Recommend Apple, Lose Your Job?

rocketjam writes "While examining whether outsourcing tech work to India is really cost-effective, Robert X. Cringely takes a look at the old conspiracy theory that IT doesn't recommend Apple solutions because they need less support, thus endangering IT professionals' job security." Cringely argues: "Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department's job."

If you buy Apple..

[Anonymous Coward]

..somebody in India starves because of lack of tech support calls.

Please. Think of the Indians. Buy PC.

Recommending Apple

[HobNob]

So this is kind of like "Nobody ever lost their job for buying IBM"?

Nobody ever kept their job for buying Apple.

Has a nice ring to it, I can see it on the adverts now.

Re:Jeez, don't flatter yourself

[Red Meanie]

Come on, everybody knows its Jobs Reality Distortion field. Its a natural phenomenon, there's no gun involved.

Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated

[CoyoteGuy]

Linux can be used as a file server/firewall/application server/web server/email server/DNS server/database server/all of the above at once without costing you nearly as much as an X-Serve.

You can do all of that with an iMac, if you wish.

Care to give a url of a nice iMac web server to slashdot, and we'll see what OS is superior? :P

Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated

[CoyoteGuy]

Here you go. Give this one a try.

I said iMac, not a convoluted version of Linux running on proprietary hardware.

iMac= small, cute microwave sized pc.. something I would feed an Opteron Cluster for breakfast..

Mouse Buttons

[Shadow Wrought]

I think we all know that until a second button makes it onto the Mac mouse, they will never achieve corporate recognition. x86 platforms are up to 3 sometimes even 4(!) buttons. Forget the color, its the buttons that matter!

I did lose my job!

[Dukael_Mikakis]

My company used all MicroCrash Windows machines and servers and everything. Then I sent out a memo recommending Linux for our workplace and, barring that, perhaps G4s with OSX (though I am not necessarily an Apple fan).

I promptly lost got a memo saying that I was fired. It was from some guy named Ballmer.

Jagoff.

just like the Bible!

[QEDog]

Recommend apple, lose paradise!

Real reason Linux is faster adopted.

[etymxris]

It goes like this for Linux:

Me to boss: "There's this thing I want to do that will make me work more efficiently if I had a Linux box around."

Boss to me: "We don't have a budget for any new equipment or software."

Me to boss: "No problem, I'll download a distro for free, burn a few CDs, and install it on that old beige box that we don't use anymore."

Boss to me: "Sure, knock yourself out."

And it goes like this for Apple:

Me to boss: "There's this thing I want to do that will make me work more efficiently if I had a Macintosh to work on."

Boss to me: "We don't have a budget for any new equipment or software."

Me to boss: "Nevermind then."

Re:A matter of comfort

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used lots of different operating systems, CPM/TRSDOS/OS-2/VMS/Unix/Windows but have NEVER used a Mac

Do me a favor, and never associate yourself with IT ever again, much less call yourself someone who knows computers.

Sincerely, The IT Community

Recommend Cringely, Lose Your Job?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommended this article to my boss. Then he fired me.

Keep the cash in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy Apple

I recomend macs despite not using them!

[bluGill]

I havne't used a mac in years, but when someone asks what computer to buy I recomend a mac. For my own protection. I don't use windows, but I get many questions on Windows. I have no idea how to deal with a windows machine that is described over the phone as having given a dialog box that mentioned registery corruption. With a Mac I'm comfortable that I won't get a call like that. Those details are taken care of, so when something bad happens they can normally deal with the problem. (and it doesn't happen as often)

I couldn't imanging my grandpa on a windows machine, but he can work his mac just fine.

Re:If you buy Apple..

[BobWeiner]

all I can say is this [pcweenies.com] is how it's going to be if we keep buying overseas.

Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated

[magores]

Only issue I have with this post is the fact that there are 2 admins working 12 hour days 7 days a week.

If employer really wanted piece of mind it seems he/she/it would have minimum of 3.5 admins. This would cover 8 hour shifts 5 days a week + weekends.

Or is that not the way things are done in your world?

stairwells made easy

[epine]

How is pushing a button on a keyboard *and* the mouse at the same time "easier" than having a mouse with two buttons in the first place?

Apple aggressively marketed the one button mouse concept for years to promote their own unique slant on "easy to use" and then when world+dog discovers that the human hand has more than one finger, no one stops to ask what they were smoking.

What boils my cheese is how Apple gets away with a vacuous redefinition of the word easy.

Easy is one of the most complicated human criteria in human language. For a two year old, it is easy to go down stairs on your bum. That is how I always felt using a Mac.

When a teenager I discovered that stairs (on the way down) were mostly optional. I discovered that I could make it all the way to the bottom in a single bound, two steps from the top. Then one day my forehead sailed into the overhang, dropped me on my ass halfway down, with a concussion and a damaged tailbone. That's how I feel using older versions of Windows.

One Christmas morning I spent at my girlfriend's, she had an older house where the carpet was not glued onto the steps, but pinched down with metal rods at the nook of each step. The steps underneath were the old wooden style with the rounded projection. There were shiny patches from long years of use worn into the stiff carpet bubbles folded around the stair edges. I put my bare foot onto a shiny patch as slippery as a skating rink, then smashed my leading heal on every step all the way to the bottom. That's how I feel using Unix. Ten years later, that same heal still hurts in the shower.

One time I worked in an office building with highly depressurized stairwells. Because I still had my keys in my right hand, my pinky was folded outside the handle. I pulled hard to crack the airlock, the door swung open ballisticly (which I was prepared for), I was just to pull my hand free when hard steel door handle crushed the small knuckle of my pinky finger against a decorative rockface. What I didn't realized is that the decorative rockface stuck out six inches from the plane of the door hinges so it crushed my finger well before it finished swinging to 90 degrees. This left me with a mild, permanent disfiguration of that knuckle. I'm not sure what OS that represents, but both Windows NT and VMS spring to mind.

So here Apple comes along and proclaims that their stairwell is easier to use because there design has only one handrail, so you don't get confused about which handrail to grab, nothing can go wrong, and I'm supposed to feel impressed.

I think I could fill a 500 page book on stairwell design factors: step dimensions, surface materials, footwear, footsize, materials carried, overhead clearance, emergency lighting, evacuation, firefighting, bannisters and handrails.

At the end of the day the answer would be that different designs are better for different people, different tasks, different situations.

Not even a common stairwell has a one-size fits all solution.

One decision has made my life easier: never underestimate the complexity of the task you are facing. After beating myself senseless on dozens of different stairwell designs, that's the only kind of easy that still interests me.