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FedEx Switching to Mac?

On the subject of hardware, I'd definitely like to see a low-cost headless Mac os some sort - even just an eMac with a good helping of RAM and an external display.

The interesting thing is that Dell have recently made clear that they will freeze their business model's configuration for a minimum of 6 months (maybe a year, not sure on that detail). Businesses demand predictability. At present, we use quite a few Dells, and many of the OptiPlex systems have identical model numbers, but may have different internal components (3Com vs. Intel ethernet adapters, fr'ex). This is a support nightmare, especially considering how often Windows machines must be reformatted to either fix things or to prepare for other users.

Apart from the obvious lack of driver worries, Apple hardware specs can be stable for years (excluding the odd speed bump). This would make them a dream come true - especially for businesses like mine which need a very rapid turnaround for computer (re)allocations. It's scary the amount of time required to go from a bare machine to one fully set up for what we do. Norton Ghost's nice, but not without its own set of issues.

Regarding speed, I think even an eMac is more than capable of most of what our users do. All the computation is done on the server side - the computers just need to be able to keep up with the front-ends to the databases. As for upgrading, my experience is that corporations rarely upgrade machines beyond adding RAM and maybe adding hard disks. Most business PC's (Dell, etc) are pretty closed systems anyway -- everything's integrated. Anyway, a few years of owning an iMac has shown me that you can get pretty much anything else done via USB or Firewire peripherals. This is also much nicer for tech staff -- need the DVD burner in a different room? Just unplug and take it there!

And as for Access, I seem to remember reading somewhere that IBM were working on a project to create a cross-platform Access 'drop-in' replacement. Now that would be cool.

(sorry for wandering O.T!)
 
Something to crow about....

With NO VIRUSES at this point this is something that stands out like a sore thumb.... in a GOOD way. :cool:

By the time Windows was the size of the current Apple user base they had PUH-LEN-TEEE of viruese, due to the same reasons that they have viruses today; WEAK CRAPPY OS SYSTEMS.
 
rdowns said:
Companies may be unhappy but I've yet to meet the IT professional who advocates moving away from Microsoft. Microsoft is their job security.

A good analogy is my company and my brother's. Both are about 175 employees and are heavily computerized. My company is a Windows shop and we have 4 support people to deal with the daily problems. My brother's company is primarily Mac and they have 1 support person. Imagine savings like those for a large scale company.
Click to expand...

The counterpoint (kinda) to your first comment is that this benefits those of us who've kept our fingers in both pies. The Linux/Open Source world is beginning to open corporate director's eyes. How long before companies begin seeing those around them making the jump and getting these massive savings? I'd imagine the IT pro's protestations would begin to sound pretty weak compared to the director's demand to keep up with the competition.

If you're experienced with both MS products and standards-based software from Apple and Open Source projects, you're in a position to begin offering cheaper, safer solutions to problems. No-one in their right mind would advocate a wholesale switch without knowing what to expect. So start small. Apply Mac/Linux/etc. solutions where they'd fit best. Prove that using Mozilla Firefox will lead to a more secure network. Highlight the problems of keyloggers and spyware which users can accidentally install simply by browsing the web. Mention the cost of all that software required to help these deficiencies. I guess I'm lucky in that I work somewhere that allows for people to jump in and suggest alternatives. I can trial something if I think it'll work, and fortunately my higher-ups are reasonable enough to know a good thing when they see it.

Think back a few years, and then think about how far Apple's come for this to even be considered. Great stuff.
 
Analog Kid said:
Granted Apple can never stop some idiot from clicking on random attachments and then typing in the administrator password, but a solid base can relegate the problems to the leaves of the network and keep the servers safe.
Click to expand...

There was a good post about this on the Full-Disclosure security list last month *rumages*

From: petard <petard@freeshell.org>
Cc: full-disclosure@lists.netsys.com
Subject: [Full-Disclosure] os x mass mailers
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 19:59:50 +0000

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 12:09:54PM -0500, Joshua Levitsky wrote:
> Personally I hope someone is writing an OS X virus / worm to shut those
> people up about how secure the 3% using Macs are. How hard is it for someone
> to write a freaking osascript that tell application Address Book.app ... and
> then tell application Mail.app ... and you would have the same problems as
> windows. It would be nice to have a little less stress with Windows and let
> the others suffer for a while.

the script to do so is trivial... certainly easier than on windows, I'd
say. in fact, here's how to send a message with no user interaction at
all in applescript, provided mail.app is running and authenticated to
your server as required:

tell application "Mail"
set newMessage to make new outgoing message with properties
{subject:"some witty subject", content:"some random garbage",
sender:"some@loser.tld"}
tell newMessage
make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties
{name:"Victim", address:"victim@other.tld"}
send
end tell
end tell

The issue is getting that to propagate on a large scale. There are 3
problems:
1. Mail.app doesn't automatically execute incoming scripts.
2. If you ship it as a "script" (even run-only) the only thing that
happens when someone double-clicks it is that script editor opens; it
doesn't run. Most mac users have never seen the script editor, wouldn't
like it, and would promptly quit.
3. If you ship it as an application bundle, mail presents a very
dire warning about how you shouldn't open it because it may contain a
virus or be harmful to your computer and does not default to opening it.

Those 3 issues assume you've hit an os x user who runs mail.app. Other
users just wouldn't be able to execute it if they want and are stupid
enough to do so. And that's most of the recipient pool. (95% of the
people in a non-technical user's address book are likely to be windows
users. Not exactly fertile ground for an applescript virus.)

The combination of more difficult social engineering thanks to a safer
default configuration of the environment and a smaller user population
make writing this mass mailing trojan very unrewarding. The upshot is
that, as a practical matter, the 3% using Macs are much safer.

And you must just be an ass if you hope for more of this crap to clog
your mailbox, whether you use the platform in question or not. I haven't
been vulnerable to a single one of them, but they irritate me and I
certainly don't want more stuff like it bogging down my servers.

regards,
petard
 
krykert said:
I always knew FedEx is the best shipping company--here in the United States, at least--and this just confirms it.

Cool trivia fact: Did you know there's an arrow hidden in the FedEx logo? Can you find it?

express_logo.gif
Click to expand...

Yeah yeah, Bewteen the E and the X (in the white space).


I wonder what machines they are looking for... hmmm.
 
krykert said:
Cool trivia fact: Did you know there's an arrow hidden in the FedEx logo? Can you find it?

express_logo.gif
Click to expand...

between the "E" & the "X"

... and now for something completely different...

It's good to hear that FedEx is thinking of switching because of the viruses, and yes there is that chance that virus authors will also "Switch", but I once asked the head of Apple South Africa why there were so few viruses for the mac and he had a simple, yet elegant answer: "Macs are too much fun... Why try and destroy a positive thing?" I agree. The Mac offers so many other possibilities that the writing of viruses is a complete waste of time. Lets just hope that there will be no vindictive persons out there...
 
Lot of damage without admin password..

Analog Kid said:
Granted Apple can never stop some idiot from clicking on random attachments and then typing in the administrator password, but a solid base can relegate the problems to the leaves of the network and keep the servers safe.
Click to expand...

A Worm wouldn't necessarily have to have administrator access to do the sorts of things that the Windows worms are doing. It can read the address book, send emails, delete just about all the Applications, and the users files all without the admin password being entered.

I'd suggest Apple think hard how they will be updating Mail.app to prevent this sort of thing happening, and it won't be easy as you say, there are always idiots out there that will click on random attachments and say "Yes" to every dialog box without actually reading them.

Cheers,

Edward.
 
What are you talking about?

Skypat said:
Apple's main problem is that they don't have business-tailored computers. What kind of computer could FedEx buy ? iMacs with DVD-R and 32MB graphic cards ? G5 + flat screens ? eMacs ? None of those computers are corporate machines.

I think Apple needs to (1) have a corporate/large business offering (cheap boxes, with smaller hard driven & less powerfull graphic cards), better support and ... a better image in large corporation where Mac OS is (still) seen as a nice little computer for graphists. When will Apple make a strong advertising campaign to fight against those myths !!! :mad:
Click to expand...

The eMac/iMac is a PERFECT low cost/low maintenace machine. It's a space saving machine too. The Apple Store proves this well by using CRT iMacs as cash registers, so does a chain called Country Clutter (100 locations in the US) with Mac POS these make great counter/register machines. I would imagine many "mostly mac" peripheral companies could tell you the "nice things" about having Macs in their corporate environment. I'm assuming here - but Other World Computing must have a really tight system like this - using Macs for database/webserving/design/point of sale.

Apple does have a corporate headless machine that can be dummy terminaled by MULTIPLE monitors and multiple keyboards - that's a G4 or a G5 or even an XServe - Apple makes corporate deals and education deals you know?? Do you think VA Tech paid retail for the super cluster? Do you think Maine paid retail for all those iBooks?

As far as MS Access goes - all I know is that major companies like GE and Arcadis are switching from Access to SQL server/Oracle 8i and even FileMaker (but not necessarily Macs) - all of which are superior database solutions in my opinion + more secure and less to maintain.

GE (with one of the largest plants near me) is giving iBooks to Senior IT slowly for this very reason. The recently transitioned from Access and two other databases to Oracle 8i. It took them 3 years. I would imagine Fedex is no where NEAR the employment of GE (even though very large)

Could Apple have a better enterprise solution = yes. Do they have the best out there now = quite poissibly.
 
Skypat said:
Apple's main problem is that they don't have business-tailored computers. What kind of computer could FedEx buy ? iMacs with DVD-R and 32MB graphic cards ? G5 + flat screens ? eMacs ? None of those computers are corporate machines.

I think Apple needs to (1) have a corporate/large business offering (cheap boxes, with smaller hard driven & less powerfull graphic cards), better support and ... a better image in large corporation where Mac OS is (still) seen as a nice little computer for graphists. When will Apple make a strong advertising campaign to fight against those myths !!! :mad:
Click to expand...

Their business machine would be the emac/imac

Just get lowend emac. whats the problem?
 
Question: How much can you do with Apple Script? Is it basically the same thing as VB script? The reason I ask is couldn't a virus be written in AS?
 
Windows isn't really that hard to support

rdowns said:
Companies may be unhappy but I've yet to meet the IT professional who advocates moving away from Microsoft. Microsoft is their job security.

A good analogy is my company and my brother's. Both are about 175 employees and are heavily computerized. My company is a Windows shop and we have 4 support people to deal with the daily problems. My brother's company is primarily Mac and they have 1 support person. Imagine savings like those for a large scale company.
Click to expand...

Occasionally I see numbers like this and I can't figure out what you're doing. I worked in a Windows shop where we had 1200 workstations, about 50 servers, spread over 12 sites. Support for daily problems and a rather complicated inhouse business app was handled by two techs, one DBA who admitted he only put in a good 4 hours a day, and two people to answer the phone and do training classes. These folks were never busy and the only time I ever saw them work overtime was if we were swapping out a server and it had to be done at off hours.

If you're not buying Joe's backroom PCs, hardware failures aren't really that frequent, there are tools that will push security and software updates to workstations automatically, WTS and other tools will let you remotely admin servers and workstations, and if you've got a virus scanner installed (client and/or mail server), you're okay there. Apply a little security to your users (don't make them an Admin) so they can't just install every piece of junk software they think looks neat and you'll reduce a ton of calls right there.

Ghost is a wonderful tool too, make the users save all documents to network drive (which of course is backed up). If they do manage to trash a machine (never seen it happen to anyone who wasn't an Admin), reblast the standard image and boom you're up and running in a matter of minutes. If they are on a portable, partition the drive so that there is a system and data drive. Change my documents to point to the data drive and again if they trash the system, blast an image to the system drive.
 
SiliconAddict said:
Question: How much can you do with Apple Script? Is it basically the same thing as VB script? The reason I ask is couldn't a virus be written in AS?
Click to expand...
Read the thread. A virus could very easily be written in AppleScript, but it's getting it to run on other people's systems that's the problem.
ph8te said:
It's good to hear that FedEx is thinking of switching because of the viruses, and yes there is that chance that virus authors will also "Switch", but I once asked the head of Apple South Africa why there were so few viruses for the mac and he had a simple, yet elegant answer: "Macs are too much fun... Why try and destroy a positive thing?" I agree. The Mac offers so many other possibilities that the writing of viruses is a complete waste of time. Lets just hope that there will be no vindictive persons out there...
Click to expand...
Oh dear me, talk about getting drawn in by PR bull****. There are people who want to write viruses. They're not gonna stop just cos it's a Mac.
 
0 and A ai said:
Their business machine would be the emac/imac

Just get lowend emac. whats the problem?
Click to expand...

The eMac is a good home computer, or a good education computer. I really don't see an eMac on every desk where I work. We work with ugly Dells now. They look like business machines, and they are. Apple creates cool looking computers, and that's not an advantage in the corporate environment. Because cool-looks = not serious. Sad but often true.

But look around you. Check a pro-computer publication. They talk about Windows or Linux. Mac ? Never. Ask an IT manager, they are Windows or Linux "formated" ;-) Most techies still have in mind the Mac OS 9 from 5 years ago. They would be surprise to see how the mac has changed, but how would they know. Apple communicates on the ... iPod ;-)
 
burntoutjoy said:
Oh dear me, talk about getting drawn in by PR bull****. There are people who want to write viruses. They're not gonna stop just cos it's a Mac.
Click to expand...


Hey, it just might be PR-Bull, but consider even if Apple's market share is only 3 per cent, the number of viruses for the mac are definetly less than 3% of the total number of viruses that have appeared over the years, so, there has to be some truth to the statement.

Also I think the mac-user community in general is on a totally different level compared to the PC user, and mac-users to have their fun with their machines, and do not sit in some hideyhole and s****** like and idiot when they can do some damage.
 
displaced said:
.... It is truly scary how much companies (like the one I work for) are giving money hand-over-fist to vendors such as Symantec and Computer Associates for firewalls, AV software, network security etc. The Mac's UNIX heritage means things like industrial-strength firewalling, packet filtering and other network/security features are already right there, well documented and easy to configure.....
Click to expand...

I have Norton Personal Firewall on my Mac (because it's easier to configure than Apple's own), and Virex via .mac insures I don't get a nasty surprise -- someday.
 
"Proprietary" solutions and rueyeet's .sig

displaced said:
The fact that the Mac, albeit a 'proprietary' system, embraces and supports so many open (and free standards) means that it's becoming viable to use them in place of PCs on the desktop, with minimal structural changes to how a company operates...
Click to expand...
"How can IT shops say they won't use a 'single-vendor solution' like Apple, but then use Microsoft for everything--from the server to desktop OS to software--and call it 'standardization'?"
-rueyeet's .sig, MacRumors forums
:D
 
displaced said:
Well done FedEx for even investigating this move. I'd love to look at doing something similar for our company, but unfortunately we're completely locked in to Microsoft Access (and Access 97 at that!) and don't have the resources to shift to something else.
Click to expand...

The last company I worked for built it's main product around Access 97. I begged and pleaded for them to change. They wouldn't, I couldn't take it so I up and quit! That's how bad it was. They went out of business. I am fortunate that where I work I can use a Mac and our main systems are UNIX based (thank god!) The bad news is that I still have to support 250 Windows workstations (that use our UNIX system) but at least there is no MS Access!!!

:D
 
I had an Applescript virus back in late 2001: it grabbed piles of stuff out of the os9 system folder and deposited it onto the desktop; the icons for these things were originally visible only via ResEdit.

I figured there may have been several thousand icons on the desktop.

Couldn't access any files unless I went into osX -- and there was a special way to reboot into X that I used, but I can't remember what that was -- to access my files.
 
rdowns said:
Companies may be unhappy but I've yet to meet the IT professional who advocates moving away from Microsoft. Microsoft is their job security.

A good analogy is my company and my brother's. Both are about 175 employees and are heavily computerized. My company is a Windows shop and we have 4 support people to deal with the daily problems. My brother's company is primarily Mac and they have 1 support person. Imagine savings like those for a large scale company.
Click to expand...

Agreed. This is why many companies don't even get the whole lost productivity, downtime, and costs related to computers. They turn to Joe IT guy and say "what can we do to stop all these crashes and bugs" and he says "hire more M$ certified people." He wants a bigger department, more people working under him, it's all job security. College where I work has about 1200 employees, had about 1000 Macs in the 90s, and had only three full time staff IT people; employees have stayed the same, peecees have sadly disgustedly crept their way in so it's almost 750 craptaculare peecee sh**ty winblows machines, IT now has 11 people on staff, only one of whom is the "mac guy" and he says they trained him on peecee M$ crap sh** stuff because he didn't have job security i.e. 1 person for 250 Macs he had nothing to do.
 
Macrumors said:
....

While Macs are not inherently immune to virus attacks, most viruses have been written on the Windows/PC platform.
Click to expand...
Oh, come on. The only proof of a virus susceptibility on any platform is a concrete example. The proof that it is possible to write a virus for MacOS X is a MacOS X virus. There are none--zero--nada. This is not to say that it is impossible to write a MacOS X virus. What I am saying, however, is that there is more evidence for ghosts, UFOs, and Big Foot than there is for MacOS X viruses. People have actually reported seeing ghosts, UFOs, and Big Foot.
 
legion said:
I doubt this is true as most of their databases would be unable to be run with Mac OS X. Just last night I was dealing with a "Customer Advocate" at FedEX concerning tracking and found out many of their interfaces are Microsoft Access designed.
Click to expand...

They are using Mac OS for the Client Computers. Remember a Client computer is one that an average worker can use. A Server is a computer that is rarely infected by the viruses, etc of the world because they are sufficiently protected. FedEx has no need for Access on client machines, remember most of their interfaces are web-based? Do you actually know anything about computers? Lol, FedEx runs their data on MS Access on Windows 95! How unlikely.
 
SubGothius said:
"How can IT shops say they won't use a 'single-vendor solution' like Apple, but then use Microsoft for everything--from the server to desktop OS to software--and call it 'standardization'?"
-rueyeet's .sig, MacRumors forums
:D
Click to expand...

You're exactly right. Most people don't realize Mac OS X Server is primarily a reimplementation of OSS. Postfix, Apache/Tomcat, SSH, etc... They just make managing Servers several times easier for those unfamiliar with a UNIX environment. I admin Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X Servers and Linux is my favorite but is also the most difficult to admin. Windows requires the most dedicated time and Solaris is borish. Mac OS X Server is excellent.

My companies primary app is running on Windows right now but we do have a JSP version running on Linux. My main drawback is the Oracle Release. I'm evaluating Sybase Enterprise but it isn't true 64bit yet (however, can you really expect that after the hardware has only been out a short time). The Oracle release schedule is strange to me.

Our likely conversion will be to redundant (dual location) G5 XServes for our Web Servers and Linux running 9i as the DB Server. All our firewalls are Linux based as well.
 
Fed Ex Technology

Just some interesting stuff from the FedEx Website, lots of similarities in the two companies approaches to technology.

"FedEx's newest data collection device for couriers incorporates a micro-radio for hands-free communication with a printer and mobile computer in the courier's delivery vehicle. Called the PowerPad, the devices use Bluetooth wireless technology that allows FedEx couriers to communicate with each other within 30 feet of their vehicle."

Also the Fed Ex Institute, which has research centers in many areas that Apple is strong, such as multimedia, Life Sciences, etc.

Institute Web Site

And one more thing... doesn't using the OS X server software save a ton in licensing fees ($999 for unlimited licenses), so maybe it is a desktop and server migration.

Cool stuff, maybe this will mean new Powerbooks on Tuesday...
:D

Cheers,
hughdogg

edited - added content
 
Photorun said:
He wants a bigger department, more people working under him, it's all job security.
Click to expand...

Yes, but this is changing. More IT jobs are offshoring, workers are becoming more efficient which means that this gravy train has ended.

It is interesting to note that it wouldn't be hard for Microsoft to fix the operating system to be more secure as most of the security flaws are well understood. The problem is that doing so would break a number of applications running on the system including Microsoft's own. It is well known that Microsoft writes their software such that it operates very close to the metal, and I guess this implies that no number of security audits will untangle that fundamental problem, because they really stepped up the number and size of the audits but the number of viruses/exploits remains the same.
 
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