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Microsoft Barring Many of its Employees from Buying Apple Products with Company Funds?
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I have not had a chance to use Configurator yet but I am looking forward to hearing some feedback on it. It's hard to imagine that Tim Cook & Co. are ignoring Enterprise with the release of Configurator.
Cost is relative. Depends on who you ask whether or not Apple products cost too much. Can't say I've ever considered Apple products trendy. Rather, I find most to be exceptionally well made, user friendly, visually appealing, technologically advanced devices. I've owned both PC's and Mac's therefore my opinion is based solely on my own experience.
Indeed.
If this isn't pure BS, what was the name of the "DVD driver" and from where did you download a good copy? (There's no "dvd.sys" in Windows....)
It's amazing that your bad karma with Windows is so powerful that it can affect your friends' mothers-in-law....
I've not read that post, but what did that ex-MSFT/Google Evangelist actually do at Microsoft? Perhaps his position didn't really warrant the use of Macs.
As for "knowing thine enemy", I'm sure that Microsoft will pay for Apple products for the departments/employees that need Apple products. Namely the design teams that need these products to copy off of.
Well hello to you Aiden. It's been a while.
The Windows 7 box was purchased and put together by some local third party shop in the city I was visiting the friend. The driver manufacturer came up as "Unknown" or something to that effect. I was unable to download a good copy due to "unknown" manufacturer. Given it was a Sunday night and I had a Monday AM flight back to my beloved MSP, I instructed the mother in law to contact the local company to fix her Win7 box given she paid about $1000 for a Win 7 tower, 20" display, and Office.
Indeed it is amazing about my Windows karma. Could the mother in law call you next time?
This is typical for a big company. Companies see this as promoting brand loyalty and reward it with discounts. We can get discounts on PC's and printers at my current company but not for other companies products ie Apple. The same held true when I was at a company that made CDMA chips. You could get an employee discount on any phone that had our chipset in it but not for a GSM phone on AT&T's network.
Configured the magic triangle at my previous job. Apple sales engineers spoke of it's wonders, but it was a nightmare. Mainly because MACs closest solution to mandatory roaming profiles stores too much data that has to be transferred at login. 20 kids logging into a MAC all at once took about 30 minutes of the 45 minute class. The frustrating part was that MAC engineers couldn't figure this out. We were about to pack the Apple carts up and send them back (after 4 months and 3 failed attempts from egineers) when I discovered how much data from apps was held in the user's profile. I was able to work around it. But I was not impressed with Apples enterprise level support.
Joining the domain really wasn't a problem, but integrating MACs into a Windows AD environment and utilizing both MAC preferences and AD Group Policy - bleh.
And I had to configure WEP on the WAPs because MACs didn't play well with WPA.
I'll never again attempt to bring MACs into an AD Domain.
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And so is Kinect - which will work phenomenally well with Windows 8. Particularly on Kinect integrated monitors and laptops.
Not in this case, sorry.
The two scenarios:
1) Microsoft salesperson requests purchase of laptop for use on the road. Asks for MacBook Air.
2) Apple salesperson requests purchase of laptop for use on the road. Asks for Dell Inspiron.
Which scenario sounds more plausible to you?
Or salesperson asks for the new model Asus Zenbook, which is just as thin, just as well built, has USB 3.0 support, and is guaranteed to run all his software.
If you were an MS tech support specialist, and all your software was on Windows, which would you pick to take to work?
If you were an MS tech support specialist, and all your software was on Windows, which would you pick to take to work?
Ridiculous ...
This story has done far more harm than a few employees buying a few Apple products using Microsoft's funds.
This is breathtakingly ridiculous.
On the other hand, one suspects an increasing number of MS employees walking around with iStuff ... because iStuff is soooooo good.
Somewhere ... Steve Jobs is wryly smiling.
This story has done far more harm than a few employees buying a few Apple products using Microsoft's funds.
This is breathtakingly ridiculous.
On the other hand, one suspects an increasing number of MS employees walking around with iStuff ... because iStuff is soooooo good.
Somewhere ... Steve Jobs is wryly smiling.
We're not talking about Apple here. We're talking about MS here, right? That an MS employee is far more likely to buy a Mac to do MS business? Based on what? A memo about not using company money to buy Apple products for personal use? That you happen to like Apple more?
What's your point?
Because Microsoft like so many Microsoft fanboys some how believe that people buy Apple devices because they're morons that have been brainwashed by a sinister advertising and propaganda campaign from Apple. The sad reality is that they fail to accept responsibility for the abomination that is Windows, they fail to actually do something substantial about the problem (WinRT still heavily relies on Win32 such as user32.dll etc. so it isn't purely a subsystem in its own right) and then make it worse by shoe horning a great idea (Metro) for tablets and phones into a desktop operating system.
Windows 7 is great when compared to Windows Vista but it is the same operating system based on the crappy poorly constructed API that is win32 and to be frank Windows 8 doesn't fare a lot better when you look at the lack of any movement to replace win32 with WinRT for desktop applications. If Microsoft think we're all going to be using Metro applications then the head programmer is a moron. People are happy with their desktop and how it works, it works because it is flexible and powerful so the idea of ramming Metro down the collective throats of end users as the 'be all and end all of GUI design' seems to be a sort sighted decision. For all of Apple's faults at least they recognise that there are certain things that are unique to tablets and others which are unique to desktops - touch works great on tablets but a touchpad is better for desktop and laptops. Apple takes the conservative pragmatic decision where as Microsoft embraces change for the sake of change and appearing to be new but little else to show for it.
1) For someone who is supposed to be intelligent you don't seem to know the difference between MAC and Mac. How can a MAC (Media Access Control) attach to an AD server? the fact that you can't even use the correct terminology pretty much destroys what you have to say.
2) "And I had to configure WEP on the WAPs because MACs didn't play well with WPA" thus you're doing something wrong again. Don't blame Apple or Microsoft because you're unable to get some basic things up and running.
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There's one problem with what people are saying about Pepsi not buying Coke and things like that in comparison: Apple and Microsoft aren't direct competitors. To be honest, no one is Apple's direct competitor. The only company that makes both their own hardware AND software in the computer, tablet, and smartphone industries is Apple (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong). Microsoft and Google could be called direct competitors, but Apple's in a league of its own in more ways than one. 
There's one problem with what people are saying about Pepsi not buying Coke and things like that in comparison: Apple and Microsoft aren't direct competitors. To be honest, no one is Apple's direct competitor. The only company that makes both their own hardware AND software in the computer, tablet, and smartphone industries is Apple (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong). Microsoft and Google could be called direct competitors, but Apple's in a league of its own in more ways than one.
I don't think that your analysis makes sense - because computers are lifeless slabs without an OS.
When you show someone something on a computer screen (let's assume laptop here), you see the OS. If you look at the screen - it doesn't matter if it's a Dell, HP, Lenovo or Apple running Windows - you see Windows. The experience is Windows.
If it's an Apple running Apple OSX, you see Apple OSX.
However, because Apple produces both OS and hardware, if you're running Windows on an Apple that big glowing Apple is there diluting your message like some tacky designer sunglasses which have the logo as the main feature (we're talking about you, Gucci).
It seems entirely reasonable that Microsoft would want to avoid sending mixed messages by giving Apple products to customer-facing employees - especially since in most cases Microsoft's partners produce equivalent products.
It's nice to see that someone understands this policy.
It's only news to those who fail to understand business.
s;Microsoft;Apple;g
(the cryptic text means "globally substitute the word 'Apple' whereever 'Microsoft' occurs")The comment applies to both Microsoft and Apple.
It can be hard to understand business from your mother's basement.
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From what I understand, the only thing wrong with Win32 is that it's a little long in the tooth these days, and could use a goodly bit of modernizing. Still, I don't think I've ever heard a real programmer call it crappy or poorly constructed before.
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Have you heard of .NET ? That's the new API.
Win32 has had a constant stream of compatible upgrades - so your old stuff will still compile.
But, even if you're doing native C++ development, you'll want to use the updated APIs. In particular, I've given up on ASCII/ANSI and do everything using the UNICODE APIs. Lots of useful new stuff is UNICODE-only, so Microsoft is gently pushing its developers into the new era. (Unlike another OS vendor which kills entire API sets without warning.)
And, most of the time, there are redefinitions or overloads in Win32 so that old code will pick up the new APIs without modifications. It's nice that ten year old 32-bit ASCII programs compile fine as x64 UNICODE programs.
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Yup, but the core of Windows is still built around and heavily reliant upon the old Win32 API. I don't think MS is going to move away from it completely until Windows 9, and that's at the very earliest.