Starting on Thursday, IBM workers will be able to choose between a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or a PC when getting a new or updated workstation, according to a company-wide memo.
For anyone with half a brain and does actual work, the decision (a mac) is a obvious. Pity the uninformed that choose a Wintel machine.
Besides, that shiny new Macbook makes a great Windows machine too. I should know, I've been running Windows on my Macs since it came with Intel CPU's. So a mac gives you the solid stability and usefulness of OSX, and the ability to run Windows if you feel the need to lower your IQ.
There are plenty of IT people who would love to see that shiny Macbook reduced to nothing more than running Windows.
"You can have a Mac, as long as it runs Windows only".
This also gives IT the ability to truthfully say "yes, we support Macs".
So, I infer that the VM software is handling the Thunderbolt interface ...
I wonder what happens with Bootcamp.
VMware handles all the drivers necessary to run it as a virtual machine.
As I understand it, with Bootcamp, Apple has to develop the drivers to make it work natively on a Mac. Didn't Apple recently announce that it was not going to discontinue development of drivers for Windows 7 under Bootcamp? Only Windows 8x will be supported on new Macs?
I concur with the use of VMWare Fusion for development and build machines. In fact even when on a Wintel box all development is done using VMWare Workstation. The onerous IT policies and locked down production machines make development on virtual machines a necessity. Been that way for last 5 years at least.
IBM's pc was only ever a tiny part of its business. IBM sells mainframe computers or super computers to big businesses, letting go of its lacklustre and low-margin pc business just made sense to them. It certainly isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
It's Os X -- won't let you dual boot as far as I know. Air or MacBook Pro.
Certain jobs and programs will still be PC only. IBM has been moving folks over to Linux as well for a while.
As you may have learned reading all the posts after yours, Mac do indeed dual boot and also run stable, eminently usable virtual Windows environments simultaneously with the Mac OS. Nearly all Windows apps will run on a Mac one way or the other. Macs can also boot into Linux, that but is more difficult simply because it's Linux.
Does any of the Mac virtualization software support Thunderbolt on Windows? On Linux?
I only use Thunderbolt RAIDS for storage on my Mac.
I just posted a piece related to that last weekend, I used a VM to do this. It got moved to the Software Forum. In essence I now have Windows 8.1 booting from my Thunderbolt dock in which I have an SSD (but it worked with any bare drive I had). It was very easy to do, no hacking and runs like a champ. No Boot Camp used other than I installed the drivers for my Mac Pro after it was all running. Yes Parallels 10 did see the TB drives and did what I needed whereas VMware Fusion saw them but the procedure failed (see link below). And yes when running from the Boot drive it sees my TB drives too. In fact I use a double TB dock and have the SSD (the WinBoot) in one and another 2 TB in the other for data. It does not see my internal new Mac Pro SSD but that is fine with me. I tried all sorts of things with USB3 docks and had a lot of problems. TB seems to work seamlessly for me.
As you may have learned reading all the posts after yours, Mac do indeed dual boot and also run stable, eminently usable virtual Windows environments simultaneously with the Mac OS. Nearly all Windows apps will run on a Mac one way or the other. Macs can also boot into Linux, that but is more difficult simply because it's Linux.
Oh, yeah. I know it's possible -- that's what I do at home. IBM just won't let us, from what I've read of the new policy. They take a pretty paranoid view of security (with good reason.) Then again the do run VMs on Linux laptops, so maybe they'll loosen up once they've got things rolled out.
That said, I'm even happier they are taking OS X seriously. But there are just a lot of legacy tools left over out there. I've had clients still running OS2.
As an aside... my company (a Microsoft Certified Partner) just acquired another company that happens to be 100% Mac. I spoke with our network guy in passing just today, and he remarked on how much a PITA it is to figure out how to accommodate Macs (running OSX) on a MS network.
(It can't be that hard, right?... I mean, I would LOVE a Mac at work, instead of the POS I've been using for years.)
You're old-school (as am I). Yeah, in the old days when laptops were glorified calculators, real work was done on desktop PC's.
Nowadays, a "Workstation" has evolved to a device that performs one's actual "work", being an Excel document, Photoshop, or CAD work. It's pretty much a generic terms now I think.
I suppose for us older folks, a "workstation" is still something like a Mac Pro.
Old old school reserved workstation for the very high end desktops and not just any PC desktop. Usually these were not Windows or Dos based but had some sort of Unix (or for DEC also VMS) and Xwindows. Started with 68xxx and then went to RISC architecture. Think Sun, Silicon Graphics, DEC (where I am an alumnus), Data General, etc. PCs were toys in comparison.
As an aside... my company (a Microsoft Certified Partner) just acquired another company that happens to be 100% Mac. I spoke with our network guy in passing just today, and he remarked on how much a PITA it is to figure out how to accommodate Macs (running OSX) on a MS network.
(It can't be that hard, right?... I mean, I would LOVE a Mac at work, instead of the POS I've been using for years.)
As long as it is an Ethernet or WiFi network, I cannot see why it would matter--there shouldn't be anything that needs to be done for the network itself. (If there are MS applications that are accessed via the network that might be different, but that would be an application issue not a network issue.)
As long as it is an Ethernet or WiFi network, I cannot see why it would matter--there shouldn't be anything that needs to be done for the network itself. (If there are MS applications that are accessed via the network that might be different, but that would be an application issue not a network issue.)
They want to use active directory or whatever crap they use to manage user accounts and all that. It is not just the physical network these guys are worried about.
After working in a few Mac-based companies and then going to work for IBM, I sure wish this had been available at that time. (Obviously that would never have happened then, since IBM still owned The PC Company at the time.) Our department had a dedicated ThinkPad support person, and we all got to know Mike a little bit too well!
Neither the article's author nor the commenters have asked this critical question: will these laptops be configured with OS X, Windows, or both, and if both, through Apple's Bootcamp or some other mechanism?
MacOS only, by default. You could I'm sure order a VM and a Windows license if needed, but that's becoming less and less of a need.
As a retired 32 year IBM employee I'm really confused. Maybe that's one of the reasons IBM has fallen from the ranks of the high and mighty to a plain and average company...
Comments
Starting on Thursday, IBM workers will be able to choose between a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or a PC when getting a new or updated workstation, according to a company-wide memo.
If only Steve Jobs could have seen this.
For anyone with half a brain and does actual work, the decision (a mac) is a obvious. Pity the uninformed that choose a Wintel machine.
Besides, that shiny new Macbook makes a great Windows machine too. I should know, I've been running Windows on my Macs since it came with Intel CPU's. So a mac gives you the solid stability and usefulness of OSX, and the ability to run Windows if you feel the need to lower your IQ.
There are plenty of IT people who would love to see that shiny Macbook reduced to nothing more than running Windows.
"You can have a Mac, as long as it runs Windows only".
This also gives IT the ability to truthfully say "yes, we support Macs".
So, I infer that the VM software is handling the Thunderbolt interface ...
I wonder what happens with Bootcamp.
VMware handles all the drivers necessary to run it as a virtual machine.
As I understand it, with Bootcamp, Apple has to develop the drivers to make it work natively on a Mac. Didn't Apple recently announce that it was not going to discontinue development of drivers for Windows 7 under Bootcamp? Only Windows 8x will be supported on new Macs?
It's Os X -- won't let you dual boot as far as I know. Air or MacBook Pro.
Certain jobs and programs will still be PC only. IBM has been moving folks over to Linux as well for a while.
As you may have learned reading all the posts after yours, Mac do indeed dual boot and also run stable, eminently usable virtual Windows environments simultaneously with the Mac OS. Nearly all Windows apps will run on a Mac one way or the other. Macs can also boot into Linux, that but is more difficult simply because it's Linux.
I just posted a piece related to that last weekend, I used a VM to do this. It got moved to the Software Forum. In essence I now have Windows 8.1 booting from my Thunderbolt dock in which I have an SSD (but it worked with any bare drive I had). It was very easy to do, no hacking and runs like a champ. No Boot Camp used other than I installed the drivers for my Mac Pro after it was all running. Yes Parallels 10 did see the TB drives and did what I needed whereas VMware Fusion saw them but the procedure failed (see link below). And yes when running from the Boot drive it sees my TB drives too. In fact I use a double TB dock and have the SSD (the WinBoot) in one and another 2 TB in the other for data. It does not see my internal new Mac Pro SSD but that is fine with me. I tried all sorts of things with USB3 docks and had a lot of problems. TB seems to work seamlessly for me.
Here's the skinny ...
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/186425/how-to-boot-windows-on-a-thunderbolt-external-drive
Oh, yeah. I know it's possible -- that's what I do at home. IBM just won't let us, from what I've read of the new policy. They take a pretty paranoid view of security (with good reason.) Then again the do run VMs on Linux laptops, so maybe they'll loosen up once they've got things rolled out.
That said, I'm even happier they are taking OS X seriously. But there are just a lot of legacy tools left over out there. I've had clients still running OS2.
As an aside... my company (a Microsoft Certified Partner) just acquired another company that happens to be 100% Mac. I spoke with our network guy in passing just today, and he remarked on how much a PITA it is to figure out how to accommodate Macs (running OSX) on a MS network.
(It can't be that hard, right?... I mean, I would LOVE a Mac at work, instead of the POS I've been using for years.)
Old old school reserved workstation for the very high end desktops and not just any PC desktop. Usually these were not Windows or Dos based but had some sort of Unix (or for DEC also VMS) and Xwindows. Started with 68xxx and then went to RISC architecture. Think Sun, Silicon Graphics, DEC (where I am an alumnus), Data General, etc. PCs were toys in comparison.
As an aside... my company (a Microsoft Certified Partner) just acquired another company that happens to be 100% Mac. I spoke with our network guy in passing just today, and he remarked on how much a PITA it is to figure out how to accommodate Macs (running OSX) on a MS network.
(It can't be that hard, right?... I mean, I would LOVE a Mac at work, instead of the POS I've been using for years.)
As long as it is an Ethernet or WiFi network, I cannot see why it would matter--there shouldn't be anything that needs to be done for the network itself. (If there are MS applications that are accessed via the network that might be different, but that would be an application issue not a network issue.)
They want to use active directory or whatever crap they use to manage user accounts and all that. It is not just the physical network these guys are worried about.
After working in a few Mac-based companies and then going to work for IBM, I sure wish this had been available at that time. (Obviously that would never have happened then, since IBM still owned The PC Company at the time.) Our department had a dedicated ThinkPad support person, and we all got to know Mike a little bit too well!
MacOS only, by default. You could I'm sure order a VM and a Windows license if needed, but that's becoming less and less of a need.
One of the reasons why I took up iOS development was to stop employers giving me a PC.
With what appears to be well over 400,000 employees, they only expect to deploy 50,000 Macs?
It's a substantial start.
As a retired 32 year IBM employee I'm really confused. Maybe that's one of the reasons IBM has fallen from the ranks of the high and mighty to a plain and average company...