Lack of Apple around here?

Hey all,

I have noticed that there isn't ever much talk about Apple on the forums. Just curious if anyone uses the products / goes for the certs or if most people see Apple in a poor light like I do. I will keep my opinion tame, as I know some people really do like the products, but to me it seems like Apple is always last year's tech with a nice new price tag and a logo.

That said, I'm not looking for an Apple bashing party, just curious if that is a shared view with other professionals.

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About7Narwhal

I will say that I do really like the design of the laptops. The unit feels solid and durable and usually runs quiet. The reason I started the thread was because someone strongly suggested that I consider a MBP or similar for AIX / Linux work. I initially laughed it off as a silly idea saying I wasn't a graphic designer and I don't do video editing. But after reviewing some of the bootcamp options and software support, I was starting to reconsider the statement.

The only presumption I was having issues shaking was the price and the legitimacy of the technology vs. current innovations. Hence the initial statement and the overall question. At the end of the day, I could care less if it is Apple, Microsoft, or Linux as long as I can get my job does the easiest way possible.

Thanks for the response, I know now that my assumption of Apple being a personal device vs. professional was not entirely correct.

petedude

I know two IT workers who will spend a half hour yapping about iPhones/iPads at the drop of a hat. One recently changed over from a Samsung. They love the stuff, but seldom mention anything outside of small personal/portable Apple devices. They haven't pulled me into those conversations much, lately, as they know my preferences have changed.

It's funny-- I was a slobbishly raging Apple fanboy for about 10 years.

Then, desktop Linux started to really mature and Android came around.

Why on Earth would anyone want to pay the Apple tax now?

I don't doubt it's still good equipment, reliable, and easy to use. But I look at people like young college students using iPhones, and I wonder what they're giving up to have those. A $500 phone, and a $70 per month data plan right? What, give up movie nights and extra-large multi-topping pizzas for an iPhone?? Downgrade to cheap, watered-down beers over happy hour just to surf and download apps? Thread-thin cheap megastore jeans instead of Levi's to have iTunes? Just can't see it.

(And I'm not a huge fan of the Manzana's current business practices, either. They're starting to borrow heavily from one of their old enemy's business plans: litigate rather than innovate.)

DevilWAH

In the academic world, Universitities and research companies Mac are seen quite a bit

They are still a pain to support for IT as they don't integrate as well with the IT systems, AD and exchange is generally OK but things like endpoint encryption and security complience, there are still only a limited number of vendors who support them. In many cases they have to be managed as "external" devices.

despite being a pain, I encourage there use if there is a good business case, and there are many, indeed some software is only available for macs, but people who demand a mac for standard Office can be annoying.

I find from experience MAC note books seem to run virtual machines better than windows on equilivent hard ware, and many of the mathematical modler like to develop on them as there servers are generally Linux based so they are more at home with a MAC than windows.

tpatt100

Boot camp inhales a ton of hard drive space FYI if anybody is going the SSD route. I never noticed with SATA drives because when all I have are 512 gb drives in my wife's Mac I didn't pay attention. When you have a 240 or 128 SSD though I pay attention.

tpatt100

petedude wrote: »

I know two IT workers who will spend a half hour yapping about iPhones/iPads at the drop of a hat. One recently changed over from a Samsung. They love the stuff, but seldom mention anything outside of small personal/portable Apple devices. They haven't pulled me into those conversations much, lately, as they know my preferences have changed.

It's funny-- I was a slobbishly raging Apple fanboy for about 10 years.

Then, desktop Linux started to really mature and Android came around.

Why on Earth would anyone want to pay the Apple tax now?

I don't doubt it's still good equipment, reliable, and easy to use. But I look at people like young college students using iPhones, and I wonder what they're giving up to have those. A $500 phone, and a $70 per month data plan right? What, give up movie nights and extra-large multi-topping pizzas for an iPhone?? Downgrade to cheap, watered-down beers over happy hour just to surf and download apps? Thread-thin cheap megastore jeans instead of Levi's to have iTunes? Just can't see it.

(And I'm not a huge fan of the Manzana's current business practices, either. They're starting to borrow heavily from one of their old enemy's business plans: litigate rather than innovate.)

Anybody now a days with a smart phone is paying crazy prices though. I looked at Samsung no contract and they are 650 to 750 dollars. Pretty much my only choice is the Nexus off Google Play if I want something relatively current and under 400 dollars.

YFZblu

petedude wrote: »

Why on Earth would anyone want to pay the Apple tax now?

Well, these things do not change overnight. We have already seen the shift with every day users getting excited about Android devices. Between the points you made and Steve Jobs absence, I think the shift away from Apple will continue over time.

DoubleNNs

I have a Macbook Air. I hate running bootcamp on it - the drivers kinda suck. Typing in Windows is annoying because the trackpad is so large and constantly is registering clicks that I didn't intentionally do. Also, gestures are barely functional and you can't invert the scrolling (permanently at least).

Sure, a mouse fixes almost all those problems. But I have an Air for the portability. Adding a mouse to it feels kinda cheap, and defeats the purpose of paying all that extra for the machine.

Other than that tho, I was pretty anti-apple prior to gettin my Air. Now I actually prefer it over Win for Day-to-Day use. (Then again, I never really got used to Win 7...)

oli356

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Anytime I've met a Cisco employee, there's a 95% chance they use a Macbook.

Really? There's a few people in our office who use them but otherwise all the laptops are Lenovo.

tpatt100

Was there a shift in the Windows laptop manufacturer area? I know IBM sold off their desktop/laptop manufacturing to Lenova. It seems I just thought of Dell and HP but it seems I hear good things about Lenova and Asus now. I might only think of Asus due to the ultra book trend. I used to trust Dell years ago but I got burned twice now so I am kinda done with them consumer pc wise.

About7Narwhal

@tpatt100

I stay away from Dell also. Having worked in a repair shop, I saw way too many of the DV series come through with heat problems. I personally use Toshiba.. But I see a lot of Asus floating around recently.

elderkai

I don't use them whatsoever. Too constricting and inefficient for the way I work. To be at my maximum productiveness, I have to do things my own way. Apple products don't do that for me. I run Arch Linux on my desktop most of the time and I have an Android tablet. I like certain aspects of Apple hardware, such as their retina displays. That's it, though.

twodogs62

I use Windows and Linux at work.

At home I've bought both pcs and macs.
funny, I've gone thru 2 or 3 pcs per each Mac.
So, which is really cheaper?
Plus, having to renew antivirus each year.

I like using Mac at home for photography and graphics.
And they just work. I don't want to be troubleshooting at home.

BTW, I did an Apple certification several years ago. This gives me another item fr resume should I need it.

tpatt100

About7Narwhal wrote: »

@tpatt100

I stay away from Dell also. Having worked in a repair shop, I saw way too many of the DV series come through with heat problems. I personally use Toshiba.. But I see a lot of Asus floating around recently.

Yeah I thought I just had bad luck the past few years and the names I used to trust seem to not be that great. I'm thinking my next laptop will be Lenova if I get a Windows machine.

petedude

About7Narwhal wrote: »

@tpatt100

I stay away from Dell also. Having worked in a repair shop, I saw way too many of the DV series come through with heat problems. I personally use Toshiba.. But I see a lot of Asus floating around recently.

Dell has started to cut corners in annoying ways. Some models fall to pieces in a year; others may be nice but have annoying quirks. I can't say I dislike Dell, but I'm not their biggest fan either.

I really like the design of HPs. Reliability seems good in general; I see some HPs chugging along long after Dells of the same epoch would have been thrown away.

Toshiba-- I saw a lot of bad Toshiba laptops in the early 2000s. That's burned me a bit. If they've really changed, I'd consider giving them a whirl as I've seen some good promotions lately.

And as to Apple laptops-- I confess to occasionally pondering a purchase of an old G4 laptop or Mac Mini to replace my G4 tower as I still have a lot invested in iTunes/iPhoto. I doubt I would venture much further into their newer stuff, though.

Iristheangel

I'm not a huge fan of Apple myself but they have some amazing hardware. My dad owns his own company that uses computers for heavy number crunching (physics). When they first started out, they were burning through anywhere from $5,000-10,000 a month in PC hardware because the processors would overheat quickly. They tried gaming PCs, liquid cooling, etc and it was turning cost-ineffective quickly. They ended up buying Macs for the entire office, wiping them, and sticking Windows 7 on them and they worked perfectly. I'd have to check on it but I believe they haven't had an overheating issue since then. It's kind of amusing to see my dad's office though: Over 300 cubicles/employees using Macs running Windows 7. I should shoot a picture of it when I'm home

CodeBlox

There are roughly 900 user workstations on our network and maybe only five have OSX installed. The rest are Windows.

emerald_octane

We used to be an all Windows Shop. Now we have about 60% mac penetration (= about 50 mac workstations), the rest windows obviously, alot of iPad and iPhone for corporate use. Imagine my surprise, after I purchased dell server hardware and Win server licenses, when my CEO said that they were changing up the game and OS X would be given to all new employees and current employees could have their choice of MBP and MBA, costs be damned. It was/is horrible. 10.7.0 was BROKEN up to 10.7.3. Active Directory simply DID NOT work no matter what anyone says, wheras 10.6.8 worked perfectly. 10.8 has it's own quirks as well.

But OS X server blows chunks if not for the fact that there is no real server grade hardware (i'm not mounting a mac pro in a rack and the Mac Mini Does not count), and I'm just not a fan of it's LDAP operation . Infact i'd rather chew rocks.

So now i'm clamoring for solutions from the industry. ExtremeZ-IP is standard fare and works damn well. Centrify solutions are OK. Expensive but offers pretty good integration, and includes group policies that can be deployed alongside our windows clients. OS X Server just DOES NOT play nice with the Windows Clients, period. I have to support them and have full support for my OS X clients so the only way to pull it off is full blown Windows Enterprise setup with numerous bolt ons for our mostly mac environment.

I've used both (well, all three including linux) for years. Apple hardware IMO is superior especially with thunderbolt. The experience and being able to move across OS X to Windows in a variety of flavors (bootcamp, fusion et al) offers maximum flexibility, which is why I use one at work & home. I used to be a fan of Lenovo hardware but i've had a few machines break down on me with some really strange errors, especially on the lower end (low $1000s) machines. I like dell R server boxes, they just work.

warranty is a whole 'nother ball game. We can't service our own macs as of yet (though we plan to apply) aside from ram or hard drive replacements. Even though we have applecare onsite with all of our hardware, getting apple to dispatch a tech to our location is like pulling teeth. First we're accosted for 30 minutes as to why we cant drive to the local apple store to pick up/drop off our hardware. After they realize that we're not backing down, the request is sent to a manager. After the request is approved (24 hours later) I finally get the opportunity (!) to call the local onsite provider and tell them that i've got authorization for a tech dispatch.
Dell is far and away the most considerate. They will send an exact replica of the order placed for the machine in question,2 day air, if needed. Onsite service is given of course if the component can be replaced onsite. Truly blown away by the ease of their service.

yoshiiaki

Iristheangel wrote: »

I'm not a huge fan of Apple myself but they have some amazing hardware. My dad owns his own company that uses computers for heavy number crunching (physics). When they first started out, they were burning through anywhere from $5,000-10,000 a month in PC hardware because the processors would overheat quickly. They tried gaming PCs, liquid cooling, etc and it was turning cost-ineffective quickly. They ended up buying Macs for the entire office, wiping them, and sticking Windows 7 on them and they worked perfectly. I'd have to check on it but I believe they haven't had an overheating issue since then. It's kind of amusing to see my dad's office though: Over 300 cubicles/employees using Macs running Windows 7. I should shoot a picture of it when I'm home

That sounds like my boss. My boss has a macbook pro with retina, and talks about how great it is. I never deal with it as he is very knowledgeable and can take care of himself. However, we do have a few people in our office that have macs for personal use and however when they would have a problem he would only know how to fix the basic problems and I would end up fixing most of the problems. I always assumed it was because he didn't have the time (and perhaps that could be a factor), but anyways now it's me fixing all the macs, that being said we only have a handful of macs and a year on the job and we've had less than 1 problem per mac on average. I stopped to ask him one day a question about OSX and he responded "I have no idea, I don't use OSX". I was confused and ask what he means and he goes " First thing I do is wipe OSX and install windows." So I asked him why he would spend so much money on an Apple product just to wipe OSX, install windows and not even bother to keep OSX. No dual boot, no virtualization...nothing it's gone. He responds with how much better the hardware is. While most people just look at the number on the paper that are advertised as "specs", people forget to look at what it is really capable of. The hardware might be called the same names, and have similar ratings, but they can outperform most hardware installed in a windows machine in terms of longetivity. They are of a higher build quality and meant to last. He can spend 2k today on a mac and it will last him 4-5 years which would then drop the price to 400-500$ a year. Not so bad anymore.

That is of course not to say apple isn't mass producing them, and when something is mass produced they will have bad products or even bad batches. Customer support is great based on my single experience of the apple store, i bought an Iphone 4 refurbed and when into an apple store, they replaced it with a new one for free. So i got a new phone for the price of a refurb. haha.
I don't see myself buying a MBP anytime soon, but thought I'd share the story of my boss.

DoubleNNs

I honesty wish I understood all the people who use mac laptops for Windows. My personal experiences with that haven't been that bad, but still subpar. Seems like driver support could be a lot better.

But then again, I use bootcamp as opposed to a clean install.

emerald_octane

yoshiiaki wrote: »

First thing I do is wipe OSX and install windows." So I asked him why he would spend so much money on an Apple product just to wipe OSX, install windows and not even bother to keep OSX. No dual boot, no virtualization...nothing it's gone.

That's kinda silly.

No, not the keeping windows on there part. That part is understandable (at one point in time (2007), The Macbook Pro was one of the fastest Windows laptops on the market).

But you need OS X to make firmware updates to the hardware.

tpatt100

Bootcamp driver support is pretty bad if you like keeping your drivers up to date. I just learned to find an alternative program or a VM I guess. The thing is if I found I needed Windows for anything more than say 20 percent of my everyday tasks I would stick with Windows. I stuck with Windows before because Mac OS X third party support was pretty limited. Now I find support pretty good for what I do or use so the switch was easy since most of the services I use are Google services.

I think I have convinced more people I know personally to stick with Windows if they ask for my advice. Usually it's because they are in school themselves or their kids are. I know most colleges I have heard of support Mac but I don't feel like it is worth it if somebody is not willing to do the research first.

NightShade1

I prefer windows

staticz

I absolutely love my rMBP. The company bought it for me a few weeks ago after my HP notebook spent 6 weeks at a repair center

For someone who sits in terminal all day, no complaints

ptilsen

emerald_octane wrote: »

The Macbook Pro was one of the fastest Windows laptops on the market).

It is currently the closest thing to a 15'' gaming Ultrabook and the fastest Ultrabook as well (I realize it is technically not an Ultrabook, but it meets the requirements). There are faster DTR and gaming laptops, but that's it.

kgb

I just got my 15 rMBP last night.

There's no other words to describe it other than "pure sexy". The screen is crazy. Text is so darn sharp... High resolution photos almost feel 3d. I actually like the gestures on the trackpad as well. I've made a commitment to not use a mouse when coding on it.

dontstop

Apple user for 6 years (Macbook Black 13", Now a Macbook Pro Retina 15"), Unix System Admin + FreeBSD Home Server.

WafflesAndRootbeer wrote: »

Most IT people won't touch Apple products except for the iPad, iPod, or iPhone. The Apple desktops and notebooks are generally not found in the workplace or Enterprise environments, so there's little discussion of them here. The certs are pretty much worthless unless you want to work for Apple and there isn't really much out there in the way of Apple certs.

I've worked in both Government & Private (at a Top 5 Web org.), I can say with a lot of conviction that what you have said is false. Most I.T. pro's that I know use a Macintosh (me Personally too). Most "I.T." People won't touch them, generally because they are scared of change & using something they are not familiar with. They have as many problems as Windows Machines do in certain areas, but excel in other areas. For most *nix and Network types they are the perfect fusion between a stable Desktop Environment and a Unix certified machine out of the box.

I wish that I could count how many Users at my previous job got rejected when requesting a Macintosh Computer. Then served up a fresh Windows clone due to the Windows Admins having zero clue how to integrate them into the Environment & even if they did have the answer to integrate they feared the wrath of their Windows Support partner due to it not being the "One and only Windows Way of Supported happiness".

Really at the end of the Day, you work to support a Customer (+ the Org they work for) & not your own ego. Every time a Mac or Linux (or even Windows) user is shut out from having a tool that helps them work productively, the only purpose you serve is being a Fan Boy for OS [Insert here], an Inhibitor of change and a waste of oxygen for the company. This kind of person & thinking doesn't belong in I.T.

If you work out the logistics of it all, you quickly can see the impact it makes. Take the Admin who doesn't let any other OS bar their favourite, if each employee in a company of 1000 works @ minus 10% of their typically output due to using a non-preffered OS, this could theoretically lose the company $4,500,000 of wage-for-work dollars, not to mention lost opportunities, lost employees (+cost to replace them) and bad rapport due to disgruntled employees. How does it then make sense not to spend time & money giving them, what they want? Also as a System Admin, your not worth those dollars - Hence why "enlightened" companies, typically give their employees a choice.

For anyone who says "those numbers are b**s**t", when you have sales people who can bring in $10k to $100 millon contracts, if they are not working at 100%... you can do the Maths

All I can say in regard to this type of thinking is 1984 baby, 1984.

Apple - 1984 - YouTube

-ds.

About7Narwhal

@ dontstop

Your statement works in theory, but that is where it stops.

OS Market Share Nov 2012

If I were to take a company of 1000 people and cater to their preferred OS, the total would be about 90% Windows to 10% other. That is 100 employees out of 1000. If every company changed things around for 10% of their workforce because Windows doesn't make them happy, they would be taking massive losses due to cost, staffing of specialized IT, system and server modifications to accommodate everyone's OS, etc, etc.

There is simply no possible way to accept everyone's preference. You may be right, a lot of the IT staff you work with may use Apple products, but that simply means you and your staff represent 10% (or less) of the whole. It has nothing to do with "fanboy" logic; it has to do with universal support. Apple simply cannot compete with the corporate backing and support that Microsoft has.

tpatt100

But using the same source it shows iOS makes up 60 percent of all mobile traffic yet I still wouldn't try and push iPads as a mobile solution.

I think what you have to do matters the most rather than a preference.

ptilsen

tpatt100 wrote: »

But using the same source it shows iOS makes up 60 percent of all mobile traffic yet I still wouldn't try and push iPads as a mobile solution.

Why not?

About7Narwhal

tpatt100 wrote: »

But using the same source it shows iOS makes up 60 percent of all mobile traffic yet I still wouldn't try and push iPads as a mobile solution.

I think the mobile market is easier to adapt to. I personally do not use any Apple products, but I have previously supported iPads and iPhones. These devices have far fewer variables and can more easily adapt to security policies (much like Android) through use of exchange or other third party remote assist tools (cannot thing of the name, has Air in the title somehwere).

I am willing to go on record and say that Android and Apple far exceed Microsoft when it comes to mobile devices. I personally have never considered a Windows phone. Why would I when Android / Apple provide so many applications and so much support for other company's technology?