Any other Mac users stuck in a windows world?

What are you doing in the UK where there are no Macs? The previous five contracts I've done in London have been for creative, legal, or banking companies, and all five have used Macs to some extent. Also quite a large percentage of the people I got to know during those times had Macs at home.

Far more common in the UK than many realise.

I don't quite understand these problem as once you have a Windows printer setup it is no harder to print to it than any other printer.

Keynote and Pages can read/write Microsoft Office formats and if you need it, Office is of course available for the Mac.

Not sure why Calendar syncing would be a problem either with the Exchange support in Snow Leopard (unless your company uses a previous version of Exchange).

Basically — is there any way any of the forum members can help?

Interoperability between PC and Mac shouldn't and doesn't need to be a big hassle.

Yes, I work in the Windows world. This is why the Intel switch plus the introduction of virtualization on the Mac were so amazing to me. It's made my life so much easier in terms of being able to easily interface in a Windows-centric environment.

I don't know about the UK, but I can tell you that nobody in Germany uses Macs in a business environment, and I've only seen three Mac users - take that number literally - while I was still working for the United Nations. It's actually easier to find people with Ubuntu Linux on their machines than it is to find Mac users.

But it's interesting that you seem to experience the very same compatibility problems that I had with an Apple notebook in every office so far. You usually can connect to the company network and get Internet access, but that's where the story ends. Office documents lose their formatting, Office makros don't work, file server browsing might still be possible, but you cannot expect it, but usually none of the large office printers has Mac drivers - or if they have Mac drivers, which is extraordinarily rare, they still won't work with Intel Macs and only support Mac OS X Jaguar or Panther. (Konica Minolta, anyone? And Sharp only has pay-for Mac drivers which, of course, no company buys.)

And here is where owning a Mac really pisses me off: Ubuntu 9.10 does not show ANY of these problems in my company's office. Snow Leopard couldn't even print, but Ubuntu could do it out of the box. File server browsing also worked out of the box with Ubuntu, Snow Leopard didn't even find the Windows shares.

Since Windows and Linux are the platforms where I make my living, I today decided to finally dump Mac OS X. I've put the expensive Apple software on eBay two hours ago and made Windows 7 the only operating system on my Mac Pro. And there are only two reasons why it is Windows 7 and not a flavor of Linux: My USB scanner is not compatible with SANE and I do not believe in emulation layers to play games like Civilization IV, STALKER or Half-Life.

The killer arguments for Windows are: I no longer have to turn on my company notebook to work from home. All the software that I need also runs on my own desktop machine. And that is very handy when I'm on 24/7 duty.

For me, this is now the final Goodbye to the Apple world. My Mac Pro is a good machine, although too loud for my taste. I'll keep using it until I need a new computer, and when that day comes it will be one of those completely noiseless PCs. A Quad Core with 0 db(A)/0 Sone. Probably one from SilentMaxx.

OS X is a nice platform for certain purposes, but it has many restrictions and a devilish vendor lock-in. It took me five years to figure out that Windows is the lesser of the two evils and to accept defeat.

Maybe Windows 7 will only be an interim-step on the way to a full migration to Open Source platforms. But that depends on a couple of other factors. I would love to completely dump commercial (application) software and be free from vendor dependencies and also be free from being their cash cow.

Well. Let's see how things develop. I have not yet given up on Linux and FreeBSD.

elppa said:

Interoperability between PC and Mac shouldn't and doesn't need to be a big hassle.

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I can tell you from years of experience that in the real world, it still is.

I can't say I've had many issues with windows-mac interoperability apart from some slight bugs in snow leopard seeing windows pcs on a network.

Nope, far from alone on that one. Most of the computers in my company are PCs and most of the internal software we use seem to be designed exclusively for Windows (work for an on-line bank). I think the only Macs (a few 21.5" iMacs) in the company are used by our marketing department for graphic design. Plus to make it worse, we're still using IE 6! *shudders* And no, we're not allowed to download any other browzer

I haven't had any real issues in my office (networking or otherwise, bound to AD just fine). I am the only person with a Mac in the office. Several of us have Macs for home use but not at the office. I've done just fine. The only issues I have are the crippled Excel 2008 and not having Access. But I remedy that with virtualisation for the few things I do that require a windows only feature or product. If it weren't for those few things I don't think I would ever find myself in a compatibility situation. I guess learning about the OS and knowing how to get things working (ACTC cert) helps. Ubuntu is great, but i've had nothing but headaches from all of the other distros i've tried (OpenSUSE 11.2, Fedora 12/13 and Debian have just been inconsistent as hell and good luck joining AD). In my experience Linux hasn't quite worked perfectly out of the box where OS X has been either perfect or at least needed way less coaxing than linux. Certainly not going back to Win7 100% of the time.

I am perfectly comfortable using either one, so really it makes no difference.

Where I work it's mostly Windows though a number of people use macs. I have no choice in using a PC since I support windows servers, desktops and applications that are windows based

this doesn't bother me much because I've always worked in businesses that were windows shops. It's just life

Of course you can share your iWork stuff with your colleagues. Just convert your Pages documents to .docx, your Keynote presentation to .ppt or your Numbers files to .xlswith a few clicks, so they can open them in Microsoft Office. It only takes a few seconds.

As Apple advertises - it plays well with others.

Winni said:

I don't know about the UK, but I can tell you that nobody in Germany uses Macs in a business environment, and I've only seen three Mac users - take that number literally - while I was still working for the United Nations. It's actually easier to find people with Ubuntu Linux on their machines than it is to find Mac users.

OS X is a nice platform for certain purposes, but it has many restrictions and a devilish vendor lock-in. It took me five years to figure out that Windows is the lesser of the two evils and to accept defeat.

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well..it took me 2.5 years to figure out that Windows is lesser of the two evils....I agree with the vendor lock-in and hence tried use Win 7 as my primary operating system...I felt it was the right thing to do....sony did look like a good choice....but I realize that I like OSX a bit too much to let go off so easily...I guess I am doomed to struggle in the business world with OSX...

and yes..I am a Mac lover stuck in the world of Windows...but this love hurts! 😛

Mcbar said:

i work for the youth service and a couple of other youth workers use mac (mine primarily for music) but 95% of the people in my organization that i know use windows and our IT support are no very helpful at offering solutions to my problems.

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I also worked in several youth justice places in London years ago and they all used PC at that time. I haven't seen any law office use a mac either, though I think now that information portals like Westlaw do run better on Macs, I think many years ago they only ran on IE. Any large provider will run their operation on PC, and their custom software won't be compatible with Macs, so even smaller specialized IT departments often get tied down to using PC..

Macs have a long way to go before they're more popular, but on the other hand any creative studio we use will have Macs, exclusively. I've never been to a copywriter or printer that's had PCs.

I was in the same boat and then requested myself and my department all have Macs. Now I use iWork instead of Office and use Apple Mail instead of Outlook. I think Macs actually make sense at work and Windows is more of a home system because of the price and games.

And the kicker is that the Mac exceeds with compatibility with the company's internet Java applications better than Windows. The windows machines get conflicts and can't even get to the login screen.

There are only about three of us at a location of 100+ that use Macs. Indeed we all purchased them on our own, and the company (rightfully so) has rules against allowing personal computers on to most of the network.

So everyday I trudge my backpack with the company Dell notebook and either my MacBook or MacBook pro into the office. Usually the Dell stays at my desk, and I am able to get most things done on the Mac. Here is what I do;

Email/Calendar: We are given Outlook web access. So I do these things in the browser. I am looking forward to Outlook for the Mac.

Network access: I use our visitors network

Notes and files: I use Evernote to keep various things in sync, I also occasionally use my personal storage on MobileMe.

Printing: I have a local printer at my desk.

Archive Files: I keep an external back up of my work PC fairly up to date. I am able to use that on the Mac when needed.

My Solution to MAC's in a Windows Office Env.

I also am "a mac user and lover in a windows world". For a long period of time I would use BootCamp XP at work and OS X at home.

Then along came the Nehalem processors (4 cores and 8 threads) and Snow Leopard. Not being able to afford a Mac Pro, I went the Hackintosh route.

The point is that the Nehalem processor allow me to run Window XP as a virtual machine faster then XP runs on my BootCamped 2.8GHz uMBP. So now I am always in OS X with one space running a virtual instance of XP and I move between the environments with ease.

neil

opening windows docx

I've tried open office and various downloads, but still can't open docx documents from microsoft even though I have microsoft office for mac 2008. Anyone know how this works?

Yep, I work in an all Windows environment. I'm in New Media so I'm always getting my chops busted by outside vendors that I take work to lol. 🙂