“The Mac is fashionable again, but I still hear a lot of arguments from Windows users afraid to make the switch. Here are some of those contentions, accompanied by reality checks,” Al Fasoldt writes for The Syracuse Post-Standard.
Fasoldt answers the following questions and concerns:
• What would I do with all my files?
• But what would I DO with all my files?
• I’d have to learn something new!
• What about my printer?
• What about my digital camera?
• Will my five-button mouse will work with a new Mac?
• And my new 5.1-channel speakers?
• My wireless headphones?
• My card reader?
• My thumb drive?
• My digital camcorder?
Basically, the article details what its headline states, “Macs can work with, yes, everything.”
Full article here.
My son-in-law got a VERY good deal on a 17″ G5 iMac from friends that “switched” but had problems using the Mc after too many years on PCs. They even took classes, but eventually gave up and sold the iMac cheap. While they are in their 60s (so am I) it wasn’t their age or intelligence levels (which are high enough), but the fact that they couldn’t adjust to the Mac’s way of doing things.
I had no problems switching, even at my old age. In the last 3+ years I have bought 2 15″ PBs (my son has the original 667 and I have a 1.5 that is attached to a 23″ display at the office), a 12″ iBook for the wife and a 20″ G5 iMac at home. While it’s easy for us to think that everyone would be better off with a Mac things don’t always work that way. At least my son-in-law got an iMac for half price.
Macs do not go well with idiots. Will a Mac work with an idiot Windows user at the keyboard?
AH, I got you this time for sure.
Now I’m really curious (and not ironic, only ignorant). What then is the “it” language for cross platform apps?
Python and CLisp come to mind. Very powerful and on the rise, especially CLisp. By the way, this last is what NASA uses.
AppleReseller,
Congratulations on your first first post!
Dreams do come true!
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“[…] the main reason for a lack mac’s in companies are because they are far too expensive to implement, and/or to make the switch, many mainstream packages are not available/supported on mac’s. And shelling out for a new office package for each machine (which is most likely to be MS Office) would cost a fortune.”
Okay, let’s start at the top.
“[…] they are far too expensive to implement, and/or to make the switch […]”
First, TCO is lower–about 36% lower according to Gartner Group 2002 study. So you pay for it by laying off a batch of your no longer necessary IT workers.
“[…] many mainstream packages are not available/supported on mac’s […]
Please let me know which of these you are talking about. First, you might be surprised what is and isn’t available for Macintosh. My personal favorite was the IT guy who insisted they couldn’t switch to Macs because of Lotus Notes. When I showed him this [PDF}, he hemmed and hawwed and muttered and walked away.
Second, define “mainstream.” If you mean applications that everybody in your office will use, there are plenty of applications available to do anything your office might do. If you mean the “lemming” approach–other people use this software, so we will, too–you’re probably right.
Finally, even if there is something that some employees need to do which is not available for Macintosh, fine. Get them a PC. But is your theory is that because the shipping department uses software from FedEx to print shipping labels which only runs on PCs, everybody in the company should be using PCs? Sounds like a stretch to me.
“And shelling out for a new office package for each machine (which is most likely to be MS Office) would cost a fortune.”
Hello? McFly? It’s called a site license. You really think a big company goes out and buys 500 copies of Word?! The last large company I worked for had a site license for pretty much the entire Microsoft software library–and that included the Mac versions! And, yes, you can get site licenses for Office or just Word or Excel.
So how do you get these copies of Office that you use? Do you just buy them when you buy the PC?
Finally, there’s this (out-of-order):
“[…] not all IT people/departments are anti-mac […]”
Sorry, but when I hear these same three arguments over and over and over and over again, it gets annoying.
The software one is particularly galling. For example, one IT guy told me that there was no project-management software for the Mac. When I pointed out this, he said, “Well, yeah. But we need Microsoft Project.” Why? “Well, what if we need to share data?” You mean, with other people in the office? “Yeah.” So they’d all be using the same software.
“Well, yeah, but…”
So, personally, I tend to get grouchy with “IT people” because they don’t seem to do their job.
I’ll admit, I’m an old-timer. I remember when our spreadsheets came from Lotus, our word-processors came from WordPerfect, and our databases came from Ashton-Tate.
Nowadays, the IT Departments opens up the big book of Microsoft products and buy what’s in it. They never seem to actually try to research what products are out there, evaluate them, etc. etc.
fact is, mac don’t support business like Windows do. I’m a mac fan myself but they don’t hold hands like Windows and Microsoft does and companies are leery of that.
For whatever ignorant reason, they know they will get supported through their problems. Of course if they have macs, they wouldn’t need 85% of the support that MS provides…
but I digress
Peter, good points. Especially on the software side. The issue of “We can’t adopt Macs because we use <whatever>” invariably that whatever is a sw title that runs exclusively on Windows when perfectly valid cross-platform alternatives abounds.
buyer, the only thing MS sells you is pre-paid update and patches.
LOL, how much have costed customers the pre-paid licenses for updates that did not come in years and are not coming in years?
I see you’ve read “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. hehe.
You’re quite funny, and cynically more or less correct on many things, but your experience with CS grads and I.T. in general is disturbing.
My experience with CS grads is that they’re generally pretty good at what they do (software development that is). Sure, you get some dummies there too, but on the whole, they know what they’re doing. Yes, they’re “green” to start with, but isn’t everyone? (this said, I’ve not met too many CS grads in the past say 5 years,… perhaps more recent grads are spoon fed too much and/or don’t know how to think???)
I.T. can suck, and I’ve worked with some total ignoramuses (mostly Cobol programmers on a different team to me who only know Cobol and Mainframes, not anything else), but I’ve also worked with some top notch people too, CS grads and all. Thing is, I.T. needs a decent manager at the top, someone with full business support, coz all too often companies see I.T. as a money pit with little in the way of tangible returns. Never mind that one query on the data warehouse enabled the guys upstairs in finance to figure out a way to save the company a million dollars in taxes, no, it’s COSTING us $0.5M a year to have the data warehouse! (that “costing” reason is also why Mac’s don’t get bought in many cases – coz they “cost” too much up front, but that’s already been mentioned above.)
Perhaps your company just hires bad people, including those at the top? Or perhaps it won’t pay the money for good people? Or puts the CS grads into roles unsuitable for them? But you’re bitter and hate what you do, and are clearly biased, so it’s hard for you to find joy in anything in that situation.
By the way, I studied CS in the late ’80s, and was increasingly annoyed at being given more and more sys admin and helpdesk type work over the past 10 years, rather than actual software development. Whilst I believe I was still very good at it, it’s not why I got into computing. In fact, that side of I.T. bores the hell out of me. I felt like a glorified button pusher at times. Yuk.
You are pretty funny tho. I really hope you find somewhere more suitable for you to work, where the people (CS grads and all) are good at what they do, coz I suspect where you are isn’t doing you any favors, except paying you a bucket load for mind numbing work.
One problem I have at the moment is that online business banking (for the bank I’ve been with since 1993) doesn’t work. It worked briefly with Panther, but no longer. Trying to find a bank (in the UK) that supports Macs is a nightmare. Just recently started paying some tax online rather than with a cheque, now I can’t do that.
Now I know it’s not the Mac’s fault. It’s the bank’s fault for not writing standards compliant software, but that’s not helping me right now. What I do know is that there’s no way I’d trust these transactions to a windows keylogger infested POS.
“One problem I have at the moment is that online business banking (for the bank I’ve been with since 1993) doesn’t work. It worked briefly with Panther, but no longer. Trying to find a bank that supports Macs is a nightmare. Just recently started paying some tax online rather than with a cheque, now I can’t do that.”
Fair enough. Solution: Switch banks. Make a point of it when you come in. Let them know this is a deal-breaker.
Fun story: Years ago, I was hired by a company to develop a Mac version of their forms software. Why? Because they were selling to Motorola which–at the time–had more than a few Macs and pretty much said that if they didn’t do a Mac version, there’s no way they would get more business out of Motorola.
It may not help–I’m sure you’re not a big enough customer (no offense intended)–but if enough people come in and let them know there’s a demand, they will certainly supply it.
Hywel, too bad with your bank. With Wells Fargo and Bank of America I have no problems.
Change bank
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> or tell them you are looking for another bank because of their lack of support for online banking on OS X.
Did the guy that wrote this look at his paper’s site on a Mac? Fugly.
“The only problem we have with Apple at work is the Java handling ability for all the back end stuff of web pages, both from our Java coders who code for PC…”
Mr. Winmacguy, heads up on the Java issue. If your Java coders are coding for the M$ Virtual Machine, that is the problem. Mac OS X uses the “real?” Java SDK from Sun (probably modified for OS X in some fashion), not M$ bastardized version. If Java coders would stick to the standard Sun or GJC, then there probably wouldn’t be a problem if OS providers would follow form, too. It would certainly help wean all those firmly attached to M$’s teat from IE and get them on Firefox.
Now, I am not saying that Java on any platform is easy, but is the problem Java on the Mac or Java itself?
Just some comments about IT people and CS degrees. I am in that boat in Australia. I have a 15″ Powerbook and I LOVE it to death. Professionally I am a web designer & developer, and recently was lead designer AND developer for a company, now I am self employed as I am still young and wanna try it on my own.
I use my Powerbook for pretty much everything, EXCEPT programming. Microsoft’s ASP.Net technology is bloody awesome, kicks php and even jsp’s ass. Microsoft’s SQL Server is good too, SQL Server 2005 and ASP.Net 2 will be HUGE improvements. Those 2 technologies slaughter php and jsp.
I ALWAYS recommend macs to everyone I come across, and my use of Microsoft technologies only affect me as the developer to use a windows computer, NOT anyone else.
My windows computer is getting pretty slow now, BUT I am holding off upgrading my PC for an intel based PowerMac. So the pendulum can swing both ways. Some might think people will stop buying macs currently and go for a windows pc, but there are some in the market who instead of buying a windows pc within a few months will wait for the new intel macs.
hey buyer…
“fact is, mac don’t support business like Windows do. I’m a mac fan myself but they don’t hold hands like Windows and Microsoft does and companies are leery of that.”
you are kidding right? I worked for a fortune 200 company – one dumb enough to install Windows servers all over the place. When these wouldn’t stay up for 48 consecutive hours MS sent in their “hand holding” support team to help. Their solution? Configure the servers to automatically reboot every night. Wow! I was impressed with that level of expertise. How can anyone possibly live without such support? bwaaahahaha
MW lack: as in lack of competence from MS “support”
A lot of it comes down to people using what they are familiar with. Most people, once they have made the transition from their office PC to a Mac are normally fairly happy. It then just becomes a matter of getting familiar with the little differences between the two systems. It is also a matter of getting people to make the initial “switch”
MS Help: that is the reason why in serious work, where servers has to stay up 24/7 because there is no night time – worldwide collaboration – Windows has _literally_ no place.
winmacguy: totally.
As one of my coworkers – who switched recently – simply put it: “little distinguo aside, it’s like Windows. Main difference is that the Mac tends to work all the time, whatever I do! ” and a big smile on his face: “it changed my life, buddy. Thanks”
The BOTTOM line is that Microsoft will continue to dominate the business market for many many years to come, despite the intel-macs.
you are right on Seahawk…
after the crack MS “support” team direct from the bowels of Redmond blamed the problem on whatever applications were running on those servers and advised us to “automatically reboot all the servers every night” as the “solution” we moved 24/7 required services to Unix boxes. Then just for grins and giggles a couple of our IT support team installed a new box with nothing but a fresh copy of Windows on it (no apps at all) and when *it* wouldn’t stay up 48 hours asked the “crack MS support team” which app they thought was crashing it. The MS monkeys didn’t see the humor in that but I sure did.
MS clearly – as in clearly the problem was with windows
maybe on behalf of the bmc remedy community i should tumble onto remedy’s payroll & devise a neat mac client for their remedy ITSM suite. bitch is the only thing keeping me on windoze.
A reader commented that the link given for my article brought him to a site that required registration. He might be interested in knowing that MY site, which carries all my articles, requires no such thing. My articles have been online since 1983 — a record, as far as I have been able to tell, for continuously available newspaper articles online.
Go to my site for that article and the thousands of others that are online:
http://aroundcny.com/technofile/
Al Fasoldt