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For those who aren't on Mac yet: think about it...
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Posted by jamesofford
Oct 16, 2015 at 03:06 PM
Ah yes, the Mac vs PC in industry battle. Back when I was working in industry, the company for which I worked originally had a very enlightened approach to what computer you could use. You could use whatever you wanted. People generally chose computers that would facilitate their work. At the time I was doing a lot of gene manipulation, and the software on the mac was far superior to what was available on the PC. When the place was networked(Yes, I am that old.)we were still able to use either Macs or PCs because all of the local software that we used on the network was written with open software that was computer and browser agnostic.
Then we were bought out by another company. At the time they were running Windows 95. The word came down that everyone needed to move to PCs, and we would all be running Windows NT 3.5. We had two guys who maintained all of the Macs on site. There were a few hundred. We had a large department who supported the PCs. Sigh.
I really missed my Mac when they took it away.
Jim
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 17, 2015 at 04:28 PM
IMHO, in the not so distant future we will probably see some major changes in enterprise computing solutions—I believe the Dell/EMC/VMware deal is indicative. I expect that what OS an employee’s machine is running will be secondary, as long as it follows certain security guidelines, and Google is certainly investing on the Chrome OS in that direction.
However, the choice of OS is clearly of major importance to users themselves, as discussions here show again and again.
For my part, I don’t see me converting to Apple/Mac/iOS anytime soon. In fact, I am at present regressing from Android and building an ecosystem for myself and my next of kin based on Windows and Linux. Eventually all my PCs capable enough will probably be upgraded to Windows 10, while less powerful machines will probably run Linux.
There are many reasons for the above, the stronger one in my case being one of philosophy. For example, my overall impression is that the Mac, iOS and Android development timeplans require one to upgrade their hardware unreasonably often. Aside from the financial cost of such investments, there is a planet of limited resources to care about.
But I really don’t feel I’m sacrificing much, aside of aesthetics (and these have never been my strongest point) and possibly Tinderbox and Devonthink. That’s life.
Working with graphic designers who have been running Macs for as long as they’ve existed, my impression is that they don’t spend less time than myself getting their offices’ systems to work.
That said, I think that there is another aspect of philosophy where Mac OS wins: the system encourages one to use less programmes, because they are better integrated with the infrastructure. But I believe most of that philosophy can be applied with Windows or Linux as well, e.g. by extended use of text files. By contrast, I don’t think it can be applied to iOS and Android, where the “there’s an app for that” motto expresses the logic of more and more…
Just my 2c.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Oct 17, 2015 at 05:46 PM
Alexander,
>For example, my overall impression is that the Mac, iOS and Android development timeplans require one to upgrade their hardware unreasonably often. Aside from the financial cost of such investments, there is a planet of limited resources to care about.
* I have a Macbook Pro from 2009 that runs fine and has no problems with the latest Mac OS X - to be precise: I have the impression that the Macbook runs faster since I upgraded to Yosemite. My iPad 2 from 2011 runs the latest iOS.
* My wife bought Android phones and tablets in 2012 and 2013 - the latest Android versions are not available for them.
* I had a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 from 2013 that ran Windows 7 and 8 but won’t run Windows 10 (Lenovo refuses to update some drivers, some users managed to get Windows 10 up and running but that is too much hassle for me). In the meantime, I gave it away to get a used Thinkpad x201 Tablet that’s fine with Windows 10.
Just some anecdotal evidence…
Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 18, 2015 at 02:42 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>For example, my overall impression is that the Mac,
>iOS and Android development timeplans require one to upgrade their
>hardware unreasonably often.
Anecdotally, that was also my experience with iPads specifically (I can’t speak of Macs, and I had no such problems with iPod Touch). I found my iPad 1 being abandoned by Apple and therefore app developers way too early, and without being able to upgrade the OS, it’s no longer a useful device, despite being an excellent piece of hardware with an amazing battery. It just feels like a waste, financially (for me) and environmentally (for the planet).
Currently I’m dealing with hardware or OS problems (hard to tell) with my partner’s iPad Mini 2, which is going to be only 2 years old next month, and it’s going to cost extra money to fix. I’m just not willing to be buying a new iPad on an annual basis (and thereforee I moved to Chromebooks).
Maybe I’m just unlucky and a statistical outlier. But if it’s a game of planned obsolescence, under the pressures of having to deliver extra profit to the stockmarket, then I’m not willing to be part of that game (and app ecosystem).
Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 18, 2015 at 03:24 PM
I’d entirely agree with you about the iPad 1 - that was naughty, since they clearly already had the iPad 2 set up and ready to go just a few short months later.
However, my iPad 2 still runs fine. Not as swift as it was, but perfectly usable.
That’s because I do a full factory reinstall on a fairly regular basis (every time Apple releases a major iOS upgrade, in fact). And every time, this has a huge (positive) impact on the iPad’s performance.
It’s so easy to reinstall iPad apps - and so many of them sync with various Cloud systems - that this is nowhere near as onerous as it would be on a desktop machine. Not unlike a Chromebook, in fact.