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Businesses Apple

Macs Gaining a Bigger Role In Enterprise 383

Posted by kdawson from the i-want-my-os-x dept.
rev_media tips a short article up at InfoWorld giving some numbers on the increasing Mac presence in businesses. "We're seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs," notes the operations manager for a global advertising conglomerate. They "now [support] 2,500 Macs across the US — nearly a quarter of all... US PCs." Another straw in the wind: "Security firm Kapersky Labs has already created a Mac version of its anti-virus software for release should Mac growth continue (and the Mac thus [find] itself prey to more hackers)."
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Macs Gaining a Bigger Role In Enterprise More

Macs Gaining a Bigger Role In Enterprise

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  • Macs Gaining a Bigger Role in the Enterprise (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:27AM (#23211498)
    Well that's only because you can run LCARS in vmware now...

  • Low starting point (Score:4, Interesting)

    by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:31AM (#23211518)
    Well when you've got such a low starting point it's not hard to improve is it? i think this deserves a dilbert comic, something like marketing showing a 100% increase when they only sold 1 extra unit.

    • Re:Low starting point (Score:5, Funny)

      by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @02:39AM (#23212082)
      You know, when they said that Macs were gaining a "bigger role in the Enterprise" I had a picture of a bunch of Macs installed on the bridge of a Federation starship. And this dialogue:

      "Fire photon torpedoes!"

      "I can't!"

      "What's wrong, number one?"

      "There's just a single mouse button! I can't right-click on the Klingon ship!"

      "Dammit! Do a command-click!"

  • If Macs ever get to be the predominant platform or to common, Im switching to Linux. Call me a troll or whatever (Im a Mac user and have been for over a decade, so you other zealots feel free to mode down one of your own), but I dont want the Mac to grow anymore than it already has. Id much rather see OSS software take over the market and let the others be a paid choice.

    • Re:I honestly donâ(TM)t want more market shar (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:43AM (#23211580)
      thats right you can't be an elitist snob if everyone had one.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by HeroreV ( 869368 )
        Hence the hate for Ubuntu, for allowing normal users to be comfortable with Linux.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by VON-MAN ( 621853 )
          There _is_ no hate for Ubuntu. There's just somewhat disdain for Ubuntu fanboys, but don't let it get you down. All are wellcome in the community, but please be civil.

          Now, this "hate for Ubuntu"-meme that surfaced about a week ago, _that_ I hate.

          Why people have to turn "many long time users are not that impressed with Ubuntu" into "many hate Ubuntu", is beyond me. But it is probably just a sign of the linux desktop getting close to critical mass, and the userbase broadening up.

          Oh, and you meant to w

    • Make that two of us, Apple needs competition (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theolein ( 316044 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @09:40AM (#23213648) Journal

      My thoughts exactly, and it doesn't have anything to do with elitism. This will be a long post, so please bare with me.

      First, a Disclaimer: I am a sysadmin in a shop that uses mostly Macs, and a few Windows Machines, and I've been using Macs since 1990 and OSX since the first public beta in 2000.

      Second, Apple, like anything or anyone else, is as vulnerable to the abuse of a powerful position as, say IBM was in the 70s and 80s, and Microsoft has been up until now. Apple has already started showing signs of that abuse, which I'll now point out.

      Third, Apple originally touted OS X as a very open Unix like variant. They had all sorts of technologies that were there to draw developers and Windows users to the platform. Built in Java and C/C++ APIs as first class development language along with Objective-C. As Apple became more comfortable with their position and had less fear of Developers being unwilling to move to the platform, the first dropped Java as a first class language (no more Java-Objective-C API bindings) two years ago, and last year dropped the C/C++ API's further development.

      The net result of this is that if you want to develop a native 64 bit GUI application on OS X, you must use Objective-C. ObjC is a fine language, and now has Garbage collection, amongst other things, but it is very very difficult to port ObjC applications to other platforms. In a way, it's like Microsoft's .Net, except that there's not even an ObjC Mono to counter it.

      This means huge costs of major software developers who have, for the most part, been developing in C/C++. Microsoft Office, Adobe CS3, Maxon Cinema 4D? They're all C/C++. There will be no 64 bit version of Adobe CS4, the next CS iteration, for OS X, Adobe has said. It will literally take them years to port their code base to ObjC. Personally, I wonder why they bother. Given that the Ubuntu Linux desktop is now very smooth, is getting fantastic reviews all around the net on mainstream publications, It would be a perfect time for Adobe and others to port their apps to Linux (with far less effort and far lower cost than porting to ObjC). Putting some of the money saved into a major marketing push for Linux would help the uptake.

      It would also scare the living hell out of Steve Jobs (apart from making him go off on one of his major Ballmer-esque tirades again) and, it would force competition on Apple, which Apple seems to think is now unnecessary due to the major fuck up that is Windows Vista.

      Fourth. Apple is almost wholly dependent on the final opinion of Steve Jobs. That is often very good, as the man has a sense of taste, unlike Steve Ballmer, who doesn't, but, because Steve Jobs is only human, that sometimes results in extremely poor decisions like the OSX 10.5 Leopard Desktop and GUI design. The default galactic image background is very bad for designers who need a neutral background to work on. The fact that Apple made the default Dock in 10.5 a weird faux 3D thing that is very difficult to use due to the changes, making it often very hard to see what applications are running. The new pop-up folders in the Dock are next to useless for most things, and the translucent Menu-bar could have only been a Steve Jobs decision, driven, like the 3D Dock by the perceived need to compete visually with Vista. Apple only offered changes to this when users rebelled in outrage.

      Fifth. Apple's server offerings are to a large extent just wrappers around open source technologies. Their Open Directory is just a wrapper around OpenLDAP, SLAP, and a Berkley Database as data store. Their Email server is just Postfix for SMTP and Cyrus for IMAP. The problem is that due to the Apple GUI management bindings, it is next to impossible to customise these software packages. This is somewhat symptomatic of Apple's approach. They make some things very easy, but others very, very hard.

      Apple needs competition. Without competition, Apple tends to lose their solid grounding and become a bit more like Microsoft, given to market lock-in and arbitrary decisions that make no sense.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        Fourth. Apple is almost wholly dependent on the final opinion of Steve Jobs. [...] The fact that Apple made the default Dock in 10.5 a weird faux 3D thing that is very difficult to use due to the changes, making it often very hard to see what applications are running.

        The Dock is, as always, the most obvious interface fuckup Apple has made, and boy did they ever.

        The NeXTStep Dock was brilliant. It's probably been imitated more than anything else but the Windows taskbar (let's face it, everyone wants a start menu now. Apple put more stuff into the Apple menu in OSX, probably due to just that.) Then they totally hosed it for OSX. If your desktop is somewhat full then icons appear behind the dock. You have to either hide it or lasso that icon with some other icons before

        • I think the Dock thing is subective. A lot of people I talk to hate the Dock.

          A lot of people I talk to love the Dock.

          I fall into the latter category. I agree with the GP on the Leopard dock being annoying; hell I developed an app t change it from the default 3D to a more sedate and retina-pleasing 2D one.
          But I still like it, and consider it one of OS X's nicest GUI features. Hidden, with the icons on "zoom" mean I can have a tiny dock that I never see unless I need it, and then I can see exactly the icons I want, not the other ones that stay tiny and out-of-the-way.

          As for the BeOS thing, yeah, you're probably right. If they had bought BeOS, the same gui people would have worked on it to make it more "Apple-ey", which would mean you'd still have Aqua. Maybe they'd even of put a Dock in there, which I think would be awesome (an Aqua-like BeOS).
          But it would have been faster for multimedia which is a BIG thing nowadays (iLife anyone?), and the multi-user thing isn't.

          But, that ship has passed, and we've got what we've got: Unix.
          It's a good OS. Sure, maybe an enhanced version of BeOS would be better, but we can't say that now.

          Maybe, in some dark black-ops like basement in Cupertino, Apple are playing with BeOS still, planning to make it in the "next big thing" when (if) Unix starts to show it's age. Who knows...

      • Re:Make that two of us, Apple needs competition (Score:5, Informative)

        by 644bd346996 ( 1012333 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:05PM (#23214566)
        The Cocoa-Java bridge was dropped because hardly anybody was using it. There's no way it would have been cost effective for Apple to continue to update it.

        The "C/C++" apis you were referring to, more commonly known as the Carbon api, is a slightly sanitized version of the Classic Mac OS programming interface. They were old and ugly, and Carbon had to retrofit them with support for things like preemptive multitasking and memory protection. Anybody who considered Carbon as anything but a legacy api was a fool. (Yes, that includes Adobe.)

        You don't seem to be aware of CoreFoundation and Objective-C++, which provide C and C++ respectively with access to most of the Cocoa apis. But I get the feeling that you're deliberately ignoring the fact that Apple has added Cocoa bindings for Python and Ruby.

        And you definitely should have mentioned GNUStep, a portable environment that is compatible with OpenStep (from which Cocoa is derived) and has included many of the improvements from Cocoa. If you actually want your app to be portable, it is very easy to write it using GNUStep as the lowest common denominator. The resulting app can then be compiled and run on Windows, Linux, and OS X.

        • Clarification (Score:3, Informative)

          by theolein ( 316044 )
          I know people and companies who used the Java-Cocoa bridge. A friend of mine was developing an online custom PDF report generator for financial companies using it. There were many such uses of the Java-Cocoa bridge, just not much in the way of client side publicly available applications. The problems my friend ran into, long before Apple decided to drop the bridge, was that the Java-Cocoa bridge was very buggy and reported bugs to Apple by companies that had developer agreements with Apple were simply not g

      • Re:Make that two of us, Apple needs competition (Score:5, Informative)

        by iluvcapra ( 782887 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @01:14PM (#23215204)

        As Apple became more comfortable with their position and had less fear of Developers being unwilling to move to the platform, the first dropped Java as a first class language (no more Java-Objective-C API bindings)

        They had built in the bridge at great cost in the early years, and it was a major part of their developer push. You can imagine their frustration when no one used it; this is the Cocoa bridge, mind you, not the Java platform. People code in Java so they can write once and run anywhere, not so they can code platform-dependent GUI code. Apple thought having a Java bridge might drive people to write software that favored their platform, but Java devs just kept on using Swing and AWT, and generally ignoring the bridge, since it was platform-dependent.

        I think the nail in the Java bridge's coffin was that you couldn't do key-value coding in Java, the way Apple implemented it, because you sorta need duck typing to make it work. Objective-C can do this, Java cannot (though the Java people hold this is a good thing.)

        last year dropped the C/C++ API's further development.

        This is a tricky statement, as CoreAudio, the File Management APIs, OpenGL, QuickTime, Core Foundation, Core Services, and, hell, the Kernel API and BSD subsystem are all "C APIs" and a part of the OS X platform [apple.com], and they are all continuously being refined and extended; though not all of them are 64 bit yet, this doesn't pose much of a limitation on OS X since you can call from 64 bit code into 32 and back "for free." The Carbon API, particularly the UI code, has not been rebuilt for 64 bit and may not ever, but it is not "unsupported" or "deprecated."

        Your statement makes it appear that coding in C on OS X is somehow unsupported, or that ObjC is the only Kool-Aid in town, and this is a flagrant canard.

        There will be no 64 bit version of Adobe CS4, the next CS iteration, for OS X, Adobe has said. It will literally take them years to port their code base to ObjC. Personally, I wonder why they bother. Given that the Ubuntu Linux desktop is now very smooth, is getting fantastic reviews all around the net on mainstream publications, It would be a perfect time for Adobe and others to port their apps to Linux

        They're probably in the same spot MS is, in that even they don't know how their code works any more, with the number of people they've had working on it over the years.

  • Fed up with MS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) * <bittercode@gmail> on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:41AM (#23211572) Homepage Journal
    I think a lot of us really hoped that eventually people would really get what a mess Microsoft's products are and then OSS would really take off. Instead what I think is happening is that Apple may really see some growth.
     
    I don't know if this means much but my department of 80-90 has gone from zero to about 20% mac in the last year. I don't see that adoption rate slowing down either. Now in the server room it is a mix - Windows, AIX and Linux. With Linux growing the fastest. But on the desktop I don't think anyone is full time Linux only. Even the Linux users all have a windows or apple machine.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) *

      Even the Linux users all have a windows or apple machine.

      Well, that's obviously because this isn't (yet) the year of Linux on the desktop. That's next year.

      But seriously, I think it's because, on a Mac, you can run OS X, Linux and / or Windows of whatever flavor. The latter OS being the most important. Once it becomes more common for enterprise level apps to be written for *nix or just as web apps (shudder), you can then easily migrate the worker-drone clients to a cheap Linux box. Or convert your ch

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by arminw ( 717974 )
        ....That's next year...

        That's right, the year of Linux is ALWAYS next year in the same way the fusion power plants are always twenty years in the future.

    • But on the desktop I don't think anyone is full time Linux only. Even the Linux users all have a windows or apple machine.
      do you really want to go with this? as it happens i do own an imac, which of course has a gnu/linux distribution on it. installing gnu/linux was actually the first thing i did when i got it, i never even booted osx once. my company laptop got the same fate.

    • Re:Fed up with MS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by symbolset ( 646467 ) * on Sunday April 27, 2008 @04:13AM (#23212516) Journal

      I don't know if you've read it yet. Microsoft's Vista Problem at the New York Times is especially informative. Pay special attention to the comments.

      FTA:

      Microsoft keeps insisting that Windows Vista is a winner, but the questions keep mounting -- and Thursday's quarterly report only added to the doubts.

      The comments are especially interesting. 90% anti-Vista, 50% anti-Microsoft, 30% pro Linux (or thereabouts).

      There was a saying once: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". It became untrue overnight and people who didn't see the change happening lost everything. Who are you faithful to?

  • I call bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 )
    That was a very inflated summary... fuck

    FTFA

    "We're seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs," notes David Plavin, operations manager for Mac systems engineering at the U.S. IT division of Publicis Groupe, a global advertising conglomerate. There are so many requests that Plavin now supports 2,500 Macs across the U.S. -- nearly a quarter of all Publicis' U.S. PCs.

    There that sorts it out, 2500 is no where near 1/4 of all US pc's... damn

    Besides, uhmmmm, ok, so Mac is gaining ground. How much is that about the Mac vs. about Microsoft being shit for the last three years? Vista did more than an 'own goal' they are giving points away to EVERYONE else. Of course Mac will get some of them. It doesn't hurt that the iWHATEVER has been so popular. It's called the halo effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect [wikipedia.org] and so Mac gets

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) *
      Oh come now, Mr. and Ms. Moderator. Just because zappecs isn't in a very good mood, there's no need to Trollerize him. Besides having a reasonably cogent point (the article is pretty lame and stupid), he's posting on Slashdot on a Saturday night. He's obviously a lonely guy stuck in some (perhaps figurative) basement.

      Where's the love?

      • I nearly spit beer on the screen laughing at that. I've been imprisoned by the ring... wedding, not precious.

        So posting on a Saturday night (after mowing the yard, organizing the garage, picking up brake parts to put on the car tomorrow, and fixing a bathroom faucet) is just a bit of relaxation before bed.

        I was only trying to put a big-picture-business-analyst slant on the story. I'm not angry at all. I just don't think the business values, market trends, and predicted market conditions will sustain this gr
        • Did you see Apple's latest financials this week? Apple's sales are growing while the rest of the PC industry is shrinking. This recession isn't affecting the company in terms of Macs at all so far. There's no indication it will either. As people's PCs break and get old they're buying Macs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CODiNE ( 27417 )

      "We're seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs," notes David Plavin, operations manager for Mac systems engineering at the U.S. IT division of Publicis Groupe, a global advertising conglomerate. There are so many requests that Plavin now supports 2,500 Macs across the U.S. -- nearly a quarter of all Publicis' U.S. PCs.

      There that sorts it out, 2500 is no where near 1/4 of all US pc's... damn

      You're just reading too fast and getting offended at what you perceive as Mac fanboism... they are stating that 2,500 Macs are 1/4 of Publicis' US computer systems. So it's an anecdotal report of one particular companies growing Mac trend. Read what you want from it, but it's not talking about Macs being 25% of the US PC sales or anything like that. Slow down and as a Technocarpenter might say "Read twice, reply once."

      • Actually, it's Saturday night, I'm not going out, so I'll point out that it was not mac fanboism that I thought of. If you read the summary you 'd see that it was 'edited' to say 1/4 of US pc's, and there are way more than 10,000 pc's in the US business world. The math did not add up. I had to read TFA to figure out what the hell they were talking about. The summary was written very poorly, my friend. I said nothing about Mac fanbois... nada, zip, nil, null, nothing. In fact I did mention that Mac has serio

  • Crests and troughs (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Hojima ( 1228978 )
    This isn't surprising. We've seen this behavior many times and it's called the oscillations of business. Just wait until they are the dominant force in the market and it'll all go downhill from there. Just like Microsoft. They've already made the mistake of not allowing open source software on the iPhone (one of the many reasons I don't get one). That's the one that's pissed me off the most, but it certainly isn't their only mistake. I'll never be a mac fan since I'm so used to tactile response anyways.

    • You're kidding, right? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Santana ( 103744 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @01:18AM (#23211764)

      They've already made the mistake of not allowing open source software on the iPhone (one of the many reasons I don't get one)

      Are you being sarcastic? Nowadays it's difficult to say. I have just finished to watch Steve Jobs' keynote [apple.com] about the brand new iPhone SDK, which is a heck of a platform for development, either proprietary or open source, and the App Store that will let you distribute your application to every iPhone on Earth.

      I'm not sure what's wrong with those Mac bashers around. You know, just stating to not want to be a "Mac fan" because you like tactile response is stupid for itself. Intel based Macs running UNIX plus open source software and a great set of development tools is anything a geek that respects him/herself wants to get his/her hands on.

      And before anybody mods me down, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I've been programming for Windows, Unix and Unix-likes (Linux, OpenBSD) on Intel and SPARC for years and never owned a Mac until recently (two weeks ago aprox.) and I'm amazed. I'm currently writing this message from Safari while whatching my terminals (cloning repositories, building software, the usual stuff.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HeroreV ( 869368 )
        Pleas read The iPhone SDK and free software: not a match [linux.com]

        Considering how defensive you were, despite your ignorance, I would definitely consider you to be an Apple fanboy.

        • "free software" (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Santana ( 103744 )

          You seem to assume that I believe on the "Free software" religion and its prophet RMS. I'm sorry to break it to you, but not every Slashdot reader is a free software loon.

          But maybe you got something right, after two weeks with a Mac, I think I've started to love this thing.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Telvin_3d ( 855514 )
            Just wait until something breaks. Something minor like a fan. And taking to the nearest Mac approved retailer, handing to the actual tech who will fix it and picking it up the next day. No phone calls to automated systems. No shipping.

            Happened to my MacBook. Was completely my turning point from 'this is kind of nice' to 'from my cold, dead hands'.

            • Re:"free software" (Score:4, Interesting)

              by kklein ( 900361 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @05:49AM (#23212846)

              My MacBook's HDD died about a month ago (there may have been a bit of abuse that triggered it--I don't put my backpack on the passenger seat anymore) and after troubleshooting it, called it in. The tech didn't waste my time with stupid crap; he just asked a couple questions and sent me a box. It got there Friday evening after work.

              Sunday morning, before I had even made coffee, it was back with an upgraded HDD, no questions asked.

              I missed one day of work with it. I was back at work on Monday, ready to go.

              I was an Apple fanboy back in tha day, then I was a mean vilifier of the Mac, and now I have sold all my PCs and have a 100% Mac house.

              You don't notice how bad the user experience on Windows (or even worse: Linux) is until you notice that your computer hasn't done anything remotely annoying for a week--and that you never turn it off, just put it to sleep.

              Granted, naysayers will point out that it's a proprietary system that you can't just get any old hardware for, but that's actually its strength. MS can't keep up with the driver issue, and Linux developers most certainly can't. But I still can throw any SATA HDD or PATA DVD drive in my Mac Pro, and I just put a fanless cooler on my video card today. I run all my Windows-only stats stuff under Fusion with no noticeable performance hit, and the thing works like a UNIX machine on a network (i.e. correctly and easily).

              I am not a fanboy, I don't think. I made an educated decision to buy a Mac, and it has been really nice. Not perfect. Far from it. I can't stand Apple Stores (pretentious, my god, pretentious). But I am really glad I switched.

          • actually if youd read the link (i know its hard because your too busy looking at the grovey safari fonts man), its incompatible with GPL2 & GPL3 and may only be usable if you use a BSD shim of unreleased source code. But the truth is apple wont stop free software, its just a bad choice of development kit rules.

    • Richard Stallman need not apply here. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NDPTAL85 ( 260093 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @02:32AM (#23212042)
      I know this is dangerous to say on Slashdot and all but here goes.

      You are VASTLY overstating the importance of open source on a mobile platform such as the iPhone. Its a friggin $500 phone. You think the masses who are buying it are going to care if they can use open source software on it or not? The big draw of the device is its interface and ease of use. You can release zero cost programs via the AppStore if you want and to the user thats really all that matters. The vast majority of the computing using public can't program to begin with so whether its open source or proprietary is wholly irrelevant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by wootest ( 694923 )
        The masses don't care one whit about the technology or licensing behind their apps, but the big deal with iPhone development is that to be able to test anything on a real phone "legitimately", you have to pay $99 for a developer license that's hitherto only available for US developers. For a "friggin $500 phone" (even if the 8 GB model is nowadays $399, so $400), this is *not* a big deal if you're planning on selling software, but a big deal if you're planning on releasing free software.

        On no other mobile p

  • It's not Vista; it's W7 and beyond (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StreetStealth ( 980200 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:49AM (#23211612) Journal
    Perhaps it's just IT people looking down the road and seeing the same thing some end users saw with XP:

    Like many others, I didn't like where it seemed Microsoft was headed with Product Activation and DRM and decided that long-term, I would attempt to migrate away from Windows. I might not have as quickly if I hadn't gone into "creative services," but that was my thinking at the time.

    I can imagine IT departments are now experiencing a similar sensation: Even if Vista (like XP) isn't a terrible thing in itself, it points toward a rather unpalatable future for the platform.

    There is a slow but undeniable exodus underway. To Ubuntu and Fedora go the more technically focused, to MacOS go the more user-focused. Windows' arbitrary relevance becomes ever slightly moreso every day.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by humphrm ( 18130 )
      More likely it's IT people looking at aged, about-to-die NeXT-on-Intel hardware running critical apps and trying to find a way to mitigate risk. That's how it is in my company.

      Yes, you heard me, I said NeXT.

    • Re:It's not Vista; it's W7 and beyond (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @01:04AM (#23211690)
      There is a slow but undeniable exodus underway. To Ubuntu and Fedora go the more technically focused, to MacOS go the more user-focused.

      Not necessarily. I left Windows for Linux a decade ago, but switched from Linux to OS X a few years ago. I am not alone, I know many scientists and even whole science departments switching from Linux (or SunOS) to OS X. It has nothing to do with the presence or lack of technical skills, but IMHO it's just a better OS to get shit done on. And obviously many other technically-skilled scientists agree.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by UttBuggly ( 871776 )
        Absolutely agree with what you say, most especially "...a better OS to get shit done on."

        I've used everything; Apple II and III's, every Mac model there is, the Lisa, and NeXT machines from the Steve. I think at every strata of the evolution of Apple, there was a focus on getting shit done. And making the user interface better.

        I'm not a fan of Apple or a Microsoft hater. I am most certainly a fan of things that work and work well.

        That's why I've started switching the family to Macs. After the first MacBook

        • The Mac looks good from a support overhead standpoint, which is not insignificant with the number of users we have.
          what sort of support are you talking, If the system is locked down, its just as easy to support linux. I suppose you have a point if you let everybody set-up their own stuff tho

    • The ghost of Vista (Score:5, Informative)

      by Santana ( 103744 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @01:36AM (#23211838)

      I was thinking of buying a laptop some weeks ago but I was reluctant to use Vista. That was the initial thought that led me to buy a MacBook.

      I use Windows XP at home and OpenBSD at work as desktop OS. I can't stand Linux as a desktop OS. Mac OS X seems like a perfect merge of a great GUI and the power of UNIX, running on solid, proven Intel hardware. With a Mac I have the best of both worlds.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SL Baur ( 19540 )

        I use Windows XP at home and OpenBSD at work as desktop OS. I can't stand Linux as a desktop OS. Mac OS X seems like a perfect merge of a great GUI and the power of UNIX, running on solid, proven Intel hardware. With a Mac I have the best of both worlds.

        I use Linux at work and Linux at home. I've been happy with desktop Unix for several decades.

        I tried to give my wife a Microsoft Windows box, (Microsoft Windows XP Media Edition), but she hates it because it crashes all the time. She loves the Mac PowerBook though.

        I think that's why so-called Mac fanboi-ism is so hated here. Macs are perfect for domestic tranquility. Give your wife a Mac and be happy or since this is Slashdot, give a random woman on the street a Mac and ask her for a date.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kklein ( 900361 )

        That's basically the call I made as well. It's like Linux, but without the sucky parts of Linux.

  • OSX in 2008 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Artuir ( 1226648 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:54AM (#23211630)
    This is the year of OSX on the desktop!!!!11

    *cough*
    • Could the year of desktop linux be the year of OSX + 1, there have been three problems with getting linux adopted
      format lock in (e,g everybody runs word), with people switching to OS X are people starting to use OO,or are they using word4mac anyway ?
      vendor lock in, but this seams broken now with dell offering linux
      User unawarnes, (monkey see windows, monkey do windows), but now as theres diversity, perhaps users will start realising windows may not be the best OS for them.

      Is the dream of a 30/30/30 market,

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by node 3 ( 115640 )

        Could the year of desktop linux be the year of OSX + 1

        Probably not, given that every year since at least 2002 (with the release of version 10.2) has been an actual "year of OS X on the desktop".

        However, your overall point isn't far off. Once people switch to the Mac en masse (if you consider US consumer market, which is where "the desktop" is most important, this has already begun), they will no longer look at Windows as being a necessity.

        The thing that is keeping Linux from being the "year of OS X + 1" is that there's no compelling reason for most people to

  • I've been programming on a mac for years (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vrillusions ( 794844 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @12:55AM (#23211636) Homepage
    My "introduction" to macs--aside from school--was at my current job. I am a web developer/it manager. I first thought it was odd everyone used macs but after I got used to it I'm glad. The amount of questions asking about their computer locking up or not being able to print or something is practically nil. When something doesn't work it's usually something more significant than just the windows "shut down and reboot" mantra.

    EVERY employee uses a mac. From graphics designers (of course) to the IT department to accounts receivable and billing. From an IT standpoint being able to have a native terminal to ssh to remote servers is very handy. Yes I know of cygwin but terminal on mac is just there. We literally only have two windows machines only because of some software that only works on windows.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      In Capitalist West you used a Mac in the past, use a Mac now or are thinking about switching.
      In Soviet Russia going to gulag, in gulag or returned from gulag is life story of you.

  • Mac support in the Enterprise? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by moofrank ( 734766 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @01:25AM (#23211792)
    The article asserts in a couple of places some very amusing things: 1. Apple SAYS that it integrates cleanly in Active Directory environments. (In our experience, it doesnn't). 2. "That Apple Enterprise support doesn't exist is a popular myth." (We actually paid for Apple Enterprise support and work in a major metropolitan area. We and our VAR could actually never manage to locate Apple Enterprise support. I'm calling myth.) Admittedly, I'm writing this on my Macbook Pro with an Iphone in my pocket. Supporting a handful of macs is easy. Supporting hundreds is a major pain.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by bartron ( 772079 )
      AD works but is is no-where clean. It doesn't support DFS (not the way we set it up anyway). The only thing that comes close is Thursby's AdmitMAC product which does the job but likes to own the computer in the process. To me that's just an invitation for instability and we'd be back where we started.

      I love my macs but they are indeed a pain to get working properly in a mixed environment.

  • Here too... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adnonsense ( 826530 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @01:54AM (#23211902) Homepage Journal

    Small company, newly formed IT/development department. Turned out all four of us preferred OS X as our desktop environment, and it didn't take long for the boss guy to convince himself he needed one to (and very happy with it he is). Just found out one of the sales people has come over to the dark^H^H^H^H Jobs side, and the external consultant guy has a MacBook Air (which is a subject of constant ridicule as we are Ethernet-only for reasons of paranoia).

    (Personally I need a laptop which runs an internationalized UNIXy environment and plays well with the hardware without me having to spend time fiddling about with the OS , and OS X has saved me a great deal of time in this respect).

  • I'd love to roll out more Mac laptops but the main thing holding it back is complete lack of a first party dock connector for the portables. Not everywhere is the same of course but where I work it's an OH&S problem with loose cables hanging about the place.

    I know about bookendz and they might be ok but it's hardly an elegant solution and the aesthetic is so non-Apple. I would jsut like a single connector on the bottom of the Mac that connects to a dock that has all my shit permantly plugged in to it..

    • Yeah, it probably is. That connector would mean more wiring/PCB space and other stuff. Perhaps not much, but avoiding these things is the way Apple keeps their hardware simple and elegant and avoids making feature bloated products like many others do. I guess there just aren't enough others like you -- people who want a functional and aesthetic dock -- to make it worthwhile.

  • you know... (Score:2, Funny)

    by luigi517 ( 1169353 )
    they only work better for the same reason that its hard to drown in the kiddie pool...
  • First it was us on the Unix Sysadmin team. Then the network guys had a look at what we were doing, and started buying themselves Macs as well. Now management is starting to get into them. With VMware Fusion we can use Outlook, everything else we don't need Windows to do.

    Vista has prompted many people to make a decision about what they want from their operating system of choice. With Windows the OS is everything, with OSX it's just the means by which applications are run. The measure of an OS that I fin

  • What comes around, goes around (Score:4, Insightful)

    by calstraycat ( 320736 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @03:54AM (#23212440)
    I think to understand the renewed interest in Macs in enterprise requires a look how IT departments got themselves into the sole-sourced software platform pickle to begin with.

    The story begins with IBM doing a piss-poor job of protecting their hardware. It seems everyone forgets that IBM had every intention of locking up its hardware just like Apple did with the Mac. But they blew it. Some guys cloned the hardware and the commodity PC was born.

    Corporate IT departments, believing that having multiple hardware sources was key keeping down capital expenditures, rejected the Mac because it was sole-sourced. They opted for the commoditized IBM-PC hardware platform. But, as they preached the importance of having a diversity of hardware suppliers, the same IT departments insisted that it was imperative to "standardize" on a single operating system and a single office suite. "Standardize", in this context, is just a different way of saying sole-source.

    In other words, the dogma was (and still is, for the most part) that computer hardware must be multi-sourced and software must be single-sourced.

    That strategy has bit them in the ass. It turns out sole-sourcing your software platform is just as probamatic and expensive as sole-sourcing your hardware platform. Having put all their eggs in Microsoft's basket in the persuit of minimizing hardware cost, IT departments are now stuck in an ever-deepening hole of increasing and recurring licencing fees to a single vendor. And they are completely powerless because they single-sourced their software platform lost all leverage with their supplier.

    Perhaps some IT departments are finally questioning the wisdom of that strategy and are bringing some Macs into the mix.

    Apple finally has a viable alternative, mostly because OS X is mature now and they've to x86-compatible hardware. Combine that development with the continuing creep of web-based alternatives to embedded applications and you've finally have an escape route from sole-sourced software platform hell.

    A wise CIO, in my view, would take advantage of this opportunity by moving to a more heterogeneous computing environment. Re-introducing platform competition in the corporate computing space is the only way for IT departments to regain pricing leverage with Microsoft. It will cost a little more up front. Mac hardware is more expensive. But, that extra upfront cost will be more than offset by the gains from being able to exert price pressure on Microsoft.

  • Biggest Apple problem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dregs ( 24578 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @10:52AM (#23214022)
    Want to know what the biggest apple problem in the enterprise is ?

    Just try leasing them, on a 3 year lease, and find out at the end of the lease theirs no replacement machines because apple has run down the channel due to a new product announcement, that is yet to happen.

    Happens on a regular basis to us, and then the new machines doesn't support the current release of OS X, so we cant deploy until we fully test in any case, as it only runs 10.5.2 or later, not earlier or some such rubbish.

    Apple is light weight and no where near enterprise ready.

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