New Apple IT Pro Section 178
aqsalter writes "Apple has finally created a new section for information from an IT Professionals viewpoint, with articles about all the good stuff. Previously Apple shied away from having any obvious IT focus, but it seems Apple are acknowledging their influence in the IT sphere, with two high-profile HPC clusters and enterprise class tools for managing open source technologies."
Who cares? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
You know though, in the US we spell it center, not centre. Whoever did this hoax forgot about that one little technicality.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
They forgot about those technicalities as well.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
Nice :) (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Nice :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the IT guys I know, who are calling the shots, are Windows only. Mention a Mac and they cringe.
At one school I teach at the IT admin has to put up with Macs, because we have a recording studio. Me (ESL teacher) and the music teacher also bring in our Mac laptops from time to time, which he hates. I find it strange that the music computer lab only has PCs, when it would be better for the
Re:Nice :) (Score:2, Funny)
Great idea! Cause there's nothing IT admins love more than being told how to do their job!
Re:Nice :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they don't love being told how to do their jobs, but they sure as hell love creating job security by standardizing us all on machines that require near constant attention.
I love when our IT guys try to tell us things like "Macs can't network", "Macs can't use the internet", and my personal favorite... "Apple is going out of business".
Maybe instead of being told how to do their jobs, they should take it upon themselves to learn how to do their jobs.
Re:Nice :) (Score:2)
They'll won't go out of business anytime soon but their market share will keep going down. Every year it drops, it is 1.7% down from 2% in 2002. And because of this, the 3rd party software market is drying up. I can count the number of games released in 2004 on my hand. Luckily apple has itunes and ipod to make up revenue difference.
Re:Nice :) (Score:2)
Sorry. Had to.
Catastrophe Might Wake Up IT. (Score:5, Insightful)
IT hasn't had that wake-up call yet. History has shown that lack of diversification leads to fatal results. Having only one way of doing things, or in this case, only one choice in handling services, causes a backlash when elements of the systems are put to test.
I've been an IT professional specializing in Apple products for over 12 years now. Despite the advances (administratively and competitively) that Apple and other companies have done in providing alternatives that work as well or better than the mainstream products, many IT pros still have NO FSCKING CLUE about the alternatives. They aren't TRAINED to think about alternatives, but only to do what they can with what they have.
They may be a time where one of the many serious vulnerabilties found in Windows is fully and dangerously exploited, leading to failures of various sorts throughout the country and the world. Data is lost. Networks paralyzed. And all through such a time, computers running operating systems that are much more resistant or immune to these issues will aid in keeping our businesses working despite ourselves and our industry's lack of vision.
It was a lack of imagination that led to the some of the world's notable disasters like the Titanic, the recent tsunamis, the Apollo 1, Shuttle Challenger and Columbia tragedies, the Macerena and Anna Nicole Smith. Someone in the IT world has to wake up and see that putting all the eggs in a basket may be cheaper, but that it is still one basket.
I try to educate and never preach about the use and capabilities of Apple products, and I'm sure others try with Linux and other operating systems. I hope a site like this, sanctioned by Apple itself, adds a bit more professionalism to the mix of offerings.
Re:Nice :) (Score:2)
Then do what I do: Don't mention "Mac". Mention "Apple" instead.
For whatever reason, it seems like those of us who have negative reactions to "Macs" (including myself, until recently) don't react as strongly to "Apple". Possibly because of the long-standing tradition of describing the company as an underdog, etc. I can' really explain it.
All I know is it's been easier to talk to Windows guys about
Re:Nice :) (Score:3, Funny)
That's because the Mac would set them free - free of a job, that is...
But been there for a couple of months (Score:1)
About time! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody ever reads the article... (Score:5, Informative)
Security Guide for OS X [nsa.gov] - by the U.S. National Security Agency [nsa.gov]
Email virus protection [apple.com] - setup SpamAssassin, ClamAV and Amavisd-new with Postfix on OS X
Linux Magazine gives OS X five penguins [apple.com]
The nice thing about this site, as a developer, is that everything I was looking for regarding OS X is all here. Tools, manuals, FAQs, discussion boards, you name it, it's here.
Fixed NSA Article Link (Score:2)
http://www.nsa.gov/snac/downloads_macX.cfm [nsa.gov]
Direct linking doesn't work because you have to agree to an acceptable use policy before downloading the article.
Another useful site... (Score:4, Informative)
Better check their links (Score:1)
Re:Better check their links (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Better check their links (Score:2, Funny)
I have no knowledge of this page, nor would I be at liberty to disclose this page if it did in fact exist. Sir.
If you have a hammer ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Historically, Apple had its own operating system(s) developed in-house. Creating enterprise systems would have been a huge extra burden for them. Now, their os is basically _nix. Existing enterprise systems can be easily integrated with Apple's stuff.
Bottom line: Apple can more easily do this now and so they are doing it.
Re:If you have a hammer ... (Score:2)
Oh, wait...
That does it !! (Score:2, Funny)
Re: That does it !! (Score:1, Funny)
Apparently you're already a Windows user.
One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:2)
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft = communism? Yes, sure. But, going back in time to other famous monopolies...
Rockefeller's Standard Oil = communism
Thanks a lot for opening my eyes!
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Within the Apple enclave, there is even less "freedom" than in the Microsoft world. Using the "communism" analogy, what you are doing is cheering on North Korea as compared to China.
There is much more of a "you must use this hardware to run this software!" thing going on. You can also check with the PlayFair folks about Apple's tendencies. If you want "Competition = free market = you choose.", look to the Linux world. They bend over backwards for such "freedom": interopability, hardware flexibility, and open standards, and user participation in major developments. You don't have everything being handed down from a "Politburo" like you do with Apple and Microsoft.
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a pretty funny analogy.
And apt, too! Apple is just like a North Korea, except that they have fair trade (open source kernal), human rights (well-designed consistent UI), a market economy (PCI, AGP, USB, SATA, IEEE 1392, GigE), a free press (TCP/IP, OpenTalk/ZeroConf, Apache, Jabber, Kerberos, SSL).... but other than that exactly like North Korea, yes.
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:2)
The parent made the communism analogy. I was not particularly happy with it, but I ran with what was there.
"except that they have fair trade (open source kernal)
Are modifications from the user/developer community being incorporated into Mac OS? Not last time I heard (a dictatorship and not a democracy?).
Hmmm. Where is FairPlay/AAC on that list? Speaking of a free press, click here [slashdot.org] to see
OSS Censorship (Score:2)
OSS seems to have it's own brand of censorship. People who have legitimate grievances OSS usability and with how damn hard OSS is to used are attacked by the OSS community and are c
Whining is one thing.... (Score:2)
Whining is one thing. Filing frivolous lawsuits (as Apple has done) is another.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:2)
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:3, Informative)
Are modifications from the user/developer community being incorporated into Mac OS? Not last time I heard (a dictatorship and not a democracy?).
The answer is yes. Go have a look at apple.com/opensource, there's a handy (and verifiable) chart there.
Hmmm. Where is FairPlay/AAC on that list? Speaking of a free press, click here to see the latest Apple stories on Sla
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:2)
desperately needed: balance (Score:1)
May I assume you're part of the USA population who grew up in the Cold War hearing that Commies were going to destroy the precious freedoms your forefathers fought for? If so, may I ask you to lay that prejudice to rest?
Re:desperately needed: balance (Score:2)
Re:One of the things that are desperately needed (Score:2)
Apple is a monopoly. Can you (legally) run OSX on a x86 PC? No. Can you legally run Windows on a Mac (via emulation)? Yes.
I am in no way a Microsoft fanboy. The market has spoken. The problem is that most people don't choose Windows, they choose a computer based on price. Until recently you couldn't get a Mac for under $999. (I may be wrong.) Then the eMac came along and I considered buying one when they became available to the g
Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:2, Interesting)
I always wonder why Apple seems to be so popular for HPC? I mean, Apple makes good hardware and a very nice OS an all, but each compute node is so expensive that it doesn't seem worth it. To buy an compute node with roughly the same power costs half as much if you use Xeon or Athlon processors with support contracts with a large company. I had to design several clusters with a price limit of of $120,000. We could get 45-60 Apple boxes, or 240 Intel boxes. Yes the Xeon boxes where slower, but with almost 5 t
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:1)
No one here really cares about the BigMac. (Just for those mods who don't know what Blacksburg is, it's a wide spot in the road with this little college called Virginia Tech in the middle of it.)
Seriously, unless you are a CS major, no one on campus cares about it all that much. I don't know why, especially how we are supposed to be a tech-y college, but there's just no local interest in it beyond the obligatory "Hey, wonder if we can have a lan par
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:2)
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:2)
Some biz majors are interested in learning how to drive MS Office, and some math and science majors want to learn Excel -- but not a damn one of them cares in the slightest what platform those run on.
They want a machine that does those things as cheaply as possible. They don't care that there's a machine out there that does it "bett
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:2)
I was recently pricing up a dual processor 64-bit box (for doing some out-of-core visualisation work with datasets of several GBs), and looked at Opteron, SPARC, and POWER/PowerPC boxes. The G5 was significantly cheaper than any of the competition. And I tried really hard t
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:1)
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:1)
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:2)
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why does everybody love Apply for HPC? (Score:2)
California Digital [californiadigital.com] offers pre-configured Mac and Intel clusters. Turns out an Xserve cluster will cost you less per flop than a Xeon cluster. And their performance figures are using the 2 GHz Xserve models, which were replaced with 2.3 GHz models last week at the sam
I hear they're coming out with a new product... (Score:5, Funny)
But will they be less secritive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:5, Insightful)
They went from 350 MHz in 1999, to dual 1.42 in 2003. Honestly, most Mac users think that was too long, not too short.
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2)
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2)
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:5, Informative)
These machines are slow by todays standards, but they *work*, and reliably. The only upgrades they've seen are extra memory and firewire hard disks.
This is a lot more than I can say about any of the > 3 year old PCs at my office. Some of those machines can barely boot XP, much less run office effectively.
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
Long life cycles mean that there will be parts and support available from the OEM. I don't want to buy an expensive server and find out that next year I won't be able to replace a motherboard/cpu on it because the new G6 is out, and they don't make the G5's anymore.
The act
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2)
That said, there are companies that sell 3rd party replacement parts. I don't know to what extent they provide backup hardware. My guess is it's slim, at best.
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2)
It is more like Apple Hardware and Software lockin vs. Microsoft Software Lockin. So choose 2 possible future devils or one.
No I am not implying that PC hardware has Never sucked? But with PC there are hundreds of companies making compatible systems. So when Gateway began to suck people switched to Dell. Now that Dell is sucking people are starting to go to switch to something else, while keeping your existi
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2)
Not really. Andrew Tanenbaum was not Linus' teacher [fluidsignal.com]. Linus studied in Finland and Tanenbaum is teaching in The Netherlands.
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this different from *anyone* else? You think my company can easily migrate away from our combination of AD, Notes, Outlook, and EMC? At least Apple's products are, for the most part, based on open-source products, so you could go from OS X to any other *nix pretty easily. Apple may be no better than anyone else, but they're certainly no worse. To claim otherwise is absurd.
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:1, Interesting)
Vendor Lock in: When you switch to Apple for an IT strategy you will be stuck with it.
And this is different than Windows exactly... how? Actually, it's not even true. Since the MacOS X Server is essentially a UNIX-alike, it will run most OSS that can also be run on... oh, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, blah blah blah. That's a lot of choices. Sure there will be some non-OSS software, but if Apple is serious about the IT de
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:1)
Most of the time you get a lot of information about a lot of future products. The problem is that somewhere south of 50% of those products ever see the light of day, and your left asking: "What happened to so and so product? I really liked that one" Usually the response is som
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple has always made it a point to be interoperable with as much as they can, so you are not really "locked in" to a single platform like Windows tries to do. Apple computers have read PC disks for well over a decade, and PC's still don't read Mac disks. Who is locking you in?
Apple's major software has always been cross-platform: AppleWorks, QuickTime, WebObjects, iTunes (ok, a subset of QuickTime). And they tend to use standards far more than Microsoft (thus mitigating lock-in).
2. Care to tell me what will be coming out from Dell in 6 months? Can you give me their price-list? Or are you talking about the features of Longhorn... or it's ship date? How useful is that information when you know it is not going to be remotely close to true.
People expect things out of Apple that they don't expect out of other companies (or fool themselves into thinking they are getting).
3. The G4's were out for a while... Apple just moved the marketing name to G5 now. There were several different versions of the G4 processor in there. Just like there is a long list of very different processors that bear the Pentium 4 name... that too is simply a marketing name (and also don't fit in the same [processor sockets/slots).
If you are talking about service hardware, Apple has a service department that keeps on-hand hardware for a long time. While working for a repair shop I was always amazed at the old stuff that we could get. It cost a lot... but if you need it it is there.
And lets be honest. Do you think that a 4 year old Dell motherboard is more easily replaced than an Apple board? It is just as specific. The hard drives, memory, and processors (look at the Mac upgrade market) and all just as available (since they are mostly the same parts). And the graphics cards may have a smaller selection, but they are readily available.
The 4-10 years between upgrades is going to make Mac's much more valuable... they tend to last better than PC's (both from a usability and a durability standpoint). Just look at schools for that, they are using ancient Apple hardware next to brand new PC hardware... guess which gets more maintenance calls?
The real reason that IT has not made the switch is inertia. The people in IT have their certifications from Microsoft... that is why they got the job. They don't know anything about maintain an Apple computer, and it would be work to educate themselves. So even if the results would be better, they don't feel the need to do so, and have some incentive to try and prevent it.
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Vendor Lock in: When you switch to Apple for an IT strategy you will be stuck with it. And switching to an other platform is expensive.
How is this less true for any other platform? It's not like Linux has dismantled the MS monopoly overnight, and it's not like Linux is cheap enough (despite being free) to have people defecting in droves.
With Windows and Linux you can buy whatever hardware and still keep the same software, reducing the risk of needing a major upgrade. With apple you are stuck with
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2)
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen this comment a lot with regard to apple. Me personally, I don't get it. You aren't ever "stuck" with something. You choose what you choose. If you're going to regret it before you even try it, then you'll never be happy, because no product/solution/etc. is ever perfect. It's pretty simple, really. You weigh the pros and cons, and if apple seems like the best solution, then you choose apple. If you're feeling that apple isn't f
Re:But will they be less secritive? (Score:2)
Short life cycles: Wow those G4 Powermacs didn't last long. And when their supplies run out that is the end of them other then buying them used on ebay.
Which is still better than Dell offers today. More companies buy from Dell than anyone else.They have very good prices, but if you order 200 desktops (as companies I worked for have done in the past) you have no guarantee that what is inside all the cases is the same. We had not only different hard drives, but completely different network cards show up i
Re:Sorry to nitpick... (Score:2)
Welcome Apple (Score:3, Funny)
Welcome to the field of Information Technology. Heh.
IT. (Score:1)
--saint
Shame (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shame (Score:2, Insightful)
I was trying to develop a simple applescript application so that my users could click on that and have shares mounted automaticly. This was needed because the IT folks were moving around servers so I needed a easy and quick (and temporary) way to have it so that users can log into their network shares quickly.
It was a most painfull experiance. There were several versions of applescript. Many of the commands were legacy and obsolete and left
Re:Shame (Score:3, Informative)
As to documentation, I find that if you know where to look (and this can be said of Sun, too) there is a boat load of documentation. The place to start with OS X Server is to go to Apple.com =
Re:Shame (Score:2)
Your problem with AppleScript is that AppleScript is actually a very simple language, and most of its power comes from the fact it can send messages to other applications. Your problem could be solved either by telling Disk Utility to mount t
Re:Shame (Score:2)
Re:Shame (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Shame (Score:3, Informative)
Apple IT dept use all Apple products? (Score:1)
Makes me wonder, does Apple use all Mac stuff themselves? WebOjects for their website? What about database, do they even have a DB product?
Re:Apple IT dept use all Apple products? (Score:1)
Re:Apple IT dept use all Apple products? (Score:2, Informative)
Apple owns FileMaker [filemaker.com] so that would mean they have a database but whether they use it for the website I don't know. Oracle loves them and Larry E was a board member so maybe they use Oracle for the larger jobs and Filemaker for smaller jobs?
Pixar [pixar.com], Jobs' other company, has been doing a transition from Intel hardware over to Xserve now that Apple has RAID [apple.com] and SAN [apple.com] solutions together wi
Re:Apple IT dept use all Apple products? (Score:2)
WebObjects Please (Score:1, Informative)
How/what do you set up to have networked home dirs (Score:2)
I've been looking into setting up a Sparcstation running OpenStep 4.2 here at work as a Netinfo Server, but keep coming across reports of people not being able to connect which is a bit off-putting.
I'd be willing to use FreeBSD or Linux though if it could be set up easily (and inexpensively!) enough.
William
Re:How/what do you set up to have networked home d (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't suggest running Solaris on it, but I've got a SparcStation 5 that has run both NetBSD and Debian Linux during various times of its life. It's held up like a champ with both OSes as a simple fileserver/gateway.
Re:How/what do you set up to have networked home d (Score:2)
While you could use NI, OS X supports NIS for account information and it would be a lot simpler to set up a NIS and NFS server on the SS and use that for log on and home directories. That would have the advantage that you can also use it for other *NIX systems. You could also configure Samba
Smart! (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus, the good thing about MacOS is that the desktop/window manager is fully mature. Recent advances in the Linux kernel really help the whole plug-and-play thing, but it seems like a unified set of desktop apps or an accepted One True Window Manager is a ways off. It's going to take a Red Hat or an IBM clamping down on feature creep and version control to make that happen.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple managed to sneak a few XServes in as departmental file/print servers or other low-end tasks. MacOS is very cool under the hood as well as on the surface.
Re:Smart! (Score:2)
Re:Smart! (Score:2)
For instance, let's say that Windows has 92%, Linux has 5%, and OS X has 3% (these numbers aren't right, but since nobody can say with any certainty what the exact percentages are, and these fall into the generally accepted current market share percentages, we'll go with these.
I'm not going to get real persnicket
Re:Smart! (Score:2)
Re:404 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:404 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:404 (Score:1)
Re:404 (Score:1)
Re:please stop doing this... (Score:3, Insightful)
American:
FooCo is going to enter market blah. We think we can make money there.
British:
FooCo are going to enter market blah. We think we can make money there.
note that
Nope. (Score:2)
note that the American English version changes tense half way through
One doesn't need a doctorate in English (though I do have one) to realize you are mistaken. The American English version, as the British English version, is in present tense start to finish. Your claim regrading consistency is incoherent.
Re:Nope. (Score:2)
time for remedial classes?
Re:please stop doing this... (Score:2)