There are a few reasons I can think of why Macs are slowly, and not rapidly, gaining a foothold in IT.
1. Legacy software needs to be supported in the enterprise.
2. For all the desktops, there is a server somewhere rolling out patches. These servers are becoming virtual servers very rapidly. There is a physical server somewhere, however, running with redundant power supplies, multiple cpus, and gobs of ram. Apple makes no such product to replace these servers....when they did they had no 24x7/NBD support. The SLAs were consumer level.
3. Exchange. There is no functional, proven equivalent on OS X. It runs on Windows Server, period. And Exchange is rock solid, no matter how you feel about Outlook.
4. Apple abandons their software too quickly for IT. Once a new OS is released, the old one no longer exists. It makes IT nervous to roll out patches, much less be forced into mixing OSes.
I expect this to slow a bit (#4) now that OS X is 64-bit and on Intel. The next few releases shouldn't be as tumultuous as the last 4 (Tiger-Leopard-SL-Lion.)
Just my thoughts....
I have been using MBPs since the first one came out in 2006. With Fusion, I can run everything clients run, all in one spot. It has given me the ability to see exactly what any client is looking at, from Windows 2000 through 7, and I also run Lion and Ubuntu. It helps to see the screen as your client sees it when you are troubleshooting issues, and testing software.
Apple does security updates for the two OS' prior to the current one…
What businesses want isn't just some security updates but support for legacy HW and apps. This by definition will add substantial bloat to an OS and makes MS's job much harder than Apple's in creating a new OS. That is what Apple doesn't do.
Besides that, businesses don't like that there is only one vendor in which to buy machines running a specific desktop OS. For these reasons Windows has dominated in a field where Apple never really tried to play.
With the embedded market and the move to more open web based computers things have shifted quite a bit allowing Apple's wares to permeate many facets to the Enterprise, but when it comes to PCs Windows philosphies still rule for the reasons mentioned above.
What businesses want isn't just some security updates but support for legacy HW and apps. This by definition will add substantial bloat to an OS and makes MS's job much harder than Apple's in creating a new OS. That is what Apple doesn't do.
Besides that, businesses don't like that there is only one vendor in which to buy machines running a specific desktop OS. For these reasons Windows has dominated in a field where Apple never really tried to play.
With the embedded market and the move to more open web based computers things have shifted quite a bit allowing Apple's wares to permeate many facets to the Enterprise, but when it comes to PCs Windows philosphies still rule for the reasons mentioned above.
Great post. Exactly what I was trying to say...only better
Where I work (a company with between 500 and 1000 employees, skewed towards PhD types), there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with IT. ... .
Many universities in Oz went PC in the mid 1990s. My dept (Chem) fought off the MS tragics in ITS and kept their precious Macs but others went MS only. The latter regretted it right from the first then the second, etc. virus attack. Last trip back to Oz I visited a number of universities and the Mac is back in a big way - dominating in the computer rooms and among the students. Eventually the Mac will permeate mainstream business as well - it only makes sense (I've got a Win 7 computer set up for particular jobs/applications but it's total frustrating piece of crap as a user experience; my wife won't touch it even though she'd only used Wintel PCs before we met five years ago).
Please refrain from implying that Entourage was anywhere near what Outlook was/is. Entourage was slow and useless, and nowhere near a functional equivalent of Outlook on Windows.
You see, people in this forum have just been saying "entourage is crap, move on" and then don't give any reason as to why. I used Entourage for 4 years without any bother as an email client, task list, scheduler and calendar in 2 different universities and at my previous job. The read receipts were backwards to implement and the HTML formatting when typing and forwarding mails being less than ideal from what I remember. The only thing I didn't like was lack of an "out of office" feature.
So, will someone tell me what was missing in entourage that you were in dire need of?
Incidentally Outllook has been available on Macs for years - its part of the Mac Office Suite.
Just because it has the same name does not mean it has all the same functionality. Check the Mac blogs on Microsoft's web site and see all the complaints about lack of feature parity.
Quote:
Check with CRM because they may have a Mac version of what you need. I know that they are making a big effort converting their stuff for iPads.
An iPad is not the same as a Mac computer running Mac OS.
Comments
1. Legacy software needs to be supported in the enterprise.
2. For all the desktops, there is a server somewhere rolling out patches. These servers are becoming virtual servers very rapidly. There is a physical server somewhere, however, running with redundant power supplies, multiple cpus, and gobs of ram. Apple makes no such product to replace these servers....when they did they had no 24x7/NBD support. The SLAs were consumer level.
3. Exchange. There is no functional, proven equivalent on OS X. It runs on Windows Server, period. And Exchange is rock solid, no matter how you feel about Outlook.
4. Apple abandons their software too quickly for IT. Once a new OS is released, the old one no longer exists. It makes IT nervous to roll out patches, much less be forced into mixing OSes.
I expect this to slow a bit (#4) now that OS X is 64-bit and on Intel. The next few releases shouldn't be as tumultuous as the last 4 (Tiger-Leopard-SL-Lion.)
Just my thoughts....
I have been using MBPs since the first one came out in 2006. With Fusion, I can run everything clients run, all in one spot. It has given me the ability to see exactly what any client is looking at, from Windows 2000 through 7, and I also run Lion and Ubuntu. It helps to see the screen as your client sees it when you are troubleshooting issues, and testing software.
4. Apple abandons their software too quickly for IT. Once a new OS is released, the old one no longer exists.
Apple does security updates for the two OS' prior to the current one?
Apple does security updates for the two OS' prior to the current one?
Not what I meant. Go online and buy a Snow Leopard MacBook Pro from Apple. Ain't happening.
Not what I meant. Go online and buy a Snow Leopard MacBook Pro from Apple. Ain't happening.
And why would a business want to buy an old OS?
Apple does security updates for the two OS' prior to the current one…
What businesses want isn't just some security updates but support for legacy HW and apps. This by definition will add substantial bloat to an OS and makes MS's job much harder than Apple's in creating a new OS. That is what Apple doesn't do.
Besides that, businesses don't like that there is only one vendor in which to buy machines running a specific desktop OS. For these reasons Windows has dominated in a field where Apple never really tried to play.
With the embedded market and the move to more open web based computers things have shifted quite a bit allowing Apple's wares to permeate many facets to the Enterprise, but when it comes to PCs Windows philosphies still rule for the reasons mentioned above.
What businesses want isn't just some security updates but support for legacy HW and apps. This by definition will add substantial bloat to an OS and makes MS's job much harder than Apple's in creating a new OS. That is what Apple doesn't do.
Besides that, businesses don't like that there is only one vendor in which to buy machines running a specific desktop OS. For these reasons Windows has dominated in a field where Apple never really tried to play.
With the embedded market and the move to more open web based computers things have shifted quite a bit allowing Apple's wares to permeate many facets to the Enterprise, but when it comes to PCs Windows philosphies still rule for the reasons mentioned above.
Great post. Exactly what I was trying to say...only better
Where I work (a company with between 500 and 1000 employees, skewed towards PhD types), there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with IT. ... .
Many universities in Oz went PC in the mid 1990s. My dept (Chem) fought off the MS tragics in ITS and kept their precious Macs but others went MS only. The latter regretted it right from the first then the second, etc. virus attack. Last trip back to Oz I visited a number of universities and the Mac is back in a big way - dominating in the computer rooms and among the students. Eventually the Mac will permeate mainstream business as well - it only makes sense (I've got a Win 7 computer set up for particular jobs/applications but it's total frustrating piece of crap as a user experience; my wife won't touch it even though she'd only used Wintel PCs before we met five years ago).
Please refrain from implying that Entourage was anywhere near what Outlook was/is. Entourage was slow and useless, and nowhere near a functional equivalent of Outlook on Windows.
You see, people in this forum have just been saying "entourage is crap, move on" and then don't give any reason as to why. I used Entourage for 4 years without any bother as an email client, task list, scheduler and calendar in 2 different universities and at my previous job. The read receipts were backwards to implement and the HTML formatting when typing and forwarding mails being less than ideal from what I remember. The only thing I didn't like was lack of an "out of office" feature.
So, will someone tell me what was missing in entourage that you were in dire need of?
Incidentally Outllook has been available on Macs for years - its part of the Mac Office Suite.
Just because it has the same name does not mean it has all the same functionality. Check the Mac blogs on Microsoft's web site and see all the complaints about lack of feature parity.
Check with CRM because they may have a Mac version of what you need. I know that they are making a big effort converting their stuff for iPads.
An iPad is not the same as a Mac computer running Mac OS.