“Once viewed as a plaything, the Macintosh is now the PC of choice for many hard-core technology professionals, and Macintosh skills are now an in-demand specialty among IT pros, rather than an afterthought,” Allan Hoffman, Tech Jobs Expert, reports for Monster.com.
“‘The Mac will be coming soon to a company near you, if it hasn’t already,’ says Brian Vaughn, executive vice president of Dataprise, a network support and IT solutions provider,” Hoffman reports.
The following factors have played a major role in the Mac’s resurgence in the IT world:
• When Apple released OS X, an operating system with Unix underpinnings, the Macintosh “got the attention of hard-core techno-geeks and began gaining mindshare and market share among them,” Vaughn says.
• The growth of the Internet and advances in networking technologies have removed some of the obstacles to combining disparate software and hardware, making hybrid computing environments more common.
• The popularity of the iPod and iTunes has generated a halo effect around Apple and Apple products, Vaughn says. With more and more people working from home, those with Macs and iPods need tools and support to connect their computers to non-Macintosh systems at the office.
Hoffman reports, “The about-face in attitude toward the Macintosh — and what it means in terms of the skills IT professionals require — was evident to Vaughn when one of Dataprise’s clients, with about 100 computer users, made it clear that the company needed to have adequate Macintosh know-how. ‘Unless you can support our Macintosh enterprise, we’re not going to be able to stay with you guys,’ Vaughn says Dataprise was told.”
Hoffman reports, “And now, with new Macs running on Intel chips, the Mac is capable of running not only Apple’s OS X and Unix, but also Windows. ‘This ability to have the best of both worlds on a single machine will result in further inroads of the Macintosh platform into the mainstream business environment — and increase the need for those who support company IT systems to be familiar with it,’ Vaughn says.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Wolfgang” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Mac-hating IT guys and gals will not enjoy this article. Perhaps they’d like a nice coffee mug to wash down their crow?
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Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 20, 2003
I think it is wonderful to read this especially when im currently going to school to be an IT and well duh I love Apple and Mac’s.
Thanks for the stories people! It’s good to know that I’m not alone.
Someday…..
Having worked for about half a dozen PC based companies (running a Mac-based studio in each), I can vouch for the ignorance of Windows IT guys.
Are they ignorant of the Mac’s? Hell no, they know full well what they are capable of – that’s why they are shit scared of them.
At the moment I manage a studio of about 5-10 Mac’s, with 2 Windows laptops to access the company’s XP-based sales database.
The whole company is behind a firewall, and all email and internet surfing goes through a proxy server. Recently, each laptop had anti-virus installed, why I don’t know, as surely the firewall should protect these PC’s. They don’t access the internet & do not access email.
Since having anti-virus installed, we get a virus alert every couple of hours – while the PC’s are sitting there doing nothing. IT zombies are called, and they come out, run some more software, and go away. Next day, the same thing happens.
It got so bad that we had 2 brand new Sony Vaio laptops installed. They survived about 2 days before viruses stalled them. IT zombies called, and they come out… etc.. etc.. etc..
Printing from the PC is a nightmare, it works about 1 try in 10. We now save anything to print as a PDF, bring it over to the Mac, and it prints fine as usual – this was actually suggested by the IT zombies.
My Mac-department is run on an internal network, running half a dozen printers, proofers, scanners, pretty straightforward for a Mac setup (pretty complex if it were on PC).
My Mac network is separate to the PC network. I handle all email, backup internally – separate from the PC network – it’s just to unreliable to use in a deadline based department.
Number of IT guys needed for a pretty sophisticated Mac studio – ZERO.
These zombies are out every day around our company, off-site cleaning up the WIndows PC’s. We have about 10 now (with consultants being brought in all the time), all happily plugging the holes, safe in the knowledge that they have jobs for life.
Oh yeah, they’re scared of the Mac.
gagravaar,
What a great account. I’m sending a copy of it to a church member who is an IT zombie and is always making wisecracks about the pastor and his “toy computer.”
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The church network has been down 3 times this week. My macs have been up and on the net the whole time. I’m half-way convinced to bring 3 of my older Macs (two G3 Blue and Whites and one G4) from home and set up my Secretaries and my Associate Pastor with Macs and have them THROW away their Dells. But, my IT drone would go ape and I’m not ready to confront his complaints before the PPR (Pastor-Parish Relations Committee) … yet. Once I have at least my staff fully on my side, I’ll do it. With the problems we’ve been having the last few weeks, it might be soon.
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It will be the second Reformation. Nail a floppy to the front door. Good thing the Big Guy’s on your side.
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Find better Windows admins, your experience is not typical.