danvm

macxpress said:

StrangeDays said:

IBM came to the same TCO conclusion years ago and published a paper on it. 

I believe UPS did the same thing and made the switch. 

If you setup the environment correctly with an MDM such as jamf, Macs are extremely easy to manage in an enterprise environment. With jamf you can literally take a brand new Mac out of the box and if you have the back end of jamf setup for that Mac it will set itself up as soon as it hits the internet and checks in with Apple upon activation. There is no imaging, there's no manually installing most apps, configuring printers, mapping network shares, setting permissions and config profiles, etc. It's all done for you as part of the MDM setup. There's some initial setup with Apple Business Manager and things like that but once you get it setup it works like a charm. 

You don't have this complete package in a Windows enterprise environment. You can get part of the way there if you want to screw around with SCCM and Group Policy but it's so much more of a pain in the ass versus something like jamf. 

I think in today's world a good IT Tech or whatever you want to call (IT Engineer) them should be very open and be fluent in both platforms. It will make you very valuable with in a company. I know it saved my IT position during covid. I lost my entire team during covid and I have to think they kept me because I'm very fluent in both platforms and it's not always easy to find a Mac person who can also support Windows PC's and visa versa. It's typically either one or the other. 

FileMakerFeller said:

danvm said:

netrox said:

Discover a trick to save money... IT staff hates Apple for this!

I don't think that IT hates Apple.  Is just that companies like MS have an ecosystem for business / enterprises that companies like Apple don't offer.  

Were you not around for the OS wars of the 1990s?

netrox said:

Discover a trick to save money... IT staff hates Apple for this!

dewme said:

danvm said:

dewme said:

danvm said:

Interesting how times have changed, from Apple criticizing the Surface Pro for being a "fridge / toaster", to making the iPad the Apple "fridge / toaster".  

You could say the same thing about jumbo smartphones and mini tablets. But that’s what make science, technology, product marketing, and running big businesses so interesting and refreshing - you get to change your mind when new evidence, greater/broader insights, emerging trends, and consumer demand compels you to “think different.” This isn’t religion. 

I agree with you.  What is interesting is that, in this case, the "Think Different" you mentioned didn't came from Apple, but from the competition. Apple just followed what other companies did.

“Think Different” also allows you to put aside dogma, popular assumptions, and conventional approaches to solving existing problems. It’s not always about going into uncharted territory and discovering new things. It can also be about traversing through previously charted territory with a different mindset and finding value in things that are already there, but undervalued, overlooked, or implemented poorly or in a suboptimal manner. It’s also about never assuming that a problem has been completely solved and you can close the door and no longer have to think about it. 

The iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirTag are all examples of product types that were introduced into markets that already had products that purported to solve the same problems that Apple set out to solve with their design approaches. Apple succeeded, or greatly exceeded what the others had done, by breaking with convention, pushing aside assumptions, and taking a system level view of the problem to be solved. “Think Different” is about leaving the door open for new approaches and new ideas to enter.

Music players didn’t have to be built around ripping CDs and downloading pirated music when individual songs, only the ones you liked, could be purchased for less than a dollar with the full blessing of the content owners. Smart phones with texting as a front line feature didn’t need to have physical keyboards. Web browsers on smart phones didn’t have to be austere stripped-down versions of their desktop counterparts. A tablet device could actually be little more than a much larger version of the vendor’s smartphone and still possess sufficient appeal to attract millions of new buyers. A watch didn’t have to run for weeks on a single charge to be accepted. An inexpensive tracking tag lacking GPS could be used beyond the limitations of Bluetooth.

I have no doubt that Apple’s competitors can be as inventive and as innovative as Apple, especially when it comes to new product design, new features, and creating new markets. Apple does not and will never have exclusivity on having all of the very smart people on their team. But in some cases some of those competitors with great ideas and impressive innovations still got hamstrung by their conventional thinking and assumptions that were instilled in their perspectives by excessive inward focused thinking, listening to so-called market experts and pundits, moved on to other things, or simply getting lazy and complacent once the money started rolling in and the cash cows were happily grazing in the field. They closed the door and assumed that the problem was solved and required little or no new thought. Those are all behaviors that are the antithesis of “Think Different.”  

tmay said:

danvm said:

Interesting how times have changed, from Apple criticizing the Surface Pro for being a "fridge / toaster", to making the iPad the Apple "fridge / toaster".  

Apple has been building iPad's and accessory keyboards for 13 years, so I'm not seeing Apple as "hypocritical" for continuing to evolve the iPad platform.

Meanwhile, the iPad is set to gain the M3, which does indeed give it potential capabilities matching MacBook Pro branding, even as a "fridge/toaster" that you describe it.