Macs Landing on Corporate Desks, Led by iPhones and iPads

linux2mac said:

BUT you need to be a computer scientist to use Android.


Ballmer Thinks You Have To Be A Computer Scientist To Use Android
http://articles.businessinsider.com..._1_android-iphone-steve-ballmer#ixzz1k164RLzS

Click to expand...

You spend a lot of time bashing ballmer and Microsoft then you proceed to post a link by the same guy you mock as proof of..... Well proof of what exactly?

dgree03 said:

You spend a lot of time bashing ballmer and Microsoft then you proceed to post a link by the same guy you mock as proof of..... Well proof of what exactly?

Click to expand...

Hmmm....I guess the elevator doesn't make it to the top floor in this instance.

KnightWRX said:

But iOS is showing promise OS X hasn't in a long time in this fashion. Apple are providing the tools and features required by enterprises. They aren't level with RIM's BB platform yet, but I bet they will eventually get there.

Click to expand...

It's pretty insane how many iOS devices are getting bought at our organisation - although they're pretty much used as glorified email readers and status symbols, bought by the wrong people, thrown at IT and expected to work.

My two biggest issues are:
-- I can't get proxy authentication to work reliably. Entering a fqdn into a popup box that appears 'at random' is hardly usable.
-- I can't buy applications and deploy them to devices. Apple's large account department sounded pretty ashamed when they suggested their solution; that every user has their own itunes account and we provide gift cards for them to buy applications...
This is the type of thing that might sound like a non-issue to some, and a completely unworkable mess to others - pretty much dependant on the size of the business, the services that are used to run it and security policies.

Realisticly, osx can do little more than sit on a corporate network as standalone machine currently. Unmanaged (compared to a windows desktop), running osx software, receiving no support and missing out on 10000s of man-hours worth of services already built to 'run the business'.

'Normal' people have computers at home and smart phones in their pocket, everything works very nicely, irrelevant of the OS - If you haven't worked in a large enterprise environment, it's pretty hard to imagine the transition.

linux2mac said:

BUT you need to be a computer scientist to use Android.


Ballmer Thinks You Have To Be A Computer Scientist To Use Android
http://articles.businessinsider.com..._1_android-iphone-steve-ballmer#ixzz1k164RLzS

Click to expand...

I get why he's saying that, as he's pushing his new Windows Phone along. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with that.

I do have a new Android phone, and it's nice being able to transfer files (ringtones, music, anything) to it without iTunes or any other program. Good old drag-and-drop, and even wireless via bluetooth or wifi if I feel like it.

I'm actually looking forward to see what's next from Apple, too. My 3GS is getting shorter and shorter battery life, and I don't feel like performing surgery to put a new battery in it. (iPhone users need to be SURGEONS to change a battery! Hahaha! )

mijail said:

That's why I started by saying that anything I could say would be anecdotes, and that's why I asked for what kind of proof would be good.

Click to expand...

Every review of Windows 7 talks about it's stability, and the vast majority of people I talk to don't get much problems out of it. That isn't to say that things are perfect all across the board. Some people are bound to have issues here and there. But then again, some people are also bound to have issues out of OSX as well.

All computers are flaky and stupid, and are bound to spaz out at a moments notice for no apparent reason. The fact we have computers that can work consistently for months on end is practically a miracle of engineering. Macs. PCs. iPhones. Androids. They're all dumb. And because of this, there's no such thing as one single OS that will run flawlessly on every single piece of hardware out there. Even amongst two identical computers, one guy could have a completely smooth experience, while another guy has nothing but problems.

Hell, I had my iPhone freeze up on me a few weeks back. All I was doing was scrolling through my contacts, and BAM! HARD FREEZE! Why did it freeze? Hell if I know. I guess the stars aligned just right, with Venus in the seventh house of Scorpio or something, which is detrimental to ARM processors, because they were fabricated under the sign of Taurus, and it froze up on me.

Does this mean all iPhones suck? Of course not. I'd be an idiot to say something that dumb. The same applies to Windows 7. There are millions of people who use it without seeing a single BSOD. Ever. Just because you know a guy that did, or heard about Windows OSes crashing all the time 15 years ago doesn't mean the latest and greatest OS from MS has the same problem.

tigres said:

Well I can expect an OSX machine to talk to a windows network properly, unless it is Apple's way to completely exist independently of any MS user base. As the tread does imply Corporate Desks w/ macs, I find it hard to believe that the elimination of shared folders on a windows network are being axed.

Works great with SL, but dog slow with Lion. So I ask if this is apples intention of leaving all OSX clients to no longer co-exist in a windows environment? If this is so, it makes no sense to me; as I am forced to use it (windows) in work as the backbone platform, which many others do as well.

Click to expand...

Is it perhaps one of those religious things, where Apple wants you to use NFS (the Nightmare File System) instead of CIFS (the Common Internet File System)? Or maybe there's a secret project to bring back AppleShare?

See Blu-ray, USB 3.0, Flash for other examples of similar battles that only hurt the Apple user.

That might also explain why Active Directory support on Apple OSX has continuing reports of problems, release after release.

AidenShaw said:

Is it perhaps one of those religious things, where Apple wants you to use NFS (the Nightmare File System) instead of CIFS (the Common Internet File System)? Or maybe there's a secret project to bring back AppleShare?

Click to expand...

No, I want me to use NFS. That's how I share files between my *NIX boxes.

AidenShaw said:

See Blu-ray, USB 3.0, Flash for other examples of similar battles that only hurt the Apple user.

Click to expand...

Uhhh.....I was not hurt by any of those battles.

No Blu-ray hurt the Apple user?

Who wants Blu-ray when the future is 8K?

CES 2012: Here's What Video on an 8K Television Looks Like, Up Close
http://www.tested.com/news/ces-2012-heres-what-video-on-an-8k-television-looks-like-up-close/3457/


No Flash hurt the Apple user too?

Adobe listens to Steve Jobs, pulls plug on Flash for mobile
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/adobe-listens-to-steve-jobs-pulls-plug-on-flash-for-mobile/16128


And regarding USB 3.0. No thanks. I'll take Thunderbolt.

apples and pears

linux2mac said:

And regarding USB 3.0. No thanks. I'll take Thunderbolt.

Click to expand...

...and you'll pay $125 for a mouse and $150 for a keyboard, and have used up a third of your IO ports just for the mouse and keyboard, not to mention having to deal with a mouse with two cords and a keyboard with two cords.

USB 3.0 and T-Bolt are meant to solve different problems -- but there's some overlap in the lower end storage space where USB 3.0 is a fine, affordable solution with all of the real-world performance of T-Bolt.

Also, USB 3.0 is widely available today - whereas most T-Bolt items have been "6 months away" for a year or so....

linux2mac said:

No Blu-ray hurt the Apple user?

Click to expand...

Exactly. Why worry about choosing whether to use it or not when Apple already made the choice for you?

Who wants Blu-ray when the future is 8K?

CES 2012: Here's What Video on an 8K Television Looks Like, Up Close
http://www.tested.com/news/ces-2012-heres-what-video-on-an-8k-television-looks-like-up-close/3457/

Click to expand...

We're gonna have 24 core iMacs in another 10 years, so why waste your money buying a puny quad core iMac now?

And regarding USB 3.0. No thanks. I'll take Thunderbolt.

Click to expand...

Thunderbolt is nice, and probably will eventually supplant USB. But right now? There's barely any hardware out that takes advantage of it. While you're sitting around admiring that port on the side of your Mac that isn't doing you much good, I'll be using USB in the interim.

Renzatic said:

Thunderbolt is nice, and probably will eventually supplant USB.

Click to expand...

Intel sees them as co-existing.

And the crazy daisy-chaining and 6 device limit on the current T-Bolt is a killer limitation. It's reasonable to say "6 displays/RAID controllers/AV cards/etc max per port" if you're looking at high end storage and peripherals, but when you look at printers and digital cameras and scanners and memory card readers and mouses and keyboards and lower-end external drives and GPS systems and Z-Wave controllers and power meters and thermostats and... it's kind of silly to expect all of those to convert to T-Bolt. (Especially the things like GPS modules which would run fine on USB 1.1....)

Renzatic said:

But right now? There's barely any hardware out that takes advantage of it. While you're sitting around admiring that port on the side of your Mac that isn't doing you much good, I'll be using USB in the interim.

Click to expand...

+1

...and I'll be getting full performance from external hard drives while linux2mac is either getting 30 MB/sec or paying a lot extra for the few 1394b drives still available.

linux2mac said:

No, I want me to use NFS. That's how I share files between my *NIX boxes.

Click to expand...

...and of course Windows supports NFS clients out-of-the-box, so if you want least-common-denominator file-sharing that's your option.

AidenShaw said:

Intel sees them as co-existing.

And the crazy daisy-chaining and 6 device limit on the current T-Bolt is a killer limitation. It's reasonable to say "6 displays/RAID controllers/AV cards/etc max per port" if you're looking at high end storage and peripherals, but when you look at printers and digital cameras and scanners and memory card readers and mouses and keyboards and lower-end external drives and GPS systems and Z-Wave controllers and power meters and thermostats and... it's kind of silly to expect all of those to convert to T-Bolt. (Especially the things like GPS modules which would run fine on USB 1.1....)

Click to expand...

I really need to go out and read up on exactly what Thunderbolt is one of these days. I've been under the impression that it's the eventual successor to USB, it's big advantage being that it can provide enough bandwidth to basically act like an external PCI-E solution. But now, if I'm reading you right, I'm thinking Tbolt would be better suited for a smaller set of high end, power hungry devices, while USB would be used more for peripherals.

Which means, if I'm correct here, that all these people who've been arguing that Tbolt is so much better than USB are missing the point.

Renzatic said:

I really need to go out and read up on exactly what Thunderbolt is one of these days. I've been under the impression that it's the eventual successor to USB, it's big advantage being that it can provide enough bandwidth to basically act like an external PCI-E solution. But now, if I'm reading you right, I'm thinking Tbolt would be better suited for a smaller set of high end, power hungry devices, while USB would be used more for peripherals.

Which means, if I'm correct here, that all these people who've been arguing that Tbolt is so much better than USB are missing the point.

Click to expand...

One Wire To Rule Them All On Your PC: Intel's Thunderbolt
http://www.fastcompany.com/1750149/one-wire-to-rule-them-all-on-your-pc-intels-thunderbolt

"But think of the design possibilities for a laptop, tablet PC, or smartphone that only has two connectors: One for power, and the Thunderbolt port for everything else--how simple and neat the back and rear of the machine would be, and how user-friendly it would be to only have to think about a couple of connections."

I guess USB 3.0 just needs Apple's blessing on Panther Point before linux2mac praises it too.

Renzatic said:

I really need to go out and read up on exactly what Thunderbolt is one of these days. I've been under the impression that it's the eventual successor to USB, it's big advantage being that it can provide enough bandwidth to basically act like an external PCI-E solution. But now, if I'm reading you right, I'm thinking Tbolt would be better suited for a smaller set of high end, power hungry devices, while USB would be used more for peripherals.

Which means, if I'm correct here, that all these people who've been arguing that Tbolt is so much better than USB are missing the point.

Click to expand...

ThunderBolt is not much more than external PCIe x4 + DisplayPort. The PCI-SIG has its own standard coming out based on PCI-Express 3.0.

As an enthusiast I find it valuable until the $50 cable sticker shock sets in. When was the last time you or anyone else cared about a USB cable?

So here's a question for you. Say you had Tbolt based 8 port USB 3.0 hub. On this hub, you'd have a couple of 3.0 thumbdrives, a wireless keyboard/mouse combo, and an external SSD. Would that count as a single device on your 6 device limit, or is it all bandwidth based? As in, you can have max 6 devices, or X amount of devices that use up to Y amount of the bandwidth provided by the port?

Renzatic said:

So here's a question for you. Say you had Tbolt based 8 port USB 3.0 hub. On this hub, you'd have a couple of 3.0 thumbdrives, a wireless keyboard/mouse combo, and an external SSD. Would that count as a single device on your 6 device limit, or is it all bandwidth based? As in, you can have max 6 devices, or X amount of devices that use up to Y amount of the bandwidth provided by the port?

Click to expand...

It would be a single device leeching off PCIe lanes to a USB 3.0 controller. It would be very similar to a motherboard block diagram where lanes split off to independent controllers but externally.

The only worthwhile investment I would make on a Thunderbolt device would be for an external GPU on a notebook. USB 3.0 for everything else.

Eidorian said:

It would be a single device leeching off PCIe lanes to a USB 3.0 controller. It would be very similar to a motherboard block diagram where lanes split off to independent controllers but externally.

The only worthwhile investment I would make on a Thunderbolt device would be for an external GPU on a notebook. USB 3.0 for everything else.

Click to expand...

Okay. Tbolt could replace USB for all standard devices, but it'd be a huge waste of resources for it to do so. Basically like hooking up a controller card in a PCI-E 1x slot just for a mouse and keyboard. Yeah. It's doable. The slot would provide more than enough power to support it. But why would you want to?

Which leads me to another question. Will Tbolt controllers eventually be able to support multiple ports, and provide max bandwidth to each one? If it can, I can see modular computing being the wave of the future. Why have a tower, when you could add a GPU to a machine the size of a Mac Mini just by plugging in a cord? But if it can only support a single port, then I kinda doubt it could provide enough bandwidth to support a monitor that's daisychained to a top of the line GPU that's daisychained to an external SSD and still get full performance out of all three. You'd have to make a sacrifice somewhere.

Hell, I'm just gonna look this crap up.

linux2mac said:

One Wire To Rule Them All On Your PC: Intel's Thunderbolt
http://www.fastcompany.com/1750149/one-wire-to-rule-them-all-on-your-pc-intels-thunderbolt

"But think of the design possibilities for a laptop, tablet PC, or smartphone that only has two connectors: One for power, and the Thunderbolt port for everything else--how simple and neat the back and rear of the machine would be, and how user-friendly it would be to only have to think about a couple of connections."

Click to expand...

Where in that link does it say that "T-Bolt will replace USB"?

That article simply describes the dock connections that Windows systems users have enjoyed for more than the last decade.

One would assume that the dock would have USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connectors, as well as eSATA, VGA/DVI/HDMI/DP, GbE and other ports. More than 10 years ago my Compaq laptop had a dock with 3 PCI slots for peripherals. Apple is very, very late to this game.

I've said from the first stories about T-Bolt that it would be a great dock connector.

But, of course, if you have a dock and a DP display - you can only connect 4 other devices. Won't you want to use USB for the ones that don't need full PCIe 1.0 x4 bandwidth, rather than waste one of your 4 daisy-chain ports on a printer or SDxc reader?

Renzatic said:

Why have a tower, when you could add a GPU to a machine the size of a Mac Mini just by plugging in a cord?

Click to expand...

Attack of the Minis
http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/attack-of-the-minis/

"Start with a Light Peak-equipped Mac Mini. Need more horsepower? Just get another Mini and connect with Light Peak. Grand Central will automatically distribute the load across multiple devices. A 2U rack will hold eight Mac Minis that, tightly coupled, will run rings around an Xserve. Better yet, given a good high bandwidth connection, OS X will be able to access applications and data in the cloud as though it were local."

I call BS on this one

linux2mac said:

Attack of the Minis
http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/attack-of-the-minis/

"Start with a Light Peak-equipped Mac Mini. Need more horsepower? Just get another Mini and connect with Light Peak. Grand Central will automatically distribute the load across multiple devices. A 2U rack will hold eight Mac Minis that, tightly coupled, will run rings around an Xserve. Better yet, given a good high bandwidth connection, OS X will be able to access applications and data in the cloud as though it were local."

Click to expand...

Please link to sources that say that "Light Peak" can be used for clustering, and to the pages for products that utilize T-Bolt clustering.

(Hint: "Light Peak" is not a network interconnect - as released as T-Bolt it's a very low level PCIe external bus.)

Cringely is hallucinating in that year-old article that you linked.

AidenShaw said:

Please link to sources that say that "Light Peak" can be used for clustering, and to the pages for products that utilize T-Bolt clustering.

(Hint: "Light Peak" is not a network interconnect - as released as T-Bolt it's a very low level PCIe external bus.)

Cringely is hallucinating in that year-old article that you linked.

Click to expand...

Compute cluster?
"Thunderbolt is very low latency - a maximum of 8 nanoseconds in a fully configured 8 node fabric - which rivals the much more costly - and expandable - Infiniband. Infiniband is widely used in high performance computing and in EMC’s Isilon NAS clusters.

A cluster of 6 quad-core notebooks on a Thunderbolt fabric could handle a lot of video rendering and transcoding while on the run. Add a fast flash array and you’ve got a 50 lb. battery-powered HD video production studio. Nice."

How we'll roll with Thunderbolt
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/how-well-roll-with-thunderbolt/1300

Mac Mini Recording or Live Cluster
http://www.ryansloan.net/2011/08/11/mac-mini-recording-or-live-cluster/

linux2mac said:

Compute cluster?
"Thunderbolt is very low latency - a maximum of 8 nanoseconds in a fully configured 8 node fabric - which rivals the much more costly - and expandable - Infiniband. Infiniband is widely used in high performance computing and in EMC’s Isilon NAS clusters.

A cluster of 6 quad-core notebooks on a Thunderbolt fabric could handle a lot of video rendering and transcoding while on the run. Add a fast flash array and you’ve got a 50 lb. battery-powered HD video production studio. Nice."

How we'll roll with Thunderbolt
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/how-well-roll-with-thunderbolt/1300

Mac Mini Recording or Live Cluster
http://www.ryansloan.net/2011/08/11/mac-mini-recording-or-live-cluster/

Click to expand...

Neither of those links mention anything about products that support clustering over T-Bolt.

Fail.

Also, please explain how to make a cluster of Mac Minis or MacBooks - since you can't daisy chain with only one T-Bolt port per system.

KnightWRX said:

A lot of Enterprise businesses are now realising the value of the "Bring your own" model. Basically, why should IT bother with your client workstation ? Most everything can be done with the thin client model nowadays except for very specialised apps that few departments need.

Click to expand...

this is exactly what my company (50,000+ employees and 80 offices worldwide) is doing. As the policy has been brought in the number of macs, especially Airs and MBP, has ballooned and probably will reach 50% in my department (marketing) where machines are basically MS office platforms.

Sure this was all started by the senior management demanding ipads but the result has been a complete change in how we do employee personal IT, many of the old systems are moving to apps to allow ipad users access which are being built by the same guys that used to run the IT support, for now it seems to be working and even IT are not complaining.

Appreciate that this will never result in a fully mac environment and I totally realise the guys in the back rooms may well be tearing their hair out but for us it's great

Renzatic said:

Your argument that "OLOL WHY NOT USE OSX ITS AWESOME AND YOU WON'T NEED AN IT DEPARTMENT ANYMORE CUZ ITS AWESOME AND JUST WORKS DARP DARP DARP" is completely missing the point.

Click to expand...

Whose argument was that again? Drop off.

KnightWRX said:

Really, how you can say this after we've had a thread full of IT guys who want to see Apple in the enterprise but realise the limitation of their offerings is quite beyond me.

Click to expand...

Which thread is that? Seriously, you guys are hilarious. None of you are users, and you simply don't understand the user side of computers. Although you sure as hell think you do, just like women think they understand men. This thread is like a comedy routine.

AidenShaw said:

Neither of those links mention anything about products that support clustering over T-Bolt.

Fail.

Also, please explain how to make a cluster of Mac Minis or MacBooks - since you can't daisy chain with only one T-Bolt port per system.

Click to expand...

To be fair.... Semi-Fail
but it does show promiss.

Yes Thunderbolt is really just a high bandwidth cable but you can put a cluster interconnect on the far end instead of the CPU end. Which means someone could build a hub with namespace translation hardware for each machine embedded in the hub instead of the machine but no one has yet.