(Disclaimer: I'm a relatively new Mac user)I think that the single biggest thing Apple could do to boost their corporate market penetration is to state an explicit product maintenance lifecycle for OS X and related software. Whereas Microsoft Windows (not to mention enterprise-oriented Linux distributions such as RHEL and Ubuntu LTS) have well-defined terms for how long each OS release will be supported and will have security updates provided, it's really anybody's guess as to when OS X 10.4 will be forced into obsolescence. 10.3 seems to still be supported for now, but who knows how long that will last; and while 10.0 and 10.1 are clearly out the window, 10.2 is a bit of a gray area at the moment.OS X is a great operating system. It just needs a bit more business sense behind it before it can really take off at the office.
Corporate IT Person: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I only know about MS products. How can the world be sooo cold? I might actually learn some new...........
GreatDrok,Sounds fine for a small-smaller environment, to "yank out" windows servers and just replace them as you make sound so easy-peasy leads me to believe your environment is smaller.However...As part of a larger enterprise that runs more Linux than Windows I have to say you are actually rather full of s**t. Making a change to something that is non-windows from a windows centric environment is a huge undertaking, I know, we did it. However, your assertion that power users are best on Linux and/or Macs is actually quite the opposite of what we found to be true. The lowly data entry folks can adapt to about anything in no time flat, now the power users who know their stuff in a Windows environment, those folks will not be changed. I know its the IT dream that we can walk over to the Executive suites and TELL them what they'll be using next week/month/year, but in reality if they don't want to change, you won't change. Sales pitches, facts and figures, capital expense, it doesn't matter as they know their s**t and are paid far too much to lower their productivity during a learning curve period.
@charlotte_web:we run entirely on mac's here, but we still use Office 2007 via parallels. It works like a champ. The only issue is the "unclean" method of transferring files back and forth between OSX and Parallels, but we've found a few workarounds that jive with our workflow so it's been a great experience. We'll dump Parallels with Office 2008 for the mac comes out, but we need Sharepoint integration so we're stuck with 2007.
The other cost no one seems to be mentioning (related to a straight switch from a Windows based PC work environment to an OSX/Mac based PC work environment) is the cost of support. Unless your current IT staff is fully trained in Mac networks/general maintenance, you've either gotta pay for their training or fire the lot and hire an entire new staff, both of which will cost the business time... and quite a bit of it. I've never understood the whole "Macs ARE better" or "[Windows based] PCs ARE better". It's a preference... yes, it's possible that Macs do theoretically get fewer viruses... but if you've got competent IT staff, you shouldn't have a problem either way. In my opinion, the only factors are personal preference (and, sorry, but you don't get to CHOOSE your computer in a work environment. It's just how the world works), and cost. I'm no fan of Windows, but I see no benefits to switching to OSX (having worked extensively with it) and I can't justify the cost of a Mac desktop when I could build my own at Newegg for a fraction of the cost with the same exact specs.
Any decent sized corporation has an IT department. Those companies also generally standardize with a single vendor. They are also concerned about costs.So...IF you're ALLOWED to get a Mac, the IT people might say..."We won't support that."Only if the business has a burning need for Macs will motivate the IT department to support them.And when you can do the job for less money, why buy Macs?
Apple would have to be out of its ever-lovin' mind to license OS X now. Apple has the best operating system, the coolest hardware and software... They don't have to license squat to reach the market. Slowly but surely, the market is coming to them.Corporate IT types may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they'd have to be certified morons not to recognize the many advantages that Apple technology could bring to their operations. Sure it wouldn't be as easy as sticking with what they've got now, but what big change ever is? The great irony is that Microsoft has unwittingly made it immeasurably easier for Windows users to make the decision to switch by making it so complicated (and expensive) to upgrade to Vista—not to mention making Vista such a ho-hum product.
I manage an office of 70 Macs and we occasionally have some compatibility issues with fonts (powerpoint...etc) but nothing crazy.We also just migrated to Exchange for e-mail (uggh) for the sole reason for BES integration, the ONLY reason we were able to do this is because we are a non-profit. MS gives us almost 10:1 savings as a non-profit. I have NO idea how the corporate world can afford the CAL's.Once the Blackberry makes a good BES connection with an open enterprise calendar system, I will drop exchange.We are currently developing everything as web apps so everything is browser based.This part is not a "OS X" specific comment, but I constantly work on corrupted Word files (PC and MAC) which usually are caused by bad tables. Im talking files that will hang Word using both PC or MAC... BUT! OpenOffice has NO problems opening the file! :)As for cost, I have found our Macs last much longer and require much less maintenance (hardware and man hours).I try to keep each desktop (iMac) below $1200, usually purchase them as refurbs from the apple store.For all the PCs that we purchase, by the time I build it out with enough ram and options it ends up costing more!(I will not purchase a base model PC, I rather spend more and keep the employees happy by not having to wait for it to chug away because it does not have enough ram...etc)Its nice that the company I work for understands how important technology is and they have no problems taking care of their employees computer needs.Bottom line, all I do is spend their money BUT their employees are happier and are much more productive due to good (higher end) technology. The company recognizes that using Macs (os x) is a big part of this.
choadnamathApr 11, 2007
@ ecowarriorAs far as I can tell, he didn't say anything at all. This seems like a preemptive strike...
nitenApr 11, 2007
(Disclaimer: I'm a relatively new Mac user)I think that the single biggest thing Apple could do to boost their corporate market penetration is to state an explicit product maintenance lifecycle for OS X and related software. Whereas Microsoft Windows (not to mention enterprise-oriented Linux distributions such as RHEL and Ubuntu LTS) have well-defined terms for how long each OS release will be supported and will have security updates provided, it's really anybody's guess as to when OS X 10.4 will be forced into obsolescence. 10.3 seems to still be supported for now, but who knows how long that will last; and while 10.0 and 10.1 are clearly out the window, 10.2 is a bit of a gray area at the moment.OS X is a great operating system. It just needs a bit more business sense behind it before it can really take off at the office.
sesante2000Apr 11, 2007
Corporate IT Person: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I only know about MS products. How can the world be sooo cold? I might actually learn some new...........
Closed AccountApr 11, 2007
GreatDrok,Sounds fine for a small-smaller environment, to "yank out" windows servers and just replace them as you make sound so easy-peasy leads me to believe your environment is smaller.However...As part of a larger enterprise that runs more Linux than Windows I have to say you are actually rather full of s**t. Making a change to something that is non-windows from a windows centric environment is a huge undertaking, I know, we did it. However, your assertion that power users are best on Linux and/or Macs is actually quite the opposite of what we found to be true. The lowly data entry folks can adapt to about anything in no time flat, now the power users who know their stuff in a Windows environment, those folks will not be changed. I know its the IT dream that we can walk over to the Executive suites and TELL them what they'll be using next week/month/year, but in reality if they don't want to change, you won't change. Sales pitches, facts and figures, capital expense, it doesn't matter as they know their s**t and are paid far too much to lower their productivity during a learning curve period.
jawngeeApr 11, 2007
@charlotte_web:we run entirely on mac's here, but we still use Office 2007 via parallels. It works like a champ. The only issue is the "unclean" method of transferring files back and forth between OSX and Parallels, but we've found a few workarounds that jive with our workflow so it's been a great experience. We'll dump Parallels with Office 2008 for the mac comes out, but we need Sharepoint integration so we're stuck with 2007.
eatbeefjerkyApr 11, 2007
The other cost no one seems to be mentioning (related to a straight switch from a Windows based PC work environment to an OSX/Mac based PC work environment) is the cost of support. Unless your current IT staff is fully trained in Mac networks/general maintenance, you've either gotta pay for their training or fire the lot and hire an entire new staff, both of which will cost the business time... and quite a bit of it. I've never understood the whole "Macs ARE better" or "[Windows based] PCs ARE better". It's a preference... yes, it's possible that Macs do theoretically get fewer viruses... but if you've got competent IT staff, you shouldn't have a problem either way. In my opinion, the only factors are personal preference (and, sorry, but you don't get to CHOOSE your computer in a work environment. It's just how the world works), and cost. I'm no fan of Windows, but I see no benefits to switching to OSX (having worked extensively with it) and I can't justify the cost of a Mac desktop when I could build my own at Newegg for a fraction of the cost with the same exact specs.
srodolffApr 11, 2007
Any decent sized corporation has an IT department. Those companies also generally standardize with a single vendor. They are also concerned about costs.So...IF you're ALLOWED to get a Mac, the IT people might say..."We won't support that."Only if the business has a burning need for Macs will motivate the IT department to support them.And when you can do the job for less money, why buy Macs?
alanskyApr 11, 2007
Apple would have to be out of its ever-lovin' mind to license OS X now. Apple has the best operating system, the coolest hardware and software... They don't have to license squat to reach the market. Slowly but surely, the market is coming to them.Corporate IT types may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they'd have to be certified morons not to recognize the many advantages that Apple technology could bring to their operations. Sure it wouldn't be as easy as sticking with what they've got now, but what big change ever is? The great irony is that Microsoft has unwittingly made it immeasurably easier for Windows users to make the decision to switch by making it so complicated (and expensive) to upgrade to Vista—not to mention making Vista such a ho-hum product.
IchiroAApr 11, 2007
I manage an office of 70 Macs and we occasionally have some compatibility issues with fonts (powerpoint...etc) but nothing crazy.We also just migrated to Exchange for e-mail (uggh) for the sole reason for BES integration, the ONLY reason we were able to do this is because we are a non-profit. MS gives us almost 10:1 savings as a non-profit. I have NO idea how the corporate world can afford the CAL's.Once the Blackberry makes a good BES connection with an open enterprise calendar system, I will drop exchange.We are currently developing everything as web apps so everything is browser based.This part is not a "OS X" specific comment, but I constantly work on corrupted Word files (PC and MAC) which usually are caused by bad tables. Im talking files that will hang Word using both PC or MAC... BUT! OpenOffice has NO problems opening the file! :)As for cost, I have found our Macs last much longer and require much less maintenance (hardware and man hours).I try to keep each desktop (iMac) below $1200, usually purchase them as refurbs from the apple store.For all the PCs that we purchase, by the time I build it out with enough ram and options it ends up costing more!(I will not purchase a base model PC, I rather spend more and keep the employees happy by not having to wait for it to chug away because it does not have enough ram...etc)Its nice that the company I work for understands how important technology is and they have no problems taking care of their employees computer needs.Bottom line, all I do is spend their money BUT their employees are happier and are much more productive due to good (higher end) technology. The company recognizes that using Macs (os x) is a big part of this.