Forrester: 'It's time to repeal prohibition' on Macs in the enterprise - Page 3

Why? Especially in business - the iMac with the power cable and ethernet cable, or the new Mac notebooks teamed with the thunderbolt displays are awesome, clutter free workstations.

Why would you want to perpetuate the morass of cables and ignored towers under desks that collect dust, dirt and much worse?

I wanted a IIci class min-tower for a long time to provide flexibility in GPU cards - but with thunderbolt, there is really no reason to not just settle on an iMac, or a portable with the thunderbolt display.

I just recently got a 15" MacBook Air with the Thunderbolt display for my docking station and the combo is simply amazing. And it will easily last twice as long as the PC/Docking station/Monitor combination it's replacing, which makes it 1/3 cheaper over it's life time.

And it looks and works a heck of a lot better too

Only if virtualized on Apple hardware - which is pretty superfluous since Apple doesn't sell server class hardware any more

That's his (very valid) point.

Agreed. Besides, I had viruses on my old Mac IIci running System 7. Back when the Mac had far less marketshare (and when there were less people versed in the 'art' of writing malware). If there were hundreds of virus strains back when the platform had about 4% penetration, how come there are zero now that it's got much higher penetration?


Connectivity to Exchange seems to be fine. However it's the end-user tools that just don't have the functionality. Yes I can send and receive email, receive (and respond to and create) shared calendar events, but besides those basics, there's plenty of functionality that's missing.

So yes, without buying Outlook I can participate in an Exchange-server environment, but it won't be the best experience.


The problem is that so many IT environments have bought into the Microsoft realm where standards do not exist. Microsoft will take cross-platform standards and 'embellish' them to the point where they no longer work outside of the Microsoft ecosystem (anyone remember what they did to Java before Sun successfully sued them?).

Quoting you earlier in your same post:


If you were including Mac's as a "real Windows machine" then my critique is withdrawn...

OH, really?



Mac Pro Server?

And?


Because many of the reasons IT departments have traditionally demanded control are evaporating with cloud-based and mult-OS networks?

The days of trying to draw "moats" around resources to be protected are fast ending. The strategies of old make little sense these days between application OS independence and virtualization (of OS's or individual applications).

Unfortunately that's not 'server-class' hardware. It's a desktop machine running a server operating system. For it to be server-class it would have to have redundant power supplies and network ports, and lights-out administration capabilities.

Because, duh, many of these same Apple defenders are employees of companies with these idiot IT departments. They are subjected to bass-ackwards Windows all day long, AND the inanities of the IT departments and their medieval policies.

No, Apple doesn't need enterprise. But enterprise companies would do well to consider how they need happy, productive employees. How they need to look beyond today's bottom line and think about TCO, or think strategically about such things as how they can disrupt competitors who don't move forward strategically in IT areas. Every day new, small companies begin to run circles around the big old incumbents in various industries, because they are not enslaved by some of these navel-gazing IT policies.

What about: this IT policy/excuse:
"We need quotes from 3 different companies; Apple is "proprietary", so we can't consider Apple purchases."

Why then, should those same IT purchasers dictate MS Windows and Office time after time? Compaq, HP, Dell, Acer, Sony, who cares... they all run the same crap software from the one same company. How is that a choice?

No, what these Apple defenders are after is a choice. They are willing to purchase and use their own hardware and software, they are willing to take care of their own support.... why? to be more productive in the workplace.

To deny that, or to deny that there is any win-win to be gained here, well, that's just stupid and short-sighted. If IT can't work out a way to make it happen, they should be fired.

I'm the only one in my office of ~35 with a Mac. A 27" i7 iMac to be exact. Everybody is jealous.

But still, my biggest pet peeve before iCloud and now afterwards is email syncing. My email at work on my iMac, and at home on my iMac, mini, and MacBook air all sync fine. My iPad and iPhone sync fine. They do NOT sync with each other. It is maddening while trying to search for a sent email on a different device. If I had a .me account, great. I don't. And businesses have their own email addresses- so until they can sync something as easy as email... Who cares about a "business ecosystem".

Since the Apple ecosystem is a walled garden, I'd guess that using Macs in enterprise works best when the whole company goes Apple. The "it just works" idea works as long as it's all under Apple control.

But it's probably quite a headache to integrate Macs in an unfriendly corporate IT environment, hence IT's reluctance. From Apple's perspective, it's like integrating your beautiful walled garden with the unruly jungle next door.

Oh, I just double-checked my mail accounts on my devices -- I am vaguely aware that I once had an issue like yours (sent mail was only showing on the device or Mac that that particular message was actually sent from).

Works fine. I can see Sent messages sent on other devices and Macs. Have you checked your preferences for the IMAP mail account? -- under the "Mailbox Behaviours" tab, check that the checkbox for Sent is check marked to "Store sent messages on the server."

Well, yes it's a headache...
It's a headache for the Mac user precisely because IT is unfriendly, nay, downright hostile.

It's a headache for the IT support personnel, because they know that, once a tipping point has been reached, they will be out of jobs.

But, as for getting the job done, no, no worse a headache than normal. Despite the headaches arising from the hostile environment and IT police harassment, there is plenty of sunshine in job satisfaction, productivity level, and things that just work, that you will want to sing anyway.

Jungle or zen garden, Mac users can adapt; they are a guerrilla workforce at heart. It's the jungle inhabitants that will fail to adapt to a changing world and die. They need to climb down out of their trees.


Not really. I have co-workers who mail me Word docs and ask me to "do some magic" on them. I don't have Office. I open them in Pages (20-dollars), export it to Word and send it to the other co-worker that needed it in the first place... but they couldn't open it because they had conflicting versions of Office or Windows, or whatever the inevitable, life-sucking issue is this week (yawn).

It has been blindingly obvious since the Mac was released in 1985 that IT departments have been pro-Microsoft and anti-Apple just to protect their budgets, head counts and skill base. CEO's have been conned by these technological dinosaurs who still believe that 'users' are ignorant fools who can't do anything without one of their support staff standing over their shoulders and keeping their PCs working and malware free. It is nothing short of a scandal which has allowed Microsoft and cyber criminals to prosper, while driving many PC users to distraction with cheap and substandard hardware and software.

It is high time that employees in all companies insist that they be allowed to use Macs at work if they wish, and that IT departments are instructed to instal Mac-compatible infrastructure and train their staff to support them in the rare occasions that they are needed. The result will not only be cost savings and better security for the business, but reduced employee frustration with crappy business tools.

Dude- there are IT guys discussing business aspects. Everything is different and it's apparent you don't deal with large scale business- you don't even know what Active directory is. I know you think you know everything about everything, but guess what- you don't. So please stop talking just to try to prove a point that didn't exist. It's annoying.

I'd love to know why you're so upset about someone trying to learn about server infrastructure and the needs of the market, but I don't really care that much.


You can virtualize OS X Server. He didn't know that. Boom, it helped a little.

Brilliant! I just need to be smarter.

Not that I should respond to this, but I will. Your philosophy- if it isn't apple, it's wrong. If it is apple, it's the only way.

Please tell me where I'm wrong.

What about clients?

You buy 1000 mbp's and have image them for users in a corporate setting with software, etc. and get rid of garage band and other software. How do you do it?

Took my pc to IT in July for yet another repair. Used my research grant funded MBP to access corporate system via Citrix. More than 3 months later and I never have been back to pick up the pc.

On a fundamental level. I'd ask you to just go back and try to explain where you're getting that nonsense, but I don't really care, and I'm not sure you'd do a very good job of it.

Apple is not infallible. Not by a long shot.

Windows user: why would I want to sync with my desktop when corporate sync through the microsoft exchange server; with little to no effort.

I do call you crazy. Why both, exactly? Have some Windows NT4 machines still kicking around or something?


Both software packages Apple MacOSX supports fluently. I use Exchange with Apple Mail and it works perfectly - my dad has a C2D 24" iMac and his work does not allow external email clients to connect (web and local ethernet clients only) and Exchange web mail works flawlessly in Safari. Active Directory has been in the Mac for quite a while.


Macmini and MacPro. Big Xeon towers, I think a lot of people would be happy with that.


They got rid of Xserve because it wasn't selling, not because the fruit said "screw the business users". Entourage was used before Outlook on the Mac, and before Entourage it was Outlook.
MS just changed the name for some strange reason.

Its six and two threes, really. Both do the same thing.

The MS RDP client for OS X is missing several features, one being being the TS Gateway support.

Symantec Altiris (Deployment Server) supports Windows, OS X, and Linux clients for deployment of software, and (I believe for the Mac) imaging.

Well, it's not about you. I can imagine that some people can do that. For others, there may be little to no effort on their parts, but the stage has been set by a whole cadre of MS Certifieds whose sole occupation is to make it possible and maintain its possibility.

But, I can imagine that some people have a life outside the corporate office, that they might have a spouse or family member they want to synch with, and they may own more than one device privately themselves.

And, there are countless small businesses and non-profits and schools and institutions that are looking for inexpensive, easy to configure and maintain systems that don't require paying a whole department of cheery chaps with MS certifications, nor paying the onerous licensing fees to MS for every little feature or new user or added access point or whatever.

There are stories every day about how this very idea you are dismissing actually turns out to be a godsend for individuals and small operations everywhere. They had no idea what was possible with so little equipment and so little software, and for so little time, effort and money. It also helps them to compete with the big boys in their industries asymmetrically; in many areas they are able to leapfrog over different technologies despite "accepted wisdom" to the contrary.

Businesses need to keep running. If need be, when a monitor dies you can go many places and buy one and be back running within an hour. Sure you can connect a second monitor to an iMac to keep running but then you have just thrown out your argument of a clutter free workstation.

To replace that dead monitor on an iMac you can't use the computer while it is being done. Are you going to keep spare iMacs lying around the office?

How do these organizations manage laptops? Same deal.

How often does a monitor die? The last computer monitor that's died on me was in the CRT days, and that was a refurb from a second tier brand, KDS or something like that. Even CRTs last nearly a decade. I've not owned an LCD that long, but none of those have died yet.

If you have hundreds of installations, any decent organization should have a few spare machines pre-imaged, regardless of brand. With an iMac, it's easy to transfer the user's drive data to a spare machine in half an hour using target disk mode (doesn't require a monitor), fix the old one when it's convenient and the old one is ready for the next swap-out.

Exactly. The iMac argument becomes moot when you realise almost everyone will most likely be running a laptop as their only machine, which in the world of portable everything (still waiting for the portable kitchen sink) is becoming increasingly more common. I'm in the head office with 5 other people, 5 of us are on laptops and the book keeping guy is on the desktop.

I'm on a MacBook Pro (developer) and the IT Manager (my boss) is using a Asus with Linux. If either of these machines goes wobbly then we'll be screwed because these are our personal machines and we'll need to get them repaired, but the windows laptops just sit in a cupboard - literally.

Broken? Get one out the cupboard.
Heck, we even have an IBM X336 in the cupboard for some reason.

that's why you go to the da cloud if you're a small office. pay the fee for Office 365 and hosted exchange and don't bother to buy any of your own hardware or software. i know someone that sets up Windows servers for small businesses and i always tell him to just tell his clients to go to da cloud.

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*the
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Jokes aside.
Using SAS can be a benefit to a business but it can also be a curse. Yes you don't have to maintain your own hardware, but if something goes tits up with the software provider then you're stuck loosing money every second. If you also want to expand your software's capabilities to meet your business needs, then it is very likely that you will not be able to extend your software beyond its default set your originally purchased and it will become a hindrance - you would have to use a service such as Azure that would most likely be as expensive if not more expensive than owning your own hardware due to fees associated.

With your own hardware you can expand, tweak, twiddle, chop, change and kick it around to suit your needs.

Linux for the servers and the Macintosh for the desktops. Powerful servers for cheap and capable workstations with proven long life spans.

Most enterprise IT folks are against Apple because they haven't kept up with all the changes. Many Enterprise IT folks have a strong distaste of Apple and their products stemming directly from the bad years at Apple prior to Steve Jobs return and restructuring. Mac OS X didn't ship until 2000/2001 and it's come a long way from even Jaguar days.

What they don't know staggers the mind...

1. Their view of Apple stems from Mac OS 7-9 days where the system was bizarre (AppleTalk, etc.) and locked down in ways that would make a Geek cringe
2. They don't know Mac OS X is really Unix under the hood (most enterprise IT folks are very familiar with Linux and UNIX). Show them Apache, SSH, top, ps, vim, emacs, etc.
3. They don't know that Mac OS X can talk to Exchange 2007 / 2010
4. They don't know they can join ActiveDirectory easily (10.7.2 fixed an issue in 10.7.0/1)
5. They don't know you can dual boot a Mac with Windows
6. They don't know you can run VMWare Fusion or Parallels to run Windows in a VM
7. They don't know Citrix has a Mac OS X Client
8. They don't know how much faster Mac OS X boots than even Win7 64bit. They are completely unaware of how much smoother everything is in general
9. They don't know they can enterprise manage Mac's using JAMF Casper Suite
10. They don't know they can run Casper Suite on a Linux / UNIX server that can run Java Tomcat & MySQL server. (i.e. they don't need a Mac server at all)
11. They don't know about Apple Remote Desktop
12. They might not know how good TeamViewer is on the Mac (cross platform remote control)
14. They don't know how much more secure Mac OS X is than Windows, they are polluted by the FUD being spread whenever some minor issue hits the media

Enterprise IT is somewhat familiar with iPads (only because Exec's demanded it), when iOS 5 shipped an alert went out stating that it fixes 96 vulnerabilities iniOS 4. So they made an urgent demand to upgrade all iPhones and iPads when Apples servers were overwhelmed and many users were getting bricked as a result. Later the next day, they had run some penetration testing and determined that the vulnerabilities were nowhere near as bad a risk as they first assumed.

If your enterprise is not supporting iOS devices yet, make sure they know about Good.com's Good for Enterprise server. It is very close to BlackBerry levels of security and new features are pouring out of Good every couple of months. Good runs on iOS and Android phones and is quickly stealing business from RIM / BlackBerry.

That was one of the big reasons for me heading down the Macintosh route. UNIX.
I love Linux but the desktop variants annoy me to no end, but boy how I love to rip the thing apart when setting up a new server.

The biggest issue I have with Microsoft windows is the Registry.
Linux, Unix and the Mac get lovely little package receipts, Windows gets the registry. I'm an educated man, I know my way around a Microsoft Windows environment, but the registry is so flaky that I've managed to brick a couple of computers because of it.
Then you have the abysmal user permissions - or the lack thereof. I used to hack the XP machines in college by doing a couple of exploits, and these were the machines set up by the "Microsoft Certified" IT department. I do wonder how shocked they were to find that all the computers in the upper library terrace had a nice set of tits appear on screen when you started the computer. (I was 17, sue me )
Me and a few friends hacked Quake 2 onto one of the servers to play network games as well. Fun times for all!

The reason for Microsoft's popularity is nothing short of brainwashing, as extreme as that sounds - go into a business with a clueless exec or an IT Manager who practically wears the windows flag on novelty underwear and they will not 'want', but 'need' MS Office, Windows and Exchange in order to function. I'm the only one in the office with Microsoft Office, everyone else has LibreOffice. No compatibility issues at all - I actually proffer LibreOffice calc when dealing with CSV files - at least there I can choose the damn character set.

What I don't get is why Windows has a termainal shell at all. In a *nix system its the swiss army knife of every possible command you could ever want, need and dream of. In Windows its just... there. Anything useful in the DOS Prompt has a GUI equivalent. Using a command line version, especially with DOS Syntax, just seems like such a roundabout way of completing a given task.

Standards are another issue as well, I don't need to say anymore than that - it is Microsoft, answer is obvious.

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Do the people who say "Apple doesn't care about enterprise" or "Apple doesn't need enterprise" or "Enterprise is bad for Apple" also think that Apple is not an enterprise itself? Do they think that a company as large as Apple is simply run from a single Mac Mini sitting in a closet? Or their entire network consists of some Airport base stations? There is much more to a running a company's IT than simply putting a computer on everyone's desk. That's why I would like to see details of what hardware and software Apple uses in all aspects of their daily operations. Especially their back-office operations such as email server, file server, web server, accounting, HR, and logistics. These details would also help companies which are currently struggling with supporting mixed platform environments. They can just see how Apple does it. The only reason Apple would have for not providing these details is that they want to maintain this public perception of being 100 percent Mac and Mac OS when in reality they also use other platforms to a significant degree, but are unwilling to admit it.

Why does the OS need to talk to Exchange? Surely that is an application concern?


Shooting the cost right up when you have to then purchase a Windows licence


Shooting the cost right yp when you have to then purchase a Windows licence (and VMWare or Parallels)


Depending on your Citrix environment it can be a pain to use.


I don't turn off my work PC, why should booting time be a concern?


Doesn't that tool only support OSX and iOS clients? Does that mean you need to purchase multiple management tools for various OS's, an alternative would be to run the Symantec Altiris suite, which supports multiple platforms including OSX


They don't? Or you think they don't?


??? Not sure where you are going here?


Not sure where you are going here either? Haven't had a virus on Windows for a very long time, work or home.

I would swap out 1 to 2 dead (LCD) monitors a week, some would be over 5 years old, some would be just out of warranty

Ah, that's getting interesting. Out of a pool of how many actively used monitors?

the company i work for is global, big, lots of sites, manufacturing plants, call centres, data centres, lots of people, lots of investment in core applications on windows and unix (sun)

i use my own mbp when travelling, and leave the dell laptop bolted to my desk, *most* of what i need to do day to day works on the mac, but a few things don't, so i have to resort to vmware or wait until i can use the deskbound laptop

the it dept. supports rim/android/iphone/windows smartphones, and if someone plugs a non-windows device into the network the world doesn't come to an end, the it people i know are generally positive about macs, but policy is windows

as a 10+ year mac user, i'd love more formal support, but the fact is apple has abandoned the enterprise, aside from personal computing it has nothing fit for it, and judging by the last few years' behaviour has no intention of playing anything more than this peripheral role

remember the xserve...

"Customers looking to upgrade, replace, or supplement existing Xserve systems with new Apple hardware have two options:
• Transition to Mac Pro with Snow Leopard Server
• Transition to Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server"

translation: apple doesn't want to be in the datacentre, please call hp/dell/cisco/ibm or some other company that can handle it, because apple can't

ms offers end to end capability from the edge to the datacentre, and supports it's stuff for a long time after end of sale (an awful lot longer if you are big enough!), it's a no brainer for the large enterprise customer, and business application developers will continue to give priority to windows because that's the market

most people in large companies have years of experience with windows, using it, supporting it, loathing it, in my organization the application development/replacement and user training costs of switching to mac would be horrendous - that's why it's not easy, nothing to do with obstructive it people, they're just following company policy and going with the best available option