Meanwhile, in Windows World...

[Southbridge]

Um... wait... You guys are all like... Companies should ditch PC's, but I havent really seen any Apple software that COMPARES to Microsoft Office, Excel, PP. I mean come on. And price? When Apple's are priced like a luxury item, why the hell would companies spend up to 50% more? Honestly you posters live in a dreamworld where Macs perform flawlessly.

Hell. I love my mac for what it does, but I'm realistic.

 

[Yvan256]

I spent an hour yesterday trying to get a new Dell to recognize a freaking network printer. When I got my new iMac as Steve would say "boom" it saw it, and had the driver for it, too.

Same thing here: purchased an external FireWire 5.25/3.5" case yesterday, installed my HD in it, connected it to my Mac mini: "boom" it appeared on my desktop.

Weird thing is, the included CD does say "mac drivers" on it. No need to say, I left it in the box and never opened it.

Apple should really trademark it.... "It just works (TM)".

 

[plinden]

Um... wait... You guys are all like... Companies should ditch PC's, but I havent really seen any Apple software that COMPARES to Microsoft Office, Excel, PP. I mean come on. And price? When Apple's are priced like a luxury item, why the hell would companies spend up to 50% more? Honestly you posters live in a dreamworld where Macs perform flawlessly.

Hell. I love my mac for what it does, but I'm realistic.

Ummm ... you mean there's nothing like MS Office for Mac?

 

[crap freakboy]

Hell. I love my mac for what it does, but I'm realistic.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

Albert Einstein

 

[Timelessblur]

Ummm ... you mean there's nothing like MS Office for Mac?

Well it not exatly Apple software. It is MS software. Apple software is like iLife, Appleworks, iWorks ect.

I might like to put in for a company to switch over to Mac from PC you have to think about that would cost. We are taking several grand to several mil to do that per building. Yeah over time all the computers could be switch but they replace so many computers a year.

Also if they went the slow switching way that would double their software cost since they would need to get stuff for both. 2 sets of volume licensing. Antivirus and firewall cost dont change they would still keep them, They are just to big to risk it. Plus there would be extra cost of the networking while both are in use. Also the Apple OS is not as easily controled as it is for windows. In windows the IT guys can lock down you system and prevent you from installing or adding anything they dont want you to on it.

Also there is a ton of inhouse software that would have to be redevoloped for the apple OS. almost anything made that runs on a MS OS from 95 on will work on win2k and XP. It would just have torun in compitbility mode. And I said almost not all before someone trys to argume that point. Most dos stuff will run on the NT software.

 

[zakatov]

Well it not exatly Apple software. It is MS software.

You do know that first "Office" was for the mac, right? Wish MS would just stop there.

 

[stoid]

Also the Apple OS is not as easily controled as it is for windows. In windows the IT guys can lock down you system and prevent you from installing or adding anything they dont want you to on it.

While your other points are valid, I'm not familiar with the Windows sys-admin stuff, but wouldn't this count for OS X?

 

[plinden]

Well it not exatly Apple software. It is MS software. Apple software is like iLife, Appleworks, iWorks ect.

Sure, but the original poster seems to have a problem that Apple don't produce an MS Office equivalent. I don't believe HP or Dell do that either. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I might like to put in for a company to switch over to Mac from PC you have to think about that would cost. We are taking several grand to several mil to do that per building. Yeah over time all the computers could be switch but they replace so many computers a year.

The biggest cost to any company is salaries. How many PC->Mac conversions could you do for the savings on 20 IT staff down to 10 IT staff, especially here on the west coast? (10x$100,000 would get you 400 PowerBooks)

As for software costs, I don't know now how much multiple software licenses cost, but the last time I had to buy Office Pro for work (six years ago) it came with something like five user licenses. So it was $600, not $3000.

 

[ewinemiller]

'So its a team of twenty plus who basically try and make a crash prone system stay up and running, keep loads of trojans/keyloggers/etc etc from bringing down the system?'

A team of 20 means nothing unless there is a number of machines behind it, if they've got 15,000 machines then they are pretty good. If they've got 400, then they are just not very bright.

I worked for a company with 2 1/2 tech guys for 1200 user workstations and 150 servers over a medium size metro area. Users were locked down (couldn't install software), updates were pushed from central locations, virus software on each machine, and various remote desktop technologies let them do 95% of the work from their office. Their job was cake. They never worked overtime unless they were rolling out the IT infrastructure to a new site. A windows network is just not that hard to keep going. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably not a very good network admin.

Funny thing this thread is because windows posted some security updates. Gee, doesn't Apple do the same thing? What am I missing? Why does this make Apple better than MS?

 

[James Philp]

Drivers

Weird thing is, the included CD does say "mac drivers" on it. No need to say, I left it in the box and never opened it.
Apple should really trademark it.... "It just works (TM)".

Those drivers were probably for OS 9 & 10.0, which were terrible for hardware support. - Why do you think 10.2 etc are so big!
Glad my first X version was .2, phew!

 

[James Philp]

Dont you just....

Hate it when your computer does something wrong!
Thing is, this happens about once a month on a Mac, and about once a day on a PC (doing equivalent tasks- hardware/software installs).
All computers screw up, Macs just do it A LOT less (I actually can't remember the last time I had to restart due to crashing- oh except when I yanked my 802.11b (catchy name eh!) card out without turning AirPort off first! - my bad).
From using OS X over 2 years ago, it's probably crashed 10 or less times, with DECREASING regularity.
It seems once a PC gets a year old, and you are continually asking it to install things and adding different hardware, it gets so unstable you have to clean install it again (or at least that's what my PC hardcore friend says!) -ouch!

 

[plinden]

Funny thing this thread is because windows posted some security updates. Gee, doesn't Apple do the same thing? What am I missing? Why does this make Apple better than MS?

Hmm, no. This thread was posted because a new "highly critical" security issue was found on the same day they released patches for eight other security issues.

 

[ewinemiller]

Hmm, no. This thread was posted because a new "highly critical" security issue was found on the same day they released patches for eight other security issues.

The news sites call it critical, but from reading the advisory it doesn't seem critical. You'd have to trick someone into opening an MDB file to exploit it. If you can trick them into doing that, you can trick them into opening an EXE which seems like a whole lot easier way to distribute malicious code.

 

[TigerPRO]

Funny thing this thread is because windows posted some security updates. Gee, doesn't Apple do the same thing? What am I missing? Why does this make Apple better than MS?

M$ has been patching XP for years, and still the rate of critcal holes being discovered remains the same, if not continuely increasing. On the other hand, the rare, merely hypothetical security issues proclaimed in application to Mac OS X are mostly found and fixed within a year of it's release; like it should be with normal quality software. So the more bugs you fix, the more secure it gets. But windows seems to have an endless supply of vulnerabilities, that M$ programmers, working for years, still haven't managed to slow the pace of emerging issues.