Will Apple's Lion Roar For Business? 340
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has long had a troubled relationship with IT departments. Any creative professional will testify just how hard it can be to convince IT managers to allow the use of Macs in Windows-dominated environments. And, despite the fact that the Mac OS is now quite a well-behaved client on Windows LANs, Apple sometimes does little to help its own cause. The decision to release OS10.7, or Lion, for download only is hardly going to endear Apple to IT managers who need to conserve network resources. Most of all, IT departments would want to see the Mac OS offering full support for virtualization, on the desktop and on the server. There are rumors that Apple will, itself, run a virtualized version of Mac OS under VMware as part of its iCloud product. Allowing OS X to run as a guest on non-Apple servers, and even on the desktop under VDI, would bring enormous administrative benefits to companies using Macs."
typo? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean, any creative professional who uses a Mac.
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You mean, any creative professional who uses a Mac.
Are you implying those people are a rare breed?
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Re:typo? (Score:4, Funny)
You seem very slow. Do you need us to draw you a picture or something?
I guess so, I just don't see what's so offensive about it.
The line says "any creative professional" not "Mac-using creative professionals". That's false.
Sure. Commander Data would agree with you.
It would be like saying "as any woman knows, Ace Cleaning Products are the best!"
Generalizing about millions of people is hard and print demands brevity. Applying literalism to this is just nitpicky.
Of course that's not what you meant because for some reason you'd rather be a dick about this than read the black-and-white line that has already been quoted for you.
I'm a creative professional who works in Windows. My whole team uses Windows. We make creative decisions that create huge ripples throughout the projects we work on. Yet that statement didn't bother me in the slightest. I don't understand why your panties jumped up into your crack about it.
Re:typo? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:typo? (Score:4, Funny)
The ones using Windows clearly found it not just hard but impossible.
It's a money question, mostly. (Score:2)
Most IT guys have no problem with a Apple device, on it's own. However, it's not just a question of plugging it in to a corporate network.
There's a whole bunch of management behind the computer system that "creative types" don't see. Each new environment has real money costs way beyond the purchase price of the kit.
Just off the top of my head (and i'm not an expert on Apple Desktop Environments):
You need someone with support skills to manage the environment. You need tools to manage the mac, and ensure comp
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Might as well get rid of HR, accounting, payroll and other departments who enforce company policy too!
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Might as well get rid of HR, accounting, payroll and other departments who enforce company policy too!
Wait a second... we can do that?!
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It's people like you who are killing productivity in the workplace. I will be very happy once "IT" has been thoroughly discarded as a business unit and workers are allowed to use whatever tools they wish to accomplish the jobs they need to do.
Yeah, you'll be happy for a month or two until you realize all of the things IT does for you. We wipe your bottom every time you use the restroom. We cut the crust off your peanutbutter sandwich. IT is a full partner with sales in making the company go. No IT means technological chaos.
True story (Score:3, Interesting)
One of my IT guys came in to ask what time I downloaded Lion on Wednesday. The time I downloaded the OS and the time a colleague downloaded it correlated with times our network traffic was pegged and he couldn't access the Internet.
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Re:True story (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:True story (Score:4, Insightful)
Well... At least one download is needed per company.
After that, the "IT guy" can use detailed instructions available on the 'net and create an installer/boot DVD or USB thumbdrive. It's easy as that! I can't see any other good way to deploy to multiple machines on businesses.
Oh, yes! I can: create a net-installer and use Mac OS X Server (now dirt-cheap) to deploy via netboot. Takes a little effort in the preparation phase, but won't use the internet afterwards, only the LAN.
Apple does offer business licensing for Mac OS X (and other products). No need to buy one boxed copy (soon to disappear) for each machine... Just the same way you can use a burned DVD to install Windows (as I did a lot of times myself).
And, please, don't even try to tell me it's better to buy installation media (like those shiny holographic Windows install DVDs). People have been burning Linux ISOs for ages with no complaints.
So, this "IT guy" needs to know some things before complaining about congested internet connections...
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do you really mean that an IT professional that works for a business (whatever size) should rely on the manufacturer's or developer's technical support?
You are missing the point
Suppose you are building a PC. You head over to anandtech/hardocp/ and research components etc. You order some kit and play around. You discover that the memory you selected isn't on the compatibility list with the motherboard... what do you do...?
If your building a gaming rig for yourself... maybe you buy it anyway and see? Some gu
Re:True story (Score:5, Funny)
So he thanked you for pointing out the network infrastructure was horribly broken, right?
The network stress test (Score:4, Funny)
It used to be downloading porn was the network stress test. Now its operating systems. How boring have we become?
When pigs fly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Allowing OS X to run as a guest on non-Apple servers, and even on the desktop under VDI, would bring enormous administrative benefits to companies using Macs
Apple would never allow this. As has been often noted, Apple is a hardware company. Allowing OS/X on non-Apple hardware would only cut into their hardware business. Besides, no one can make their servers "pretty" enough to meet Steve's artistic tastes (except Apple's engineers of course).
they are a marketing company (Score:2)
all the hardware is made by a handful of companies in China like FoxConn.
the problem with letting non-apple hardware run apple software is that it hurts their brand.
Re:they are a marketing company (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish people would accept that a company can be a hardware company, a software company, AND a company that takes design and marketing seriously.
Re:they are a marketing company (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple does their own design, they employ hardware engineers who design the circuits on their boards. FoxConn takes those designs and turns them into PCs. Other PC shops like Dell just send a list of requirements to FoxConn who designs in whatever is cheapest and yet meets specs. Apple outsourced the assembly labour, Dell outsourced both that and the engineering labour.
Re:they are a marketing company (Score:5, Insightful)
They design the boards that connect those standard parts together, rather than say just buying a motherboard from new egg for whatever is on sale that week. They also engineer the "crappy little case" beyond just picking the CPU and RAM an so on that most armchair PC designers seem to think is involved in making a product. Everything from materials testing, to thermal management, recycling ability etc - you know, rather than just a standard ATX beige box.
Just because they don't design their own CPUs and GPUs down to the transistor level does not mean you can dismiss them out of hand as a hardware designer. There are many, many levels between "design your own CPU" to "ask someone to design and build a PC that you then market"
Re:When pigs fly... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apparently even Apple engineers can't, seeing as how they killed the Xserve.
It's not that they "can't" make a pretty server, it's just that it's pointless. Why make a pretty server that just sits in a back room or closet somewhere where no one can gush over it's elegant lines. Servers, by there very nature, focus on function over form - just the opposite of Jobs' vision.
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Actually I think it's because Apple seems to be mostly interested in human-computer interaction. Servers are very peripheral to that focus.
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Re:When pigs fly... (Score:5, Insightful)
An OS X Server is like a Linux Desktop. Sure they work and a lot of people can be very happy with them. But they overall are sub optimal.
Linux Rocks as a server, It is OK at a desktop. OS X Rocks as a Desktop OS, It is OK as a server. Both sides can do what the other does but the issue is on the overhead effecting the overall experience.
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At least, one can dream about it.
Now that the XServe is dead and the only options are the Mini Server (no dual ethernet, to say the least) and the Mac Pro (takes too much space in the rack), I wish I could just get an HP or Dell server, install a minimum Linux system with a VM and run instances of Mac OS X Server in it.
About servers being pretty, I am not sure it's just like that. Apple likes to sell pretty stuff, but they like to make money out of them even more.
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Eh, they're not far from being able to do it, and meet your requirements. Take an iMac, strip it of everything that makes it expensive, the harddrive, most of the memory, many of the ports etc. Call it a vMac. Have it only connect to a Lion server via VDI. And in reverse, only a Mac can connect to lion. Charge $300-$500 for it. Let Lion run as a guest on a hyper-v host.
Do it again for the mini so people can supply their own monitors. Sell that for $200. Boom, everyone happy. IT guys get to virtuali
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That's case (i) for non-commercial use, see case (ii) regarding commercial use (bottom of first page in English).
http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx107.pdf [apple.com]
The gist of it is that in a commercial environment you need one copy for each employee, then that copy is good for each computer he is the sole user on. For a shared machine, you need a copy for each computer.
pc authority, no mac authority (Score:5, Informative)
The decision to release OS10.7, or Lion, for download only is hardly going to endear Apple to IT managers who need to conserve network resources. Most of all, IT departments would want to see the Mac OS offering full support for virtualization, on the desktop and on the server.
before reaching a coclusion, read a better researched article, written by someone who really knows macs firts: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars [arstechnica.com] (warning, 14 pages article)
lion can be burned to a DVD after download, also, in the near future, apple will ofer lion on thumb drives for $69.
the EULA also mentions virtualisation. the hypervisor probably needs to run on a mac OS host, but it is supported as guest, if the EULA is true.
Re:pc authority, no mac authority (Score:4, Informative)
The EULA allows for virtualization of up to two additional instances without the need for more licenses as long as you do it on Mac hardware. http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=lion-eula [afp548.com]
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What's more, you can just copy the Lion application bundle after downloading it through App Sture (before installing it), and install it on any number of computers, distributing it using whatever tools you like. The installer has no key code or Apple ID requirements. Of course, anyone can find that out by going to Apple's web site [apple.com].
Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:3)
But I thought the whole point of Lion was to bring the mobile OS market and the desktop OS market closer together? Isn't Apple's general strategy to be a complete unification at some point? That's certainly what it seems like to a lay-person...
That being said, I don't see how that would be compatible with administrative requirements in the business world. Apple seems to be moving towards being completely focused on the consumer aspect where people are shopping on the App Store for all of their software, the bulk of said software being Angry Birds-esque games and ways to consume mass media. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not in the industry at all, but it just seems like they're moving away from any real "nuts and bolts" business use outside of the Point of Sale market.
Wrong two ways (Score:5, Insightful)
But I thought the whole point of Lion was to bring the mobile OS market and the desktop OS market closer together?
No, that's not the point at all. The point was to learn from other platforms ideas that they can bring back into the desktop. That's why the WWDC Lion theme was "Back to the Mac" not "assimilation".
Apple has always maintained people want different UI on a desktop vs. a mobile device, and they are absolutely staying there with Lion. Yes they have a full-screen mode (and a real full screen mode too, not just a Windows style Maximize button). But that lives off in a separate space (virtual desktop) and is a full parter with all other running apps. They also have got rid of permanent scroll-bars (which you can re-enable if desired) but that's only in the case where the pointing device you are using support gesture based scrolling.
Indeed, Apple has stated repeatedly they thought touchscreen desktops made no sense. It's Microsoft that is showing us new Windows versions oriented to using a touchscreen, Apple is keeping Mobile and Desktop UI separate and distinct.
That being said, I don't see how that would be compatible with administrative requirements in the business world.
Even if that were true you would be wrong here too. Businesses LOVE devices that are more locked down because they introduce fewer paths to user security issues. Lion has a lot of new features to appeal to IT security that are brought back from Mobile devices - like whole disk security (that is actually reliable unlike FIleVault of old) and real application sandboxing (though that will take a long time to get picked up by the larger applications).
Apple is moving in a direction IT security departments love, not hate. And really that is better for overall user security too, because users at home have no IT department to worry about a system being secure so it has to do as much for the user as possible.
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As far as businesses loving devices that are locked down, you forget an important point
Forgot nothing (Score:2)
As far as businesses loving devices that are locked down, you forget an important point - THEY want/need to be the ones with root, not some cloud provider somewhere.
That's how Apple works things though, all the devices are easily managed by a company - not Apple. Apple does not want to be the one in charge of systems. Apple makes corporate management tools and there are also lots of third party options. Companies can wipe devices remotely, and with Lion whole-disk encryption can probably do the same for
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You really don't understand Apple's business model at all.
1. Mobile business is profitable because of hardware. You can't just apply that to desktops.
2. Apple makes their decisions pretty much independent of their customers, especially corporate users. See xServe demise.
3. Mobile will always be profitable for Apple because they'll always be moving forward, staying in the profitable end of the development envelope. They leave the low end, commoditized market for others to have - HTC, Dell, etc.
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Ok, You're wrong.
I know Apple engineers working on the OS and on the pro-apps. None of them are even remotely concerned about this - it's a slashdot-incubated fantasy of those who either can't or won't think for themselves. It ought to be clear to the meanest of intelligences that Apple will *need* a significantly more powerful environment than iOS to create apps for iOS. At work I have a Mac Pro with 3 30" monitors, and when I'm coding something significant all that real estate is in use. My friends at App
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it's a slashdot-incubated fantasy of those who either can't or won't think for themselves. It ought to be clear to the meanest of intelligences that Apple
Here, I bought you a gift [amazon.com].
Lame excuse (Score:2)
Just copy the downloaded Lion to a thumb drive and install it on all the corporate computers. If anything, it's easier than windows. Complaining about each person downloading it is retarded. You only need to download it one time, copy it to a drive and use it all over the place. IT, once again, showing ignorant and lazy they can be.
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just a thought.... ... we live in a different era now. everybody knows how to download and update your machines. not just the IT guys. but everybody who actually "wants to be good at IT". This is the headache for administrators. Not the machines they can safely administer anyway.
Having a good leadership man in an engineering department however is very rare.
Snap! (Score:2)
Oh wait, you were looking at your own posts.
Snap!
Not gonna happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is a company that makes its money primarily through the sale of boutique computer and electronics equipment. Their equipment happens to need an OS. Sure, there are some higher end applications for video and music that have created a niche market, but at the moment they make their money on selling trendy computers and electronics to trendy people at trendy prices.
Enterprise IT is different. Computers stay in use until they're depreciated or until they're nonviable. IT departments aren't interested in upgrading, and do it in waves, usually skipping entire generations of hardware and OSes because they don't fit the support model. IT departments also don't like variation and work hard to buy literally one model of computer for as absolutely long as possible, again, skipping generations of machines until latching on to the next long-term purchase model. It's the ONLY way to make support over a large number of machines (sometimes as much as many as 5000 to a technician like where I work) even close to possible.
Apple continually pushes everyone to go get the latest and greatest every time a new iteration of a product comes out. Got that iPad six months ago? Come get the iPad 2! Got that Mac Book? Come get the Mac Book Pro! 10.5? That's ANCIENT! Come buy 10.7!
Apple's business plan is highly successful, but only in the market they've built for themselves. They have no interest in licensing their OS out to run on hardware not their own, and with their upgrade strategy, they can't make significant inroads into Enterprise IT.
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Apple's business plan is highly successful, but only in the market they've built for themselves.
Isn't that the same with every successful company, or at least what every company strives for? For a "successful" business plan whereby they're successful in their niche? Apple has never been after the business market - BUT - They're being drawn in. Both the iPhone and iPad are making significant inroads into businesses. Whether that was/is Apple's plan or not. I know one heck of a lot of management people who have ditched their Blackberrys for iPhones, and I'm seeing exec's who want to use their iPad and
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Apple continually pushes everyone to go get the latest and greatest every time a new iteration of a product comes out. Got that iPad six months ago? Come get the iPad 2! Got that Mac Book? Come get the Mac Book Pro! 10.5? That's ANCIENT! Come buy 10.7!
...and Microsoft doesn't? It used to be you'd have bi-yearly updates to Office. Did you think they were releasing them that often because they love us?
Also, with the exception of the gap between XP and Vista, Microsoft has had a new consumer OS every 2-3 years. Windows 3.0 in 1990, 3.1 in 1993, 95 in 1995, 98 in 1998, ME in 2000, XP in 2001, Vista in 2007, 7 in 2009, and 8 in 2011 (aka later this year).
The trend exists on the Workstation/Professional side of things, too, with larger than normal gaps betw
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:4, Informative)
I find your comment ironic:
Enterprise IT is different. Computers stay in use until they're depreciated or until they're nonviable.
My four year old Macbook is still viable and in use. Apple hardware tends to be viable for a good long while. Not forever, Leopard finally EOLed the PowerPC generation hardware, and Lion is apparently now EOLing the first generation of Intel processors, but in general it last s a good long while and will run everything released till it EOLs. Unlike Windows upgrades (Windows 7 excepted here, it really is more efficient than Vista, and not much more resource hungry than XPSP3) , new version of MacOS tend to make old Macs run better even. Even on the consumer electronics level, my Dad is using my wife's old iPhone 3G quite happily. Of course Apple would prefer you buy a new computer, phone, and tablet every time they release one, Dell would prefer you buy everything they sell too. It's hardly required though.
IT departments also don't like variation and work hard to buy literally one model of computer for as absolutely long as possible, again, skipping generations of machines until latching on to the next long-term purchase model.
One of the biggest weaknesses people love to cite on Apple hardware for power users is their refresh cycle. A particular line is usually refreshed every 18-24 months. So, for instance, the Air line was just refreshed. That means that for the next year or more, the four options for "MacBook Air" are going to stay more or less the same. It's a pain in the ass when you want a new laptop and you know they're about to do a refresh so you either have to wait or buy hardware that'll be "old" in a couple months when they do a refresh; but it ought to be great for IT according to your theory.
Also, one of the reasons that IT departments do what you say they do is to keep images consistent. Drivers and software support must be maintained by keeping hardware the same. MacOS doesn't have that problem because all the drivers you need are loadable kernel modules that are on every install. I could clone my MacBook to an image file, and put that image on a Mac Pro's drive. The Mac Pro will boot and perform normally. Linux is similar by the way. Most of the distro vendors compile the vast majority of drivers the system is likely to need as loadable modules. Unless you've got some really strange hardware, you can generally image a Linux system, use the image on a completely different system, and be fine.
Apple and Corporate IT don't get along, and for a lot of very good reason (and some bad ones), some of which the article points out. Your reasons though are completely bunk. If anything Apple products are particularly suited to Enterprise IT by the standards you list here. Apple makes it money on consumers, and isn't like to change its policies to accommodate corporate IT. So the irony is that your premise is right, but your reasons aren't.
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You forgot cost.
Every time someone here brings up macs the director asks them for the ROI. In a business environment there is nothing to justify the greatly increased cost.
With virtualization and Citrix we're back to the mainframe model. Desktops are closer to terminals these days than fully functional machines.
Summary is wrong or misinformed (Score:4, Informative)
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Yea, because in a company with thousands of desktops we want to physically touch every computer that needs an upgrade.
What is this, 1990?
Business IT pro don't want to investigate (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has pretty good enterprise tools, directory support, image deployment. What I have noticed in my organization is that Windows admins simply don't want to investigate. We have an Apple rep (engineer) that gives free classes on anything we want and still the Windows admins complain Lion needs a 3rd party (expensive) full disk encryption, special programs to integrate with Active Directory and can't be imaged.
Re:Business IT pro don't want to investigate (Score:4, Interesting)
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Ah but that's bullshit in and of itself. You extend the AD schema... ONCE... and you can plug the workgroup manager into it and do apple-equivalent of group policy management on all the machines. The apple kit binds out of the box, and will do authentication, password changes and everything. There are only two points of difficulty that I've seen so far: DFS support is, for lack of a better word, shit. You can get DAVE but fuck that, so you plug the mac's onto the
Why can't iphone users change their email sigs? (Score:2)
Almost everyone I know who uses an iPhone has no clue on how to change their email signature. I find it irritating that all of their emails contain an ad for iphone and whatever carrier they happen to use.
I know, editing a signature is a tough technical task for most iphone users.... or are they just bragging about how cool they are to have an iphone?
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As usual, blame the manager, not the OS (Score:3, Insightful)
When, for instance, did apple fix their OS to use windows server print queues without locking the AD user account when their password changed? 10.6, that's when.
Please, this issue was over ten years ago - where is the apple equivalent of AD, or group policies? They've had ELEVEN YEARS. And that's just three examples - so please slashdot, enough with the fanboy ignorance articles.
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The Apple equivalent of GPO is Managed Preferences. This has long been delivered via directory services, but Lion also allows you to deliver it with MDM solutions.
Uh, what makes you think Apple cares... (Score:3)
about businesses? Apple is a consumer electronics company. This topic comes up every few years. It's like Apple is supposed to care about businesses when the majority of their revenue comes from consumers. The notion is entirely misplaced. At best Apple accommodates business customers or perhaps more accurately Apple tries to make it easy for their customers, consumers, to do work too.
yes and no (Score:3)
Well-behaved LAN client != Managed client (Score:4, Interesting)
Well-behaved LAN client != Managed client
Until OS X takes on or even implements active management of clients at even a fraction of the level Windows does, it will not be viable in corporate/enterprise enviornments.
With Active Directory and Windows management capabilties, Microsoft has always focused on enterprise/business customers and an increasingly seamless system. Windows client/server environments self maintain, and offer a vast number of features that it is impossible to even replicate on OS X.
The world is no longer just well-behaved clients that work well with file shares and printers, and hasn't been since the early 90s, when Novel didn't grasp this evolution either. The transition was first to application server technologies, then centralized technologies that allowed computing power to stay local and offer a lot of features to the users/client and yet behave with the ease of agnostic terminal computing.
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Not trolling, just interested as to what you see as missing.
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Until OS X takes on or even implements active management of clients at even a fraction of the level Windows does
Apple Managed Preferences. One can even deploy them from non-Apple LDAP servers.
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apple needs to make some hardware changes for busi (Score:2)
apple needs to make some hardware changes for business use like.
* Needs to have some kind of hardware / software road map
* Mini and Imac's need to easy to open at least being able get to the HDD
* Let Business send in systems for warranty work with out a HDD in side
* Better pricing VS dell and others at least for big orders of hardware
* allow some OS downgrades on new hardware
* App store for business
* smaller OS update downloads
* some kind of desktop mid tower or at least a easy to open mac mini system
* Let
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Needs to have some kind of hardware / software road map
Why? What use it that? Current desktop systems will suffice, plan for three years of use. Why do you NEED to know what else is coming?
Mini and Imac's need to easy to open at least being able get to the HDD
I'm not sure how it gets any easier that screwing off the bottom of a Mini to get to HD and RAM. That changed a few years ago...
Let Business send in systems for warranty work with out a HDD in side
That would be useful, are you sure Apple disallows
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Why? What use it that? Current desktop systems will suffice, plan for three years of use. Why do you NEED to know what else is coming?
I'd say it's more about knowing what is going away. Over the life of an installation you are likely to need to add or replace some systems and you want to be sure of having something appropriate to replace them with?.
First it was the xserve, now it's the macbook and the optical drive in the mini. Can you really reccomend apple knowing that the products you have built your system arround could either be dropped completely or have important features dropped at any time with little warning?
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Needs to have some kind of hardware / software road map
Why? What use it that? Current desktop systems will suffice, plan for three years of use. Why do you NEED to know what else is coming?
Budgets. And PHBs - The people who control how the money is spent. If you don't understand this, you've never worked in a business that's hesitant about Macs.
Let MAC OS server run on ANY VM
That would be good, not sure what the license is like on that now... it would make a lot of sense since they don't have the XServe anymore.
Only licensed, supported VM is VMware 5 which says it requires host OS *and* guest OSes to be running on Xserves. Which flat out sucks.
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business PC's and servers are like selling coke cans in a supermarket. there is no profit and it's done for branding only. that $500 laptop or desktop is almost no profit for HP or Dell. they make money on the server hard drives and other IT gear they also sell. like a $3000 starter fiber switch that goes to $30,000 after you buy all the licenses.
apple on the other hand wants to make a 30% or so gross profit on every device they sell.
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I dont really care about any of that. If Apple wants their equipment blessed by IT, they need to have the following:
A) some way of dynamically mapping network shares; at logon would be nice.
B) some way of controlling updates from the server
C) some way of issuing security and password policies, from the server
D) Centralized LDAP integration
E) some method of pusing software from the server would be nice
Basically, without a method to configure the Mac from where I sit at my remote terminal, Macs remain a phen
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They already have all that, you ignorant ass-hat.
And have for at least 5 years now.
Want to not be ignorant? Try reading the docs on Mac OS X Server.
FUD? (Score:2)
The decision to release OS10.7, or Lion, for download only is hardly going to endear Apple to IT managers who need to conserve network resources.
Uhm, except that instructions for creating a boot disc from the first download are all over the 'net? And in one month or less Apple will be selling thumb drives with boot system & Lion installer preloaded? So what was the point of this post?
Yes, I would like to virtualize OS X on non-Apple hardware, and would be willing to pay good money to do so. But that's not enough to redeem this worthless piece of shit post.
Newsflash: Apple couldn't care less (Score:2)
Apple is busy making scads of money in the consumer space. Enterprise IT is a "nice to have", but not a "gotta have" for Apple. Sure Lion is initially available as a download only. And no IT department with any brains will install Lion right away to begin with. That all said, it's easy to download it once, then make it available for mass deployment (just pay the license fees as if you were downloading it a ton for starters - there's no DRM on the download). And next month it'll be shipped on USB stick (lik
Quite well behaved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, of course, there is the fact that if you want to do any sort of AD-esque control of OSX clients, Apple's advice is "Go get an OpenDirectory server". In fairness, that is pretty much exactly the same as Microsoft's response, but in an already microsoft environment, only one of those is a sunk cost(and, Apple's "server" offerings, to which their software is legally bound, are kind of a joke. Of Course IT would be happy to run some directory services off a machine that isn't even offered with redundant PSUs, and is "rack mountable" in the sense that you can put it on a shelf if you want...)
There is no point in denying the elegance of Apple's engineering, and their success in home and small-business niches is a testament to that; but institutional IT isn't frowning at your precious macbook just because we hate your creativity and want to stifle you into a beige cube drone...
Re:Quite well behaved? (Score:4, Informative)
In my own(admittedly limited) experience, supporting the ability of people's personal Macs to connect is no big deal. They are less likely that personal wintels to harbor exciting malware, they do DHCP perfectly normally, more clueful users can do 802.11x/RADIUS by manually configuring their personal local OSX accounts with their domain credentials, we advertise a few printers with Avahi for their convenience, no problem. DFS doesn't work, and browsing for windows-shared printers can be a bit flaky; but the location of the home directory shares isn't exactly a secret, and abuse isn't much of an issue so we can leave some IPP printing options open.
If it's our hardware, and expected to work automagically, though, the Macs are a comparatively massive pain in the ass, per unit. Because of the 802.11x authentication differences, AD authenticated logins on wireless need some bodging to get working(since the Macs have no native concept analogous to "machine authentication", though some script-fu can fake it, and you can't exactly authenticate against the server unless you have a connection), DFS is a no-go, any sort of user-account configuration either has to be baked into the image by modifying the home directory template or has to be handled by adding an Apple server to the mix, or involves more script-fu. Same with automatic software installs, locally cached updates, etc, etc.
There are also the tedious(but unfortunately necessary) 'hardware lifecycle' considerations. We are required to pull all drives and other storage media for physical destruction before a deactivated device leaves the site. Even the products of HP and Dell's ghastliest engineering abortions make that a 10 second job. Apple... varies... sharply in that regard.
Creative professional (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a myth in that a great many "creatives" prefer Mac. It's not that Mac is better for them, it's what they prefer to use and likely the most familiar with.
Is it a myth that business needs Windows/PC? Technically, Linux can serve in that role just fine just as Apple's Mac. The problem is the matter of compatibility and data exchange -- then matters become less about the technical reality and more about the practical reality which is overcoming problems in the easiest or most efficient way possible.
Does the poster even work for a business? (Score:2)
OS X virtualisation (Score:2)
It does offer full support, unless you're too cheap to buy Apple hardware to run it on.
The whole thing seems to boil down to a whine that the AC submitting can't run OS X on his cheap commodity hardware..
WAKE UP AC ! OS X is a means to sell Apple hardware because they are a hardware company.
Re: (Score:2)
Except the actual hardware that a certified, supported VM can run on is no longer sold. What now? I really want to know, because I want OSXS virtualized AND moveable between various VM boxes.
Network resources? (Score:2)
as far as upgrades, do the same thing we do for pcs. For instance, I have 15 identical macs and 25 identical PC. Upgrade one of each, setup as like, create an image and propagate. MS Windows is superior in some ways in that it can remotely load change profiles each time the machine is booted, but that is not important to everyone.
Only one download required (Score:5, Insightful)
The decision to release OS10.7, or Lion, for download only is hardly going to endear Apple to IT managers who need to conserve network resources.
They've already announced a volume licensing scheme [osxdaily.com] which only requires one download and everybody should know by now that the "updater" app that you download can be copied to physical media and re-used, and if you dig it contains a disc image of a good-old-fangled bootable DVD which you can use for bare metal installs. Most big IT setups will do an install on one machine of each type and then image it, anyway.
The main annoyance is not for IT departments, but for microbusinesses and people running small groups of renegade Mac users in PC centric environments, where the minimum order of 20 licenses might be a problem (although if you phrase that as "$600 for up to 20 users" it sounds more reasonable).
Most of all, IT departments would want to see the Mac OS offering full support for virtualization, on the desktop and on the server.
Ain't gonna happen. First, Occam's razor suggests that the reason they dropped XServe was that they couldn't even sell it to themselves: who's going to buy a XServe when the makers have just built a big shiny data center full of Dells?. Second, they've passed on the realistic solution, which was to license Snow Leopard Server for non-Apple hardware: at $500 a pop (or sign a volume license) it would hardly allow Dell to produce a $500 MacPro-killing minitower, but would be competetive with other server-grade software. Now that Server is a $50 add-on, that is out of the window.
Thing is, Apple has to make the Mac play nice with Windows servers if they want any business penetration. With that as a given, there's not much of a case for using OS X in your general purpose server farm when you can use Windows or Linux instead: OSX's USP is its combination of UNIX with nice GUI and the availability of MS and Adobe applications, which counts for little on a server.
While the Mac Mini and Mac Pro servers are not a replacement for proper rack-mounted server hardware, they are fine for Mac workgroups. The advantages of "proper" server hardware only cuts in when you've got a hundred of the things and the overall MTBF starts to go down.
As for this whole Apple hates business thing: so much of the business sector is a MS or Linux closed shop than any investment Apple makes is a long shot. Its main "inroad" to business in the past was its present in the DTP, Pro graphics and video arenas which was established at a time when Apple and Adobe had a head-and-shoulders lead in those markets and the PC of the day wasn't technically up to competing. That is now going to be a war of attrition. Apple main weapon now is its ability to rapidly innovate and move on to new things: that goes down a storm in the consumer arena but is not so good to businesses who like nice stable platforms, roadmaps and 5 years warning before a product is discontinued.
There are rumors that Apple will, itself, run a virtualized version of Mac OS under VMware as part of its iCloud product.
Well, OS X is Unix and Apple own it so they can install it where the hell they like. Bet its stripped down to hell, though. Chances are though, it would be just as practical to run iCloud on Linux, OpenBSD or any other Unix-a-like - just a bit of an embarrassment if your name was Apple.
Too bad Apple is going to abandon desktops (Score:3)
Too bad Apple is going to abandon desktops and their pro line software. They laid off 40 staff on the FCP team and turned it over to the iMovie people. If the FCP X fiasco is any indication, the transition not going to be clean or pretty.
Apple should have sold their desktop business and licensed their OS to someone else. They're a successful consumer electronics company trailing a part of the business they hang on to for nostalgia.
Only one supplier (Score:2)
Any medium to big sized company that thinks that it is cool to base their IT infrastructure in hardware from a single supplier and that any software you buy for that platform is tied to it is making a big mistake. Basing their software purchases on a single OS provider like Windows is enough a problem to tie you to a hardware manufacturer. At least software is something intangible that can be replicated easily, with hardware you must be ready to be able to switch providers if needed, for example: on my coun
Download argument is a red herring! (Score:2)
I can't see how this is an actual issue for most IT managers. Most shops have already been doing electronic delivery on every other OS for years.
Apple does NOT WANT business (Score:2)
I am very familiar with Apple in a business environment and have been successful using, administering, supporting and integrating Mac with a primarily Windows environment. That is not and has never really been the problem.
The real problem is hardware support.
In business, we have come to expect things like next-day-on-site for repairs and service. This is especially important for servers and laptops -- desktops not so much but still important when you need it. (And most businesses don't understand "spare"
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank God! (Score:2)
Not just Windows, not just OSX (Score:2)
Really, how many admins are actually fluent (at the competent network admin level) on more than one OS? No, I'm not talking about you, the first dozen child replies to this post who know three flavors of Linux, support Windows XP-7, and have intimate (CLI level) knowledge of the OSX network stacks - I mean one of the typical admins who's spent their entire career (sometimes exceptionally short) managing only a single OS environment.
How conducive are Apple admins to supporting the occasional Windows box? I
You are 100% WRONG (Score:2)
Corporate IT ALWAYS prefers taking electronic delivery of software so that they avoid sales tax charged when receiving physical media. We haven't received physical media for *anything* (including gigabytes of ERP software) in years.
A serious upgrade (Score:2)
Actually with the security improvements in Lion everyone should really switch. Between sandboxing applications and much better security all over, it's a really strong update that moves past Windows7 in terms of securing the desktop.
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You know what would be better? if Microsoft would make it possible to easily integrate with AD. No shit easy AD integration would be be better. I'd love it on my Linux boxes too. You've built your house on top of an uninhabited mountain and now you're complaining that there are no stores nearby. I'm quite sure the Samba guys and and the OpenLDAP guys (both of which Macs support) would love to help you out with easy AD support on both Linux and Macs.