6 ms·

I use a Mac at work, and we've started giving managers the discretion to choose a Mac for their employees. I've been using Macs since OSX, so fairly familiar wi

by greedo 10y ago

I use a Mac at work, and we've started giving managers the discretion to choose a Mac for their employees. I've been using Macs since OSX, so fairly familiar with their flaws in a corporate environment. I have to laugh at anyone who thinks Windows would be comparable or cheaper in cost to a Mac. Everyday, I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum. Fortunately for me, my only interaction with the "Windows" environment is via SMB to our fileservers. This works reasonably well. The rest of our applications are either Java based, have a web interface, or use a console. My immediate coworkers are all sysadmins with years of experience, and even they still have to cope with BSODs, crashing applications, and all the usual crap that Windows users continue to put up with. It's sad; they actually think it's normal. I run into the same issue when they talk about Windows server issues (I admin the *nix systems). They don't believe me when I say I don't run into issue xyz...

talmand 10y ago
>> I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum Sounds like human error to me. My two young children seem to handle Windows just fine without me having to constantly monitor their machines. Edit: what? my anecdotal evidence isn't as good as everybody else?
- jakobegger 10y ago
  You should know that anecdotal evidence is frowned upon on Hacker News when it doesn't support conventional wisdom.
  - salamisultan 10y ago
    Shutup you dirty nigger
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    I thought his anecdote was the conventional wisdom? It lines up pretty perfectly with my experience swapping in Ubuntu for Mac OS. When I have a problem I can troubleshoot it down to a specific line of code or piece of hardware, on windows.... well, I would rather not troubleshoot anything on windows.
- h0p3 10y ago
  Your anecdotal evidence is ruining my enjoyment of the circlejerk.
- greedo 10y ago
  Do you have corporate issued/managed anti-virus, threat detection, disk encryption, VPN, fileservers and managed printers? If so, your kids are well equipped for life in the corporate IT world.
  - talmand 10y ago
    You mean every person on here that's doing the usual whining about computers being hard fits that description? Seems to me there's just a lot of complaints just aimed at a specific OS for reasons. Also, I'm fairly certain drivers and anti-virus is not exclusive to the corporate environment.
walshemj 10y ago
Managed to get macs working with share point yet
- INTPenis 10y ago
  Or more simpler yet, Active Directory? My brother works with Macs as a sysadmin of a university and there are constant issues getting them integrated with the rest of the PCs in their AD. They even discussed buying Apples OD to integrate with.
  - greedo 10y ago
    All of our Macs authenticate with AD. Pretty simple, especially since the last two versions back. We even have our Linux systems authenticate via AD using Quest. That can work with macOS as well, but we haven't found a need to use it.
- grumblepeet 10y ago
  I'm a SharePoint architect and developer. I work with SharePoint Online every day, create forms and workflows, as well as use it for document management and lists. I have a MacBook Pro and everything just works. SharePoint now works seamlessly with Macs.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    Natively? how did you manage it
- greedo 10y ago
  Luckily, our executives haven't sipped from the Sharepoint well...
raesene6 10y ago
What I would say however is that some of those issue you mention are more about how organisations typically manage Windows systems than they are about Windows itself. Active Directory is a good example, there's no necessity to add a windows system to an Active Directory, and if a company is going down a less centrally controlled model, which includes things like MacOS systems, it would make sense to not force the Windows boxes to log in to AD. Personally, I've run Windows/MacOS and Linux for a reasonable number of years and I wouldn't say that one was necessarily vastly more stable that the others (assuming current software) What I do see is that a lot of "traditional corporate" systems get loaded down with additional layers of software which can cause issues, remove that and I think you have a less crashy experience, regardless of the underlying OS.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  The NT kernel has always been rock solid -- so long as it's unmolested. Microsoft made some deliberate decisions in the 90's in the name of performance that made it much less stable. They spent several OS versions working past that, and past some other unpleasant things about the Windows ecosystem. What I've found over the past 18 years is that Apple is the best at creating an environment where I can install dev or media artist stuff, keep up to date with the latest software and OS, and it all just works -- no WTF moments or frustration. (With the one stark exception of Apple's CoreStorage volume management system.) That said, Apple's OS has also been getting less dev friendly and more consumer oriented in recent years.
  - raesene9 10y ago
    Sure I'd say that both Windows and MacOS are getting less Dev friendly, but that's inevitable I'd say as their main perceived market is consumers and really to operate safely in todays environment you either have to be technical or let the OS take control of more aspects of your computing experience. My guess is that most consumers will end up running and iOS like managed environment in the next 5 years or so and more technical people will end up running Linux.
- greedo 10y ago
  The idea of running a decently sized corporation without AD is a non-starter. Fileshares alone would be unmanageable. I'm not talking a 50 person shop, I'm talking an enterprise with multiple locations and several thousand desktops. As much as I dislike having to use and manage Windows when it comes up, AD is an essential tool.
jrcii 10y ago
I love my Macbook Pro, it is great for development. The times I have to work with Windows I'm counting down the seconds until I can finish my task. In all these years I've only had a couple real issues: #1 I don't appreciate Apple updating OS X/macOS with features that send your private, local file search queries to remote servers and #2 it has a hard time dealing with smart cards compared to Windows. In every other way it's simply superior.

by greedo 10y ago

talmand 10y ago

>> I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum Sounds like human error to me. My two young children seem to handle Windows just fine without me having to constantly monitor their machines. Edit: what? my anecdotal evidence isn't as good as everybody else?

jakobegger 10y ago
You should know that anecdotal evidence is frowned upon on Hacker News when it doesn't support conventional wisdom.
- salamisultan 10y ago
  Shutup you dirty nigger
- sqeaky 10y ago
  I thought his anecdote was the conventional wisdom? It lines up pretty perfectly with my experience swapping in Ubuntu for Mac OS. When I have a problem I can troubleshoot it down to a specific line of code or piece of hardware, on windows.... well, I would rather not troubleshoot anything on windows.
h0p3 10y ago
Your anecdotal evidence is ruining my enjoyment of the circlejerk.
greedo 10y ago
Do you have corporate issued/managed anti-virus, threat detection, disk encryption, VPN, fileservers and managed printers? If so, your kids are well equipped for life in the corporate IT world.
- talmand 10y ago
  You mean every person on here that's doing the usual whining about computers being hard fits that description? Seems to me there's just a lot of complaints just aimed at a specific OS for reasons. Also, I'm fairly certain drivers and anti-virus is not exclusive to the corporate environment.

walshemj 10y ago

Managed to get macs working with share point yet

INTPenis 10y ago
Or more simpler yet, Active Directory? My brother works with Macs as a sysadmin of a university and there are constant issues getting them integrated with the rest of the PCs in their AD. They even discussed buying Apples OD to integrate with.
- greedo 10y ago
  All of our Macs authenticate with AD. Pretty simple, especially since the last two versions back. We even have our Linux systems authenticate via AD using Quest. That can work with macOS as well, but we haven't found a need to use it.
grumblepeet 10y ago
I'm a SharePoint architect and developer. I work with SharePoint Online every day, create forms and workflows, as well as use it for document management and lists. I have a MacBook Pro and everything just works. SharePoint now works seamlessly with Macs.
- walshemj 10y ago
  Natively? how did you manage it
greedo 10y ago
Luckily, our executives haven't sipped from the Sharepoint well...

raesene6 10y ago

What I would say however is that some of those issue you mention are more about how organisations typically manage Windows systems than they are about Windows itself. Active Directory is a good example, there's no necessity to add a windows system to an Active Directory, and if a company is going down a less centrally controlled model, which includes things like MacOS systems, it would make sense to not force the Windows boxes to log in to AD. Personally, I've run Windows/MacOS and Linux for a reasonable number of years and I wouldn't say that one was necessarily vastly more stable that the others (assuming current software) What I do see is that a lot of "traditional corporate" systems get loaded down with additional layers of software which can cause issues, remove that and I think you have a less crashy experience, regardless of the underlying OS.

stcredzero 10y ago
The NT kernel has always been rock solid -- so long as it's unmolested. Microsoft made some deliberate decisions in the 90's in the name of performance that made it much less stable. They spent several OS versions working past that, and past some other unpleasant things about the Windows ecosystem. What I've found over the past 18 years is that Apple is the best at creating an environment where I can install dev or media artist stuff, keep up to date with the latest software and OS, and it all just works -- no WTF moments or frustration. (With the one stark exception of Apple's CoreStorage volume management system.) That said, Apple's OS has also been getting less dev friendly and more consumer oriented in recent years.
- raesene9 10y ago
  Sure I'd say that both Windows and MacOS are getting less Dev friendly, but that's inevitable I'd say as their main perceived market is consumers and really to operate safely in todays environment you either have to be technical or let the OS take control of more aspects of your computing experience. My guess is that most consumers will end up running and iOS like managed environment in the next 5 years or so and more technical people will end up running Linux.
greedo 10y ago
The idea of running a decently sized corporation without AD is a non-starter. Fileshares alone would be unmanageable. I'm not talking a 50 person shop, I'm talking an enterprise with multiple locations and several thousand desktops. As much as I dislike having to use and manage Windows when it comes up, AD is an essential tool.

jrcii 10y ago

I love my Macbook Pro, it is great for development. The times I have to work with Windows I'm counting down the seconds until I can finish my task. In all these years I've only had a couple real issues: #1 I don't appreciate Apple updating OS X/macOS with features that send your private, local file search queries to remote servers and #2 it has a hard time dealing with smart cards compared to Windows. In every other way it's simply superior.