[itdiscuss] mac or PC?

[Kevin Brunson]

I think you are glossing over the most important point.  Yes, any IT person can jump in, grab additional training, and make everything work eventually.  But most IT people I know spend a good portion of their time putting out fires.  Very little of the time that is left is available for proactive maintenance.  And the industry is changing on a daily basis.  If you are going to even keep up with current technology you are already spending most of your free time learning just to keep up.  If you are having to support Linux, Mac, and Windows, you can probably become competent at all 3, but you can probably never become great at any one.

By leveraging technology in new and creative ways, you can give users options they never even dreamed of.  But unless you become really good with the technologies, you will probably never dig deep enough to make use of what the technology can actually do.  I'm sure you all get requests from users on a daily basis where they heard so and so talking about how some new technology can be leveraged to do some really cool thing.  And I think it is great that users can come to IT with new ideas.  But most IT people spend so much time responding to user requests that they never have time to implement new technology that is so far above the average users head they couldn't comprehend it.  And it is that technology that really allows IT to shine.  It allows IT to do more with less.  Just think about how much virtualization has changed the landscape in the average server room.

I hear from mac people all the time "I have a mac and pc on my desk, and use them both."  But the mac cost money and the pc cost money.  I hear people say "just buy a mac and run windows on it, that way you get the best of both worlds."  Okay, now you are paying for more expensive hardware, plus the cost of the mac os, plus the cost of the windows license.  Is all that really necessary?  Have you seen a quantifiable gain in user efficiency?  Have you seen a quantifiable drop in support calls?

I know lots of people who would say they can't support macs on a pc network because they don't have the skills.  Having someone skilled enough to provide support is expensive.  And most church IT folks I talk to are seriously underpaid.  How do you justify to your new highly skilled IT person that he needs to be able to support multiple operating systems?  Training is expensive.  Hiring someone that already has the training and experience is expensive.  I guarantee if you want to hire someone with mac, linux, OR windows skills, you could find someone within your budget.  But if you need to find someone with 2 or even 3 of those covered, it gets either more expensive or more difficult to find.

I happen to work for a shop that specializes in windows.  But I am not trying to make the point that "Windows is best."  I just think that in the majority of circumstances, standardization is efficiency.  If you want windows, goes all in for windows as much as possible.  If you want mac, go all in for mac.  When it is all said and done, the TCO for a heterogenous network is higher than the TCO for a homogenous network.  That cost may be in dollars, or it may be in less quantifiable areas, like loss of personal time for IT staff, since they spend all night every night trying to learn how to provide the same quality support experience for multiple operating systems.  But should IT people just assume that they need to hit the books twice as hard because users have "OS preferences" or should management choose to hire someone to specialize in the other OS, the cost is there.

Kevin



From: discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Ollis
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 2:26 PM
To: IT Discussion Forum
Subject: Re: [itdiscuss] mac or PC?

Ok, so I admit that I'm going to take my "Devils Advocate" cap off the rack and give it a run..

But, I see a lot of "We don't run a Mac network; we run a PC network". So tell me, oh wise ones, what constitutes a PC network? Or conversely, feel free to tell me what comprises a Mac network.

Yu see, I don't think that there is any such thing as a "PC network" anymore, unless you're having the misfortune of running Netware. It's like saying you run a "PDA network" or an "iPhone network"; the network is the underlying structure to hang all the server bits off, and allows PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Blackberries and PDA's to access the data.

Taking the Devils's Advocate cap off, I think that what most people mena when they say "PC network" is that they're not skilled-up in another area, and it's easier to handwave away a question about Mac or iPhone integration than actually say "look, we don't have the skills inhouse to support you properly". And really, that's what everyone should be saying: "IT wants to support you well, and we can't unless we have someone on board who is specifically skilled in this area".  I have yet to find a technical reason why a mac can't happily coexist with PC's on a network, and happily share data, access Exchange/Lotus, authenticate and lookup user directories, and print (with the caveat on printing that mac's haven't tended to support GDI printers as muc has PS or PCL). Sure, there's some management stuff that's going to be "different" but please ante up and say what the real issue is, and not gloss it with the boss about the network not supporting Macs.

Or, the other tack is that, as an IT Manager/director, you're letting personal bias get in the way of other system integration onto your LAN. I have both Mac and PC on my desk and I now use them equally. Wasn't always the case, but I've forced myself to push past the "It's too hard to do on Mac" to actively find ways of doing it. And I'd say that Hillsong is better for it. The Mac lovers get to to use their Macs, PC lovers get to use their Macs, and the Linux lovers (I have a couple) get to use their Linux laptops as well. Smartphone users can select from iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile or even Palm, and it all works. Different technologies, different limitations, but the tools of choice for our teams are usable.

Does it mean I'm going to swap my Blackberry Bold for a Treo or iPhone? Nup.. I just have to have the attitude of a support team that takes a little time, gleans some basic support stuff from Google and volunteers, and set the Acceptable Use Policy to match.

My $0.02 worth.. Your mileage may vary

Steve Ollis
Supporting 1500 users with 6 staff across 16 sites



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