fak3r

With the barriers lowering, and other market factors creeping in, Macs are slowly making a move into the enterprise.  While this may/may not solely be Apple driven, the fact is that people like choices, and the Macs are now far more compatible with other systems than they once were, so finally folks have options.  In my recent travels to Woods Hole we had ~14-15 developers from around the world, and there were 4 Macs there.  Of course we had the normal thing where someone couldn’t get something working in Windows, Mac folks would chime in with, “just works on a mac” and later when Mac folks couldn’t plug a projector into the certain Macs, the windows folks throw the, “just works in windows”, so it was all in good fun.  So while I don’t consider these folks “enterprise” as in working for a corporation, it clearly shows that more people can use what they want, and have IT adapt for their needs.  I talked to a friend up there about his MacBook Pro - it’s a beauty of a machine, and he loves it b/c he can do everything he needs, plus run windows for dev work that you can only do in Windows.  Of course if I had such a beast it’d be running Linux, and that’s my argument for my buying my Dell laptop; while the Apple is nicer, it was also ~2500$ more than the Dell.  Yes, maybe when my work buys me a ‘top I’ll rethink it - but now I’m thinking smaller again - and I really like the Xseries Thinkpads (used be by IBM, but now it’s Lenovo - but the same otherwise) and they’ve always had excellent Linux ability.  two devs in WH had those, and I had to borrow them - not to work on them, just to pick them up - nice and light, thin, but with high screen resolution.  of course for a full fledged system like thatI could also look at the MacBook which shares most of the Thinkpads features - but for a Mac I’d prefer the black MacBook after my long, drawn out suffering with my old iBook…but I digress.  Now, what was the question?  Oh yeah, more Macs in the workplace, yeah, it’s how I’ve always said it should be, and it’s more that way now.  I run Debian Linux at work now, on my work provided HP desktop machine, on my personal Dell laptop when I bring it, on my Development server, and (soon) on my production server.  What kind of support do I need from IT?  Gimme an IP and a gateway IP and I’m all set.  So, in conclusion, I believe four reasons for Apple’s success with people using more Macs at work is due to the following reasons:

1. x86 processor which allows the bridge to those who still *think* they need Windows.
   
2. Microsoft’s epic fail with Vista has frustrated users to no end, witness the stay of execution XP has recieved from Dell.
   
3. Apple’s awesome design sense, which cannot be duplicated, puts it in that “wow, gotta have that gadget” bucket
   
4. and lastly (and maybe to a lighter extent) the fact that Darwin is a Unix derivative, so *geeks* can use it and get the same thrill they do via Linux.  I’ve seen this not only on my trip, but to the annual DefCon, where Macs are shown alongside the blocky black laptops of yore.

Look, business is like everything else, to survive it must evolve.  Plus, choice is freedom, which makes it an inherint human desire.  Wouldn’t you rather work somewhere that allowed, and TRUSTED, you to work with whichever OS you perferred?

As a IT contractor I’m enjoying giving my opinion when asked, and sometimes even when I’m not asked; I have the confidence to be open and honest with everyone and want them to know that. Because of this I’ve been getting to do things I otherwise would not have since they would not have known I was interested or experienced in such things. One of the things I was hired for was to setup Apache on Linux to work with their web instances. It’s been fun, and while I’ve used Apache for over 10 years, there’s always new things to learn. Recently they asked for my opinion on ’support’ options for Apache. Keeping in mind, they already have support for the hardware and support for the Linux distribution, they still think they need another support channel for Apache. To me this a big waste of money and have somewhat made my case to them. While I understand their position that this support is a way to cover themselves if Apache ‘breaks’, the fact that this software is Open Source has to change the way they have traditionally considered support.

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