Recommend Apple, Lose Your Job? 997
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."
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:2, Informative)
From Pricewatch: G4 1.2GHZ upgrade: $465
Athlon XP 2100: $61
So it's about $400 cheaper to upgrade the X86 box...
CLI? It's in there. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I wouldn't suggest it (Score:5, Informative)
You can find a good catalog of Mac app's at http://guide.apple.com/. A quick search turned up ArchiCAD, CADintosh, DesignWorks (circuit design/schematics), MacSchema, PowerCADD, VectorWorks, B2Spice (circuit emulator),
Re:A matter of comfort (Score:2, Informative)
And as for the rest, it's easy. Point and click isn't hard, and program interfaces are very similar across operating systems.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:4, Informative)
But when you compare apples to apples (heh), you see that Macs are quite price-comparable to mid-range or high-end PC's, feature for feature. On the very high end, Macs are actually significantly cheaper than PC's, apples to apples. Or rather they will be when the G5 starts shipping.
A lot of people make the mistake of looking at the cheapest Mac Apple sells and assuming it's a low-end computer. It's not. Don't make the same mistake of thinking that it is.
Macs, Linux really are better (Score:5, Informative)
In short, don't believe those who say that you can't do things with Macs, or it causes problems interacting on the network, or the usual FUD. Although I'm sure there are specific instances where problems might occur on the edges, my real-world experience has shown that the Mac and Linux boxes are the ones that just work in my company. Any problems we have are with the Windows side. I can well believe that you need more IT staff to keep the Windows boxes going. There is very little you need to do to keep the alternatives going, and they interact just fine.
So if you love Window boxes, good for you. But if you hear the FUD about Macs not working well with others, I'm here to tell you that it's just not so.
Most tech support suggest the right machine (Score:3, Informative)
Some people in college where I worked as tech support did ask about buying a mac. I told them its very robust and they'll love its working, but they'll have issues with software and had better go with IBM or Dell. They took my advice. I similarly have a few Dells at home and no Mac yet.
Re:Midrange apps (Score:2, Informative)
None of these products work on OS X, but they do work on Linux, OS400, OS390, W2K, Solaris.
Apple is good for a small-scale business, but not an enterprise-wide corporation. Like banks for instance. Most IBM products will not work on Macs, except the ViaVoice and Lotus Notes products (maybe a couple more too). But middleware, no way.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is incredible, the way that it comes apart, and the ease with which you can change components is sooooo nice.
If I had to deal with upgrading/swapping components as part of my job, I'd LOVE to have a rack of XServes.
Not saying that other boxes aren't as easy/nice, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
Cringley argues...... (Score:3, Informative)
This person obviously sees only part of the bigger picture. Supporting the hardware/software is part of the total cost of ownership. If a company deems it a better deal to purchase PCs over cost of support issues, then they'll be picked. Not to mention, most users have a PC at home. Why burden them with learning a different platform at the office?
Bottom line, you can go buy a new PC motherboard, sound card, video card, etc for a few bucks. Replacing Apple parts are a bit more expensive and harder to come by.
If Apple had wanted a larger share of the office market, they should have been there to compete for it all these years. Nothing against them, but they focused almost entirely on the home user market and photoshop crowd for the past ten years, leaving PCs for the miscellanious work. You don't get your hardware stocked in offices by being innovative, you do it by being consistent and monopolistic.(
This isn't a blanket assumption that PCs are the better answer for all office situations, but those are the reasons none of my shops have been Apple shops.
Please don't get all zealoty and mod happy, just an honest opinion from an honest joe who's set up more office networks than most. My karma is still recovering from the last time I posted to a Mac thread.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:4, Informative)
But OS X Server (Score:2, Informative)
The OS X Server manual, first off, is pure crap. Information is missing and just crossreferences everywhere. But who needs a manual, right? The bundled server apps, like Workgroup Manager, is extremely buggy and crasches now and then. It also caused the entire Netinfo database to be corrupted. I had a backup of course, but it would load. I had the reinstall the entire server. Then halfway through we discovered undocumented missing feature. We wanted to use netboot without local disks as you can do fine on many unixes. OS X Server doesn't support this. You MUST use a local drive. And even nicer: once you have a working netboot disk image, there's no way you can upgrade it.
I think I'll stop here, there were many other strange bugs and missing features... finally got it to work after devious bootscript hacking and trial n errors.
I REALLY hope Apple makes a better job with Panther server. What they have now doesn't feel mac'ish at all. I love OS X (and apple generally), but OS X Server is really bad and can easily be replaced by Linux.
Ciryon
PS. Really tired, grammar nazis beat me.
Cringeley DOESN'T GET IT! (Score:2, Informative)
We have:
1) Demands of a certain app must run on a certain hardware
2) Prejuidices of management
3) Biases towards COTS hardware for repair and upgrade concerns.
There are lots of reasons Macs don't penetrate much into many companies. Same reason as you go into your average small widget-making business you will likely not see a Sun or HP server there. Because the customer wants small and cheap and "common" and the IT staff may be Bubba's nephew.
Re:Techs don't want to learn it (Score:1, Informative)
P.S. - If you think I'd put Macs on every desk in my call center you're just totally out of it.
Re:Wow, that's a pretty clueless article (Score:3, Informative)
Cringely, unfortunately, is the Latoya Jackson of the computer industry.
Re:Jeez, don't flatter yourself (Score:3, Informative)
The corporate standard is 1.7GHz machine with 256M of ram and a 17" CRT (not even flat screen).
Price out that computer and let me know which Apple I can get for that.
Well, pricing out a Dell system with roughly the same specs as a $1799 iMac was a $2673 PC. I don't think that supports your argument. Perhaps if you gave some exact requirements I could find you a PC that doesn't cost about $1000 more than a Mac.
Of course, I'd also like to point out just how screwed up a corporate environment is when they spec machines on vague hardware stats instead of on how useful they are in getting work done. That is, things like RAM requirements should be based on what software the user runs, not some useless hardware baseline.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:5, Informative)
Also perfect for high-end applications by the United States Navy, ala nuclear attack submarines.
http://www.computerworld.com/industrytopics/defen
Re:Apple isn't god (Score:2, Informative)
BS. Same memory--go to crucial or anyplace you want.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:4, Informative)
Open Directory on OS X server is very flexible, and you can choose to store your user lists in Password Server, Kerberos, or Active Directory [apple.com]. Then you don't have to worry about people getting your encrypted passwords.
Don't confuse OS X client capabilities with what's available in OS X Server.
Re:From the article.... (Score:5, Informative)
Hard to believe the parent was modded as "insightful".
Sad, people never learned to search the internet before pressing the flame button. There [applelinks.com] are [apple.com] a [hubster.com] lot [hubster.com] of [apple.com] studies [xephon.com] that [apple.com] support [apple.com.au] Cringley's [216.239.57.104] statement [macworld.co.uk] etc. [macrules.com], and you'd be hard pressed to find a single study in the reverse!
BTW, I've seen studies supporting Linux as having a good TCO vs. Windows NT. I've never seen a study comparing Linux vs Mac TCO on desktop, and there are only a few studies comparing Linux vs Mac TCO in servers (the Mac usually comes out on top, but the studies are recent and may have bias).
How to lie with facts (Score:3, Informative)
Why is this modded as informative? It's misleading at the very least.
First off, the XServe is already running at 1.33 GHz (single or dual processor) [apple.com], so what's the frelling point of putting a 1.2 GHz processor in there? The upgrade you cite is designed specifically to fit in one of the older-model G4 machines (running significantly slower than 1 GHz).
The price difference is not just the chip. The G4 upgrade is a daughter card with a processor and cache memory (including L3 cache on most G4 daughter cards, these days). If the card contains L3 cache, that's about a megabyte or more of expensive high-speed SRAM.
The Athlon XP 2100 is a stand-alone chip, which I might add still requires a heat sink. No L3 cache, though, and no daughter card, so of course it's going to be cheaper.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:2, Informative)
Hi. I can't stand Cringely, and didn't read his article, but you might be interested to know that the Panther betas/seeds from around August 3 have supported a case sensitive HFS+. I've been waiting for this for a long time ( switched my desktops from Linux ), and it was heartbreaking to watch a bunch of knuckleheads [macrumors.com] complaining in a mac forum that this would 'destroy mac as we know it' ( movie at 11 ). Seriously, where do these people come from?
YLFI
Re:Pricing and Usability (Score:4, Informative)
That's where you are completely wrong! They are major upgrades! The jump to Jaguar (10.2.x) and the next jump to Panther (10.3.x) are paid upgrades because they include a whole bunch of new features. Jaguar included literally hundreds of updates. It would be like going from WinME to WinXP in comparision.
There's still confusion for the MS crowd about how the versioning works. 10.x.x is the brand name of the OS. It's OS Ten. The .x release is the operating system version. 10.0 was practically a beta. 10.1 was the first major release. 10.2 was Jaguar and soon there will be 10.3 which is Panther. In between you have the .x.x releases. These are completely free and for the most part don't add features per se. The .x.x releases are like Service Packs.
When was the last time you ended up with major features being added to Windows due to a Service Pack upgrade? I would venture little to none. You would get improvements like bigger disk support and bug fixes but not major changes or new features. Then why is Apple dropping the ball w/OSX on the G3?
Because it was a CLASS ACTION Lawsuit and they decided to settle it. Originally Apple stated that OS Ten would run on G3's then they back peddled a little bit and the OS exceeded the hardware abilities of these older machines. I believe it was a combination of a few factors.
Re:Pricing and Usability (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:5, Informative)
The password hashes are HASHES. Not encrypted. There's no way to get the original back, no matter how much CPU you have. Agreed that it's still not a great idea to let anyone at them, and I have to admit I was stunned that you could do it. I'll have to see if they use a different salt on each machine though, it adds a small measure of protection (if the passwords aren't simple). Download a copy of john and see how long it takes. My imac (running Linux) has been working on guessing a password to match my pw hash for more than ten days. The users on my system who used insecure p/ws were cracked in minutes.
Now you wanna talk security holes: by default, any DHCP server can send a URL of an LDAP server to OSX, and it'll authenticate users from that LDAP server. Yuck.
Second, you state that "OSX is much harder to work with," but don't explain how. Personally, I've found it much easier to learn than Linux was: I've never felt the need to compile my own OSX kernel, but I've had to do that repeatedly to Linux over the years. The distributed directory stuff in Jaguar rocks, and it integrates with LDAP, AD, whatever (and all of the above, simultaneously). See the macdevcenter at O'Reilly.
Agreed about Cringely: he's an idiot, IMHO. Can you name ANY profession that would recommend a change in their workplace that would remove themselves from being qualified to work there? Sheesh!
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, the statement above is misleading. nidump dumps password that are stored in NetInfo, which is more-or-less the equivalent of NIS. When passwords are stored locally---that is, not through NetInfo---they are stored using shadow passwords. Now, if you compare with a Linux/Solaris/* environment using NIS, you can also obtain encrypted NIS passwords through ypcat. To avoid this situation, you would use Kerberos, which OS X also supports. Hence, your main complaint sounds rather biased to me.
This said, I agree with your complaint about filenames capitalization. However, the biggest complaint I would have about OS X Server is that, while its management tools are great as long as you stay on well charted roads, you need to circumvent them to get to tune more advanced settings. Then, it is not much different from setting/tuning a Linux box, except that file locations are slightly different.
Words fail me.
Hopefuly, you can recover now.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm, i simply installed "daemonic" from fink (as well as "postfix-release"), typed "sudo daemonic enable postfix", & it installed a "daemonic-postfix" item in /Library/StartupItems which starts Postfix automatically with every reboot. (Previous to daemonic's emergence, I'd rolled my own startup item, which was pretty easy as well-- I just copied the SSH one from /System/Library/StartupItems & changed a few things.) Try it out.
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:4, Informative)
Now, I don't find it fast; I use it mostly as a music/photo server and spare computer, because it is noticeably pokey compared to my 800 MHz G4 powerbook. My point is that those of us whose income or business allows us to use reasonably current machines get very spoiled, and we forget that performance that we now find "unacceptable" only a few years ago seemed impressive.
And in fact, that old G3 is indeed perfectly adequate for web browsing, word processing, and running iTunes. And in my opinion, a big improvement over the same machine running OS9.
Apple as a viable option... (Score:4, Informative)
-Many of the negative comments are based on issues / biases that have been resolved for several years. (Pre Mac OS 10.2 at least, most pre Mac OS 10.1)
-There was a post that complained about the difficulty of using Mac OS 10.2 Server. I personally find it extremely easy to use and manage. Mac OS 10.3 Server is making advances on that including adding the ability to act as a primary domain controller thanks to the inclusion of Samba 3. For the poster that did not like the management apps they have been completely rewritten as well as being able to be managed via the command line. On the documentation side yes it is a little light. That too is supposed to change in 10.3 Server. For more information on 10.3 Server go to for information on the currently shipping 10.2 server Oh and one more thing. Mac OS 10.2 Server received Product of the year from NetworkMagazine.com () that has to be worth something right?
-Cost. While Linux and BSD systems cannot be beat for cost. The amount of dedicated support and liability that they have can be. Microsoft on the other hand can be beaten in the per user license realm. Both in desktop OS and server OS Apple's Macintosh licensing fees are reasonable and flexible. The general single user licenses are free with purchase of a machine and $129 standalone. Apple can be flexible on this with large or educational purchases. The server version of their OS is even better priced $499 for a 10-user license and $999 for and unlimited user license. They also provide a plethora (sorry you never get to use that word enough) of support options all reasonably priced.
-Reliability and Stability. The one thing I absolutely love about Mac OS X is the stability it offers. This is part due to the OS and part hardware. The key thing here is that Apple controls them both. I don't have to worry about the hardware I'm running being compatible with the OS and vice versa. Apple has already done that for me. The result uptime. Which at the end of the day is worth the extra dollar for me. For instance the PowerBook, which I am writing this on, has had uptimes on the order of 80 days (I just put it to sleep when traveling.) The only time I have to reboot is when an update requires it.
-Major OS releases. When Apple releases a new version of its OS for example the to-be-released before the end of the year Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS 10.3 Server add several new features and improvements not just "bug fixes." And the nice thing about the releases is that Apple takes feedback about its products and if the demand is high enough put it into its next release () for the client version and () for server. I want to see that from a major commercial OS.
-Open Source. Mac OS X is built on open standards, and open source. You can download and tweak Darwin, upload changes. The same features that you get with all open source projects. The exception to this is the GUI interface. Most other commercial operating systems do not give you this ability. Also check out Fink a package manager (based on the Debian package manager) for ported open source projects.
-Security. Mac OS X abandoned telnet in favor of the more secure SSH in 10.1. Apple has a quick response time to up coming security threats and releases an update to fix them (). Apple provides easy and efficient methods of applying the updates via "Software Update". The OS ships in a secure fashion with all incoming ports closed. There is a good paper on securing Mac OS X available at () There are A/V solutions from all of the main companies (Symantec, Sophos, Virex.) Tripwire has been ported for host based IDS. You can run snort, nmap, nessus, etc.
-Expandability and performance. The Power Mac G5 can handle up to 8GB of Ram. Show me a desktop PC that can handle that much memory. The G5 processor has a half speed front side bus so the Dual 2Ghz has two 1Ghz FS
Re:Pricing and Usability (Score:4, Informative)
>available for $75-$85 at most places.
Bear in mind as well that *every* copy of MacOS X is closer to the professional versions of windows than anything else.
>By contrast, OSX has delivered nothing quite as dramatic
>between 10.0 and 10.3.
Bullshit.
*Journaled FS
*Encrypted Home Directories
*Expose
*Quartz Extreme
*Recompiled in gcc3.1 (from 2.9--this is *very* major).
*Rendezvous
*Faster User Switching
*WebCore
*X11 Included
*Updated Web-browser (From IE 5 to Safari 1.0)
*The Darwin core (and kernel) have both been udpated.
*Inkwell
*Built-in faxing in every application
*A new finder interface and interface tweaks (with both 10.2 and 10.3--a new find function, spring-loaded folders, a whole new brushed metal interface for Panther...)
*/Enormous/ Speed Improvements
*iDisk Syncing
*Pixlet support
*Updated bundled applications (Mail, iTunes, iMove, and iPhoto, and iChat AV all come to mind)
*Serious improvements to the developers suite (Xcode, Shark, gcc3.3)
*Font Book
Re:Hmmm, is it that complicated (Score:2, Informative)
Paranoid (Score:3, Informative)
Re:TROLL ALERT (Score:1, Informative)