MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Apr 15, 08 - 08:26 am Comment from: Macromancer

I've never understood this proprietary nonsense. Windows is proprietary. Just because it has a larger marketshare doesn't change this fact.

Apr 15, 08 - 08:31 am Comment from: NavyTim

Windows PC = Job Security to IT departments. Bottom Line -

Apr 15, 08 - 08:31 am Comment from: Cubert

Your headline isn't politically correct. It should read: "Get over the myths IT people, including women and those of any sexual orientation, who are all equally important members of all of our IT teams, Apple Macs are for business."

See, isn't that much better and easier to understand.

IT guys are just lazy and refuse to step out of their little comfort zone...as the bandwagon passes them by...see the future and jump on now or be forced to pull yourself up by that straggling piece of dental floss later. Your choice, IT guys.

Apr 15, 08 - 08:35 am Comment from: Jay-Z

It's CEOs that should be looking at this. Macs in a company could mean lower support costs, which alone could justify any extra expense associated with switching to the Mac platform.

Case in point: I am a designer. My company is primarily PC-based, but our department is on Macs. We have 7 systems. A member of our team is on the west coast, so we have VPNs and remote access, etc. We have an Xserve which hosts all our files. We almost never need support from our IT department. When we do, 95% of the time it's because Entourage isn't communicating properly with the Exchange server (surprise surprise).

My case may not be demonstrative of every situation in the enterprise, but it's proof that deploying Macs could very well lower your IT costs over time.

Apr 15, 08 - 08:38 am Comment from: Cubert

@NavyTim,

Winblows User Level of Frustration = (k)(Time Spent on PC)

(where k is an exponential constant)

Apr 15, 08 - 08:40 am Comment from: Cubert

@Blue Dream,
This bandwagon you are referring to is carrying dental floss and not a band?

Apr 15, 08 - 08:52 am Comment from: CandTsmac

The real problem is IT and the CIO's are used to getting bid from multiple companies not just one. It's putting all your eggs in one basket, albeit a real nice and smoothly running basket.

It's real hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

Apr 15, 08 - 09:00 am Comment from: Ampar

I wonder why Michael Gartenberg omitted the fact that Intel Macs can easily run Windows XP?

Apr 15, 08 - 09:05 am Comment from: Ampar

Cubert: Maybe the band just ate a huge meal of ribs, stopped for floss and left trails of dental string along the way? It sounds like those Polka Punk groups are tormenting frustrated IT guys again.
Will they ever learn?

Apr 15, 08 - 09:13 am Comment from: DLMeyer

Guys ... well over half the 'jobs' you need a computer for (in the Enterprise) can be done with a $500 computer. Monitor, keyboard and mouse included. It can be hard to convince Purchasing to spend at least twice that amount for a Mac, though it will admittedly do twice as much work and might even save a few dollars after the first year of use. I spent eight hours yesterday installing a basic iMac for friends. They were afraid of every "strange" pop-up. OK, much of that time was spent copying to the thumb drive (from was MUCH faster) and getting/installing updates.
They were quite impressed by the system's speed but thought it would be "easier to use". An entirely different OS is going to be instantly intuitive? Yes, I did install the more secure Admin+User plan ... ever wonder why your older system was slowing down?
These are the sorts of expenses IT is afraid of. If they get a generic PC they can throw on a configuration disk they built five years ago and they're nearly done. Just give them the Admin password and don't worry, the firewall and anti-virus software will take care of many of the problems. They hope.
It ISN'T all IT rigidity. There are often good reasons to go slow. And ... then there's the IT rigidity, the years of FUD, and the fear that at least a few of them won't be needed after the transition.

Apr 15, 08 - 09:26 am Comment from: Predrag

Ampar,

Michael most likely left it out because paying premium for Macs, then Windows license on top of that, just so that they could run Windows would defy the purpose of the migration; this wasn't the point of the article. The point of the article was that Mac (the OS) was a good solution for business. I will agree with you in that he could have mentioned it in the context of easing the transition with emulation (Fusion/Parallels), until Mac-only solution was created across the board.

My previous job had an all-IBM shop: IBM desktops, IBM AS/400, RS/6000, S/390 on the back end, and OS/2 on that desktop, with many IBM applications. There was no MS in sight (WordPerfect/Lotus123 and Lotus Notes were workhorses). This was until about 8 years ago. When they migrated from OS/2 on the desktop to WinNT 4.0, (with MS office, except for Lotus Notes) they went from two IT support people per 130 users to 11 in one year (!!!). OS/2 on Intel platform at the time was what Mac OS 7/8/9 represented in terms of need for support. It was in many ways similar to Mac (with respect to GUI), it was much more intuitive than Win3.1 (or 95, or NT) and it never ever needed a re-boot. Desktops were left running for months.

It is so funny to see some of former colleagues discover Mac OS nowadays and comment how it reminds them of the OS/2, with intuitiveness, reliability and speed...

This will need to come from above. No reasonable IT guy in the lower/middle echelons will every advocate a move which could jeopardise so many careers around him (including his own). C[insert a letter]O is the only one with the proper motivation (bottom line) that can get this done.

Apr 15, 08 - 09:27 am Comment from: ron

" Macs are expensive vs. PCs: In many cases, comparable Apple systems are priced similarly or in some cases are even 'cheaper' than their competition."

'Cheaper' is the wrong word. 'Less expensive' would be more suitable.

Cheap, English 101. Cheap connotes tacky, inexpensive; because it's shoddily made.

Apr 15, 08 - 09:30 am Comment from: LateRegistrant

@Cubert

If k is an exponent, then the form of the equation should be:

Frustration Level = c (Time with PC)^k

where:
"^" indicates "to the power of",
k is greater than 1 to reflect that frustration actually increases at a faster rate than the cumulative time on a PC (the magnitude of k otherwise remains open to debate), and
c transforms the power function on units of time into a scalar having units of frustration.

And that leads to an interesting question: In what units can the level of frustration be measured?

Apr 15, 08 - 09:34 am Comment from: Harvey

I think I figured out what went wrong. I'll try again:

Netcraft can tell you what OS any given web site is using. It's interesting enter the US Army's web site (www army mil) and find out what they are running.

They have a policy of using Macs and PCs 50-50. So maybe Gartenberg does have a point. <snicker>

@Cubert would it be safe to say the answer to Frustration Level is "42"

I'm an IT guy myself, though I do graphic design and other multimedia stuff that I took in college and high school. If every company switched over to MACs right now running the MAC OS... You could literally cut atleast half the IT jobs out there. Now if they were running windows on them wouldn't be as bad but there would be many who panic in a frenzy.. This reminds me, if you haven't read the very short simple book "Who ate my cheese?" you should it's rather funny yet useful.

I use mac and PC so im not worried of a switch :D

The myths aren't myths. While the Mac is a feasible alternative to a Windows system in more cases than it was 8 years ago, it's still not worth considering in cubicle world for exactly the three "mythical" reasons stated in this article:

1) The vast majority of worker-bee business systems are the cheap-seats $300-$500 machines. Gartenberg says Macs are sometimes "cheaper than their competition," but fails to note that Apple DOES NOT COMPETE at that level.

2) The smaller software pool is a reality, and while it doesn't usually mean you CAN'T do a thing, it does mean your choice of HOW to do it is much more restricted. Oh, and that "complete and compatible version of Office" for OSX is neither complete nor compatible. Still no Outlook (entourage is a sad, sad little program) and now they've dropped VBscript support. That's key for finance & budgeting applications at least, and probably lots of others too.

3) "proprietary protocols" is a misnomer for the closed-community mentality of the Mac. They won't permit it to run on commodity hardware, won't build a consumer system w/ expansion, etc.

Apr 15, 08 - 09:46 am Comment from: Harvey

@PC Apologist

Then why did the US Army recently purchase 20,000 Macs?

Enterprises can get volume price breaks. It's not like they go down to Best Buy and buy them one by one.

@PC Apologist

Quote: "Still no Outlook (entourage is a sad, sad little program)"

I don't it buy. I have full Exchange email support in Entourage. Email, Contacts, and Calendar Events. It all works.

Explain why Entourage is a sad, sad poor little program.

I love my Macs. I'm as big an Apple Fanboy as they come. I am in the process of eliminating PC/Windows completely from my home life. However, I need to eject a reality check here:

MDN is fond of pointing out that Macs now run Windows. What they don't mention is the additional cost involved. For each Mac you have to buy a license for Windows; a virtualization program if you don't want to re-boot constantly; and anti-virus software for the Windows side. I doubt an IT guy will be convinced to spend all that extra cash just to have Apple hardware and OS X without a very compelling reason.

Can businesses get along without Window? OS X has a lot of software options, but there are still many programs on the Windows side that don't have OS X counterparts. I work at an engineering company and most of the modeling and simulation tools we use have no versions in OS X and no equivalent tools.

Finally, companies invest millions, sometimes billions in hardware, software, and networking infrastructure. Expecting them to throw all that out and start over is completely impractical.

If Apple has a chance at enterprise, it will happen as a small movement rather than a revolution. The iPhone 2.0 is the birth of that strategy. I hope it works.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:01 am Comment from: Harvey

@PC Apologist (again)

Intelligence agencies tend to have a lot of Macs, too. I guess none of these guys have a problem with the smaller software pool. There are a lot more Macs in those enterprise-sized government agencies than you think.

When you say the Windows software pool is larger, it's like saying the English language has the most words of any language. Both statements are true so far as they go, but quite a lot of that software pool is junk, and no one has a working vocabulary that includes all those words. When we talk about useful software, Windows and Mac are about even, and when we talk about the average person's working vocabulary, the English language is actually a little behind.

I agree with you, Microsoft did a poor job on Office 2008, and they did withhold features and technology from it. Word 2008 is go-get-a-cup-of-coffee slow, and it doesn't know how to redraw the screen after something changes. It's not the Mac's fault that Microsoft puts out poor quality. However, there are alternatives. Government agencies tend to use a lot of custom, web-based software, so the software pool argument and the Microsoft Office quality argument only go so far.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:02 am Comment from: GizmoDan

I don't think IT guys are lazy or dumb. I think they are afraid for their job. Their kingdom. If systems just work, are easy to maintain, and don't NEED I.T., then their job might be on the line, their power will certainly decrease, their budget might even decrease.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:04 am Comment from: MobileAdmin

Working at a large F100 company that is all IBM, articles like this are amusing. I've been a Mac user since the IIe, still have a mac Classic, IIFX in the basement and currently have a mini as a media box and a G5 for Final Cut Studio.

This article could maybe work for small business and places that use out of the box type applications. We have likely 700 custom written applications that I doubt would work on a mac, no CIO is going to approve a budget to: 1 - replace a large number of computers and 2 - fund said application recoding. Your talking years of work when at the end what is gained?

Apple is good at the niche they perform in but that is all, their happy being a niche / lifestyle computer type company and their muscle is mostly around their media strong hold called Itunes.

FYI we have our marketing department still on Mac's (20 G5's) and outsourced the support of this to a mac service provider. The cost is 2x what we can do in house with some college interns ghosting pc's and doing help desk type calls.

@LateRegistrant

"In what units can the level of frustration be measured?"

How about number of hammer smashes to the monitor per day?

Apr 15, 08 - 10:16 am Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@Macromancer says, "I've never understood this proprietary nonsense. Windows is proprietary. Just because it has a larger market share doesn't change this fact." It is an official Microsoft edict that their OS, their software, their products - will indeed become the de facto standard in every category. Simple market domination has never been MS's ultimate goal.

@DLMeyer, while I don't dismiss your point out-of-hand, there are some sub-points that my personal experience has proven otherwise - and more than twice. And it's this point along with its corresponding backlash that continues to close the door on anything but MS enterprise solutions, and that is the issue of perceived as opposed to real, actual dollars spent.

What very few seem to get, even still, is that you do not save money in the workplace by purchasing $500 desktop workstations. This is the continuing fallacy (if that's not redundant, and even if it is, it works in this case). Macintosh and its accompanying OS X do not save a few dollars in the first year, they often and literally pay for themselves inside of the first six months compared to purchasing a cheap pc running Windows. MS continues to be excessively successful at playing this game with the enterprise market place, that it controls like puppets.

Oh, and about that ubiquitous IT "configuration disk" from five years ago: Yeah well, even when I'm strong armed into using Windows at work no IT person comes near my computer with that disk - which, by the way, in spite of what it's intended to do still takes the IT guy at least 30 minutes to actually get fully up and running, most often requiring that he spend time rewriting about half of the script that's on that disk to accommodate the new computer's idiosyncrasies.

In contrast, when a Mac comes in the door I've already called the "I-Don't-Do-Macs" IT department and acquired the requisite network info including shared storage space, WAN, and what ever email, LDAP infrastructure connections I'll need to communicate efficiently. I unbox the Mac, turn it on, plug in the information (without the "disk"), and presto-chango, I've saved the company anywhere from $50-150 just turning on the machine - as compared to the Windows machine which absolutely requires that an IT person fuss with it for some seemingly predetermined amount of time.

I actually did this in a scenario where 30 people were given a choice between Windows and Mac desktops. Interestingly we ended up being split just about down the middle - 16 Macs and 14 Windows. Between the time of purchase and actually receiving the machines I took all of the Mac users aside and spent 30 minutes taking them through a step by step process of unboxing and setting up their machines. It must have worked because I only had to help two of the Mac users during their respective setups, and all that I had to do was answer one question each and they were back up and running. The "We-Don't-Do-Macs" IT department refused to let me approach the Windows installations that way, nor did they want to provide their own trainer - So, when the Windows machines came in one (1) IT person went to all 14 Windows users, one at a time, and spent between 20 and 40 minutes running the configuration disk for each user... Did I mention, one at a time? We did a cost break down of those incidences, and as it turns out, the time spent setting up the Windows machines almost payed for one of the Macs - THAT'S JUST OUT OF THE BOX FOLKS!!! We continued to track incidences for both platforms for the next 12 months and compared to the Windows running machines, the Macs were paying for themselves in 6-12 months - period.

Exclusively MS-trained IT people, please get over it and yourselves. The only real excuse there is for not beginning to use OS X/OS X Server is that there is not yet the full line of ready made product solutions for larger enterprise scenarios, but that really is no excuse because that is a simple issue of supply and demand - and when the demand for non-MS solutions for large enterprise environments begins, then there will be product - it ain't rocket science. And guess where the onerous lies for creating that demand in a meaningful way.

And for those of you who use Windows religiously, and are afraid that MS/Windows might disappear altogether - Well, it might, but I think what will really happen is that MS, and specifically Windows will actually begin to actually improve for the first time since '95.

Peace

I just had a real estate guy come to my door, got a call via iChat, picked up my MacBook to answer it; he'd never seen anything like it, showed him Parallels and Windows XP running alongside OS X. His question was most real estate software is Windows, it's essential to use it in his business, can he run it and does he need virus software, etc. and about the cost of Office. His sales people (some want Macs, naturally enough) can use dot Mac to share files, back them up, etc. and it supports iChatAV.
I'm an accountant, so I said he could have productive meetings without travellling to the office, could save on travel time, have effective meetings from home. Against these savings, why fixate on the costs pertaining to additional software (XP, Parallels, anti-virus? An accountant has to look at the bottom line, opportunities to improve productivity, and software costs are not that significant in the scheme of things. The main problem is the general lack of awareness of the productivity aspects of moving to Macs.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:20 am Comment from: Zune Tang®

Hey Gartenberg: Don't go stickin' your nose where it doesn't belong! MACs don't belong ANYWHERE except maybe next to the Fisher-Price Little People farm for unfortunate kids who will never understand computers.

There is so much you don't know about the real IT world. Stay out, buttinski!

Your potential. Our passion.™

Apr 15, 08 - 10:20 am Comment from: Toasty

Didn't we just have this discussion? I invite all you folks who think a Mac is a perfectly suitable solution to replace Windows in all business to come here to my company and try it. Lets see how far you get. And this notion that MDN keeps thinks Macs are such suitable replacements just because they can run Windows doesn't hold any water. On one front they argue that the Mac OSX is superior yet when the issue of replacing Windows machine with a Mac they attack with the hardware point. So which is it MDN? Is it a hardware issue, or a software issue? The point is that if a Mac running Mac OSX is such a fantastic replacement I shouldn't even care if it runs Windows at all. While there are some businesses that certainly can benefit from switching to Macs, it is ENTIRELY INACCURATE to infer that all businesses can just switch to Mac OSX and have all their needs met. Windows sucks, but sometimes its the only tool to get the job done.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:28 am Comment from: Ampar

Thanks, Predrag.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:29 am Comment from: TexasAg03

CEOs, transform your IT guy from Nick Burns to the Maytag repairman overnight - get Apple.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:32 am Comment from: Harvey

I don't think you guys get it.

Apple didn't get Leopard UNIX 03 certified for home users. They don't include Apache, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby for fun. A complete set of developer tools doesn't come free on every Leopard disk for no reason at all. They don't put all those Xserves on their web site for show.

Only Apple, Sun, HP, and IBM have certified UNIX 03 operating systems, so if there's demand for UNIX, Apple can compete where Microsoft cannot, because Microsoft Windows isn't certified anything. Now add in Apple's coming support for Exchange on the iPhone, and I think you have a clear picture of their future direction.

Macs are already in the enterprise. More will come.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:38 am Comment from: alansky

Well said, MDN. Your average IT guy (or gal) has a huge vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

P.S. Screw "politically correct"!

Apr 15, 08 - 10:44 am Comment from: Cubert

@LateRegistrant,

Thanks. Math is not my strong suit.

And, of course, Units of Frustration are measured in Ballmers.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:45 am Comment from: Mac-nugget

When Apple keeps braking compatibility with legacy equipment and software every time they updated their OS, they also kill any chance of the Mac becoming a mainstream enterprise solution.

I had to find a new scanning solution after Panther, because my EPSON scanner would not work on 10.3.

I had to upgrade my Adobe CS suite for Leopard. I had to upgrade Toast.

Now, I am not complaining. I am quite happy with my setup and don't mind spending money on it, but I am one person. Now multiply this by 10,000 and you get the picture.

Also certain industries relay heavily on antiquated solutions that DO WORK for them. "If it not broken, don't fix it" mentality rules if your business depends entirely on this type of setup. So don't expect people to risk their entire livelihood on switching on to the Mac. It's simply not going to happen fast, if it ever.

For me to move to Leopard, I had to upgrade 40% of my software, this is not viable on an enterprises setting. Perhaps, now that the dust has settled with the migration to Intel and OS X 64 bit, Apple can finally settle down on keeping compatibility intact for a while to benefit an environment that depends deeply on this aspect. Solutions will start taking root on it's stability and dependability. It will not happen fast, that is for sure.

@Cubert
"And, of course, Units of Frustration are measured in Ballmers."

That will have me grinning for the rest the day!
Thanks!

Apr 15, 08 - 10:56 am Comment from: TexasAg03

I had to find a new scanning solution after Panther, because my EPSON scanner would not work on 10.3.

That's surprising. When I bought my iMac (10.4) in August last year, I plugged in my Epson scanner (purchased in 2000) and it worked perfectly. I had no trouble with my printer purchased in 2004 and none from a laser printer purchased in 2005. In short, I have hand NO problems with peripherals.

Apr 15, 08 - 10:59 am Comment from: Jay-Z

For many companies, there would be no additional licensing expense to install Windows on Macs. Many enterprises own site licenses which entitle the company to install Windows on any company-owned machine (this is the case with my company). They've already paid for Windows on any machine - the only additional expense would be the virtualization software.

CEOs should be examining the initial expenses (hardware and software) and the overall cost over time and seeing where they net out. My own experience and those similar to Mr. Peabody's tell me that CEOs who don't seriously consider the Mac could be throwing money away on support and other long-term expenses.

@Zune Tang
"Hey Gartenberg: Don't go stickin' your nose where it doesn't belong! MACs don't belong ANYWHERE except maybe next to the Fisher-Price Little People farm for unfortunate kids who will never understand computers.

There is so much you don't know about the real IT world. Stay out, buttinski!

Your potential. Our passion.™"

Wow; real mature there, Zune [/sarcasm]. Bet you stayed up all night thinking about that witty retort.

Apr 15, 08 - 11:20 am Comment from: ron

Mac-nugget,
'I had to find a new scanning solution after Panther, because my EPSON scanner would not work on 10.3.

I had to upgrade my Adobe CS suite for Leopard. I had to upgrade Toast.'

Very surprising, my Epson scanner has never failed through 3 OSX upgrades, Photoshop worked, as did Toast. You must have something else going on. Do you have a lot of old crap apps? I use AppZapper to get rid of all vestiges of squirrelly apps on my iMac.

Apr 15, 08 - 11:22 am Comment from: ChrissyOne

At my company, the name of which may remind one of a humorous scene from Pee Wee's Big Adventure involving corn, all of our desktop software is available from the internal IT website and servers, and it completely self-service. OS's are site-licensed disk images. Everything is set up so the IT Guy never has to come to your desk for any reason. In fact, a call to IT usually involves talking to the mothership in another state. There is really no difference at all in platforms from the user's perspective, other than the fact that Net Booting a Mac disk image requires less work to set up and loads quicker than a PC.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to run Windows for certain server applications. But if your IT department says they can't support Macs for some technical reason of being able to install software, then they are incompetent, deranged Nazis who eat babies.

Also, I have my machines pretty loaded down with software, and almost none of it HAD to be upgraded for Leopard. Leopard has in fact been the most invisible upgrade I've ever done (with 10.5.2's fixes, that is).

@Mr. Peabody– Nice tale. Keep up the good work. BTW, how much did the cost analysis cost you in productivity?

Apr 15, 08 - 11:25 am Comment from: iamdj

@bluestreak

ZuneTang is our resident tongue-and-cheek troll.

Enjoy the sarcasm.

Apr 15, 08 - 11:33 am Comment from: Jay-Z

@ ChrissyOne:

"Then they are incompetent, deranged Nazis who eat babies."

Thanks for making me laugh out loud on a boring conference call. Thankfully my phone was on mute.

MobileAdmin is right in suggesting that one must take a systemic/holistic look at the cost of migrating. That said, migrations go on all the time. I lived through transitions from DOS to Windows 3.1 to 95 to NT 3.5 to NT 4.0 to XP.

I've got former colleagues in the development group who have spent time and money migrating databases from Oracle running on Suns to .Net/C# running under Windows SQL Server. Another service-wide app was rewritten from SCO UNIX to a hybrid running Windows at the client. Why should a migration to Mac be treated any differently?

Apr 15, 08 - 11:42 am Comment from: ChrissyOne

@ Jay-Z

No problem!

-ChrissyOne... Screwing Up Meetings Since 1995.

Mac-nugget,

Just goes to show how little you really know. You're not complaining? Please! BS! Yes you are. Now stop it.

First of all, just like people on Windows should blame Epson if the driver is not written for it when the OS has been out for a little bit, people on Leopard should blame Epson for not writing a decent driver since OS 9 days. Blame Epson, not Apple, since Epson had a chance to make a driver for Leopard, but must not have yet. In fact, why don't you look for a manufacturer and printer that actually works with Macs well in the first place?

Second of all, I've been told that Rosetta on Leopard runs CS just fine, so that's a fallacy dismissed.

Toast should work fine in Rosetta too. If you want it to run as fast as possible, then you must go native. But I'm sure running Toast using Rosetta still makes it run so much faster than my G4 that it's not like you had to upgrade, no matter what the vendor says. I still run an old version of Toast just fine.

And what about virtualization do you folks not understand?!? If it runs on your old machine, it will run faster on Mac OS X in vmware Fusion or Parallels than it did on the old machine! Is it x86 architecture, what you're wanting to run? Use Parallels or Fusion. Is it a PPC app you need to run? How about using an emulator such as PearPC or Sheepshaver?

There is so much that can be done on the new Macs using virtualization and emulation, that saying you have old software to run only brings the reply "So what? Run it already and quit yer bitchin'!"

Maybe the thing that holds people such as you back is that you'd rather complain about how it can't be done, than taking the time to search google and find out how it can and is being done by somebody somewhere.

Ahhhhh. Rant over. I needed that. I hate that people make up all kinds of excuses saying how hard it is, or how it is impossible, or how you must upgrade, when they've never even checked to find the truth (that it can be done, many times without upgrading, and that there is a way to do it, many times for free, if someone took a little time to check out the facts and ask some questions and not just tow the party line).

Don't you think JUST MAYBE that Roxio sells upgrades to Toast and tells that they work with the new operating system, because they know there are people out there like yourself, which they can get money out of without you really needing to upgrade to have the basic stuff work? Now if there's actual features that weren't in the last version, then you may decide to upgrade because of that, to get the extra features. But I still run old Quark 4, and old Toast, and old Preps, and old Excel, all just fine, just like they ran before I upgraded from OS 9. Plus, on the Intel Macs, I could also just use SheepShaver instead of Classic, and use vmware Fusion to run Windows and linux' of all flavors. In fact, tell me what you can't run, and I bet you can, you just don't know where to get the program to allow it to be reality for you.

Apr 15, 08 - 11:47 am Comment from: DLMeyer

Mr Peabody, don't go getting all defensive on me. Didn't I end with "It ISN'T all IT rigidity. There are often good reasons to go slow. And ... then there's the IT rigidity, the years of FUD, and the fear that at least a few of them won't be needed after the transition."? There is a significant amount of basic "re-training" involved ... this "postage stamp" icon gets your e-mail, this blue compass-thing replaces your "e" for accessing the web, that "gear" thingie is for setting your system up ... THAT sort of thing. And, chances are you will have to (as I did for 'R' and 'G') load in a) MS Office (or iWork), b) updates to 'a', and c) updates to the pre-installed Apple software. And you really, REALLY, want them to create a "user" account after they create their "admin" account - and almost NEVER log into the "admin" account after that. These details take some time. And ... how to you move your Outlook e-mail and address book over?
So you move slowly. When a PC goes "out of service", you offer the option. Give them what they ask for. You should be able to transition 10% of your systems a year - EASY!
C1, please don't assume they are deranged Nazis who eat babies. They may not even be incompetent. They may just be as uncomfortable dealing with an unfamiliar OS as I am with Windows or - more likely - afraid they're working themselves out of a job. They have mouths to feed and shoes to buy, too, you know.

Apr 15, 08 - 11:52 am Comment from: Jay-Z

@ Raymond in DC:

You're exactly right; you have to look at the overall cost vs. long-term savings. If migrating to Macs means you can cut even 1 support person from your IT department, you save say $75,000 in salary and benefit costs. That $75,000 buys you 100 Mac minis per year (with keyboard and mouse) at RETAIL prices (you'd obviously get a volume discount). After you recoup the cost of hardware and software, you are saving money, plain and simple. We all know Macs generally last longer than PCs.

It obviously isn't that simple for every company, but a company like mine could potentially save a good deal of money by switching over. The vast majority of people here need programs similar to Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Important to note that our Macs already integrate perfectly with the current PC system, so no back end changes would need to be made, either.

Apr 15, 08 - 12:08 pm Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@Digits McGee, Thanks, some of the women at work seem to agree with you - About the nice tail... on me...

As for the cost of "analysis" [your word I believe - my word, "tracked"], well, I was the Technical Director for that group so anything that was called equipment or machines, or that whirred, buzzed or clicked, was serviced and purchased through me, so all requests for service for computing, among other things, was coordinated by me. So when someone's computer broke I was their first stop, and when the computer was fixed I received a report from the IT dept. that showed steps taken to fix it, and the amount of time spent doing it. Our inhouse IT expenses were flat rated, but I was part of the committee that decided what that flat rate would be, and that rate was reviewed and updated every year. So back to my tail - uh - tale. Since all of this information was already there I started getting curious about the fact that my Windows service requests folder was getting fatter much faster than the Mac service requests folder was, and after six months, give or take, I got permission from my boss to take a couple of hours, and a calculator, and add it all up to see which platform was eating more of our resources. If that's "analysis" then yeah, that's what I did. Makes me wonder if companies really do that anymore.

@ChrissyOne says, "There are plenty of legitimate reasons to run Windows for certain server applications. But if your IT department says they can't support Macs for some technical reason of being able to install software, then they are incompetent, deranged Nazis who eat babies."

Exactly.

Apr 15, 08 - 12:10 pm Comment from: ChrissyOne

@ DLMeyer

You're one of them, I knew it.

IT guys are "lazy"? What IT guys are you talking about? If you're not in IT, chances are you have no idea what your IT people are doing and what takes up most of their time. To be honest, telling a CEO to make decisions and make IT implement them is exactly what ends up taking most of IT's time. Tell them what you want to do and ask for all the possible options. IT people tend to know a lot more about how all your systems integrate and why your "easy" decision is going to take 6 months to implement, rather than a 1 month alternative. If your a CEO that was once an IT guy, then maybe you're qualified to make such decisions. I'm a Mac guy and have Macs in my graphics department and web group. Running Windows through Parallels is great, but that makes two operating that have to remain patched and that Windows OS is the more vulnerable and less often "online". plus, you need a valid license for that Windows OS. Don't forget that.

I agree that CEOs need to get more educated on the subject, but that doesn't mean reading some articles. It means LEARNING the products and LEARNING your current system.

IT guys are often reluctant to change because they inherited a highly complicated system that was put together in pieces, each new piece being "jammed" in with tweaks to get it to work with current architecture, since CEOs are free flowing with ideas, desires and demands, but not so much with the funding necessary to implement it. These "Tetris" systems are a result of complicated demands and insufficient funds to accomplish it.

Case in point, some CEOs/CFOs/VPs, ect., got iPhones and then told IT to get them into the network. Too bad that they will need VPN and too bad that the iPhone VPN doesn't work with Cisco VPN. Too bad that, until now, Cisco couldn't/wouldn't write an iPhone VPN client.

That is a typical CEO decision. IT guys are the ones that have to replace the VPN servers with VPN systems that work with the Apple native VPN client and the iPhone VPN client. Oh, that might break ALL the other systems that are running Cisco VPN clients. That's OK, as long as the CEO can get in with their iPhone.

How about you just listen to the IT guys and wait a couple months for 2nd gen iPhones that have 3G support, as well as a Cisco VPN client produced with the iPhone SDK. That way, you wait a few months and we don't hose 1000+ employees that currently access our systems remotely. Oh, BTW, that INCLUDES the CEO's laptop that goes to conferences, meetings, presentations, etc.. you ever heard a CEO when they are not able to access files when they're across the country and need the updated presentation for a meeting that starts in 20min?

Funny they said the IT guys can't see the big picture. That's rather funny. Sure there are IT guys that are lazy, but there are IT guys that keep you in business by doing things you don't know about. When they're doing there job right, you don't know about it. That is the point. If you have the right IT guys, you'd better include them in your "research" and decision making. you make the decisions, but you'd better consult them, or else you'll be wasting the corporatation's money.