“The law firm Brookfields has undertaken a $165,000 Apple Mac upgrade as an internal IT audit over-rules a carefully considered move to PCs. Brookfields, a Mac user since 1995, has just bought 64 iMac machines and will upgrade the rest of its 145-strong network of machines in the next year,” Peter Griffin writes for The New Zealand Herald.
“It remains one of the larger Apple users in the country, running a network of Macs for all of its desktop computing needs,” Griffin writes. “For years the domain of desktop publishers, designers, trendy advertising agencies and schools, Macs are beginning to pop up more in the corporate environment.”
“Their price has dropped along with those of PCs, more software is becoming available that is Mac OS compatible and the aesthetics of Apple, which many consider to have the best looking product line up, is now more affordable,” Griffin writes. “Brookfields general manager Kevin Hall said the cost per desktop unit was lower. ‘Our IT staff numbers would need to double if we were to run the equivalent amount of PCs. “It is very easy to maintain a Mac network, we have just four staff who manage the website, intranet, staff training and support for 145 Macs.'”
Full article here.
Looks like I got the first post.
But anyway, look at that. Four people to manage 145 Macs. On the other hand, it would take 290 people to manage 145 PCs. I always laugh when my IT friends are like, “Dude, I don’t know why you use a Mac. PCs are better.” But they are constantly on call and stressed b/c the networks they manage are plagued with worms/viruses and downtime. Yet, my network has yet to fail me.
I’m sticking with my Macs.
“It is very easy to maintain a Mac network, we have just four staff who manage the website, intranet, staff training and support for 145 Macs.'”
Wow…only 4 people. You’ll never hear a company that has a PC network of that size with only 4 support people. Very cool article. Also nice ammo for someone’s argument that major business “don’t use Macs”.
Riiiiight.
PC = IT geek job security, and they know it.
I concur…my friend who works for Samsung’s IT department in Jersey is ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS on call cos’ either the network, desktops, or something is going down. It amazes me how much I don’t see him since he started that job. Of course they are running everything Microsoft (Windows XP, SQL, Exchange) and etc.
tsk, tsk, apparently, the only machines that don’t give him trouble are macs. I’ve never heard him complain about a mac yet.
Quality never goes out of style.
Since this is an Austrialian story it deserves an Austrialian reality check: http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=103391&catId=100494&tid=100008&p=1
According to this study, 86% of Macs did not require repair in the last year, followed closely by Dell at 83% and IBM at 82%.
Consumer Reports seems to back this up:
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv3.jsp?CONTENT<>cnt_id =305449
I’m not sure if a 3% lead really deserves the criticism in the above thread.
I find this whole post rather comical–here’s a tiny company in Austrailia (yet with “one of the larger Apple users in the country”) who’s owner likes Macs and therefore thinks that everyone else should be using macs too. Hardly newsworthy.
It’s not about hardware failure rate, c–although Apple is the leader there. It’s about problems overall–hardware, software, viruses, and user-generated. Macs take far less time and money to keep running, and cause far less downtime and lost productivity.
Any case study is of interest–even ones that demonstrate things some would rather ignore
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> And the reason it shows how valuable Macs can be is genuine concrete business reasons–not someone “liking” Macs.
“find this whole post rather comical–here’s a tiny company in Austrailia (yet with “one of the larger Apple users in the country”) who’s owner likes Macs and therefore thinks that everyone else should be using macs too. Hardly newsworthy.”
Actually they are in New Zealand – it’s actually a different country to Australia….. check your geography.
In response to “c”… Its NOT an Australian company.
The story is from the New Zealand Herald and is about a New Zealand law firm. When you consider that NZ has a population of just 4 million, a non-IT company that has 145 computers on on desks is quite a large user. The basis of the story is that despite pressure to move to Wintel the company decided to stick with Apple because of total cost of ownership.
If we were to use c’s reasoning then obviously no story about anything Apple would be newsworthy as their marketshare is considered to only be about 2% – hardly worth bothering about in the larger sheme of things.
The only thing comical about this is the inability of c to read.
Thanks Birdseed – I was just going to correct ‘c’ myself. I hate being lumped in as an Australian.
yeah I concur. It’s not hardware problems that you have IT guys for – it’s the SOFTWARE problems, read Microsoft OS (and all that goes with that) combined with the viruses, etc. 4 guys for 145 Machines – You will NEVER see anything close to that on the PC side of things.
Guitarman,
I concur on the being lumped together thing…. I hate being lumped together with the land of the long white cloud…
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> Cheers bro.
I have to say that even by PC bigotry standards ‘c’ stands out by his ignorance as a real Master. Problem is however that when people are that prejudiced it is one tough nut (many nuts actually) to crack to convince them of even the simplest truths.
Yay! 15th post!
Guitarman – haha, man it’s just like the love & hate relationship between Americans and Canadians – welcome to the big eats small world ;o)
BTW, I’m Aussie but sweet as bro!
Hmmmm….I work for a Post Production house, we are still using imacs 2nd generation…you know old multi colored imacs…running os 9.2mostly for database use,, About 80 machines…One IT guy…
My apologies about the geographical mixup, obviously I made a mental-slip, thinking the Australian Continent (which NZ is a part of.)
Glad to see you’re such a friendly bunch about it though. I especially enjoyed Spyinthesky’s comment “I have to say that even by PC bigotry standards ‘c’ stands out by his ignorance as a real Master.”
This type of behavior seems pretty pervasive on this website. I’ve heard the term ‘mac zealots’ before, and now I’m really starting to believe it. It’s a shame, Apple used to be associated with fun and creativity–now it looks more like the cult of Steve Jobs.
Seriously, I would like someone to back up their claims about PC vs. Mac maintenance. I made an effort, and I’m not impressed with the 3% lead I’ve seen.
My personal experience is that only 1 IT professional is needed to maintain about 50 computer users–and I’d say only a fraction of their time is actually administration, the rest is software related, like maintaining the intranet or filesystems. I’ve worked in several design firms with mixed PC/Mac installations and that number seems solid, plus Mac users seem to have just as many issues as PC users–usually more when they’re in the minority and sofware isn’t as readily available.
Can someone actually attempt to respond to this seriously and without resorting to childish flame tactics?
All I can say on this matter is that my company has 2000 PC users and 20 mac users. The mac users are considered ‘rogues’ and aren’t even supported by the (get ready for it) 50 support personnel that handle ONLY desktop/software/hardware issues. The network stuff is a completely separate group. I volunteered to be the tech support for the mac users. Know how many calls I get? One every other month or so, and it’s typically a forgotten password issue.
The CIO & Company always joke about how maybe they should just switch everything over to macs and dump MS. The laugh about it. They’re really going to be laughing tomorrow when everyone comes back from the 3-day weekend and starts reading their e-mail. Oh look! Another Windows Virus! YAY!!!!!
Back in the mid-90’s, I used to work for HBO at Century City, CA. at the Century Twin Towers (Made by the architect who designed that “other” Twin Towers,btw.), and in one tower (the one I worked at), the IT was almost all-Mac, while the other tower was nearly all PC. We took tons of cigarette and coffee breaks with the Mac techs, and in fact, we would meet them all the time in the courtyard, and they would still be there when we went back up. We had never seen the PC techs, and when we asked the Mac Techs their opinion of them, they would shrug, because they had never. ever met met them. The two sides had to maintain communications for 42 floors each, full of Bankers and Financeers, Lawyers, Accountants and Entertainment Execs. The PC techs never saw the light of day. The Mac Techs on the other hand, would come over and kick it with us, so they can write it down in their Logs and “Justify” their existence. For 3 years, I’ve only known there to be be 4 day Mac techs, and 2 for nights and weekends. Oh yeah… some of them would come down occassional to show us how to download free Porn from the internet, so they were worth their weight in gold! 😀
Forget the notion c, your efforts will go unnoticed around here. Look what you’re up against…
Lets look at just a few items. How many hours does it take to disinfect a windoze computer once it has a virus? I have heard often of having to reinstall the windoze system occaisionally. How long does that take to do? I have never ever had to reinstall a Mac system and I have been using macs for over 10 years. In just the last year how many security patches have been issued for Windoze? How long does it take to install these? Compare that with the number of Mac security patches. Or from a monetary standpoint, how many billions of dollars have virii cost the the windoze user community in the last year? How many dollars have virii cost the mac community?
If you answer these questions it should become very obvious to you “c” why it makes sense from a financial and productivity standpoint to use Macs over Windoze.
Why doesn’t this firm just use Linux over Macs? Doesn’t Linux have a good IT track record? Why does Linux always get the cold shoulder?
Lenny: Linux? Have you ever used it? Linux is the Windows version of UNIX. Cheap, less secure, and a shittier interface. Linux is a commodity – great for a bank of web servers, bad for actually getting work done. Name one advantage that Linux has over Macs. Just one.
Lenny: I’m sure you too felt a shudder of perplexity and admiration when IBM took the devil by one of its horns and proclaimed that Linux existed, and that it’s an open world after all. What an ad. What an operating system!
Unfortunately, there’s a whole lot of software that a platform cannot do without, because firms need to exchange content over different platforms. I’m all in favour of OneOffice.org, but the reality is that MS plays the “incompatible compatibility” game, ensuring that Office’03 documents cannot be opened in Office 2000 on Windows, let alone open-source office suites… Furthermore, Adobe’s creativity suite, the hallmark of Mac-dominated design studio work, has gained Windows compatibility in the 1990’s and seeped deep into the enterprise market.
A lot of assistant personnel in the public relations and communications departments in many companies have the full Adobe suite installed, in addition to MS Office, simply because they need to to access files produced by design studios. Many non-design firms have an internal design studio for printed documents (Indesign), image and photo retouching (Photoshop) and corporate identity vector graphics (Illustrator), all producing files which aren’t easily opened in Linux, and I’m not even touching the Audio and Video markets.
The slow adoption of GNU/Linux resides in this: major software suites are still lacking. When The GIMP, OpenOffice, Blender et al. become widely popular, at least on WinXP or Mac OS X if not on Linux, winds will start to change… Film GIMP is one notable example of an open-source Linux application that is widely used in the film and video industry.
After all, the absence of 3D Studio Max on the Mac is a big reason for its puny presence in the animated 3D graphics domain, and as much as I dislike Bill’s minions (he’s OK, I guess…), I’m thankful that Apple has kept a good relationship with Microsoft, good enough for MS not to axe Office for Mac. Even if Office is one of MS’s two only profitable venues, they could exclude Mac users in a fit of rage…
Good IT tracks remain.