Macs are gay.
Oh, wait...
I don't have time to do a dissertation, but remember that hype-filled advertisements should rarely be taken at face value.
Do you remember when Intel released the MMX instruction set back in the days of the old school original Pentium line? Supposedly, Photoshop ran a hojillion-percent faster with MMX than it did without it.
Of course, that only applied to 20-25 filters that were custom-designed with the MMX instruction set in mind. A Pentium 133 is still a Pentium 133, instruction set notwithstanding.
As far as Apple's shiny new toy, I'm sure it
is faster than their last generation. That's generally how things work in the realm of technology. Do you think Apple is going to throw out a press release that says "Realistically, our new line is approximately 5% faster than our old line." Of course not, that'd be suicide by marketing.
Besides, a quad-processor Mac workstation with 16GB of RAM is unrealistic for 99.9% of people. I can build a quad-processor PC workstation with 16GB of RAM, too, but I seem to be missing the bajillion dollars necessary to pay for such a beast.
Show me a realistic Macintrash and a realistic PC, and I'll take the PC any day of the week. Why? I'm a network engineer for a Microsoft-based LAN, so using an incompatible workstation would be totally pointless.
You want some good, cheap reasons to not use Mac? Here are a couple.
- Higher price than comparable PC hardware.
- Significantly less choice (and higher expense) for aftermarket components. (Video cards, etc.)
- No decent directory services because Mac OS/X Server sucks.
- Limited compatibility with third-party directory services.
- Significantly less native software, including games and productivity suites.
- Significantly longer time-to-market for dual-market software.
Mind you, I'm not a PC fanboy or an anti-Macintrash zealot, but both systems
have their place. Since Apple is finally realizing the PowerPC architecture
sucks, they've sold out to Intel. The only thing that will differentiate Apple from "Wintel" after the conversion is a "lockdown" chip on the motherboard and the operating system. Outside of the DRM chip (which I'd like to hear your thoughts on), Mac OS will be no different from any other non-Windows OS. Wintel hardware with a non-Wintel OS. Big whoop.
Again, I know Macs have their place. I'm sure they're absolutely wonderful machines for digital media in all the various flavors it might come in. However, the Mac is not a PC replacement. There are some things a Mac just can't do, or at least not do
right. There is a reason why you'll never find a serious company (again, outside of digital media) that has Macintrash workstations on every desktop. Until Apple can fix some of the very fundamental flaws I've listed above, they'll continue to be limited to a niche market.
You see, the most elemental reason why Macs aren't accepted on "real networks" is mostly a matter of attitude. To make it in the IT field, a vendor has to be willing to
play nice with all the other hardware and software on the network. The name of the game in IT these days is
integration. This is the same concept that makes devices like the Blackberry so popular, because the end users want a single device from which they can make phone calls, check e-mail, reboot servers, keep a calendar, jot notes, and scrub the kitchen sink.
From any workstation or server on the network, I should be able to control every other workstation or server on the network. I should be able to view and change file permissions, unlock user accounts, add e-mail aliases, create new user logons, etc. I can't do that from a Mac.
Likewise, I should be able to create a "unique experience" for every user on every machine. If I want to set Joe Blow's homepage to TWNCommunications.Net, I should be able to do that without ever touching his machine. This is called "policy," and any company that wants to survive in today's IT market makes darn sure their product is fully policy-controllable. Mac won't play that game. They went far enough to allow their machines to authenticate to Active Directory networks, but that's it. No control via policy of any kind.
Again, this isn't a technological problem that Apple is facing, but a problem of attitude. If Apple wants to get out of their niche market, they need to drop the "holier than thou" attitude and starting playing well with others. As long as they keep up their arrogant, isolationist attitude they'll never be taken seriously by engineers or administrators. Until that happens, Apple's niche market will remain their only market.
-b0b
(...didn't intend to write so much.)
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