Enterprise Apple

InfoWorld's Chad Dickerson has an excellent article on the challenges IT departments face as users begin to request Macs. His initial response to one of his salespeople was "If you promise not to ask for support or help of any kind," and he's right. If an organization is going to allow exceptions to platform standardization, the user should be a true power user who is willing to do the hard work required to integrate with the existing environment.

Here's Chad's follow-up after receiving heavy criticism from Apple supporters, despite stating an obvious fact - all technology is merely a means to an end and should be chosen because it is the best solution to a specific problem.

Comments

[Dave]

I've found I'm, well, at least in the slient majority of Macc users if not simply the minority. I agree Brian.

I use Windows programming SAP professionally. And at home I use Macc exclusively. I wish I could have some issue with someone telling me if I want to Apple for my work I'm on my own, but I simply can't.

Should I whine to my boss and try to convince her I'll be more productive with my PB? Should I complain to the server support group about how difficult it is to VPN from home? No.... maybe I should complain to the SAP Basis group because the current configuration doesn't have the proper Java setup.

Yeah right. And the next pope will be Polish too. (Hey, at least that one has a chance of being right.)

What I've found since going back to Apple two years ago is how "religious" the Mac community can be. Whatever the business need AND configuration AND scenario, Apple has the only viable solution. Wish I could agree, but I don't.

[Bob]

I'm somewhat in the middle on this one. When I first read the article (I haven't bothered reading the comments, because I knew what would be there), I immediately thought, "That salesman probably saw an opportunity, but didn't know enough about his options to feel secure in using a Mac." I agree that if someone wants to use something out of the norm, they should be willing to do their own work (I use the only Mac in our office). At the same time, using a Mac in the enterprise setting is often much less difficult than people think. There are plenty of solutions out there that make the Mac a viable alternative. I just tend to think that most people view the Mac as being as difficult to support as Windows so they don't want to take the time to do self-support.

[phil crissman]

I was glad to see the link to Chad's follow-up. I saw that article a week or so ago (whenever it came out) and thought the same as you: Chad's right. Of course, I'm also not too surprised that he recieved a load of angry email.

We have a handful of Macs here at LWCC -- in the predictable places (the Graphics department, the Music department and the television department) -- and they can occasionally be a real headache to try to integrate into the rest of the network.

On the other hand, the most recent Macs (TV dept) are now on Active Directory. I'm a little fuzzy on how this is working, since I didn't set it up, but as I understand it at least the users and passwords can be handled by AD, which is pretty helpful. Having that piece of the puzzle and at least one or two techs who are closet Mac fans (and not afraid of the command line), I think it can be made to work. :-)

[Bob]

phil, I use ADmitMac to log into AD with my Mac. It's a piece of cake by simply logging in as "Other" when given a list of users on the Mac and then typing in the user_name@domain.local. The problem I've run into is that any time you change any login settings, you are basically logging in as a new user and all of your previous settings/desktop docs, etc. disappear (from what I've seen, anyway). To use ADmitMac, you really need to think about what you're doing before you start using it so that you don't have to change anything down the road.