4 ms·

Pity the IT teams who are forced to administer these circumspect fridges because employees won't use Linux.

jasonjayr 3y ago
"Continuing to use the apple fridges requires a subscription to applecare to fix and diagnose any problems we previously could fix, the TCO of this hardware is now higher...."
dangus 3y ago
This is hilarious. The idea that the typical IT admin wishes that Linda in Marketing would use Linux is so divorced from reality. IT just wants a fleet of systems that are easy to automatically deploy, patch, and restrict dangerous actions on. The easier they are for the lowest common denominator employee to use, the fewer tickets get opened. The idea that your IT team will ever waste their time crawling through your local system logs is unrealistic. I’m not saying the log shouldn’t be there or shouldn’t function properly, I just think that macOS being commercial and popular makes it very easy to administer compared to a Linux desktop. You just buy off the shelf products like Jamf and click a few buttons and that’s about it, voila, you have a managed fleet. The architectural elegance of the system is secondary to the amount of labor cost it saves. You can even order a computer directly from Apple shipped to your employee’s house and have it zero touch provisioned. I’d love to see a Linux laptop with that capability (really, I would love to see it).
- mberning 3y ago
  Not sure why you are downvoted, because this is spot on. You can tell many people on HN nave never worked in an enterprise environment. As a developer I would love to have a Linux laptop, but a Mac is as close as I can get. Companies do not have the resources or wherewithal to manage and secure 3 or more disparate desktop platforms.
- pknomad 3y ago
  I worked as a CPE before moving onto SRE and this is spot on. Jamf and others like Kandji are excellent tools for deploying, configuring, and erasing the device at scale and same thing for InTune for windows. There’s no equivalent for Linuxes other than agent based CMs like Puppet or Chef and those tools don’t deliver the same features as the tools that are offered for windows and macOS.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  > The idea that the typical IT admin wishes that Linda in Marketing would use Linux is so divorced from reality. Truth nowadays is, as long as Chrome can be launched, Linda won’t be able to care less.
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    You’d find out real quick that Chome isn’t the only app she needs. That “truth” is also divorced from reality.
mvncleaninst 3y ago
from my experience IT people normally worship windows for some bizarre reason, which imo is a joke of an OS compared to the other two
- ranger207 3y ago
  Windows's fleet management features are far better than Mac and Linux. Centralized user management, patching, policies, and application deployment all built into the OS "just works" for IT in the same way Macs "just work" for users. It's not something that can be seen as easily from a user perspective though. I've been... frustradedly enjoying watching the IT department from the company that acquired us attempt to recreate Active Directory in aggregate with a bunch of third party tools on our Macs. An example: last week I had a meeting with IT because one of their tools wasn't collecting logs or whatever. Turns out the tool didn't have the full disk access permission turned on. No good enterprise management solution should allow the endpoint to override settings from corporate, and especially it should have a way to change every setting on the device remotely. Windows has that built in to Pro and Enterprise editions, Linux has enough server management tools that you can sorta build one yourself, Macs like to think the company's laptops belong to the users.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    I'm glad Apple's pushing back on the abilities of corporations to install rootkits and other spyware on their employee's laptops. One would think that, after things like the Solarwinds hack, IT departments would be more skeptical of making a big single point of failure for security issues: I don't think the purported DLP and other justifications for this software are really adequate.
    - ranger207 3y ago
      Well, I don't think employees should be bringing their own laptops to work anyway. It's extremely borderline with phones IMO and they have facilities like work profiles for handling that specifically. But the business should be able to do whatever it thinks necessary with the business's laptops it issues to employees. Sometimes it's even required to legally.
barkingcat 3y ago
Macs are some of the easiest things to administer because of the rock solid MDM, nuke and block, lost item mitigation (as soon as declared lost, can wipe remotely, and even sometimes track via geolocation for filing police reports and for insurance claims). The pervasiveness and userfriendliness of filevault makes it so much easier than trying to enforce luks on linux. If you do encounter an OS level issue that can't be solved by first or 2nd tier local support, wiping from internet recovery is the next step, followed by sending it back to Apple (if you are within applecare) for direct replacement. The Apple Business team is incredible, and is much better than regular genius bar service at the apple store. They are pricy on the whole, but it's worth it if you have a need for macs in your environment.
- mdekkers 3y ago
  > Macs are some of the easiest things to administer because of the rock solid MDM, nuke and block, lost item mitigation (as soon as declared lost, can wipe remotely, and even sometimes track via geolocation for filing police reports and for insurance claims). All these things you mention are not “administration” in a “manage systems that end-users use”, they are “manage devices” activities. Macs have the literal worst business/enterprise administration administration/manageability experience. At previous $client, they had in excess of 30k desktops, and in excess of 50k total endpoints. They spawned a new opco, and that new opco wanted all macs. 12 months along, that was all thrown out because of the ongoing challenges of securing, managing, and administering the devices, and supporting the userbase. It wasn’t even a TCO thing (that was also wild, about 4x over a “regular” workplace, that being either Win10 or a supported Linux build), it was a “we never want to see Mac’s in the entire global organisation ever again. Macs have their place. There are plenty of environments where they can function adequately. Medium and Large Enterprise isn’t amongst those, and that is 100% due to the dire administration experience.
  - Joeri 3y ago
    I wonder how apple manages their fleet. It would amuse me to no end to discover their own ops team is equally frustrated at the state of macOS.

"Continuing to use the apple fridges requires a subscription to applecare to fix and diagnose any problems we previously could fix, the TCO of this hardware is now higher...."

dangus 3y ago

This is hilarious. The idea that the typical IT admin wishes that Linda in Marketing would use Linux is so divorced from reality. IT just wants a fleet of systems that are easy to automatically deploy, patch, and restrict dangerous actions on. The easier they are for the lowest common denominator employee to use, the fewer tickets get opened. The idea that your IT team will ever waste their time crawling through your local system logs is unrealistic. I’m not saying the log shouldn’t be there or shouldn’t function properly, I just think that macOS being commercial and popular makes it very easy to administer compared to a Linux desktop. You just buy off the shelf products like Jamf and click a few buttons and that’s about it, voila, you have a managed fleet. The architectural elegance of the system is secondary to the amount of labor cost it saves. You can even order a computer directly from Apple shipped to your employee’s house and have it zero touch provisioned. I’d love to see a Linux laptop with that capability (really, I would love to see it).

mberning 3y ago
Not sure why you are downvoted, because this is spot on. You can tell many people on HN nave never worked in an enterprise environment. As a developer I would love to have a Linux laptop, but a Mac is as close as I can get. Companies do not have the resources or wherewithal to manage and secure 3 or more disparate desktop platforms.
pknomad 3y ago
I worked as a CPE before moving onto SRE and this is spot on. Jamf and others like Kandji are excellent tools for deploying, configuring, and erasing the device at scale and same thing for InTune for windows. There’s no equivalent for Linuxes other than agent based CMs like Puppet or Chef and those tools don’t deliver the same features as the tools that are offered for windows and macOS.
WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
> The idea that the typical IT admin wishes that Linda in Marketing would use Linux is so divorced from reality. Truth nowadays is, as long as Chrome can be launched, Linda won’t be able to care less.
- nullindividual 3y ago
  You’d find out real quick that Chome isn’t the only app she needs. That “truth” is also divorced from reality.

mvncleaninst 3y ago

from my experience IT people normally worship windows for some bizarre reason, which imo is a joke of an OS compared to the other two

ranger207 3y ago
Windows's fleet management features are far better than Mac and Linux. Centralized user management, patching, policies, and application deployment all built into the OS "just works" for IT in the same way Macs "just work" for users. It's not something that can be seen as easily from a user perspective though. I've been... frustradedly enjoying watching the IT department from the company that acquired us attempt to recreate Active Directory in aggregate with a bunch of third party tools on our Macs. An example: last week I had a meeting with IT because one of their tools wasn't collecting logs or whatever. Turns out the tool didn't have the full disk access permission turned on. No good enterprise management solution should allow the endpoint to override settings from corporate, and especially it should have a way to change every setting on the device remotely. Windows has that built in to Pro and Enterprise editions, Linux has enough server management tools that you can sorta build one yourself, Macs like to think the company's laptops belong to the users.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  I'm glad Apple's pushing back on the abilities of corporations to install rootkits and other spyware on their employee's laptops. One would think that, after things like the Solarwinds hack, IT departments would be more skeptical of making a big single point of failure for security issues: I don't think the purported DLP and other justifications for this software are really adequate.
  - ranger207 3y ago
    Well, I don't think employees should be bringing their own laptops to work anyway. It's extremely borderline with phones IMO and they have facilities like work profiles for handling that specifically. But the business should be able to do whatever it thinks necessary with the business's laptops it issues to employees. Sometimes it's even required to legally.

barkingcat 3y ago

Macs are some of the easiest things to administer because of the rock solid MDM, nuke and block, lost item mitigation (as soon as declared lost, can wipe remotely, and even sometimes track via geolocation for filing police reports and for insurance claims). The pervasiveness and userfriendliness of filevault makes it so much easier than trying to enforce luks on linux. If you do encounter an OS level issue that can't be solved by first or 2nd tier local support, wiping from internet recovery is the next step, followed by sending it back to Apple (if you are within applecare) for direct replacement. The Apple Business team is incredible, and is much better than regular genius bar service at the apple store. They are pricy on the whole, but it's worth it if you have a need for macs in your environment.

mdekkers 3y ago
> Macs are some of the easiest things to administer because of the rock solid MDM, nuke and block, lost item mitigation (as soon as declared lost, can wipe remotely, and even sometimes track via geolocation for filing police reports and for insurance claims). All these things you mention are not “administration” in a “manage systems that end-users use”, they are “manage devices” activities. Macs have the literal worst business/enterprise administration administration/manageability experience. At previous $client, they had in excess of 30k desktops, and in excess of 50k total endpoints. They spawned a new opco, and that new opco wanted all macs. 12 months along, that was all thrown out because of the ongoing challenges of securing, managing, and administering the devices, and supporting the userbase. It wasn’t even a TCO thing (that was also wild, about 4x over a “regular” workplace, that being either Win10 or a supported Linux build), it was a “we never want to see Mac’s in the entire global organisation ever again. Macs have their place. There are plenty of environments where they can function adequately. Medium and Large Enterprise isn’t amongst those, and that is 100% due to the dire administration experience.
- Joeri 3y ago
  I wonder how apple manages their fleet. It would amuse me to no end to discover their own ops team is equally frustrated at the state of macOS.