Macs in the work place.

[tim_s]

Hi Everyone,

In my company I have watched the design department phase in to Macs from Windows, to only be phased back out into Windows again.

Mainly this comes in from the directors of the Marketing department and the staffing at the time but I was wondering,

A: Are people seeing this within their work place?

B: What sort of uses does your company find Mac still dominates.

(So help me god IF Mr. XXIV jumps in recommending mac minis for servers lol ? I am just kidding buddy.)

Right now in my IT department we have 2 Macs,

1: My current laptop

2: We have an iMac to confirm what the design department is seeing on the websites.

** We did have sort of Mac revival.

[C:Amie]

At one client on my books Mac users got left alone behind closed doors for 12 months and when someone (me) decided to look in on them we discovered that they had been reproducing at an alarming rate; more than doubled in those 12 months in fact.

My intention is to scale it back drastically. Personal views aside, the client has spent millions on PC infrastructure and support services only for these departments to basically now be demanding bespoke IT services, have no security integration or oversight and no backup policy. There isn't a standardised <anything> amongst them and it is not cost effective; I'm not putting a Mac server infrastructure in, we certainly will not be adjusting AD to support them and we're not going to hire anyone in to support them either.

The second that one of them has a data loss issue it will be the IT department that gets the raw end of the whip, so a stand must be made.

It makes me sick to think of the money that has been wasted on overpriced IT lip gloss, done for no business reason other than a lifestyle choice in an environment where there is no BYOD policy.

So:

A) Yes

B) Ego, attempts to escape policy directives / oversight and "it looks pretty". Funnily enough most of them spend 90% of their time being used for e-mail, nothing more

[REM2000]

i love mac's i use one at home as my primary system (iMac), however ive always kept my work and personal configs/thoughts seperate.

To this end our company needed to do some more video editing and some stuff with photos.

The photos was easy, the users needed photoshop (basically the creative suite). however as this product is the same on both Windows and a Mac this made the software neutral.

The second was video editing, i asked the users and none had direct/professional experience with any product, some had murmurs that they have heard of final cut. So based on this i brought a set of Microsoft Windows PC's, these were ramped up in spec's however the TCO was much higher, first i would have to train some of the staff that had not used mac's (about 50%) the next would be the purchase of the equipment compared to the discount i could get on the Windows hardware. Next we already run a Windows network with AD so the infrastructure is around Windows.

I agree with others that sometimes people will say mac's in the same way people who just want to crop a picture will ask for photoshop. If there is a legitimate reason then i get it, i simply get whatever tool people need to do the job they need, i like to think im quite open minded.

I don't think there's anything wrong with mac's in the workplace, when staff have the skills and there is a good reason to have them, they work incredibly well, however i can easily say the same for a Windows network also.

I think generally people (and i don't blame them) attach too much personal attachment and forget these are business tools just like photocopiers, the stationary cupboard and projectors.

[rkenshin]

My company uses a combination. Our subsidiary company, a graphic design/advertising company uses Macs. That's obvious, as most graphic company's use Macs with Photoshop and Illustrator running all day, as well as photography (even though our turn tables only work in Windows, so they use a VM).

My primary company, however, uses a combination of both. Mostly our developers are using Macs, which in my IT viewpoint, its pointless. They are doing nothing but coding, and it can be done on any platform. Instead, my organization gives the developers what they want so they stop complaining. In their eyes, however, the dev's ask for Macs because they aren't as locked down as the Windows systems are in my organization. The supervisor that runs this team is providing his team systems they don't even want. I've talked to several Dev's and they prefer to code on Linux or Windows, not a Mac. However, they aren't given a choice as the supervisor only will provide a Macbook to his team. Again, it comes back to the fact that our organization currently doesn't have the Mac "locked down" as the other machines in organization.

However, that will soon be changing. :D

A. Yes and No, as we have a combination of both.

B. Developers and our Advertisement/Graphic Design subsidiary company.

[the evn show]

Removed

[Noir Angel]

The charity I do volunteer work for is all Windows thankfully, even the laptops used for graphics design are Windows laptops.

[Growled Member]

My employer is Windows only. My boss asked me recently if I thought we needed a Mac. I asked him what for? He didn't have an answer for that so that was the end of the conversation. I have nothing against Macs but I don't think you can beat Windows in the workplace. The amount of software available for Windows is just amazing.

[Sandor]

We have windows only in my work (web design/development firm). We have precisely 1 mac mini which is used to in our "board room" to display some google spreadsheets and occasionally some youtube videos at work parties. About all it's useful for in my opinion.

[Japlabot]

As a competent IT person, I support whichever platform the clients wants to use, as long as they pay me for it, I do not push my personal thoughts/agenda others and will happily integrate a Mac into a Windows environment or Vice-versa (or Linux, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, or whatever) as much as is technically possible to do so and they are paying me for the time to make this happen.

A bit immature to refuse to integrate Macs because they are "overpriced IT lip gloss" IMO. If the Macs support the application needed for the job as good as Windows, then it makes no difference to me if the client wants to use a Mac to do that, it is their money to choose whatever they want, not mine, and in reality if you compare a Mac to a similarly priced PC, they are not very much more expensive.

[The Guvnor]

Being a Video Editor, my whole world revolves around Macs. People don't even talk about Windows in my field.

[Gotenks98]

I work in a University and for the most part we have a mix of both. However the macs that are out there are just for show, there is absolutely no reason to have them. We have no applications written for mac. In most cases if there is no webclient for whatever application thats being used the user's system is either bootcamped, or virtualboxed or the user connects to a citrix VM to get the job done. I think part of why we have as many macs as we do is because there are some die hard mac fans.

[Mr.XXIV]

God can't help you now Tim. :shiftyninja:

No seriously, I wouldn't recommend a Mac Mini to a designer, as a designer. The color profiling on an external monitor is deeply frustrating.

[vhane]

We have a healthy mix at my workplace. Our developers get to pick what client OS they want to run. Most are on OS X and Linux. Windows is the minority. As for the cost of Apple gear, yes, they tend to be more expensive than the PCs. However, the cost of the equipment is negligible compared to what the developers cost the company. Makes sense to let the developers use whatever environment they are most productive in.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

A lot of people use them where I work but, bafflingly, end up using Windows VM's most of the time or RDP'ing to other machines to get the work done that they need because 99% of the apps they use are Windows based and not available on the Mac.

[(Account no longer active)]

I believe Windows [7] has better window management, leading to increased productivity.

Unfortunately, there are few Mac users at my workplace running OS X - they all run Windows, due to the apps they use only being available for Windows.

[OOOOOOOO]

We're almost entirely Mac based. Most people are happy about it. Not just the designers, but all the coders too. And the marketing dept. We're almost exclusively running Mac's. Our in house server is a Mac too. We simply have no issue running them. The design department all have Retina Mac's and 27 inch Thunderbolt screens. I wouldn't go back to Windows even if the company did. I'd stick with what I use.

[Dapen]

All design use MAC where I work, no dev uses MAC but one Front End DEV wants to use MAC. I don't see much a problem with mixing it up but out IT manager might.

[tim_s]

We use to have mac's the server technicians after a period of time could upgrade from a windows machine to a mac but a large percentage (Especially the Red Hat technicians) just swap Windows straight to Linux. I offered Macs for the design department before the departments where separated - the idea was entertained but in the end - never became a reality.

I do not think you would be limited by much in an all Mac environment but differences exist non-the-less. Developers for example use Windows because this is what our primary customer base is using.

[PyX]

Yep, I've seen a new political party here go all Mac, and the following week I have visited their place they were converted to PCs. Apparently the platform used to manage the party was much less expensive on PCs, which I find kind of hard to believe since it was a website. An ASP.NET website, but a website nonetheless. They could have had only one PC as a server, and their ASP website hosted there if they wanted to.

As for me, even though Apple products make me much more confident and happy in my work (thanks for the clean, lean and colorful OS with skeuomorphism where I don't feel like I'm on another planet when doing virtual work), I would NEVER convert a company from PCs to Macs if they had engineers internally. It's not made for mechanical, civil and electrical engineering right now, to be more particular. I'm an industrial, and in some projects I will use my Mac because it's just fine, but in other projects I do need to use the PC laptop they gave me.

As for general Work, Office 2011 is not quite there yet, and iWork '09 is a total joke. Bring on the '13 or '14 version at this point already.

When $15 Pixelmator 2.2 will be out will Layer Styles, it will probably make a bunch of people switch though (NOT engineers). At this point it's almost better to invest $500 more on a powerful computer than on an app with a slow PC.

[Shadrack]

My company has always been a PC infrastructure workplace with the exception of me running the computers for a few years. I used a Linux box as a file/web/database server. But all of our employees worked in windows.

Now we have a more qualified full time guy to handle IT and he setup a Windows Server system.

We are allowed to bring in our own stuff to use at work such as a Mac but don't ask for support on it.

I feel comfortable working in either but most of the software my company has purchased for me is Windows only so that is what I use :).

I like coming home and using my Mac though. I like that it is different.

[CrashG]

I remember visiting my moms office (it was a commercial printing co.) Foote&Davies>American Signature>Quebecor back in the late 80's. The art/graphics dept were using Quark Express on Macs (I was using a modded Amiga A500) and the IBM System 38 was a reel-to-reel setup. I remember when they got a auto-tape setup (aka Hackers Tv station takeover scene).

I went from the Amiga OS (which was quite a bit like Apple OS) to DOS/Win3.1

[Quikboy]

When $15 Pixelmator 2.2 will be out will Layer Styles, it will probably make a bunch of people switch though (NOT engineers). At this point it's almost better to invest $500 more on a powerful computer than on an app with a slow PC.

I'm really hoping they'll make a Windows version at some point. Their app has way too much potential to be restricted to just OS X.

[vhane]

I'm really hoping they'll make a Windows version at some point. Their app has way too much potential to be restricted to just OS X.

I can't see that happening. It's a Cocoa app through and through.

[PyX]

Another reason why Macs don't get adopted in enterprises is Mail :

See here

And yes, Pixelmator relies on specific OS X-only frameworks. It wouldn't be possible on a PC. Plus, the team is composed of 2-3 guys that only know Xcode and Objective-C and Cocoa.