Using Macs In The Work Place 593
Kelly McNeill writes "It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
I've integrated Macs into PC offices before... (Score:3, Informative)
ttyl
Farrell
Ignorant IT staff is right (Score:2, Informative)
A Mac in the Enterprise (Score:1, Informative)
Contributor: Kevin Ledgister
"It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
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For the last two years, I have had to use a Dell laptop at work running Windows 2000 in a mid size company with 300-400 employees. After suffering through several complete rebuilds, blue screens, as well as dealing with patches and security upgrades, I decided that enough is enough.
I ordered the brand new 12" PowerBook on my own and decided that this would be my daily computer to replace my Dell. Quite a few people were curious at this silver beauty compared to the generic charcoal laptops on their desks -- and some even said that their next system will be a Mac too.
As I've come to learn however, integrating a Mac into an all PC world is not without its challenges.
IT Ignorance
The first challenge was dealing with an IT department that was completely ignorant of the Mac platform. Although they were helpful and curious about the Macintosh, they really couldn't offer much help so I was on my own. At my place of employment, they use Active Directory and after doing a lot of reading on the subject, I realized that it was not going to be the easiest transition.
When my PowerBook arrived, I immediately plugged a network cable into it, but for some reason, it was not being assigned an IP address. I checked all the settings and they were correct. I even plugged my laptop into a router outside of our network and it worked fine. But inside our corporate network, I would only get a 169... number which meant that I wasn't getting one from the network server.
I downloaded ADmitMac from Thursby hoping that it would help connect me to the laptop but that required a valid IP address as well so I still was left out in the cold.
Frustrated, I connected my PowerBook using the phone line by my desk and dialed into our corporate network, which was slow, but at least I could browse the Internet and check email to our Exchange servers running Outlook for Windows under Citrix. No one was able to help explain why this was happening. Not Apple, nor our IT department.
Ups and Downs
After two days of this, I got disconnected again from the phone connection but iChat stayed active and I was still getting messages! I opened up the System Preferences and suddenly I had an assigned IP address. I ran to the IT department asking for an explanation for what they did, to which they replied, "Nothing."
So now I had high-speed access to the network but not all was solved.
I still couldn't browse network shares and I tried joining our Active Directory domain using Admit Mac but it wouldn't let me join. So, I fired up Virtual PC, installed Windows 2000, and asked an IT person to join Win2k to the domain and it worked. I was also able to browse the network using a Citrix client but this was still hokey.
Little did I know that ADmit Mac didn't work because I didn't have rights to join a computer to the domain. But a week after I got all this up and running, I accidentally chose the Connect to Server function when I meant to go to a folder and Voila! I could see network shares!
I don't know when this happened but I could now browse through the servers and mount them on my desktop. I ran back to IT again asking if they had turned on Services for Mac, which I had asked them to consider. Again they said that no changes were made to the network at all.
Another unsolved mystery perhaps but I didn't care. No longer would I need to go through a Windows interface for network shares. As a side benefit, I uninstalled the evaluation copy of ADmit Mac and everything still worked fine which s
Seek Approval - Seek Denial (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tee hee hee (Score:3, Informative)
One deplyoment to rule them all. (Score:3, Informative)
As the system administrator for the project, that best part is I can roll back any changes. Say, if apple were to release a bad update, I could just remove the overload and everyone would be back at say, a working 10.2.7.
Let's see you do that with windows.
Re:I've integrated Macs into PC offices before... (Score:5, Informative)
netatalk? How quaint :)
With Mac OS X, there's no need to go running netatalk; OS X will speak NFS just fine -- or, if you don't want to go that far, there's always FTP and/or SSH. If you're in a mixed environment, OS X's SMB support is good enough that there's little point in running netatalk in addition to SAMBA.
If you want to see stuff run really slick, install CUPS on your UNIX boxes. Watch all your systems, Mac and traditional UNIX, use SLP autodiscovery to self-configure printers.
A big part of allowing Macs to be easy additions to one's IT environment is simply using actual standards, instead of "Microsoft standards." Generally, Mac OS X does an excellent job of supporting standards that have RFCs associated with 'em. For instance, OS X plays great in an LDAP directory environment. If you're using Active Directory, OS X can still be made to work -- but as with any non-Microsoft OS trying to use a proprietary Microsoft "standard," it's going to be awkward.
It's not that Macs are hard to put into an IT environment. It's that a lot of IT environments have been designed using protocols and tools that only work well under Microsoft OSes, because Microsoft designed them that way. If Ford came out with a car that only worked with a special Shell gasoline, you shouldn't blame Mobil for not being able to fill your tank.
Mac and PC play together just fine (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Skewed perspective? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm also amused that you make the comment that Windows can connect to any network and be secure. Are you new here? Windows doesn't connect to much of anything securely. Windows also doesn't connect to AppleShare volumes very well. It connects just fine if the Mac or UNIX machine is running a Samba server, though, since that's what Samba was designed to do.
Ugh. This kind of ignorance frustrates me, because it's a major block in the acceptance of alternative operating systems.
Re:I have to say one thing. (Score:3, Informative)
http://train.apple.com/ [apple.com]
</Blatant plug>
--Paul
THIS GUY IS AN IDIOT (Score:4, Informative)
> network and it worked fine. But inside our corporate
> network, I would only get a 169... number which meant
> that I wasn't getting one from the network server.
ifconfig --renew
That will solve his problem lickety-split
> I still couldn't browse network shares and I tried joining
> our Active Directory domain using Admit Mac but it
> wouldn't let me join.
> don't know when this happened but I could now browse
> through the servers and mount them on my desktop. I
> ran back to IT again asking if they had turned on Services
> for Mac, which I had asked them to consider.
What is he *doing* with ADmitMAC? It's simple, click on Finder, select "Go" from the menu and select "Connect to Server". No need for "Services for Mac" or any other BS.
> Then I downloaded Outlook 2001 for OS 8-9 and it
> connected instantly and ran much smoother than either
> of the two methods I used previously. The only downside
> is that Outlook for Mac does not render HTML email
> properly. But that is a small price to pay.
The name for the OS X version of Outlook is ENTOURAGE. He'd know this if he actually bothered to get Office X (which was probably pre-installed on his machine as a 30 day trial anyway).
Did he even TRY to search the net for tutorials on how to get his machine hooked up to a windows network? It *really* is NOT hard. I'm probably being a bit hard on the guy, but COME ON. It's a completely new OS and he's treating it like the 10 years out of date OS 9.
Re:I have to say one thing. (Score:3, Informative)
Close, How about: Spoken like someone who's never had one of the user's he was admin'ing be forced to get their own equipment.
They picked a standard platform, Windows on Dell. They know about that platform. They have Dells with windows on them that management has bought for them. They can use them as testbeds.
Oh please. Get some decent people and software, and you don't NEED to get that specific. All standardization does is help the IT department - not the users. I generally hate and despise windows, but the only "unusuable" Dell Laptops I've run into over the years are the ones that belong to non-technical people whose system trays extend more than a third of the way accross the screen.
I would agree - BUT - what are the users doing that required the number of apps they have open? Have you not met their requirements with your standard?
So he goes out and buys a Mac, and suddenly the IT people are magically supposed to know about Macs. Why are they supposed to know about Macs?
Why not? I know about Mac's. Hell I know about PBX's. If you (not specifically you, but this is Slashdot so I have to explain it's not a personal attack) are a technical person, this isn't rocket science. If you can't pick up something new with the fucking Internet as a resource, maybe you need a different career.
They haven't had any Mac training. So what?
They don't have company supplied Macs to use as testbeds. They probably don't own Macs at home. They may never have admined a Mac ever.
So what? They've already failed at what they were trained in - else he wouldn't have bought a Mac.
Yet suddenly because jackass employee went out and bought a Mac, the IT guy (Read: Some poor sap manning the help desk for $9.00/hr) is supposed to know all about Mac configuration, with all of its quirks and oddities(every OS has them). If he'd bought a SparcBook, would you expect them to become Solaris Admins over night? How about if he'd just decided to install BeOS on his Dell? VMS?
HA! Spoken like someone whos never had to admin a large number of users. :P
Seriously. Helpdesk is level 1. If it doesn't fit their scripts, they need to escalate the problem. If the user needs VMS to do their job, and there isn't an IT person on staff who can figure it out, the CIO/CTO needs a flogging.
I hate the implication that every guy whos ever worked with computers is supposed to know about every platform in existence and everything that can possibly be wrong with it and that if they don't they must be incompetent. It seems to be a fairly prevelent attitude.
Just about everyone understands if you DON'T immediately know everything - but you're supposed to be able to figure it out. Again, this isn't rocket science.
I don't expect my proctologist to know why I've got these funny headaches and doubled vision, I don't ask my my optomotrist to look at my twisted knee.
Bad examples, 'the body' is the only thing in common. Why not pick three different types of 'electronics'. Satellite, Computers, and say, short wave radio.
Why the hell should the the help desk guy in a Windows-standard shop be expected to know about Macs when one suddenly shows up on his doorstep one day?
He's not, he should escalate it to the real techs. That's what they're getting paid the big bucks for. Not for sitting on their asses and following a script the IT Manager wrote up, but solving problems. Problems that may not even have a documented solution.
To just give up because "It's not our standard" is beyond being a totally lame loser.
Now you know why so many 'common' people think computer people are snotty and arrogant. You're supposed to help them get their work done. Nothing more, nothing less.
Garbage (Score:3, Informative)
Not for years. And we're running the most hererogenous small network I've seen for a long time.
Basically, these days, since unswitched networks and 10-base-2 are gone the way of the winds, there is almost nothing that will bring down a well-designed network except operator incompetence or inadequate design due to inadequate funding or inadequate manpower. Which do you have?
'If an employee needs a tool for their job, they request it, just like any other resource. It will be investigated and implemented if appropriate and feasible.'
This almost always means management will look at it and shrug and look at IT, and IT will look at it and say 'No, that might mean work for us', and the request is rubber-stamped 'no'. As for 'More often than not, it's a bad idea to implement their demands', what that means is, 'I don't care if it actually works, more often than not it annoys me and doesn't save ME any work.'
Mind you, this is most often because IT departments are understaffed by 50% for the work they have to do. But that doesn't excuse the attitude. The appropriate response in that case is, 'We could order that, but we don't have the manpower to support it', or 'We could order that, but only after I talk to him and assure myself that he can support it himself, because we don't have the manpower to support it,' or even, 'Yes, that would be an excellent solution to his problem, and probably make him a lot more productive; it's a pity we don't have the manpower to support it'.
Just rubber stamping 'no' on things, or (even worse) assuming that YOU know better than the end user how to do his job, just leads to the kind of IT that *should* be outsourced to India.
-fred
Re:The sad reality of it all (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. They THINK they are doing the right thing. But they've been so out of touch with what's going on in the trenches they don't really know what's going on. They're more interested in reporting to the CFO, CTO, etc to say "yeah, everything is ok". And maybe I should stop saying "they" considering I was one of those decision-makers. I've been under them, I've been one, I've been consulting them. I've seen it from all sides. Many times, corporate politics play more into these decisions than actual performance.