9 ms·

Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

155 points by pg 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
TomOfTTB 15y ago
I know I (as someone in charge of a campus) and others I know in the same position are really considering a migration to Mac The problem with Windows 8 and Metro is Microsoft's upending things to the point where Windows doesn't resemble its own standard anymore. Windows 8 is as much a culture shift as the Mac would be. Beyond that just about every corporate app has gone web based at this point. Only the oldest code bases are still Windows (and it's so old that it runs perfectly fine in a virtual box). So there are no apps to keep us on Windows. So now that the question isn't "should we change" it becomes "which platform is superior" and I think most would choose the Mac in that comparison. I know (as the article says) most users feel that way. As crazy as it seems we might finally be at the end of the Windows era.
lunchbox 15y ago
One of the two main cited reasons people prefer Macs was this: > Many of today's corporate PCs are saddled with management, backup, and security agents that can bog down a PC. Employees want their PCs to boot in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes...They're drawn to uncluttered Macs... I don't see how this shows superiority of Mac over PC; presumably if the Mac were running this software it would have these problems too.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  The difference: when you use a Mac, you don't need that software. - You don't need to run third party antivirus or antispyware software on the client, only on your mail server (to protect Windows users if you forward Windows executables). OS X has built-in malware protection. - You don't need third party management software, you can use NetInstall/NetBoot or ARD. - Using NetBoot also solves the backup problem on the client, even though OS X does have built-in backup and recovery solutions built-in (Time Machine, Versions). In other words, there are no add-on services needed that would bog down the system.
  - fname 15y ago
    I'm also pretty sure that once MacOS starts becoming prevalent in the enterprise, they'll eventually need antivirus, back up agents, and some sort of management agent as well. How would an IT organization manage the settings on the OS without some sort of management agent?
    - tomkarlo 15y ago
      At what point are we going to get over the concept that Macs don't have virus issues because there's not popular enough yet? I feel like I've been hearing that chestnut for a decade now. There are already IT management tools for Macs. I've worked at two large companies in a row (25k+ employees) where a large percentage of the company was using Macs (~30% or more) and they both had established management solutions that didn't bork the user experience on Macs. I'm typing this on a managed Macbook Air right now. As for backups, those agents exist but they're rapidly growing less relevant as the majority of documents and work are either web-based or on servers anyway. If I somehow lost this computer, I'd be bummed to have to do some preferences setup again, but I wouldn't lose any work.
      - dredmorbius 15y ago
        At what point are we going to get over the concept that Macs don't have virus issues because there's not popular enough yet? I feel like I've been hearing that chestnut for a decade now. Excuse me son, but would you mind standing in line behind those Linux guys over there? They've been putting up with this longer than you have.
      - WayneDB 15y ago
        Why are Banks known for getting robbed more often than Bakeries? That's where the money is. The reason you've been hearing about Mac popularity with regards to viruses is because it's true, despite the fact that you'd like to think otherwise. The fact is that Mac market share is still only around ~15% in the US and much less than that worldwide. That is about triple the market share that they had ten years ago. Also - Ever heard of Pwn2Own? The Mac has fallen first every year.
duncans 15y ago
> The voice of Windows in the enterprise discovers that Mac users are more productive Because the standard-issue corporate Windows laptops are locked down, running Windows XP with IE6.
m0nastic 15y ago
I find myself agreeing with their recommendation, even though I disagree with their rationale. Agreeing to let "HEROES" use Macs in an enterprise (and dear god what a terrible term, as if us Mac users weren't smug enough) seems to be basically capitulating to entitlement. At my last company, when Mac OS X first shipped, I wanted to try it out, so I bought an iBook (the cheapest entry to the world of Macs, in case I ended up not liking it). People in my office were horrified, and I was forbidden from attaching it to our network (lest its cooties infect our other systems). Over the course of about 6 months, I was eventually allowed to connect it. I had a coworker who continuously ran a vulnerability scanner against it, telling me that if it ever found anything, I'd have to remove it from the network forever (the handful of unpatched Windows boxes on the network weren't a concern, apparently). Within a year, there were four or five other Macs in my group. Within two years, every single person had one. At my current job, after complaining for two years about how awful my P.O.S. Dell laptop was I got an email from my boss about a month ago. It said "We're getting you a new laptop. Do you want a Thinkpad T520 or a Macbook Pro?". I thought he was messing with me at first, but no, it turns out Macs were now OK for us to use as testing laptops. I will say that in 11 years of going on-site to clients to do security assessments, I have only once encountered a company that had a non-trivial amount of Macs on their network. Over the years, I'd run into a graphic arts department here or there that had a few Macs, but in general, they were a rounding error for the large enterprise clients I deal with.
- famousactress 15y ago
  ...seems to be basically capitulating to entitlement Entitlement to use choose your own tools? Gasp. I think the underlying point the article's taking glancing blows at has plenty of merit, they just failed to do it bluntly enough. I think there's likely a high correlation between highly productive employees, and people who could care less about IT bureaucracy. I don't think it has anything to do with Mac users.. it's just that Windows users in this position are less affected, and through this lens.. less visible.
  - m0nastic 15y ago
    Entitlement that the rules put in place don't apply to you, because you are some sort of prima-donna superstar. I find that worrisome. It can bloom into pretty ugly (and moderately damaging) behavior. I've worked for clients who have certain divisions which are the super-stars. I think the better approach is to evaluate why you have all these policies, and if they are actually doing what you think they're doing. edit: Rereading this makes it sound like I'm calling the parent a prima-donna, which isn't what I mean (I'm referring to the people within an enterprise who decide that because they feel more productive on a Mac, they can just bring one in from home to do their work and circumvent all of the policies of IT.) At the risk of forcing a square metaphor into a round analogy, it's really important in the Army that people follow orders. Even if a small group of them think they can be totally more productive by doing things their own way. Enterprises aren't really set up to optimize for increased employee productivity, they're more likely to be set up to limit decreased productivity. I think this is one reason that people seem to like working at a startup, because you get to not have all that dogmatic bureaucracy. If these HEROES in four or five years now suddenly decide that they'd be even more productive if they lugged in SGI O2 workstations from home to do their work, an enterprise has to be able to say "yeah, sorry, you can't do that." But as to more Macs being deployed in enterprises, I'm all for it. It'd give me new things to break into.
_pius 15y ago
Damning. Upon seeing this, I thought pg had editorialized the "Hell freezes over" bit of the headline, but no ... that's the actual CNN headline.
thaumaturgy 15y ago
I'm not sure what their 6 recommendations were for preparing for the transition, and I'm unwilling to pay $499 to find out, but I hope one of them deals with the horrible pain in the ass that is Windows File Sharing. Macs really do not like Windows shares, whether in an AD context or a workgroup context. While some seem to work without any trouble, others have frequent issues with logging in, with browsing, with refreshing, with permissions. It's very frustrating for the users, and frustrating for those in IT support positions who are faced with annoyed users on one side and inscrutable black box magic on the other.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  My experience has been that Windows doesn't really like Windows shares either. Ever tried to create a network with a few Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 7 computers? I couldn't get it to work. Instead, now those Windows machines simply access my WebDAV running on Mac Lion Server.
  - smithian 15y ago
    You're kidding right? Windows file sharing is trivial to set up.
    - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
      Between different versions of Windows? No, it isn't.
      - smithian 15y ago
        Well, certainly between anything that owes its heritage to NT it is. I have win2000, 2003, XP, and 7 all playing very nicely together, and I cannot recall any issues with setup or maintenance. Compare that with getting a Mac to print to any printer that wasn't specifically designed with macs in mind... torture.
        15y ago
marze 15y ago
I've heard in the past one theory for IT departments favoring PCs (besides all of the pro-PC marketing aimed at them) might be that the Macs are very cheap to administer and thus don't require much IT support. I thought this was an interesting response to this news, over at the AppleInsider forums: "I work for one of the largest corporations in the world. Surprisingly, they don't do anything to block access to network services, but they don't necessarily encourage other platforms either. I work on a team of 23 people. The company provides Dell or HP laptops running XP or Vista (Windows 7 is still being 'evaluated'). These laptops would cost a normal human about $600, but for some reason my company leases them instead. We pay about $150/month (if memory serves) over the course of a two-year lease term. You do the math... Four years ago I paid about $700 for a Mac Mini. I run Office 2011 (and previously ran 2008 and 2004) for Exchange Server connectivity. I occasionally use Word and Excel, but generally prefer Pages and Numbers. For presentations I exclusively use Keynote (PowerPoint is a festering pile of poop). I am a systems admin who supports applications running on both Unix and Windows 2008 Server machines. For Unix I use iTerm and X11, and for Windows 2008 remote server administration I use the RDP client that comes with Office. My computer currently has a monthly ownership cost of (700/48) about $15. One-tenth that of my laptop. In the past four years I've had exactly zero minutes of unplanned downtime, while every single one of my 22 peers have had their machines out for days at a time for reimaging due to OS corruption, most of them more than once. The downside is that the $150/month in lease charges covers hardware service. Still, since over four years the cost of ownership is $7200 vs $700, the company could replace my Mini six times over four years and still save money, not taking into account the money saved from productivity. Executives who don't consider using Macs are simply bad at math." http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1975818&postcount=44 http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1975818&po...
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  With a solid/easy backup system like Time Machine, don't even need a proper service plan: * Buy an external HD, set up Time Machine. * Keep an identical spare Mac. * If you're paranoid, buy a second external HD; rotate it and the first drive for TM backup every week-ish (keep the inactive one next to your spare Mac) * When the Mac dies; toss it, get out the spare, plug in the TM drive and restore. Totally back in business in an hour or three. Buy another spare.
sbierwagen 15y ago
It's quite a turnaround for the voice of Windows in the enterprise. If you're not a Forrester subscriber, you can buy the report for $499 here. Four hundred and ninety nine US dollars?
- quink 15y ago
  Their business model is a different one. Instead of giving it away for free, and going for a million views and thus ad revenue, they're going for a hundred purchases by Fortune 500 companies. It's the reason there are books out there that cost $4000.
  - gaius 15y ago
    No, they're going for corporate subscriptions (in which case everyone in the company gets access to everything they write), but if you really, really want to read it, you're welcome to pay a punitive fine for not subscribing.
johngalt 15y ago
51% allow access to web-based email? 37% allow internet access? 19% native email? I've been in IT for 12 years, I've never seen anyone endorse blocking Macs from any of these. 49% block Macs from webmail? Difficult to imagine a situation where these would be a problem. Maybe super paranoid eavesdropping management?
- rhplus 15y ago
  I think the key phrase here is "employee owned Macs". They don't say what the equivalent results are for "employee owned Windows PCs", but I'd bet they're in the same ballpark. And when they say "owned" they really mean "administrated", meaning the PC isn't part of the corporate domain and subject to corporate Group Policy.
  - johngalt 15y ago
    Ah so that falls under the umbrella of expectations of IT. E.G. someone brought a machine from home one day and proceeded to work on it, then had a failure and lost "business critical" data. Then management chewed out IT with questions like "How could you allow someone put our data in that situation!!!", "What could you have done to prevent this!"... Hence IT Policy: no personal machines in the building. To anyone else in IT; here's how you avoid that situation, and the resultant policies. Audit your connections, or have an inventory tool which will let you know when new MACs (the NIC addresses) are seen. Then follow up with a polite email to $PersonalDeviceUsers's Boss detailing what you can/can't offer service wise. So long as everyone understands the situation ahead of time (in writing), you'll avoid having to write such policies later.
    - sk5t 15y ago
      How do you propose to identify the user associated with an unidentified new MAC? Is there some way that isn't tremendously labor-intensive?
      - yardie 15y ago
        If they are on ethernet smartswitches can do it for you (you only need to know where it terminates). If they are on the wifi then some devices will display their nmb name (for example "Joe's Awesome iPhone(FE-2A-FE-FE-FE-FF).
Hitchhiker 15y ago
Mac Bauer. Power hour. Could'nt help the JB joke. Microsoft has bit of a Fort Knox within enterprises.
rplst8 15y ago
Uh, hey Forrester, the real "HEROs" are the ones that take a couple of hours on their own time to streamline a bloated Windows install rather than wasting company resources to get a Mac working in a primarily Microsoft based infrastructure.
- mkopinsky 15y ago
  In The Enterprise, there's often no way of streamlining your own install. Users often a) don't have the administrative access necessary to remove the bloatware, and b) wouldn't dare uninstall "critical security applications" installed by IT. Sometimes the only way to escape the protocols is to put yourself in a situation where they can no longer be applied to you.
blehn 15y ago
My recommendation: Never trust a recommendation from Forrester.
- Natsu 15y ago
  Do they do actual research? I thought they were purely a PR instrument based on their past recommendations.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
rdl 15y ago
I wonder how much of the advantage of startups vs. BDCs is using Macs as desktop/laptops, vs. windows. Probably not as much as using Linux vs. Windows for servers, but still a big advantage. I'd have a hard time working anywhere which required a windows desktop and blackberry. I could tolerate it as a consultant if I had a consultancy-provided iphone/android and mac, with client-provided onsite windows stuff, but that's about the limit.
imroot 15y ago
I would support OSX more if I could get better support from Apple. I have two identical MBP's in my office -- and following the same steps, one joins the AD Domain, and the other one refuses to join the domain. Apple's support? Clueless, and refers me to the community support -- which doesn't have a definitive answer or any real help.
k7d 15y ago
Most enterprises have a very strong culture of maintaining status quo as extensively as possible. Especially in IT departments. Even big software enterprises rely on 5-10 year old infrastructure software (such as Exchange 2003) which was released during the era of Windows domination. It doesn't help that some of the software is web based because even that is often made for Internet Explorer only. Nevertheless Mac's are actually spreading in enterprises. Not from top but from bottom. Officially unsupported, but with a help of VM software such as VMWare Fusion there are no problems using legacy stuff.
kokey 15y ago
I work for one of the biggest corporations in the world, and I can see the acceptance of Macs creeping in. There is at least active support for using Macs as terminals for Windows virtual desktops. That said, it's still a long way to go so it would be nice to see these things speeding up. The quote "For the same reason they wouldn't wear cheap shoes and a bolo tie to meet with Lloyd's of London to insure their cargo ships and cranes" gave me a giggle. Hell is certainly freezing over, because it's now more of a case of Lloyds of London having to rely on the tax payer in jeans to keep them afloat.
- snorkel 15y ago
  I also worked for a big corp recently where IT would not issue a Mac to anyone unless they worked in a "creative area". Some of the Intranet tools were strictly IE-only too, as in changing your user agent to IE didn't help you at all. The silly part of the Windows-only IT policy is that it's intended to simplify IT support when in fact every week IT would broadcast alerts "EMERGENCY: Everybody must stop what you are doing and run this urgent security update!!!" That was a weekly ritual. Not to mention "New version of Office! Please install it!" ... two weeks later "Office update! Please install it" ... and so on. So glad to be back in a Mac world.
  - smithian 15y ago
    You worked at a company with a dysfunctional IT department. In non-dysfunctional IT departments, security updates application patches are installed automatically without user intervention.
Duff 15y ago
I work at a large government IT organization. We were way ahead of the curve on this trend -- we did a POC deployment in late 2008. There are real issues with Mac vs. Windows in an enterprise for many categories of user. We found that some Executives and some knowledge workers LOVED them. All Unix admins and most web-dev types loved them. Why? They weren't using line of business applications, and either didn't have many meetings, or had an admin who handled scheduling on their behalf. We did not end up deploying Macs more widely, but the POC boxes are still in service. I love my Mac. Real issues: 1. Apple is unpredictable with respect to patching. Known, material security issues may lay dormant for months with no patching. Apple prefers to rollout lots of fixes at once (ie. instead of a security patch, they roll up to 10.x.y) which often break things. This is a problem if you have to rely on ANY non-Apple software. 2. Apple is unpredictable with respect to product lifecycle. Want to roll out 500 iMacs? You had better pray that they don't arbitrarily cancel or (worse) change your order because they are announcing a new product. When Apple releases a new product, the old product ceases to exist. 3. Identity integration is poor. Integration with LDAP/Kerberos or AD is unreliable and undocumented. Unless you can use tools with a different model for authentication (ie. Dropbox), simple things like filesharing are unreliable. 3rd party tools help, but that creates a new problem. (See point 1) 4. This situation improved when the new MS Office, but Exchange support sucks. Even with Outlook for Mac, calendar functions suck. 5. I don't think that Apple takes security seriously. "Viruses" are becoming increasingly rare, even in the PC world. The types of threats that are out there are different in many ways. People in the Mac community have a really bizarre outlook on security. 6. Apple doesn't give a flying leap about enterprise IT. They know that Microsoft jumps through hoops to keep Bank CIOs happy, and that keeping those folks happy comes with a cost (10 year product cycles, IE6, etc). Apple's ability to tell enterprises to screw off is both an advantage and a disadvantage. If you're a proponent of large-scale adoption of Macs in an IT org, you are taking a big professional risk. Overall, I think that it's great that people are looking at alternate platforms. But don't pretend that Apple is a silver bullet -- Apple doesn't love you back, and will make you cry.
- hvs 15y ago
  Very well said. You outlined everything that I've noticed and discussed with our IT team (who support a large number of Macs). Needless to say, they have come to despise supporting Macs. And, yes, Microsoft Outlook for Mac is a horrid POS. That said, I love Macs but I'm not in IT support and I completely understand their pain.
saturdaysaint 15y ago
I'd kill to have Mission Control, Spotlight and Quicksilver at work. I haven't found great Windows equivalents.
TorgoGuy 15y ago
The reality isn't as bad as it sounds here. According to the same source (Forrester) 32% of personally owned PCs aren't allowed on the networks either (vs 41% for Macs). So an only 9% difference seems pretty reasonable. It may not be what we want, but given limited company IT resources, it's almost surprising the delta is that low.
chris_dcosta 15y ago
The biggest barrier to entry for the Mac in the corporate world is SAP. SAP GUI and the additional products it runs like the reporting tools (Bex) just cannot be run on Mac. The SAP GUI only works on Windows and in theory is supposed to be supported on Mac through Java and HTML equivalents, but in practice they don't work. SAP is so ingrained into corporate IT that unless SAP themselves decide to rewrite everything (unlikely) I can't see PCs being replaced any time soon.

155 points by pg 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

I know I (as someone in charge of a campus) and others I know in the same position are really considering a migration to Mac The problem with Windows 8 and Metro is Microsoft's upending things to the point where Windows doesn't resemble its own standard anymore. Windows 8 is as much a culture shift as the Mac would be. Beyond that just about every corporate app has gone web based at this point. Only the oldest code bases are still Windows (and it's so old that it runs perfectly fine in a virtual box). So there are no apps to keep us on Windows. So now that the question isn't "should we change" it becomes "which platform is superior" and I think most would choose the Mac in that comparison. I know (as the article says) most users feel that way. As crazy as it seems we might finally be at the end of the Windows era.

lunchbox 15y ago

One of the two main cited reasons people prefer Macs was this: > Many of today's corporate PCs are saddled with management, backup, and security agents that can bog down a PC. Employees want their PCs to boot in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes...They're drawn to uncluttered Macs... I don't see how this shows superiority of Mac over PC; presumably if the Mac were running this software it would have these problems too.

Samuel_Michon 15y ago
The difference: when you use a Mac, you don't need that software. - You don't need to run third party antivirus or antispyware software on the client, only on your mail server (to protect Windows users if you forward Windows executables). OS X has built-in malware protection. - You don't need third party management software, you can use NetInstall/NetBoot or ARD. - Using NetBoot also solves the backup problem on the client, even though OS X does have built-in backup and recovery solutions built-in (Time Machine, Versions). In other words, there are no add-on services needed that would bog down the system.
- fname 15y ago
  I'm also pretty sure that once MacOS starts becoming prevalent in the enterprise, they'll eventually need antivirus, back up agents, and some sort of management agent as well. How would an IT organization manage the settings on the OS without some sort of management agent?
  - tomkarlo 15y ago
    At what point are we going to get over the concept that Macs don't have virus issues because there's not popular enough yet? I feel like I've been hearing that chestnut for a decade now. There are already IT management tools for Macs. I've worked at two large companies in a row (25k+ employees) where a large percentage of the company was using Macs (~30% or more) and they both had established management solutions that didn't bork the user experience on Macs. I'm typing this on a managed Macbook Air right now. As for backups, those agents exist but they're rapidly growing less relevant as the majority of documents and work are either web-based or on servers anyway. If I somehow lost this computer, I'd be bummed to have to do some preferences setup again, but I wouldn't lose any work.
    - dredmorbius 15y ago
      At what point are we going to get over the concept that Macs don't have virus issues because there's not popular enough yet? I feel like I've been hearing that chestnut for a decade now. Excuse me son, but would you mind standing in line behind those Linux guys over there? They've been putting up with this longer than you have.
    - WayneDB 15y ago
      Why are Banks known for getting robbed more often than Bakeries? That's where the money is. The reason you've been hearing about Mac popularity with regards to viruses is because it's true, despite the fact that you'd like to think otherwise. The fact is that Mac market share is still only around ~15% in the US and much less than that worldwide. That is about triple the market share that they had ten years ago. Also - Ever heard of Pwn2Own? The Mac has fallen first every year.

duncans 15y ago

> The voice of Windows in the enterprise discovers that Mac users are more productive Because the standard-issue corporate Windows laptops are locked down, running Windows XP with IE6.

m0nastic 15y ago

I find myself agreeing with their recommendation, even though I disagree with their rationale. Agreeing to let "HEROES" use Macs in an enterprise (and dear god what a terrible term, as if us Mac users weren't smug enough) seems to be basically capitulating to entitlement. At my last company, when Mac OS X first shipped, I wanted to try it out, so I bought an iBook (the cheapest entry to the world of Macs, in case I ended up not liking it). People in my office were horrified, and I was forbidden from attaching it to our network (lest its cooties infect our other systems). Over the course of about 6 months, I was eventually allowed to connect it. I had a coworker who continuously ran a vulnerability scanner against it, telling me that if it ever found anything, I'd have to remove it from the network forever (the handful of unpatched Windows boxes on the network weren't a concern, apparently). Within a year, there were four or five other Macs in my group. Within two years, every single person had one. At my current job, after complaining for two years about how awful my P.O.S. Dell laptop was I got an email from my boss about a month ago. It said "We're getting you a new laptop. Do you want a Thinkpad T520 or a Macbook Pro?". I thought he was messing with me at first, but no, it turns out Macs were now OK for us to use as testing laptops. I will say that in 11 years of going on-site to clients to do security assessments, I have only once encountered a company that had a non-trivial amount of Macs on their network. Over the years, I'd run into a graphic arts department here or there that had a few Macs, but in general, they were a rounding error for the large enterprise clients I deal with.

famousactress 15y ago
...seems to be basically capitulating to entitlement Entitlement to use choose your own tools? Gasp. I think the underlying point the article's taking glancing blows at has plenty of merit, they just failed to do it bluntly enough. I think there's likely a high correlation between highly productive employees, and people who could care less about IT bureaucracy. I don't think it has anything to do with Mac users.. it's just that Windows users in this position are less affected, and through this lens.. less visible.
- m0nastic 15y ago
  Entitlement that the rules put in place don't apply to you, because you are some sort of prima-donna superstar. I find that worrisome. It can bloom into pretty ugly (and moderately damaging) behavior. I've worked for clients who have certain divisions which are the super-stars. I think the better approach is to evaluate why you have all these policies, and if they are actually doing what you think they're doing. edit: Rereading this makes it sound like I'm calling the parent a prima-donna, which isn't what I mean (I'm referring to the people within an enterprise who decide that because they feel more productive on a Mac, they can just bring one in from home to do their work and circumvent all of the policies of IT.) At the risk of forcing a square metaphor into a round analogy, it's really important in the Army that people follow orders. Even if a small group of them think they can be totally more productive by doing things their own way. Enterprises aren't really set up to optimize for increased employee productivity, they're more likely to be set up to limit decreased productivity. I think this is one reason that people seem to like working at a startup, because you get to not have all that dogmatic bureaucracy. If these HEROES in four or five years now suddenly decide that they'd be even more productive if they lugged in SGI O2 workstations from home to do their work, an enterprise has to be able to say "yeah, sorry, you can't do that." But as to more Macs being deployed in enterprises, I'm all for it. It'd give me new things to break into.

_pius 15y ago

Damning. Upon seeing this, I thought pg had editorialized the "Hell freezes over" bit of the headline, but no ... that's the actual CNN headline.

thaumaturgy 15y ago

I'm not sure what their 6 recommendations were for preparing for the transition, and I'm unwilling to pay $499 to find out, but I hope one of them deals with the horrible pain in the ass that is Windows File Sharing. Macs really do not like Windows shares, whether in an AD context or a workgroup context. While some seem to work without any trouble, others have frequent issues with logging in, with browsing, with refreshing, with permissions. It's very frustrating for the users, and frustrating for those in IT support positions who are faced with annoyed users on one side and inscrutable black box magic on the other.

Samuel_Michon 15y ago
My experience has been that Windows doesn't really like Windows shares either. Ever tried to create a network with a few Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 7 computers? I couldn't get it to work. Instead, now those Windows machines simply access my WebDAV running on Mac Lion Server.
- smithian 15y ago
  You're kidding right? Windows file sharing is trivial to set up.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    Between different versions of Windows? No, it isn't.
    - smithian 15y ago
      Well, certainly between anything that owes its heritage to NT it is. I have win2000, 2003, XP, and 7 all playing very nicely together, and I cannot recall any issues with setup or maintenance. Compare that with getting a Mac to print to any printer that wasn't specifically designed with macs in mind... torture.
      - 15y ago

marze 15y ago

I've heard in the past one theory for IT departments favoring PCs (besides all of the pro-PC marketing aimed at them) might be that the Macs are very cheap to administer and thus don't require much IT support. I thought this was an interesting response to this news, over at the AppleInsider forums: "I work for one of the largest corporations in the world. Surprisingly, they don't do anything to block access to network services, but they don't necessarily encourage other platforms either. I work on a team of 23 people. The company provides Dell or HP laptops running XP or Vista (Windows 7 is still being 'evaluated'). These laptops would cost a normal human about $600, but for some reason my company leases them instead. We pay about $150/month (if memory serves) over the course of a two-year lease term. You do the math... Four years ago I paid about $700 for a Mac Mini. I run Office 2011 (and previously ran 2008 and 2004) for Exchange Server connectivity. I occasionally use Word and Excel, but generally prefer Pages and Numbers. For presentations I exclusively use Keynote (PowerPoint is a festering pile of poop). I am a systems admin who supports applications running on both Unix and Windows 2008 Server machines. For Unix I use iTerm and X11, and for Windows 2008 remote server administration I use the RDP client that comes with Office. My computer currently has a monthly ownership cost of (700/48) about $15. One-tenth that of my laptop. In the past four years I've had exactly zero minutes of unplanned downtime, while every single one of my 22 peers have had their machines out for days at a time for reimaging due to OS corruption, most of them more than once. The downside is that the $150/month in lease charges covers hardware service. Still, since over four years the cost of ownership is $7200 vs $700, the company could replace my Mini six times over four years and still save money, not taking into account the money saved from productivity. Executives who don't consider using Macs are simply bad at math." http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1975818&postcount=44 http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1975818&po...

ConstantineXVI 15y ago
With a solid/easy backup system like Time Machine, don't even need a proper service plan: * Buy an external HD, set up Time Machine. * Keep an identical spare Mac. * If you're paranoid, buy a second external HD; rotate it and the first drive for TM backup every week-ish (keep the inactive one next to your spare Mac) * When the Mac dies; toss it, get out the spare, plug in the TM drive and restore. Totally back in business in an hour or three. Buy another spare.

sbierwagen 15y ago

It's quite a turnaround for the voice of Windows in the enterprise. If you're not a Forrester subscriber, you can buy the report for $499 here. Four hundred and ninety nine US dollars?

quink 15y ago
Their business model is a different one. Instead of giving it away for free, and going for a million views and thus ad revenue, they're going for a hundred purchases by Fortune 500 companies. It's the reason there are books out there that cost $4000.
- gaius 15y ago
  No, they're going for corporate subscriptions (in which case everyone in the company gets access to everything they write), but if you really, really want to read it, you're welcome to pay a punitive fine for not subscribing.

johngalt 15y ago

51% allow access to web-based email? 37% allow internet access? 19% native email? I've been in IT for 12 years, I've never seen anyone endorse blocking Macs from any of these. 49% block Macs from webmail? Difficult to imagine a situation where these would be a problem. Maybe super paranoid eavesdropping management?

rhplus 15y ago
I think the key phrase here is "employee owned Macs". They don't say what the equivalent results are for "employee owned Windows PCs", but I'd bet they're in the same ballpark. And when they say "owned" they really mean "administrated", meaning the PC isn't part of the corporate domain and subject to corporate Group Policy.
- johngalt 15y ago
  Ah so that falls under the umbrella of expectations of IT. E.G. someone brought a machine from home one day and proceeded to work on it, then had a failure and lost "business critical" data. Then management chewed out IT with questions like "How could you allow someone put our data in that situation!!!", "What could you have done to prevent this!"... Hence IT Policy: no personal machines in the building. To anyone else in IT; here's how you avoid that situation, and the resultant policies. Audit your connections, or have an inventory tool which will let you know when new MACs (the NIC addresses) are seen. Then follow up with a polite email to $PersonalDeviceUsers's Boss detailing what you can/can't offer service wise. So long as everyone understands the situation ahead of time (in writing), you'll avoid having to write such policies later.
  - sk5t 15y ago
    How do you propose to identify the user associated with an unidentified new MAC? Is there some way that isn't tremendously labor-intensive?
    - yardie 15y ago
      If they are on ethernet smartswitches can do it for you (you only need to know where it terminates). If they are on the wifi then some devices will display their nmb name (for example "Joe's Awesome iPhone(FE-2A-FE-FE-FE-FF).

Hitchhiker 15y ago

Mac Bauer. Power hour. Could'nt help the JB joke. Microsoft has bit of a Fort Knox within enterprises.

rplst8 15y ago

Uh, hey Forrester, the real "HEROs" are the ones that take a couple of hours on their own time to streamline a bloated Windows install rather than wasting company resources to get a Mac working in a primarily Microsoft based infrastructure.

mkopinsky 15y ago
In The Enterprise, there's often no way of streamlining your own install. Users often a) don't have the administrative access necessary to remove the bloatware, and b) wouldn't dare uninstall "critical security applications" installed by IT. Sometimes the only way to escape the protocols is to put yourself in a situation where they can no longer be applied to you.

blehn 15y ago

My recommendation: Never trust a recommendation from Forrester.

Natsu 15y ago
Do they do actual research? I thought they were purely a PR instrument based on their past recommendations.
Samuel_Michon 15y ago
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

rdl 15y ago

I wonder how much of the advantage of startups vs. BDCs is using Macs as desktop/laptops, vs. windows. Probably not as much as using Linux vs. Windows for servers, but still a big advantage. I'd have a hard time working anywhere which required a windows desktop and blackberry. I could tolerate it as a consultant if I had a consultancy-provided iphone/android and mac, with client-provided onsite windows stuff, but that's about the limit.

imroot 15y ago

I would support OSX more if I could get better support from Apple. I have two identical MBP's in my office -- and following the same steps, one joins the AD Domain, and the other one refuses to join the domain. Apple's support? Clueless, and refers me to the community support -- which doesn't have a definitive answer or any real help.

k7d 15y ago

Most enterprises have a very strong culture of maintaining status quo as extensively as possible. Especially in IT departments. Even big software enterprises rely on 5-10 year old infrastructure software (such as Exchange 2003) which was released during the era of Windows domination. It doesn't help that some of the software is web based because even that is often made for Internet Explorer only. Nevertheless Mac's are actually spreading in enterprises. Not from top but from bottom. Officially unsupported, but with a help of VM software such as VMWare Fusion there are no problems using legacy stuff.

kokey 15y ago

I work for one of the biggest corporations in the world, and I can see the acceptance of Macs creeping in. There is at least active support for using Macs as terminals for Windows virtual desktops. That said, it's still a long way to go so it would be nice to see these things speeding up. The quote "For the same reason they wouldn't wear cheap shoes and a bolo tie to meet with Lloyd's of London to insure their cargo ships and cranes" gave me a giggle. Hell is certainly freezing over, because it's now more of a case of Lloyds of London having to rely on the tax payer in jeans to keep them afloat.

snorkel 15y ago
I also worked for a big corp recently where IT would not issue a Mac to anyone unless they worked in a "creative area". Some of the Intranet tools were strictly IE-only too, as in changing your user agent to IE didn't help you at all. The silly part of the Windows-only IT policy is that it's intended to simplify IT support when in fact every week IT would broadcast alerts "EMERGENCY: Everybody must stop what you are doing and run this urgent security update!!!" That was a weekly ritual. Not to mention "New version of Office! Please install it!" ... two weeks later "Office update! Please install it" ... and so on. So glad to be back in a Mac world.
- smithian 15y ago
  You worked at a company with a dysfunctional IT department. In non-dysfunctional IT departments, security updates application patches are installed automatically without user intervention.

Duff 15y ago

I work at a large government IT organization. We were way ahead of the curve on this trend -- we did a POC deployment in late 2008. There are real issues with Mac vs. Windows in an enterprise for many categories of user. We found that some Executives and some knowledge workers LOVED them. All Unix admins and most web-dev types loved them. Why? They weren't using line of business applications, and either didn't have many meetings, or had an admin who handled scheduling on their behalf. We did not end up deploying Macs more widely, but the POC boxes are still in service. I love my Mac. Real issues: 1. Apple is unpredictable with respect to patching. Known, material security issues may lay dormant for months with no patching. Apple prefers to rollout lots of fixes at once (ie. instead of a security patch, they roll up to 10.x.y) which often break things. This is a problem if you have to rely on ANY non-Apple software. 2. Apple is unpredictable with respect to product lifecycle. Want to roll out 500 iMacs? You had better pray that they don't arbitrarily cancel or (worse) change your order because they are announcing a new product. When Apple releases a new product, the old product ceases to exist. 3. Identity integration is poor. Integration with LDAP/Kerberos or AD is unreliable and undocumented. Unless you can use tools with a different model for authentication (ie. Dropbox), simple things like filesharing are unreliable. 3rd party tools help, but that creates a new problem. (See point 1) 4. This situation improved when the new MS Office, but Exchange support sucks. Even with Outlook for Mac, calendar functions suck. 5. I don't think that Apple takes security seriously. "Viruses" are becoming increasingly rare, even in the PC world. The types of threats that are out there are different in many ways. People in the Mac community have a really bizarre outlook on security. 6. Apple doesn't give a flying leap about enterprise IT. They know that Microsoft jumps through hoops to keep Bank CIOs happy, and that keeping those folks happy comes with a cost (10 year product cycles, IE6, etc). Apple's ability to tell enterprises to screw off is both an advantage and a disadvantage. If you're a proponent of large-scale adoption of Macs in an IT org, you are taking a big professional risk. Overall, I think that it's great that people are looking at alternate platforms. But don't pretend that Apple is a silver bullet -- Apple doesn't love you back, and will make you cry.

hvs 15y ago
Very well said. You outlined everything that I've noticed and discussed with our IT team (who support a large number of Macs). Needless to say, they have come to despise supporting Macs. And, yes, Microsoft Outlook for Mac is a horrid POS. That said, I love Macs but I'm not in IT support and I completely understand their pain.

saturdaysaint 15y ago

I'd kill to have Mission Control, Spotlight and Quicksilver at work. I haven't found great Windows equivalents.

TorgoGuy 15y ago

The reality isn't as bad as it sounds here. According to the same source (Forrester) 32% of personally owned PCs aren't allowed on the networks either (vs 41% for Macs). So an only 9% difference seems pretty reasonable. It may not be what we want, but given limited company IT resources, it's almost surprising the delta is that low.

chris_dcosta 15y ago

The biggest barrier to entry for the Mac in the corporate world is SAP. SAP GUI and the additional products it runs like the reporting tools (Bex) just cannot be run on Mac. The SAP GUI only works on Windows and in theory is supposed to be supported on Mac through Java and HTML equivalents, but in practice they don't work. SAP is so ingrained into corporate IT that unless SAP themselves decide to rewrite everything (unlikely) I can't see PCs being replaced any time soon.