German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac • Hacker News Board

Re: German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac

#31

Post by Tamerlin » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 4:39 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #22

reazalun wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular belief, actually Linux dominates the film industry. http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5611327583.html

That's a bit skewed by the thousands of machines in render farms that could be running any (free/bundled) Unix. It'll be interesting to see if OSX Server 10.6 gives them a compelling reason to switch.

It isn't likely, since most of the high-end shops have a lot of custom software on those Linux machines, and even their Linux distros are in many cases heavily customized, beyond what they'd be able to do with OSX.

Smaller FX shops that don't have IT staff are much more likely to consider it, unless they rely on software that isn't available in OSX, like XSI.

Which reminds me, now Houdini is available for OSX (it might still be beta, but it's coming if not here already).

Re: German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac

#32

Post by Tamerlin » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 4:42 PM UTC

modoc wrote: post #23

josefresco wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The front end guys 'liked Photoshp on the Mac'? And this was justification to move the entire department over? Uhhhhh, I'm sorry but if I were there and were supervising this department I'd need something more tangible than that to justify spending the company's money.

When both sides of the dev team BOTH want Macs, and can provide both technical reasons (which you skipped there) and have a personal preference for it, then it seems silly for the department supervisor to NOT go along with it. Plus, the corporate Dells + support plan + etc... are pretty close in price. And our department was responsible for 2 billion+ in corp revenue, so a few Macs are a small price to pay. I'm glad…

At one company I worked for, the IT guys hated the macs.

The first reason was that they ended up costing twice as much to match the configurations (extra memory, the requisite software, etc).

The second and more critical reason was support. Apple just wasn't up to the task of handling a call from someone with somewhere between half a dozen and 100 macs at once.

The first reason has been changing in Apple's favor since, and the last time I checked around 4 months ago the cost was pretty much even.

The second I don't know, but one can hope.

Re: German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac

#33

Post by mattmaroon » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 4:49 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #30

mattmaroon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't switch because of the tremendous cost involved. You have to replace a bunch of already functioning boxes, and for what? You'd have to expect a pretty large decrease in IT support staff to recoup that cost. For businesses, it's all about the bottom line on the spreadsheet, and the cost of switching from any one OS to another is rarely going to be justified. Much more likely is a company supporting both f…

But most companies ( in my experience , before some little punk says "but where's your data") tend to replace all their kit every 3-5 years anyway. Those "old" computers didn't suddenly get slower . Unless you're in a business where raw CPU grunt matters, there's no real reason, but they do it anyway. It's funny, loads of companies in the late 90s ripped out their Unix CAD workstations and replaced them with high-end…

I think that cycle is a lot longer than 3-5 years now, especially with the economy the way it is. It probably was that way for a while (and was probably even shorter before that) but there seems to be little justification for it anymore. We're finally at a point where a computer from 3 years ago can do everything we need it to do today, and not too slowly either. That's a relatively new development.

Re: German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac

#34

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 5:34 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #14

cstejerean wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm afraid of. I was hoping people would be less likely to completely hose a Mac and therefore there would be a lower need for draconian restrictions.

Operating systems are not 'fun', it's like saying my house is 'fun'. It's what you do on or in the OS that makes it fun. I've experienced this over the years with Linux. I will from time to time install the latest greatest distro, configure it, work out all the little nagging bugs and then .... Nothing, it's not fun (unless you think getting your graphics card to work and spending 4 hours doing it is fun), in fact th…

[deleted]

Re: German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac

#35

Post by DanielH » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 5:55 PM UTC

ojbyrne wrote: post #25

That's a newspaper/magazine publisher. I find this hilarious, because back in the day (mid-nineties) most companies in that industry used Macs. Many IT departments probably completed the switchover to PCs in the early part of this decade (standardization was probably the primary reason) - and now they have to switch back.

You are right!

They switched some years ago for the exact same reasons they mention now from Mac to Windows PCs.

Re: German company switching 12,000 desktops from PC to Mac

#36

Post by j2d2 » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:34 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #7

You know, back in the day, it was normal for everyone to have two computers on their desktop. There would be a generic PC running Windows with a 14" monitor for word processing and email, and there would be another machine for "actual work". If you were an engineer, it might be a SPARC or RS/6000 workstation. If you were a designer, probably a Mac or an SGI. Nowadays you can get one box to do everything, a Mac is a U…

Lots and lots of vba written for Excel.