GE goes with Apple: Not the Transformation you were looking for, Satya? While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella trots the world plugging his book on “transformation”, some of the biggest enterprises in the world are “transforming” themselves ... away from Microsoft. Industrial giant General Electric employs 330,000 staff world wide, and can be considered one of the more conservative businesses. But …
Macs aren't much better. The Pros seem to be losing the "Pro" features each year.
The current MacBook Pro is dreadful, I set one up for my daughter. The keyboard has to be the worst I've ever experienced, there is so little travel and it just feels terrible. They'd have been better off building an iPad into the base to use as a keyboard.
The lack of touch and pen support is also bewildering in 2017 on a supposedly high end pro machine. I love the 360° hinge on my laptop and using the pen in OneNote and graphical applications feels so natural, compared to the MacBook.
I have also always found the mouse / pointer in MacOS to be not exactly laggy, but imprecise, I'm not sure what it is, but Windows and Linux certainly feel smoother. I've used Macs on-again-off-again since 1987 and it was better than Windows in many areas for a long time, especially for creative tasks, but they seem to have lost the plot in the last 6 or 7 years.
my MBR is super smooth, 5y old, up-to-date, including parallels for WinX daily use (in coherence mode). About the mouse, I've had that problem with all logitech wireless mice on macOS, but not with original apple mice - on mac logitech is trying to solve a non existent problem with their wireless receiver. Besides, a mouse on macOS only trumps the magic trackpad at 2+ big screens, get it - since it's the 21st century! A bit stuck in the past, aren't we - think different eh?
They'd have been better off building an iPad into the base to use as a keyboard.
Watch out, they might come out with the MacBook Wheel.
agree on the keyboard. it's pretty horrible which is why I ended up putting a new battery and bigger SSD in my old Macbook Air to keep it alive!
I actually worked at MS for about 8 years all told, and managed to use a Mac as my daily machine (even though I had no real justification!) most of the time... and in the last few years it was a better machine to run Windows (even via Fusion) than the Surface Pros
One of the great things about the Macs is standardization ... at my new place of work I can walk into any conference room or hot-desk area and there's a USB-C and a Magsafe connector on every desk. To do the same across the wide range of PCs is near impossible. Surface has done a good job keeping their connector consistent, but Sony, HP, Acer, Lenovo etc over the years I ended up with a collection of model-specific power bricks.
Sure, most users believe they know how to use Windows, and will cripple their office machine installing the software they need (especially those like Chrome that attempts to install anywhere). Give them a Mac or Linux machine and they will be humbled down to just use the default applications because they don't know how to do anything else. Seen more than once.
Give them a Mac or Linux machine and they will be humbled down to just use the default applications because they don't know how to do anything else.
Weird, we've seen the exact opposite. The gist of the article is old news for us - I personally stumbled across this TCO truth by accident some 7 or 8 years ago during research, and we have since not only turned this into evidence, but also into a business converting organisations.
One of the main issues with a conversion is getting people used to a slightly different UI and keyboard layout, but in our experience it takes less than a month before that subsides. What is permanent, however, is the expressed dislike to return to Windows once staff have worked with macOS. Despite sometimes being faced with new applications, the UI is so consistent that users end up educating themselves, also because Time Machine allows them to wind the clock back if they have screwed up (although we found versioning a bridge too far). It's not just usable, it's nice.
Is it perfect? Nope. Nothing is. But compares so well to Windows in both usability and TCO that it has become a no-brainer for companies that know about numbers. Case in point: private banks.
Seen more than once.
We have yet to come across that. If anything, we have to set up a budget. We're also testing SetApp subscriptions which allows users to choose from a menu of apps which they can install and de-install at will (Aeon Timeline, for instance, seems to intrigue people).
I wasn't talking about converting user to a different OS, they will adapt when forced. I was talking about support calls. Many of the support calls are from users who crippled their systems because they made not authorized changes. Because most users have Windows at home - far fewer one a Mac or Linux systems - there's a good chance they will attempt to modify their work PC when it is a Windows one. Then, when issues arises, they will try to delete their mess and call support.
Give them a Mac or Linux system, and there are good chances they don't know how to modify it - you will not train them that much while converting them-, they won't attempt to bring their petty software from home, and often don't even know what to use to replace their personal Windows applications.
Of course, there is also the malware issue, far less support calls because someone infected a system because it plugged in an infected disk, or got one online.
@AC "What is permanent, however, is the expressed dislike to return to Windows once staff have worked with macOS. Despite sometimes being faced with new applications, the UI is so consistent that users end up educating themselves"
Skinned Apps broke windows - All you GUI desigers *innovated* the platform into un-usability.
"Skinned Apps broke windows"
Windows has always been weak on GUI consistency compared to Mac.
Just look at Windows 10, even in the year 2017 there is loads of junk under the hood that behaves in no way like the Windows 10 is supposed look and feel. Sometimes there is single click, sometimes double click, sometimes back out to commit change, sometimes a commit (OK) button. And so on. And that's MS's own stuff.
If MS themselves never got their act together, you can't expect the independent application developers to do so.
I've worked at several companies with mixed fleets of Windows and Mac PCs. I can't really say that Windows has caused more problems / calls than the Macs. Different sorts of calls, maybe, but in general the levels on both sides of the fence were similar.
Mac users also tend to be more obstinate. I had one case, where a Mac froze solid, the user rang up and wanted somebody to come and unfreeze it. I told her, the only option was to turn it off and turn it back on. She didn't want to hear that and when I eventually got to her desk and informed her that, no, I couldn't rescue her document, any unsaved changes were lost (I even tried the debug interrupt button on the side of the case, but it was well and truly frozen solid) and threw the power switch, she got straight onto the phone to the head of IT to complain, because you can't lose work on a Mac... :-S
she got straight onto the phone to the head of IT to complain, because you can't lose work on a Mac... :-S
That comes from a trend of people to glorify machines and platforms - we have seen the same with Windows where a senior manager wants to convert EVERYTHING to Windows because he's a Microsoft fan for reasons unknown (if they play golf it's not that hard to guess).
We stick to the cold numbers, as our customers do. If you add it all up, Microsoft is not the best platform to use as desktop nor as back end and hasn't been for some time. If you make your back end fully open standards (RFC) compliant, it renders what you use as desktop less relevant and you can just look at the TCO of the various platforms involved. For a commercial desktop, macOS is at present well ahead and if anyone wants to use a Linux desktop, well, that works too.
@big_D
In fairness, in my experience, crashes on Macs (and Linux) tend to be caused by faulty memory (which is cold comfort on many modern Macs where the memory is permanently soldered to the main board). Losing work is harder though and for two main reasons - firstly, Time Machine, which works for all software of course but only if the user remembers to plug in their backup drive or connect to a network which has a Time Capsule of some kind on it.
Secondly, software which uses Apple’s APIs (NSDocument in particular), is very well protected against crashes. You can try it for yourself if you’re feeling brave and you have a desktop Mac to hand. Create a document in something like TextEdit, Pages or Numbers (to choose software that every Mac user will have) and bang out some text. Then yank the power. Don’t shut down. Just pull the power. Then turn the computer on - and, after a spot of grumbling, everything will open up again and your cursor will be flashing away at the point it was when you terminated your machine so ruthlessly. You might not have every last character - but it’ll be damned close.
Sadly that last trick doesn’t work in Microsoft Office, which is probably the most popular work suite on the Mac - particularly in a business environment, since Microsoft eschews Apple’s APIs in favour of its own.
Windows has had its equivalent of Timemachine for years. We actually use it as part of the backup strategy on the file servers, for example. The first line of defence against damage or deletion is VSS, then the Veeam snapshots, then the Veeam backups and if that fails, a tape restore.
On the client front, if Windows crashes (a very rare occurrence these days, my Windows machines crash about as often as the Macs and Linux machines I use - once in a blue moon), Office has been able to recover with little or no data loss for over a decade and with the current versions (Office 365 Excel and PowerPoint), there should be no data loss if it crashes, as it supposedly saves every change "in real time" with autosave, the same as OneNote.
As to viruses and users changing configuration, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I can only say that I have been lucky so far. I have had one user with a virus problem in the last 20 years - it was a new crypto virus that slipped through - we get about 2 or 3 notifications every day about viruses being removed from emails and 5 cases of viruses being quarantined in the last 3 months (150 PCs).
All of the PCs are closed down so that users have no admin rights to change things themselves and with GPs you can restrict things even further. I don't think we've had a single case of a user screwing things up on their PC since I started here.
and she's right, because the OS supports that. But depending on the application she used to edit her document. Word for Mac doesn't do it but Pages does - never lost data there when having crashes. Sometimes the crash happened while not being at the desk and the only way I see that is by noticing that the VPN is broken - the rest is there as before.
@big D
Most modern Mac apps will restart where they left off, yes even mid sentence even after a hard power pull restart.
Boots up, login and reopens the app right where you left it before the forced restart.
Even does it with a normal restart.
I wish Windows did that. It’s a pain having to restart due to frequent os updates. It’s a pain having to save my work, close office apps, close those temp notepads reboot and then try and reopen all th3 apps and docs I had open before.
Most of us know this already - Windows TCO is godawful.
Not so bad for me; I just wait for the MSWin users to get disgusted with their old kit, and when they replace them I get the old kit at cheap or free. The I load Linux on them and All is happy-happy (well, except for the Optiplex 390 that has run like shit with everything).
It's not that it's good value, but Windows has become a sick joke that damages productivity, to the point were buying Mac is really cheaper and even Linux as a desktop, not just as a server, is being considered.
Problem is not Adobe or even MS Office, but SOHO and SME using Sage, payroll, CRM etc that is only on Windows. One "cloud" based CRM stupidly needs "Silverlight". At least they plan to migrate to HTML5.
We're examining SuiteCRM now - it's SugarCRM without the nonsense. Runs on a LAMP stack so you can stick it on practically anything, worst case even on a Windows box.
As for Sage, there is Sage for Mac now. I guess there was just too much demand due to all sorts of companies switching.
Imagine the money MS could make if they decided to really focus on their core business (Windows and Office), instead of trying to chase companies like Google and Facebook.
I wonder if, when Satya gets canned, the next guy will refocus the business on returning to their core business. I'm sure that Win11 won't be perfect, but it could so easily be very, very good. Of course, I strongly suspect that it won't be, and that's horribly sad. If they could just make an OS worth paying for, I think they'd be able to sell it!
Such as? Worth investigating, as that's an area we haven't looked at yet.
Add to the list the entire process control domain. PLC programming software; ABB, Siemens, Honeywell, Rockwell even GE, all PLC software is Windows. As are HMI systems, same list as above plus the independents such as Iconics - Windows. One reason for the latter is control room quality massively multi screen hardware; Matrox and er, anyone else? Windows. Even the backend server boxes to run industrial control systems, it's all Windows. The glue that binds multivendor systems together, OPC* mostly, windows (though OPC on Linux is growing slowly).
Part of the problem is hardware, you need ports to talk to stuff and any given port standard has a very short life in Mac world.
*Before anyone says it OPC does not stand for OLE for Process Control, it hasn't for a decade and a half. It did originally but now OPC doesn't stand for anything, it's just the name of a communication protocol that can be implemented on any platform.
This one hopes so. Although, at this point, if I have to host my damn tools on a Windows Server 2012 R2 installation, I'll go ahead and do it. Remote or virtual instance, who the fuck cares. My database and software engineering tools can be pointed at other machines as required so not that big of a problem. Finite engineering/analysis/simulation tools have been popping up in Linux since NASA got headed that way, flat refusing the No reply from vendors.
The way it's looking here, the transition is already well in progress. Doesn't hurt that you can cut your staffing in IT by a factor of 11 even if any particular slot costs twice or thrice as much. Oh, that expensive Mac hardware? Much lower DOA and MTBF. Always.
Provided you compare like-for-like.
You're never going to get the same starting cost as "landfill" PCs, but they keep going for a long time (typing this on an eight year old Macbook Pro that I've had since I switched from Dell Precision).
I just have to look over my desk to find computers designed for Windows XP happily running Windows 7 Enterprise nearly 10 years old. Anyone can make any machine whether its Windows, Linux, iOS last years longer than the manufacturer would like (Probably would run notebook computers longer however replacing a battery on a machine with an asset value of £0 isnt going to happen).
"(Probably would run notebook computers longer however replacing a battery on a machine with an asset value of £0 isnt going to happen)."
Depends on the cost of the battery vs. the cost of a replacement laptop.
The main issue with laptops is the blooming fan. I only want fanless from now on.
The second issue is breaking solder joints due to the lead-free solder.
All the shitty adware and malware is great for selling new hardware, as most of the CPU cycles are used for nothing but crap.
We have a number of older Dells (6 -8 years old), we are replacing most of them, but some are being replaced, because the user need something more powerful, but most have had an SSD upgrade and new batteries and they are still going strong.
But next time around, they will probably be replaced, when the batteries die.
Given the hard lives they live, the laptops have done very well (they spend most time on building sites).
Probably would run notebook computers longer however replacing a battery on a machine with an asset value of £0 isnt going to happen
Ah, but that's another trick Apple has up its sleeve to improve its TCO advantage: you can exchange Macs for a reasonably fair return value.
In my experience, your best replacement time is if a machine is about 3 or 4 years old. If it has been treated well, the return value is quite high (not on a personal level with the machines my kids have used, groan), and that again improves your TCO in two ways: lower hardware costs, and no need for eco-responsible disposal processes (mandated in some of the places we operate). It does require a couple of hours to zap the onboard storage (mandated by our security policy), but machine swaps are an excellent extra idea in our opinion.
Pure hardware cost and duration <> TCO.
Your savings already start when you start looking at the cost of adding software and license management overhead, but where it really hits home is in usability and the cost of patching. It's not just a matter of substantially lower resource costs, it's also a far lower risk exposure overall. In addition, you don't need to keep much in the way of stock, and you have global service without having to engage in heavy, expensive contracts - it just comes as standard.
We have centralized patch distribution for Windows and application updates, the former with WSUS, the latter with a free add-in for WSUS, it makes rolling out new applications a breeze. Rolling out a new PC is takes a couple of hours, with about 20 minutes of work, the rest is waiting time.
Hardware problems with PCs are fairly rare these days, as is stability, IME. Most calls are user education on things like the ERP system, AutoCAD and the like, or mailbox forwarding / access for people on sick leave / leavers.
The most common questions coming from new starters are that the apps for HR and a couple of other areas (booking holiday, entering your personal information etc.) aren't in the Start menu. That they get in both paper form and on the company FAQ site, that these "applications" are web sites and they get the URLs provided to them, is neither here-nor-there.
"My iMac is still going strong, with Linux and Windows, because Apple stopped providing security updates, let alone new OS versions, over 3 years ago."
This really is the fly in the ointment when it comes to Apple.
Why can't they make OSX resource-scalable? Who needs every single flashy feature that each new version brings? (We all know that it's the desire to sell new stuff, but I think it's irresponsible from an environment standpoint, if nothing else.)
I only wish Apple wouldn't stop supporting their hardware so quickly given that OSX works so well on older hardware. If more corporate customers could influence this, that would be nice.
OSX for PC would be nice too, with an old fashioned one-off license payment. Not going to happen of course, unless some monopoly situation arises and legislation gets involved -like in the good old days when the information industry didn't have it all their own way.
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