCamp / Parallels to get any work done on my MacBook, at home that is. Office sucks on OS X, not to mention 99.9% of the apps we use are Windows only.
- pabster, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10"...should understand that Apple's consumer products are like their annoyware laden PC brethren..."
Maybe because a Mac is nothing but a vanilla x86 box with great styling and a fat price tag?
This is nothing but FUD. I know of not a single serious enterprise even considering Mac. - ExSlashdotter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I'll give you the fact that GP doesnt apply to the macs, but there are 3rd party solutions for this out there already.
As far as support time for the Macs, our experience is just the opposite. Roaming profiles are also possible with 10.4.8 (we're doing it right now, even with RSA keychains). As far as a managed solutions go, thats there too. Apple Remote Desktop = SMS 2003 for Mac - betobeto, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7You've said it - Flash. Which have always sucked balls on Mac - not because of Mac's fault, but because of Adobe (and formerly Macromedia) not wanting, or being able to put their ***** together on the platform. Photoshop has always been an application incredibly optimized for the Mac, and it shows. I'm hoping Adobe puts their act together and bring the "Flash curse" to an end with their next Creative Suite version. There is not a single reason they shouldn't.
- aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I don't know why the hell I'm being dugg down but I though it important that people be aware that OS X have to very useful tools for Administration from Apple and a third party so I'm quoting myself:
" Macs are supported with Deepfreeze http://www.faronics.com/html/DFMac.asp and Apple remote Desktop http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/ . The latter replaces SMS and Remote Admin functionality for macs." - robdazomba, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11@ahhell, may I just speak on behalf of everyone on Digg who is sick to death of people trying to turn every discussion into a pointless argument about platforms? Shut the ***** up.
- schoate09, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Two things here.
Dell isn't the only PC maker.
On the high end, mac pros may be cheaper, but for CONSUMER desktops, there's no way in ***** that's true.
Until Apple licenses OS X for beige boxes, let's not even get this topic. Because they're not gonna make "Teh haxzors comback, ZOMG, Apple Wins, MS dies"
They're too conservative with their culty business model, and MS is not. Big ***** whoop chris ***** perillo, Windows will still have its market share, and Apple will not win. Everyone here knows that. No one cares about you're company having a switch, and some other people switched too, It's not gonna happen.
STOP THE CIRCLE JERk. - Avalontor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You have that backwards, it is stable for the masses. Just not for a small minority. Otherwise show some stats. Mine is the 90% marketshare.
Maybe you want to tell me that almost everyone(90%) is to stupid to know better. - thor2077, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Apple is a company, not a religion.
Use what does the job you want to do best.
Thats it folks. nothing else matters. usefulness is key.
Run Windows, OSX, and Linux. - threemagic, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6@exslashdotter by exslashdotter
not to mention the biggest feature.. the ability to run unix commands and scripts as root on multiple machines..
nothing is more easy! - Schelske, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I've been in IT for 10 years, all but the last two exclusively PC. Nubnub, you are not the normal PC user. You may be the normal Digg PC user, but you are not the normal user in most businesses. You are an expert windows user. That's great. You know how to surf safely, hunt viruses, tweak your firewall settings, and a thousand more technical things. Great. As a result you've had splendid performance from your PC. But the normal user in a normal business who uses a PC does experience viruses, file corruption and BSDs on a regular basis.
We had two IT personnel in an all PC environment. Two years ago, after a major virus hit that crippled our core database, the owner made the big plunge and converted the entire enterprise to Mac. Granted it's not a huge corporation, but its still a decent size company. Two year later we've transitioned down to one IT person, and that person now spends 1/3rd of his hours doing graphic design because there's not enough IT work to justify his paycheck. In that time we've had eight Apple Care calls. Three required taking a computer in for repair, where two power supplies and one mother board were replaced. (Three different computers.) The other five involved software issues where they provided fixes over the phone that we applied ourselves. Other than that, everything has worked. Networking, upgrading, everything - just works the way its supposed to.
Now as an IT person I get to help our staff learn cool new ways to use their technology to become more efficient, rather than showing them for the eleventieth time how to get the network printer to show up after its vanished from their computer.
We use Microsoft Office, all kinds of advanced graphics, video and music editing software, a couple of specialized databases, and a handful of specialized web-based technical software. The software transition was basically about three months of pretty smooth learning curve for our employees, and today not one of them would give their Mac back. In fact, I personally know of 9 of them who have bought Macs for their homes since our transition.
Seriously. This is what's happening in the real world. It's a fantasy propagated by IT professionals who are afraid to learn new things and want to protect their jobs that PCs are stable. - rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -17/+20@ahhell:
You don't read much about Apple v. Dell pricing these days, do you? Apple systems are less expensive out of the box than comparable Dell systems, which makes the TCO even lower than before Intel Macs.
In an enterprise environment, Exchange servers require CALs (Client Access Licenses). Currently, my company's Dell boxes require CALs for Exchange and for Windows server. Those licenses cost $$$ as companies increase the size of their workforce. Apple xServes are sold with UNLIMITED clients.
So Apple is not only beating the price of Dell desktops, but also the price of Dell servers. In the long run, Dell servers cost 3x as much as a comparable xServe from Apple.
The trick is configuring the network to keep Active Directory on a Windows server (for VPN access, maintenance of users, etc.) and switch everything else to Apple. It will take a while to roll out solutions that replace Windows in an enterprise, but it is feasible now when it was not before. - shyrich, on 10/12/2007, -12/+15Once upon a time I used an HP laptop w/ Windows XP and an HP desktop w/ FC 6 during my time spent in the office doing the various things that a software engineer does. I also had an Intel iMac @ home that I used to VPN into the office and work remotely during evenings or weekends. The programs that I spend the majority of my time in include Eclipse + Oracle SQL Developer (and of course Outlook), both Java based and therefore are OS agnostic. I found I had a much better experience using these programs at home on my iMac. Not only did they run much faster on my iMac than on my HP laptop, they were also more stable than running on Linux (I'm not sure why, but I seemed to have bad luck with Eclipse + Fedora - the app would randomly crash 3 or 4 times a day whenever I was running JBoss inside Eclipse right in the middle of testing... very annoying). So one day I decided to lug my iMac into the office and stole the display from my Linux box to get a dual-display setup going on my iMac. I installed Parallels only because I need Internet Explorer for testing purposes. Also installed a copy of Office for Mac so I could use Word and Excel, and also Entourage to replace Outlook to connect to the corporate Exchange server for email and calendar services. All I can say is, I should've done this a long time ago. Not only do I get to spend my entire work day using a computer that gives me the great user experience that Apple is so well known for, but I'm now more productive because my apps run faster and I experience crashes only a fraction of the time that I used to experience before the switch.
Of course the only downside now is I'm Mac-less @ home; I'm just waiting for Apple to release updated products before I buy a replacement.
So personally, I love having a Mac in the workplace. It obviously depends on what kind of things you do @ work on a daily basis, but the days of Macs only being better in the artistic and creative fields are long gone. - WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4They *had* the best of breed products for enterprise. It seems that in their latest efforts to match the shininess of Apple's OS which appeals to the consumer market, they're losing their focus on what enterprise customers expect from their desktop OS deployments. Their lock-in reactions to piracy in developing countries with WGA does nothing to endear them with enterprise IT. As they chase OS X's shininess on one end, and Linux's success on the other end, they seem to be losing their focus on API stability and common business productivity that brought them to the dominating position they currently enjoy. The combination of OS X and Linux attacking MS from opposite ends of the market are proving very difficult to respond to without completely splitting their consumer and enterprise OS offerings into separate products (and no, Vista Business vs. Vista Home don't count). Tightening the screws with new incompatible formats and increased DRM and copy protection are only serving to drive their customers away to less restricting options. Once MS's focus shifted from offering productivity solutions to locking in their current user base, it's been a downhill slide towards irrelevance. It may be difficult to see now, but with the strides Linux is making, they will not be in their dominant position for long without some major changes in priorities for them.
- hardwired, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9Coming from an IT Support environment that has 90% Macs desktops, a bit of PC, a bit of Linux.
I'm telling you there is really not a lot of work. I cannot imagine if it is the other way round, my life would be hell, running around, keeping up to date with patches, constant battle of securities, virus, corruptions, system issues...
Macs just doesn't have alot of issue, don't crash much, they just run, and I have much less things to worry about. - WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@colincornaby: All I know is that from experience, new OS releases (10.2->10.3, 10.3->10.4, etc.) tend to break a LOT of apps. Also, they don't support backwards compatibility in the kind of timeframes (decades) required for enterprise use. Classic MacOS applications, for example, cannot be run on Intel Macs. Typically, for most OS X apps, it's just a matter of recompiling with the latest copy of XCode to get them working, but for a lot of situations, breaking binary compatibility is a serious problem, especially for outside code to which source might not be available. In the consumer space, this is not an issue, and it doesn't bother me for my personal use. For enterprise deployment, however, this is a serious concern, and IT departments should treat OS X more like a standardized linux distro with fancy admin tools, rather than make heavy use of APIs that may or may not be available down the road. I love OS X to death, including developing custom workflows based on Applescript and Cocoa, but for those critical internal app coding projects, I'd stick to open source APIs and Java, for ease of migration to Linux, and for the guaranteed API stability. As much as I love Apple's software, I don't trust them to ensure backwards compatibility past five years or so... This might change if they pick up more enterprise marketshare, but if it's my business at stake, I'd sleep much more soundly if my infrastructure is based on cross-platform open source APIs.
- zdiggler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Usually takes about 8 to 9 monthes of IT dept do testing on new OS before they will start deploying to user desktops. Eventually they will get switched over to Vista. There are thousands of large companies out there still run Windows 2000.
- Skrilla360, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8pabster is right, this is just a pipe dream. if you honestly think enterprises are even considering it you are fooling yourself. digg me down all you kiddies that have never stepped into a real work place
- cthellis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What excellent points as to why the Mac is a bad choice for the enterprise!!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4not sure about sap... axapta/navision certainly will not run on safari :)
-
Show 51 - 100 of 152 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is