An amusing article on how much money IBM is saving by installing Macs across its operations (5% helpline activity, vs. 40% for PCs, and better longevity, too).

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/15/macs-saving-ibm-money/

However, it's worth bearing in mind that IBM recently reached a strategic agreement with Apple (for various corporate IT tools), so there may be a certain bias in this enthusiastic acclamation.

Cheers,
Bill

MadaboutDana wrote:

An amusing article on how much money IBM is saving by installing Macs
across its operations (5% helpline activity, vs. 40% for PCs, and better
longevity, too).

Well, they'd be blown away if they ever tried a Chromebook then ;)

However, it's worth bearing in mind that IBM recently reached a
strategic agreement with Apple (for various corporate IT tools), so
there may be a certain bias in this enthusiastic acclamation.

Yes, there seems to be some of that to it. But I was only half joking about the Chromebook. I'm starting to find it increasingly less fun to be spending time updating and troubleshooting my Windows machines and those of my loved ones.

And I do seem to come across people once in a while complaining about Apple updates messing up their machines as well. If I wasn't so wedded to some of my Windows software and forced by my workplace to have to handle MS Office files on a daily basis, I'd happily switch to using the practically maintenance-free Chrome OS even on my desktop.

I work for IBM and I have just switched from a Windows laptop to a Macbook; many of my colleagues are switching too. As a Mac user at home, migration was easy for me but it's a complete new world for the long-time Windows-only users. Yesterday I helped a friend who was in trouble with keyboard configuration - saved a call to the help-desk... Some internal applications and complex Excel spreadsheets does not (yet) work on Mac OSX, so those who has not observed this before ordering a Macbook may have to switch back (or try to run Windows virtualized).
It's good that I'll be able to run Ulysses but I am quite unhappy with Mindmanager (Mac version absolutelly does not compare to Windows one and many of my maps became unusable). Other tool that I use a lot is Todoist, the Mac app is nice (with color emoticons!).

I work in big corporate (transportation industry and regulators -- not dot.com) and government environments and use a MacBook -- but would find it impossible to work with clients without also having Windows virtualization on that platform too. Parallels and VM Ware are excellent and running Windows plus OS X in coherenence mode is terrific.

A Chromebook would never cut it. I've never run across anyone using a Chromebook at work, as a matter of fact.

(BTW, MindManager 16 for Windows is out and is very very nice. New interface; new features. I agree -- MindManager for Mac is a stepchild product.)

Paul Korm wrote:

A Chromebook would never cut it. I've never run across anyone using a
Chromebook at work, as a matter of fact.

That might start to change soon. The first corporate Chromebook (Dell Chromebook 13) has only just hit the market, with some remoting and virtualisation apps that allow employees to use Windows apps if they really need to.

The other emerging force is the kids in the US education system who are currently using Chromebooks in school. As the first wave of them hits the job market, they will start questioning the status quo.

Anecdotally you can already see on ChromeOS Reddit that more and more university students are questioning their profs why their assignments need to be handed in in MS Word format...

Ah yes, the Mac vs PC in industry battle. Back when I was working in industry, the company for which I worked originally had a very enlightened approach to what computer you could use. You could use whatever you wanted. People generally chose computers that would facilitate their work. At the time I was doing a lot of gene manipulation, and the software on the mac was far superior to what was available on the PC. When the place was networked(Yes, I am that old.)we were still able to use either Macs or PCs because all of the local software that we used on the network was written with open software that was computer and browser agnostic.

Then we were bought out by another company. At the time they were running Windows 95. The word came down that everyone needed to move to PCs, and we would all be running Windows NT 3.5. We had two guys who maintained all of the Macs on site. There were a few hundred. We had a large department who supported the PCs. Sigh.

I really missed my Mac when they took it away.

Jim

IMHO, in the not so distant future we will probably see some major changes in enterprise computing solutions--I believe the Dell/EMC/VMware deal is indicative. I expect that what OS an employee's machine is running will be secondary, as long as it follows certain security guidelines, and Google is certainly investing on the Chrome OS in that direction.

However, the choice of OS is clearly of major importance to users themselves, as discussions here show again and again.

For my part, I don't see me converting to Apple/Mac/iOS anytime soon. In fact, I am at present regressing from Android and building an ecosystem for myself and my next of kin based on Windows and Linux. Eventually all my PCs capable enough will probably be upgraded to Windows 10, while less powerful machines will probably run Linux.

There are many reasons for the above, the stronger one in my case being one of philosophy. For example, my overall impression is that the Mac, iOS and Android development timeplans require one to upgrade their hardware unreasonably often. Aside from the financial cost of such investments, there is a planet of limited resources to care about.

But I really don't feel I'm sacrificing much, aside of aesthetics (and these have never been my strongest point) and possibly Tinderbox and Devonthink. That's life.

Working with graphic designers who have been running Macs for as long as they've existed, my impression is that they don't spend less time than myself getting their offices' systems to work.

That said, I think that there is another aspect of philosophy where Mac OS wins: the system encourages one to use less programmes, because they are better integrated with the infrastructure. But I believe most of that philosophy can be applied with Windows or Linux as well, e.g. by extended use of text files. By contrast, I don't think it can be applied to iOS and Android, where the "there's an app for that" motto expresses the logic of more and more...

Just my 2c.

Alexander,

For example, my overall impression is that the Mac, iOS and Android development timeplans require one to upgrade their hardware unreasonably often. Aside from the financial cost of such investments, there is a planet of limited resources to care about.

* I have a Macbook Pro from 2009 that runs fine and has no problems with the latest Mac OS X - to be precise: I have the impression that the Macbook runs faster since I upgraded to Yosemite. My iPad 2 from 2011 runs the latest iOS.
* My wife bought Android phones and tablets in 2012 and 2013 - the latest Android versions are not available for them.
* I had a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 from 2013 that ran Windows 7 and 8 but won't run Windows 10 (Lenovo refuses to update some drivers, some users managed to get Windows 10 up and running but that is too much hassle for me). In the meantime, I gave it away to get a used Thinkpad x201 Tablet that's fine with Windows 10.

Just some anecdotal evidence...

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

For example, my overall impression is that the Mac,
iOS and Android development timeplans require one to upgrade their
hardware unreasonably often.

Anecdotally, that was also my experience with iPads specifically (I can't speak of Macs, and I had no such problems with iPod Touch). I found my iPad 1 being abandoned by Apple and therefore app developers way too early, and without being able to upgrade the OS, it's no longer a useful device, despite being an excellent piece of hardware with an amazing battery. It just feels like a waste, financially (for me) and environmentally (for the planet).

Currently I'm dealing with hardware or OS problems (hard to tell) with my partner's iPad Mini 2, which is going to be only 2 years old next month, and it's going to cost extra money to fix. I'm just not willing to be buying a new iPad on an annual basis (and thereforee I moved to Chromebooks).

Maybe I'm just unlucky and a statistical outlier. But if it's a game of planned obsolescence, under the pressures of having to deliver extra profit to the stockmarket, then I'm not willing to be part of that game (and app ecosystem).

I'd entirely agree with you about the iPad 1 - that was naughty, since they clearly already had the iPad 2 set up and ready to go just a few short months later.

However, my iPad 2 still runs fine. Not as swift as it was, but perfectly usable.

That's because I do a full factory reinstall on a fairly regular basis (every time Apple releases a major iOS upgrade, in fact). And every time, this has a huge (positive) impact on the iPad's performance.

It's so easy to reinstall iPad apps - and so many of them sync with various Cloud systems - that this is nowhere near as onerous as it would be on a desktop machine. Not unlike a Chromebook, in fact.

MadaboutDana wrote:

That's because I do a full factory reinstall on a fairly regular basis
(every time Apple releases a major iOS upgrade, in fact). And every
time, this has a huge (positive) impact on the iPad's performance.

Bill, thanks for that tip. I'll try that with the iPad Mini 2 before I spend any more money on it.

As for the environmental aspect that Alexander brought up, here is an interesting option for recycling old Windows machines:

"Turning a crappy old Windows PC into a full-fledged Chromebook with CloudReady"

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/turning-a-crappy-old-windows-pc-into-a-full-fledged-chromebook-with-cloudready/

Sorry, I thought you were talking about an iPad 2 (big one). My Other iPad is a Mini 2, as it happens, and that runs very well indeed on iOS 9, even though I haven't done a factory reset (yet; I'm thinking about it!). So I'd encourage you to brutalise your Mini and reset the thing. I think you'll find it makes a big difference.

Cheers,
Bill

MadaboutDana wrote:

even though I haven't done a factory reset (yet; I'm thinking about
it!). So I'd encourage you to brutalise your Mini and reset the thing. I
think you'll find it makes a big difference.

Thanks, Bill - I did a factory reset last night, now I'm just waiting to see if the problem recurs (essentially it refused to start up, saying it had zero charge, but after multiple soft resets it showed it had 100% charge). Wiggling the connector sometimes would help. Still wasn't sure if it was a hardware or software problem.

BTW, before doing the factory reset, I made a local backup in iTunes on the PC, did the factory reset, and then restored the local backup. I hope that was the correct procedure and that the restoration of the local backup didn't negate the benefits of the factory reset...

Continuing the anecdotal evidence, the following might be of interest. It comes from Hans Zimmer's engineer assistant. Consider that these people have access to whatever kind of hardware/software one can imagine, including custom solutions.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/10/interview-mark-wherry-man-behind-hollywoods-digital-musical-instruments-hans-zimmer-collaborator/

"We’re mostly Windows-based now, which I think people often find surprising. All the samplers are Windows. The only Macs we really use are for running Pro Tools, and that’s more of a legacy thing. I think it’d be interesting to see if we could go to Windows for Pro Tools as well, because it gives you a bit more freedom in the kind of hardware you can use, especially since it’s sort of unknown what Apple’s long-term plans are for the Mac Pro. "

Battles between Mac and Win supporters seem a bit more fuzzy nowadays. See here:
http://lifehacker.com/mac-vs-windows-your-best-arguments-486125257

Just two facts on Hardware and other two on Software:
- Parallels went public. The company does not only that, but it seems to make good money from its desktop software. In fact many Macs run (or even boot) Windows.
- PC owners does not have the same easy choice. Hackintosh is there, but it takes work, without guarantee of success, above all with laptops.

So with Mac hardware you have more OS choices. This helps to explain why the Inc. world is no longer reluctant to buy a Mac.
A note of concern: Microsoft is increasingly becoming a hardware company. At some point they may decide to make their OS incompatible (or very difficult) to run with a MacOSX emulation or with a dual boot. Macs would become a bit than less attractive, I guess.

About Software, and most of all outliners, two facts seem to have favoured MacOS in the recent decade:
- WinOS, regardless to its updating, continues to offer poor knowledge management. I think for instance to its inability to handle natively PDFs. As a consequence, there are very few Win applications with good PDF features, like preview, thumbnails on-the-fly, etc., as compared to the huge collection of apps available with MacOS.
- Development OSX tools seem superior than WinOS tools. The introduction in the last decade of the .Net standard made probably more arm than help to the Win world.

If something will change in this regard, probably also the outliner PC software will benefit. In these last years it seemed to languish