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Did you even BOTHER to read the FIRST LINE? Fabricating a conclusion from something I did not say is remarcable but nothing less than utter nonsense. You went

Did you even BOTHER to read the FIRST LINE? Fabricating a conclusion from something I did not say is remarcable but nothing less than utter nonsense. You went from me talking about an inmature engineer wanting a Mac for the wron reasons to claiming I said companies deploy such technology to have employees look good at Starbucks. And that's exactly the problem: People are in love with Apple and the ability to reason goes out the window. Again, read the first fucking line. 99% of businesses in the world are NOT IBM. They simply cannot spend 10x on hardware that buys them exactly nothing for the money or close to it. The myopia that exists around Apple is truly infuriating at times. It is completely irrational by almost any metric. The evidence is in the tens of millions of businesses world wide who do not use Apple computers and never will. Because it makes no sense whatsoever from a purely objective point of view.

robin_reala 11y ago
Fair point, I’d forgotten the first line by the end of your comment. Mea culpa and I’d give myself a downvote if I could. Either way, let me give you the reasons that Macs were cost effective from the point of view of a small (20 person) agency I recently worked for: * primary development of the web stack we worked on was on Macs. Windows PCs were difficult to get running properly, and Linux while generally OK often had smallish bugs unless you were using LTS releases which quickly became outdated. * Our designers used Photoshop and other Adobe products and helped out with front-end dev so they were stuck on Mac full-stop if they wanted one machine. * We had an Apple store 5 minutes walk from our office, so hardware support was immediately available if required. * Standardised hardware on the Mac platform meant standardised connectivity: everyone had a Mac charger at their desk, mini-DP screens, AppleTVs in the meeting rooms to stream your desktop to etc. * Clients that were buying design services felt like they were getting their money’s worth if they walked into a room full of people with beards and Macs (I know you’ll hate that point, but that doesn’t make it less true). * The PCs we had in the office on average had more hardware problems and needed to be replaced more often than the Macs. People weren’t forced onto Mac hardware (we had Linux users too) but objectively it generally made more sense for my company for the reasons above.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  In your case the decision to go with Macs was absolutely justified. I would have done the same. BTW, Adobe products run just fine on Windows --we do it all the time. And everything else you do can be done on a PC just as well. Frankly, we've been using PC's and Macs since, well, they came out eons ago. Starting with the original IBM PC and the first Macintosh. Hardware and reliability problems are exactly the same on both platforms. In the early years of "pc clones" there were lots of problems with crappy third party hardware. Today you could blindly purchase anything at a place like Best Buy and walk away with a reliable and very capable machine. It's the same with cars. Thirty years ago buying car was almost a lottery outside of premium models and brands. Today you can blindly buy anything in the US and walk away with a car you can easily drive 200,000 miles without problems. So, why did I say your decision was justified when most of your points might be of questionable merit from a "parts and features" perspective? Well, for one thing, yours is NOT a normal company. Your metrics are very different from those of the average small business anywhere on the planet. That is probably the case for any company that deals in knowledge or information products rather than physical goods. It is likely that your computers represent the single largest capex item in your books. You don't have inventory, raw materials, warehousing, regulatory/recycling concerns, etc. Your margins are likely far larger than normal businesses. Yet there is one item in your list that justifies the decision far better than anything else: Your client profile. Presenting the right image to clients and customers is of paramount importance. Nobody wants to walk into a dirty restaurant. You have to communicate the right message to your clients the minute they walk through your front door. A huge portion of the impression we develop of someone or something happens visually. When they open that door and walk into your lobby they have to see elegance, sophistication, inventiveness, creativity or, depending on your niche, an out-of-the-box and maybe even extreme sensibility. When walking into the conference room, same thing. While doing a tour of your working space they need to have the same message communicated over and over again. This is a case where Apple has done an amazing job of communicating technical and aesthetic sophistication, creativity and a whole list of qualities that absolutely speaks to your clients like almost nothing else could. If you had beautiful tables and conference rooms with amazing PC's on them you would probably be missing that extra element. This, despite the fact that the PC's could do absolutely everything you are doing for a lower capex cost. Having Apple products throughout makes that lobby, desk and conference room far more valuable as a marketing and positioning tool than anything else you could showcase anywhere in your company. You could have a bunch of Teslas outside. If they walk into your creative space and see a bunch of PC's you would have made a huge mistake. The same would not be true if you were running a garment manufacturing business, a food co-packer or dry cleaner. In that case the Apple hardware would say nothing and provide little value. So, yes, I agree, not for all of your reasons but for perhaps the most important one: Positioning.

robin_reala 11y ago

Fair point, I’d forgotten the first line by the end of your comment. Mea culpa and I’d give myself a downvote if I could. Either way, let me give you the reasons that Macs were cost effective from the point of view of a small (20 person) agency I recently worked for: * primary development of the web stack we worked on was on Macs. Windows PCs were difficult to get running properly, and Linux while generally OK often had smallish bugs unless you were using LTS releases which quickly became outdated. * Our designers used Photoshop and other Adobe products and helped out with front-end dev so they were stuck on Mac full-stop if they wanted one machine. * We had an Apple store 5 minutes walk from our office, so hardware support was immediately available if required. * Standardised hardware on the Mac platform meant standardised connectivity: everyone had a Mac charger at their desk, mini-DP screens, AppleTVs in the meeting rooms to stream your desktop to etc. * Clients that were buying design services felt like they were getting their money’s worth if they walked into a room full of people with beards and Macs (I know you’ll hate that point, but that doesn’t make it less true). * The PCs we had in the office on average had more hardware problems and needed to be replaced more often than the Macs. People weren’t forced onto Mac hardware (we had Linux users too) but objectively it generally made more sense for my company for the reasons above.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
In your case the decision to go with Macs was absolutely justified. I would have done the same. BTW, Adobe products run just fine on Windows --we do it all the time. And everything else you do can be done on a PC just as well. Frankly, we've been using PC's and Macs since, well, they came out eons ago. Starting with the original IBM PC and the first Macintosh. Hardware and reliability problems are exactly the same on both platforms. In the early years of "pc clones" there were lots of problems with crappy third party hardware. Today you could blindly purchase anything at a place like Best Buy and walk away with a reliable and very capable machine. It's the same with cars. Thirty years ago buying car was almost a lottery outside of premium models and brands. Today you can blindly buy anything in the US and walk away with a car you can easily drive 200,000 miles without problems. So, why did I say your decision was justified when most of your points might be of questionable merit from a "parts and features" perspective? Well, for one thing, yours is NOT a normal company. Your metrics are very different from those of the average small business anywhere on the planet. That is probably the case for any company that deals in knowledge or information products rather than physical goods. It is likely that your computers represent the single largest capex item in your books. You don't have inventory, raw materials, warehousing, regulatory/recycling concerns, etc. Your margins are likely far larger than normal businesses. Yet there is one item in your list that justifies the decision far better than anything else: Your client profile. Presenting the right image to clients and customers is of paramount importance. Nobody wants to walk into a dirty restaurant. You have to communicate the right message to your clients the minute they walk through your front door. A huge portion of the impression we develop of someone or something happens visually. When they open that door and walk into your lobby they have to see elegance, sophistication, inventiveness, creativity or, depending on your niche, an out-of-the-box and maybe even extreme sensibility. When walking into the conference room, same thing. While doing a tour of your working space they need to have the same message communicated over and over again. This is a case where Apple has done an amazing job of communicating technical and aesthetic sophistication, creativity and a whole list of qualities that absolutely speaks to your clients like almost nothing else could. If you had beautiful tables and conference rooms with amazing PC's on them you would probably be missing that extra element. This, despite the fact that the PC's could do absolutely everything you are doing for a lower capex cost. Having Apple products throughout makes that lobby, desk and conference room far more valuable as a marketing and positioning tool than anything else you could showcase anywhere in your company. You could have a bunch of Teslas outside. If they walk into your creative space and see a bunch of PC's you would have made a huge mistake. The same would not be true if you were running a garment manufacturing business, a food co-packer or dry cleaner. In that case the Apple hardware would say nothing and provide little value. So, yes, I agree, not for all of your reasons but for perhaps the most important one: Positioning.