Apple Forcing IT Shops To 'Adapt Or Die' 715
alphadogg writes "Many IT departments are struggling with Apple's 'take it or leave it' attitude, based on discussions last week at MacIT, which is Macworld|iWorld's companion conference for IT professionals. Much of the questioning following technical presentations wasn't about Apple technology or products. It was about the complexities and confusions of trying to sort out for the enterprise Apple's practices. Those practices include the use of Apple IDs and iTunes accounts, which are designed for individual Mac or iPad or iPhone users, and programs like Apple's Volume Purchase Program, which, according to Apple 'makes it simple to find, buy, and distribute the apps your business needs' and to buy custom, third-party B2B apps."
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:4, Informative)
Lets say I want a phone with a physical keyboard running iOS. I can't have it. On the other hand, I can have a wide variety of phone form factors on Android and even Windows Phone 7. Want a really thin phone with no keyboard? They've got it. Want a phone with a sliding keyboard? They've got it. Want a keyboard just on the face of the phone? They've got it. One size does not fit all.
Lets say I want a cheap computer for web browsing, e-mail and office use. If I get a PC, I can get a laptop for about $330, sure it isn't really high end, but it will do what I want. On the other hand, if I wanted to get the same thing running OS X it would cost me, what? $600 for an iPad which isn't close to a full fledged computer? Or $1,000 for a cheap Macbook?
Or lets say I want a minor customization, putting the window buttons on the left side like most people are used to. With Linux, switching the window buttons are easy, a quick Google search will tell you how to rearrange them. On the other hand, there seems to be no way to do it on a Mac. Lack of customization is what keeps me away from Chrome and also Mac OS.
Yes, Mac OS is nicely designed, but there is simply no customization. Even Windows offers more customization. After all, the operating system is there to stay out of the way, part of it being that I should be able to customize it how I want to, something that OS X doesn't give me.
Re:Apple forcing IT shops to buy elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
Not in regulated environments, they don't. Users who try to do what they want in those environments can find themselves being escorted out of the building by security with their last paycheck and a promise to have their belongings shipped to them in hand.
Leave It (Score:4, Informative)
"Take it or Leave it"?
I would choose to leave it. Apple products, while "cool" and "neat" for the individual user, don't often work well in large enterprise environments.
This is just a fact of life.
Until better management tools are made to "manage" the apple devices / environment, they will still be a secondary (or greater) choice for enterprise environments.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously, try one of Apple's products. It's not hard to see why they're so popular.
Exactly. There are plenty of top notch technical people who like Apple. I was skeptical myself until I tried their products. Now I have several, and I'm very happy. I still use and develop for Windows and Linux. There is nothing about Apple products that magically make you stupid or incapable of using other platforms. Hard core anti-Apple people are generally those who speak from, at best, second hand knowledge.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:3, Informative)
4) Go to Omni and purchase a Quantity Discount for up to 30% off. Or a Large Volume Discount for whatever price you happen to negotiate.
https://store.omnigroup.com/main/86705d974e0553dcffffffff/ [omnigroup.com]
Just like you did before.
The Mac isn't a walled garden. If software is suitable for enterprise use, then the software vendors will have a volume licensing option. The Mac App Store is designed to make finding, buying and installing apps easy for consumers. But it's not the only way of supplying Mac software.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:2, Informative)
He swore to destroy Android. He got his chinese sweatshot workers jumping to their deaths in herds. He got the apple police to kick in the front door of a journalist. He lied about the antenna.
It is a hassle... (Score:4, Informative)
Recently I had to deal with Apple's App Store. Our agency's purchasing people had no idea how to handle the App Store as the purchase has to be done from the user's computer. I spoke with an Apple government rep and he admitted that things are not set up for companies unless you're buying at least 30 (?) of something. Our purchasing folks ended up giving me the department credit card (now, there's trust!) and let me make the purchase from my cubicle. Not that hard to deal with, but certainly not standard procedure...
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:5, Informative)
I not only "tried" Apple gear and products, I have and still support them. I probably know a lot more about Linux and about MacOS than you. I guided a professional organization through the transition from MacOS9 to MacOSX and on. I know Apple intimately. I can tell you that what people think Apple is, often isn't the case. Most of it is hype and misplaced perceptions.
When you break a computer down to how it serves the interests and needs of a user, even you have to admit that Apple more or less requires that the user shift their needs and interests to fit within the Apple framework of products and services rather than the other way around. Apple is not particularly adaptable nor is it flexible. And if you disagree with this view, then you already disagree with Apple -- they say the same things themselves. "We tell users what they want" sound familiar?
Re:what does (Score:5, Informative)
Well the fanboys will mod you down for that.
But you are correct, itunes has no place on a corporate machine. And quite frankly the idea you need a music player to manage a phone is like saying you need a fish to manage your bicycle.
Itunes can be placed on the users home machine. Its not at all certain you can SECURELY accommodate iPhones in the work place AND prevent itunes from being installed. However there is an Apple iPhone Configuration utility [apple.com] that is supposed to do this.
I have yet to see it in use anywhere, but some claim you can use on the corporate network and still block itunes on corporate machines.
Re:Leave It (Score:4, Informative)
They have pretty much lost the school system I work for with this rigid, we know better attitude. All administrators are on the lenovo tablet now. Supports AD and computrace right out of the box. Management tools are robust and support windows environments. We're ramping up to put tablet products on the schedule for students, it'll probably be the lenovo k1 ( or its upgrade) by then.
We had a school get 38 kindle fires, didn't ask IT of course. When we described the hell they would have to go through to manage and actually buy anything on them they were hastily returned, except the 1 that was opened. They were shocked that no, you cant buy stuff for all of them at once. Yes, you'll ned 38 different email addresses. No, if they get stolen they are gone and there is jack we can do to get them back.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:1, Informative)
He's not trolling. Genuinely, most people that criticise Apple products have never actually tried them. One of the secrets of Apple's unprecedented success of the last 10 years is are the physical Apple Stores where people can go and try the products out for themselves.
Re:Apple forcing IT shops to buy elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
the license only let's it run on mac hardware (Score:4, Informative)
[The 2007 Mac OS X 10.5 Server EULA] permits OS X Server to run in a virtual machine (VM) as long as each VM is stocked with a different license and the physical system is Apple-made. The new rules don't apply to the client edition of Apple's operating system, which is still barred from being virtualized.
The Golden Master version of OS X Lion (10.7) just released to developers includes the final end-user licensing agreement (EULA) which reveals that users can run up to two additional instances of OS X Lion on their same machine without a need for extra licenses. From the 10.7 EULA:
(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software.
So apple needs to make a license change so you can use VMware on any hardware useing any base OS with out getting in license issues.
Way More Complicated Than That (Score:4, Informative)
First, let me point out that Apple's model isn't even a fantastic fit for a family, using my own experience. In order to buy music through iTunes, which we do a fair bit of, we need an AppleID. For all the convenience features (like automatically downloading music that any of us buys, for instance), we have to use the same AppleID on all the computers/devices that we use for storing the music, listening to it, or loading it on the phones/iPods/etc. And even with iCloud, this works reasonably smoothly, because you can set one AppleID for your music and another for everything else, so that you can still share music but not, say, email.
OK, but that means that our playlists are shared (which we can deal with by using folders for our individual playlists), but so is the metadata. Mostly, that's a good thing, but what if my wife and I and my sons want to all rate the same song differently? Out of luck: the rating is shared. I could go on about what should be shared and what shouldn't, but the point is that Apple does not make it easy to share some things and not others even within a family. I imagine that trying to work AppleIDs and iDevices into an enterprise must be quite the nightmare from that point of view.
There are solutions to some such problems, and certainly different IT shops have different ways of doing things, which means that for some (including my current one), it's easy while for others it's a complete nightmare. Fundamentally, if you have an IT shop where integrating is easy, there's little reason not to do it. If you'd need Apple servers, or more control over devices (say, if you're regulated, or a government entity), then you're probably out of luck and should tell users — yes, even users like the C-level types — that they're welcome to use whatever they want, but IT cannot support it.
In some cases, this means that IT shops as we are used to them will have to dramatically change to accommodate their users. And in some cases, it means that the users will have to live with the restrictions. I can see some shops moving to a model where internal users are treated like external users, except that they have access to different resources through their (untrusted) network connection to the servers. VPNs would be unnecessary: just connect to resources directly over the network, "local" or remote, and be done with it. In other words, I could see some shops moving to a model that protects the data, but not the desktop. But I think other shops will likely have to dig in their heels, not because they want to be difficult, but because they cannot allow the kinds of practices that Apple would require. (Think of trying to manage a bank's customer data when you couldn't properly audit the machines used to access that data, and then think of trying to explain that to a bureaucrat.)
But in the end, I think that the general purpose computer in a decade or so will be far less common than today. Thin client devices, tablets and the like will replace a lot of computers simply because of cost, maintenance, training and business utility advantages intrinsic to the types. And that means that IT shops will lose a lot of the control that they have now over the user experience. They'll still keep control of the centralized data stores, certainly, but that may be the extent of it for a lot of shops. And that's not necessarily a bad thing: in truth, how many users really need something as powerful and flexible as a laptop? Maybe 10% — maybe? Well, why not make things cheaper and easier for the other 90%, even if it does make IT's job harder in some ways?
Re:Apple's initial failure (Score:4, Informative)
Apple's struggles in the mid 80's were on a couple of fronts. They didn't have a compelling set of business software, and botched the launch of the Macintosh Office [wikipedia.org] with everything from slow availability to a terrible ad campaign. The Apple ][ and Mac divisions fought each other internally. And they built more expensive computers and demanded higher margins on them than their competitors, during a period where there was a massive price shake-out in the home computing market. The fundamental issue wasn't ignorance of what business users expected. It was failure to execute on delivering it, which went from product strategy mistakes to massive inventory mismanagement. John Sculley's "Odyssey" covers this period of Apple's history closely. The tried to win over the business market but just didn't do a very good job of it.
Nowadays, Apple is selling to consumers in droves and doesn't care at all about whatever traditional business IT departments want. They're not trying and failing this time; they're not even trying. The demand is coming up from individual people and pushing toward IT. In the 80's, there just wasn't enough demand to offset their production and R&D overhead.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:5, Informative)
Note the "lets say OmniGraffle".
That's why I gave you info on Omnigraffle.
Pick an app which is only distributed via the App Store. Say, the Blink SIP soft phone.
It looks like Blink will even give you a pre-configured and branded version if you want to approach them for a volume licence.
http://icanblink.com/inquiries.phtml [icanblink.com]
As I say, the Mac is no more a walled garden than Windows or Linux. Software vendors can supply you with software any way the choose to on any of those platforms. Some obviously choose to only do so via the Mac App Store, because if you're an indie developer it's so much easier. But any app that's got the potential for enterprise use is going to be supplied by the company in a form that is accessible by the enterprise.
Re:Leave It (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, don't buy this. Not one bit.
I am an engineer at a large technical government entity. Apples -- both Macs and iPhones, and recently iPads as well -- are ubiquitous. At least 30% of direct employees use Macs, and more use iPhones.
IT has Apple specialists, but they handle the approximately 200-1,000 Macs out of 500-5,000 computer seats without fuss or complaint at each one of our centers.
I'm sorry, but in the end IT is there to help the engineers and managers do their jobs. While it's true that it would be impossible for those engineers and managers to function properly without IT support, the purpose of that support is to enable their work. If I as an engineer want a Mac, I will order a Mac from the online ordering system. If it breaks, I am going to call IT and ask them to please fix it. They will fix it, because it's why they're paid.
What's more is that this was true ten years ago at my agency when I first started. I've seen chief engineers of billion dollar projects at meetings making fun of the few non-mac people around the table...quite a sight to see.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:2, Informative)
You write, "a decent CLI, but vastly overrated" about OS X.
Be honest, how well versed are you with Unix and the command line?
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:5, Informative)
You really sound like someone who's supported Windows for years, learning the little details like hashing together a program to automate your workflow.
Yet you don't have any clue about the Mac, and that makes it hard. Somehow, that's OS X's fault.
VPN issues are VPN company issues. Ask them to write the software?
There is full disk encryption. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4790 [apple.com]
What the hell is launch on startup? Google shows nothing. Launch at login is a user preference that's been around for a decade. It doesn't make the computer slow.
Never had any issues importing certificates across all those versions of OS X.
defaults settings are well documented. http://secrets.blacktree.com/ [blacktree.com]
There's also things like radmind that would probably be much better at doing what you want. But your ignorance led you astray.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:5, Informative)
The built in encryption on OSX is FileVault, and in Lion it does full disk encryption.
The preferences vs registry thing just sounds like Windows was easier for you than OSX because you know Windows. The registry is a the very worst feature of Windows, and I don't know anyone that didn't learn computing on Windows that would dream of praising it.
Re:Apple's initial failure (Score:2, Informative)
Back in the 1980's they failed to come to grips with what Business Users expected of a PC - thus Microsoft's fortunes were made.
Back in the 1980s, huh. You mean when people were still using Banyan Vines over 10Base-2 to network their DOS machines? Except for the Mac, that is, which had AppleTalk from the very beginning. Or do you mean when Microsoft released Excel for Mac OS, two years before it was available on Windows? Or when it released Word for Mac OS, four years before a native Windows version? If it took more forethought than that to succeed, I reckon Apple probably should have quit after the Apple ///. (You know... the business one?)
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:2, Informative)
If you just want to open terminal and interact with straight ports of various unix CLI programs, it'll probably work OK(unless you do something that conflicts with the OSes shipping version of something, in which case you have my condolences). If you want to make the GUI layer behave with your bash-fu, things get more exciting....
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:4, Informative)
OSX machines can be administered via. OSX admins or Unix admins. Trying to admin a Unix, be it Solaris, AIX, Linux or OSX like a Windows machine is genuine a load of suck.
1) OSX versions have a 2 year lifespan. You cannot write your instructions in typical Windows "click here" style.
2) FileVault included does Full disk encryption on OSX. Prior to 10.7 PGP WDE worked fine.
3) The way to script changes in you would click through is using the AppleScript browser and automater. You can read off from there the various changes possible. Other than that, yes you need to use defaults and you can google that stuff.
4) The way you are supposed to do what you were trying to do is with OSX server which offers automatic admin and config.
Re:Why Apple is good (Score:5, Informative)
OS X 10.5 and later on Intel is official Open-Group-certified UNIX. It's not "built on top of UNIX", it is UNIX.
Re:Apple forcing IT shops to buy elsewhere (Score:4, Informative)
Apple is still a niche player.
Yes it is, so long as your definition of "niche player" is "the biggest maker of PCs in the world".
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/apple-becomes-worlds-biggest-maker-of-computers-thanks-to-ipad/ [nytimes.com]
Re:Apple in enterprise is hard (Score:4, Informative)