Hi, I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC

[Superflyer]

Originally Posted by fanforever1986

At leat your arguement is rational. I agree the business world and PC's will be in bed for a long time to come...but there is a whole other aspect that people aren't paying attention to...well except apple.

It's all based off the saying "Once you go Mac, you never go Back." Apple knows that they have a better product in terms of performance than MS has, hell Gates has said that. Its now an issue of how Mac approaches their attack of the market. They're doing an excellent job with getting the attention of college students, with Edu. deals...If you walk into any campus bookstore in North America you'll see poster ads for iPods and Macbooks. Walking around the library you'll find that there are all the sudden a hell of a lot of macs being used by students.
The students of today are the business people of tomorrow, and if they're already using mac...theres a good chance that they'll continue the trend when they migrate into the workforce.

This would be true except to try to come out of school and walk into a business and say "you know I was working on a Mac at school so can you get me one for here as well."
The IT guy is going to look at you and say sit down and use the PC that we just built for you. We are not going to go through the hassle of integrating a Mac for a person just out of school and then have to learn how to troubleshoot all the problems that can come up with it.

[TheDragon]

Originally Posted by fanforever1986

The students of today are the business people of tomorrow, and if they're already using mac...theres a good chance that they'll continue the trend when they migrate into the workforce.

It depends. Unless Mac can come up with some kind of Network compatiable system, that will run all of the programs that Unix and Windows based servers operate on, and cooperate with the programs that, right now, only work on a PC... it will be a long, long time before Apple is ever migrated into the work space, outside of personal laptops and things like that.

I know, speaking from experience as an IT guy, that I had to install Windows XP on my boss' laptop so that he could just run Citrix alone... and let me tell you. Windows XP does not run well on a Mac - at all. Slower than all hell, and frustratingly hard to even figure out.

By Mac targetting university students who will eventually find work space in an office, it's really only creating more problems for that said individual... because they're going to have to relearn how to use a PC. By then, I'm sure MS will have upgraded their OS, once again. (Hopefully one not nearly as system dependent as Vista.)

They (Mac) may or may not be better made systems. Just as a Lexus car is a better designed automobile than a Ford F-150 or a Dodge Ram 4x4. I sure as hell would not try to tow a Yacht with a Lexus because it's a better designed car, though. Nor would I dare try to take it through a muddy field in order to get to an oil rig. Give me a pick up, any day.

If I was a celebrity or did a lot of inter city travelling, though. You betcha I would use the Lexus. Same goes for PC's and Mac's.

Different strokes for different folks.

They should really only be focusing on iPods and graphics design stuff, if you ask me.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Superflyer

This would be true except to try to come out of school and walk into a business and say "you know I was working on a Mac at school so can you get me one for here as well."
The IT guy is going to look at you and say sit down and use the PC that we just built for you. We are not going to go through the hassle of integrating a Mac for a person just out of school and then have to learn how to troubleshoot all the problems that can come up with it.

It's kind of a myth that integrating a Mac with a PC network is a "hassle." My wife uses a Mac at work, and her computer works better than any of the PCs in the lab. Joining the network was a matter of plugging an ethernet cable into the computer and allowing it to detect the right settings. The OS is generally more stable and less vulnerable to viruses.

Maybe the IT guy WILL say that it's a hassle. But that doesn't make it true. It just makes him wrong.

I should have known that this thread would become a Mac vs. PC thing. For the record: Macs are cooler than PCs, but John Hodgman is way funnier than that Mac guy.

[Wookie]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

I've seen two new ones in the last couple of weeks. I'm no expert on advertising, but as far as I can tell the campaign is still going strong.

I just heard it on the radio or something... If you've seen them on the internet.. well that's hardly indictive of whether the campaign is still going or not. Everything can pretty much be available on the internet.

Anyway.. It was something I caught on the radio or something.. so could just be garbage..

[tjinaz]

This would be true except to try to come out of school and walk into a business and say "you know I was working on a Mac at school so can you get me one for here as well."
The IT guy is going to look at you and say sit down and use the PC that we just built for you. We are not going to go through the hassle of integrating a Mac for a person just out of school and then have to learn how to troubleshoot all the problems that can come up with it.

The one off exception may sound fine but when you add up the support costs of additional training and reconfuring all the printers, servers and simply the cost of writing doco for 2 different systems the cost benefit and return on investment numbers go straight to hell.

Autocad, solidworks, nearly all vendor applications for engineering are PC only. The only area MACs have a foothold is graphics and video. Hell there are still Amigas out there.

Macs will continue to be the one off white elephant urban legend they are for the foreseeable future and for the same reason 95% of businesses will never go to a Linux desktop. Support. They have so much money tied to the infrastructures even giving away the software is not cost efficient because of the manhours of labor involved in the conversion and continued support. The MAC may be a superior product as a home desktop machine but who wants to learn two ways of doing something? MAC banked on the educational market to gain them a foothold in Business thinking if you converted people early enough they would want MACs at work. MS went straight to the business and thought that what ever business adopts will give the incentive to learn their system. Who do you think won?

It's kind of a myth that integrating a Mac with a PC network is a "hassle." My wife uses a Mac at work, and her computer works better than any of the PCs in the lab. Joining the network was a matter of plugging an ethernet cable into the computer and allowing it to detect the right settings. The OS is generally more stable and less vulnerable to viruses.

Putting a Mac on the network is easy but when all of your network applications, and services are written for PCs it becomes a problem. Email for example. What is the Apple Email server again? um um yea they don't have one. Your business uses MS Exchange. How does that Mac access Exchange? You use outlook. Oh wait that is part of the Office suite so you would have to run a virtual session just to get email or run MS Office for Mac. Now your HR system has a software client as well that only runs on PCs as well. So now you can run your Mac but you have to use a PC as well to do certain tasks. Sure their may be HR apps that will run on a Mac but you would have to limit the number of product you have to choose from in order to accomodate that one Mac. Do your really want to do that? It just doesn't scale well. Say your HR app is web based and likely written with Internet explorer in mind. You use Safari and now some of the push buttons don't show up. Now you have to find work arounds. Just for the one Mac. In mid to large businesses it is a PC world and will be for a long time to come. Apple lost that battle nearly 12 years ago.

[Wookie]

Aren't macs now using intel? All the hardware should simply be the same now..

The only difference should be the software.. ? Yes no?

[Frank the Tank]

Originally Posted by tjinaz

The MAC may be a superior product as a home desktop machine but who wants to learn two ways of doing something?

Ya because it takes about an hour to learn how to use a Mac. Its SO HARD!

[V]

I'd really like to get a Mac for my home computer, since I would like to do some funky graphic stuff with the millions of pictures we've taken of our daughter. Unfortunately, if it isn't compatible with the software I need to work from home, I can't justify it. Then I'd need two new computers. Aren't there programs on MS that are identical to the Mac graphic software? Why haven't they developed this stuff yet?

[tjinaz]

Ya because it takes about an hour to learn how to use a Mac. Its SO HARD!

You use MS word at work and want to take some work home with you. How is it you do that exactly? Sure you could use the Mac word processor but all of options are in different places and you have your work PC set up to exactly the format you need. So now you have to know how to set up the margins, page space, font, heading, on two differnt systems. How many people would rather watch Lost than spend hours setting up the new template? Well you could VPN in from home and simply remote into your work PC because it is already set up there. But the VPN client and remote control software are PC only.

Like I said listen to your music, edit your videos and surf the web. When it comes to being productive use a PC.

[peter12]

Apple has an email server on .Mac world. It's much more secure than Outlook, which is a big piece of crap.

[Frank the Tank]

Originally Posted by tjinaz

You use MS word at work and want to take some work home with you. How is it you do that exactly? Sure you could use the Mac word processor but all of options are in different places and you have your work PC set up to exactly the format you need. So now you have to know how to set up the margins, page space, font, heading, on two differnt systems. How many people would rather watch Lost than spend hours setting up the new template? Well you could VPN in from home and simply remote into your work PC because it is already set up there. But the VPN client and remote control software are PC only.

Like I said listen to your music, edit your videos and surf the web. When it comes to being productive use a PC.

Well you be smart about it for one, and use Open Type fonts. And ya, there is a command key on my Mac instead of a Window key. Chaos!

[Frank the Tank]

Oh and all this network arguement and stuff I am hearing....I am in no way an IT expert, but, we have a network which is run off of two Dell PC towers. I don't get the arguement I guess. Our system works flawlessly. We have 8 Macs, one PC and three printers all running off of these servers, so where is the problem I am reading about in this thread?

[peter12]

Do PC guys realize that there is an MS Office Suite specifically for Macs? I've had no problems sending stuff back and forth.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by TheDragon

Actually, I think you need Virtual PC on a Mac in order to run AutoCad. Either that, or I suppose you could try and install Windows on it. I did that once recently. It was like pulling teeth and incredibly frustrating, as Mac had about 0 instruction on how to do it.

Worst. Install. Ever... which only reaffirms my loathing for Macs.

Could that be because Bootcamp is a beta? Did you try Parralles? Virtual PC was shot the day MS bought it and died the day Apple announced they were moving to x86.

Good post tjinaz. Not much to argue in there. However, it can be said that the days of there are no games, they're only good for graphics, they're too expensive, there are no applications and so on should be gone.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by tjinaz

.........But the VPN client and remote control software are PC only.

Like I said listen to your music, edit your videos and surf the web. When it comes to being productive use a PC.

Well this is not true. Like most IT professionals, it's very easy to say no its PC only and not actually spend 3 seconds looking at MS's own site.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherpr...edesktopclient

or do you prefer Citrix?

http://www.citrix.com/site/SS/downlo...ownloadID=3250

[kevman]

Seeing as this is a Calgary site afterall...

What's the largest industry in Calgary?
What programs do they use everyday?
What platform runs those programs?

I don't know if the Mac's at school argument will play out, yes the U of C micro store has student discounts but every computer lab at school I've ever used runs PC's. All of the business and engineering students graduating from U of C spent 4+ years using PC's in school.

It's going to take a radical change in Industry for Mac's to make a push...

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by kevman

Seeing as this is a Calgary site afterall...

What's the largest industry in Calgary?
What programs do they use everyday?
What platform runs those programs?

I don't know if the Mac's at school argument will play out, yes the U of C micro store has student discounts but every computer lab at school I've ever used runs PC's. All of the business and engineering students graduating from U of C spent 4+ years using PC's in school.

It's going to take a radical change in Industry for Mac's to make a push...

Indeed. It is however possible to work on a Mac. There is nothing wrong with Windows at work and Mac at home.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by tjinaz

You use MS word at work and want to take some work home with you. How is it you do that exactly? Sure you could use the Mac word processor but all of options are in different places and you have your work PC set up to exactly the format you need.

I guess you could do that. Or you could save it as an MS Word document on a PC formatted disk and then take it home and work on it in MS Word on your Mac. But hey, do whatever's simpler, right?

[V]

Unless you're a sucker like me and have to take work home. It's too bad, I'd like some better software for graphics at home. But I'm not going to buy two machines.

[Frank the Tank]

Originally Posted by Dominicwasalreadytaken

Unless you're a sucker like me and have to take work home. It's too bad, I'd like some better software for graphics at home. But I'm not going to buy two machines.

I'd do some more research before you write off getting a Mac.