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German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac
- josefresco 18y agoMore interesting is this "Until now the highest profile switcher has been Auto Warehouse Co. which is in the midst of a switch of 1000 desktops" That's it?!? And they're not even done, which means the largest installation is now under 1K. Shows how far the Mac platform has to go in the 9-5 world.
- axod 18y agomac dominates the design/music/film industries though
- josefresco 18y agoAny evidence to back this up? I'm a web designer, I know a ton of other designers and they are all either multi-OS capable or fall firstly into the PC camp. The posers (fresh out of school, concerned about image/style still) usually are using Macs. /ducks
- modoc 18y agoshrug Every design team I've worked with, startup or Fortune 500, has been on Macs. Yes, that's just more anecdotal "evidence" but I've been a consultant in several companies over the last ten years. One Fortune 100 company I worked at had slowly moved the entire web development team (front end and back end) onto Macs. The front end guys liked Photoshop on the Mac, and the OS level colorsync support, and the higher gamut LCDs (versus your run of the mill Dells - no one was springing for the $5k+ displays). The back end guys liked that they could run the same bash scripts and ant execs on their local machines as would be running on the Solaris production servers. Having a 99% compatible bash shell available out of the box, and having the same path separators makes a big difference.
- josefresco 18y agoThe front end guys 'liked Photoshp on the Mac'? And this was justification to move the entire department over? Uhhhhh, I'm sorry but if I were there and were supervising this department I'd need something more tangible than that to justify spending the company's money.
- modoc 18y agoWhen both sides of the dev team BOTH want Macs, and can provide both technical reasons (which you skipped there) and have a personal preference for it, then it seems silly for the department supervisor to NOT go along with it. Plus, the corporate Dells + support plan + etc... are pretty close in price. And our department was responsible for 2 billion+ in corp revenue, so a few Macs are a small price to pay. I'm glad you weren't supervising our department:)
- Tamerlin 18y agoAt one company I worked for, the IT guys hated the macs. The first reason was that they ended up costing twice as much to match the configurations (extra memory, the requisite software, etc). The second and more critical reason was support. Apple just wasn't up to the task of handling a call from someone with somewhere between half a dozen and 100 macs at once. The first reason has been changing in Apple's favor since, and the last time I checked around 4 months ago the cost was pretty much even. The second I don't know, but one can hope.
- gaius 18y agoCompanies often upgrade their hardware every 3-5 years anyway, so the money is a non-issue if it coincided with the cycle. And it would be a poor manager who didn't take advice from the specialists he employes in making decisions.
- reazalun 18y agoContrary to popular belief, actually Linux dominates the film industry. http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5611327583.html http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5611327583.html
- josefresco 18y agoShocking, real evidence that doesn't back up the widely accepted 'truth' that Macs are for the 'creative people'.
- gaius 18y agoThat's a bit skewed by the thousands of machines in render farms that could be running any (free/bundled) Unix. It'll be interesting to see if OSX Server 10.6 gives them a compelling reason to switch.
- Tamerlin 18y agoIt isn't likely, since most of the high-end shops have a lot of custom software on those Linux machines, and even their Linux distros are in many cases heavily customized, beyond what they'd be able to do with OSX. Smaller FX shops that don't have IT staff are much more likely to consider it, unless they rely on software that isn't available in OSX, like XSI. Which reminds me, now Houdini is available for OSX (it might still be beta, but it's coming if not here already).
- jonknee 18y agoIt doesn't mean the largest installation is under 1,000. It means the largest all at once switch was 1,000 (at least that was publicized, these things aren't always). Switching from one platform to another is pretty rare.
- cstejerean 18y agoI wonder just how fun a corporate, locked-down, Mac will be.
- josefresco 18y agoAbout as fun as a corporate, locked-down PC is.
- cstejerean 18y agoThat's what I'm afraid of. I was hoping people would be less likely to completely hose a Mac and therefore there would be a lower need for draconian restrictions.
- josefresco 18y agoOperating systems are not 'fun', it's like saying my house is 'fun'. It's what you do on or in the OS that makes it fun. I've experienced this over the years with Linux. I will from time to time install the latest greatest distro, configure it, work out all the little nagging bugs and then .... Nothing, it's not fun (unless you think getting your graphics card to work and spending 4 hours doing it is fun), in fact the goal is always to get the OS to the point where I can use it ... for something else.
- jobeirne 18y agoCertain operating systems are more conducive to 'fun' experiences than others, much like houses.
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- gaius 18y agoYou know, back in the day, it was normal for everyone to have two computers on their desktop. There would be a generic PC running Windows with a 14" monitor for word processing and email, and there would be another machine for "actual work". If you were an engineer, it might be a SPARC or RS/6000 workstation. If you were a designer, probably a Mac or an SGI. Nowadays you can get one box to do everything, a Mac is a Unix workstation that can run a PC in a VM. Why wouldn't organizations switch?
- reazalun 18y agoCan someone explain to me why designers should use Mac? I can't see any significant differences between Photoshop and Illustrator run in Windows and Mac.
- josefresco 18y agoShhhh, there isn't. But don't bring that up because it's very cool to use a Mac, it makes you so creative and cutting edge. Rainbows and unicorns and dogs shitting ice cream and all that.
- modoc 18y agoDon't knock the pettable, portable, ice cream dispensers...
- TweedHeads 18y agoWhat's the name of your guide dog?
- omouse 18y agoThere used to be a difference and Adobe and Apple were very good friends many moons ago. Some people can't help but cling to a past where Windows was still only glare on Bill Gates's glasses. (I probably have my history wrong, but you get what I mean)
- gaius 18y agoI didn't say anything about who should do anything. Just telling you how it actually was. Certainly, back then, if you needed colour management, Mac was by far the easiest/cheapest solution.
- meisterix 18y agoby the way, it's not any company. it's axel springer, one of the largest media-companies in germany
- ojbyrne 18y agoThat's a newspaper/magazine publisher. I find this hilarious, because back in the day (mid-nineties) most companies in that industry used Macs. Many IT departments probably completed the switchover to PCs in the early part of this decade (standardization was probably the primary reason) - and now they have to switch back.
- DanielH 18y agoYou are right! They switched some years ago for the exact same reasons they mention now from Mac to Windows PCs.