Unfortunately, key details are missing, notably what they are being used for. For example, are these being bought as unix servers? Much enterprise and turnkey software is not available native for Mac. Perhaps this is mostly for running open source stuff like MySQL and Apache and they are buying them instead of Linux machines because they are well configured? Or are they installing Windows on the Macs? I have seen a number of Macs the last couple years in professionals offices which are running Windows.
We should also note that the more expensive OS X Server edition is gone for Lion, having been merged with the cheaper consumer version. This will probably accelerate adoption for server use as well starting later this year.
I'd like to thank you for your reply. That's a good point, it seems like nearly every company has some sort of iApp for iPad/iPhone/iOS out - a good portion of the increase could be development machines to support this. I also want to note that you are the only person among many responses I see that had a thoughtful response to explain what the increase in sales might be due to. It was disappointing to see so many other posts talking about why they believe OS X sucks. That may be true or not, but doesn't help with understanding what is the cause behind that statistics in the cited article.
You are welcome. The tech company I work for ($20m RD budget), long having been a Microsoft shop, now has a neat line of Macs. The iDevices have got so good that we could no longer ignore them.
I have a friend that works at a company which is in the print media business and the entire staff uses Macs by decree. They also use OSX Server for common office needs like file-sharing and VPN, probably because it's the path of least resistance - they can afford to have their IT support staff trained only on Mac OSX, don't have to struggle with potential MacOSX <-> Samba interoperability issues, etc..
(Interestingly, their web-servers are Linux boxes, run by contractors.)
It is my understanding that this is a pretty common scenario as far as OSX Server use cases are concerned.
I can understand this, but only in shops that don't have on-staff Linux people.
My company is rather Mac heavy, but we run Linux fileservers. Way more bang-for-the-buck.
That said, there are still problems: poor AFP performance when fetching directory listings from a large filesystem, and the necessity of using resource-fork-aware mv,rm,mkdir, etc., commands when on the Linux shell, in order to preserve metadata and resource forks.
> … and the necessity of using resource-fork-aware mv,rm,mkdir, etc., commands when on the Linux shell, in order to preserve metadata and resource forks.
What still uses resource forks? I can't speak for your company, but the only files with resource forks I still have around are historical curiosities. Modern OS X apps generally don't use them at all.
OS X Server has some good built-in applications, like Podcast Producer, which can serve as the centerpiece of a video capture / workflow / conversion / uploading / streaming platform.
Some colleges use it for lecture capture. It's pretty decent by itself.
However, the logical extension is iTunes U which is devoid of any real support, except via a forum, and an email system which sends out the dumbest canned responses I've ever read.
I tried for several weeks to get iTunes U set up properly, and no amount of expensive deluxe enterprise support could do the job. Even on a priority ticket, Apple techs and my sales rep told me repeatedly, "Uh, support for that is via email only."
And then the canned email responses were utterly Kafka-esque, as in, "Oh gee, did you break your iPod? Did you lose a file on your hard drive?" When I called in desperation to their iTunes support (as they instructed in the email), they could not get past their own support screen which demanded a product serial number. For iTunes U? No serial number, no service, next! Thank you, come again!
I'm an enterprise customer. Or was.
The rest of Apple enterprise support is solid, but if you're just setting up iTunes U in 2011, it's a ghetto. It's so bad that after months of training, evaluation, vendor selection etc., after investing tens of thousands in Apple hardware, software, training and enterprise support, we killed the project because the iTunes U part was just brain-dead support-wise.
That, and we started to feel like we were just shilling for Apple's proprietary stack, paying for the privilege, and then getting the insult of hearing "there's an app for that." Yeah, but where's the support? We paid a lot to find out it doesn't exist for iTunes U.
So that's why I'm a tad disillusioned about enterprise Apple. (I've been Microsoft-free for 12 years, by the way.)
> DEFINITELY nobody is picking them up as "mysql and apache servers instead of linux" because OSX is a terrible server OS and not worth the cost.
"Not worth the cost" I can certainly see, but why is it a "terrible server OS"? Not saying you're wrong and I'm not in a position to argue the opposite, just curious.
From personal experience, the issue is that Mac OS X likes to hide a lot of stuff behind graphic user interfaces, sure you can set it up manually and configure it, and tune it, but the next person to come along and to fire up the graphic interface may break it.
The other issue is that Mac OS X just isn't tuned for serving a lot of requests, Mac OS X Server is fine for calendaring and the other applications that come standard with it, and I would even suggest them just for ease of use, but for mainstream server applications you are better off with Linux/FreeBSD and for much cheaper as well hardware wise.
Interesting. But doesn't Apple's own (evidently adequate) infrastructure run on OS X?
Regarding your experiences, could you be more specific as to what manual configuration might get broken by the GUI?
Also, regarding tuning, are you talking about app-level tuning (like Apache) or OS-level tuning? I'm curious because I'm a UNIX person without OS X knowledge.
I'm talking about stuff like sysctl tuning, the firewall (which got replaced on the next system update ...), application level tuning, changing log locations, stuff like that.
Haven't used it in a couple of years now... might no longer be an issue.
The kernel design it uses (while having some advantages) is unfortunately slow at many tasks, which is detrimental to server performance. After years of tuning they've got it working well enough for the local user I suppose.
Not sure if it will ever be able to perform as quickly as a monolithic kernel such as linux.
You can use a Mac for standard "productivity" purposes (because it runs Office).
You can use a VM, which are now quite mature, if you require some Windows-only app.
Mac integrates well with MS Exchange now (for corporate e-mail and calendaring).
Beyond mere compatibility:
The build quality of Apple laptops is excellent, which is a positive incentive to move over.
And, most importantly, if you've personally bought in to the Apple ecosystem (iDevices, iTunes), or use a work-provided iPhone or iPad, then you have an incentive to actively move off your Windows system.
They're not being used as servers, or for open source apps. Put yourself in the shoes of some "knowledge worker" at BigCorp, contemplating what his/her next "seat" will be. You'd have such a choice every ~3 years, so there's a delay between when the choice is obvious and when you can actually do it.
I don't think Apple cares hardly at all about this, BTW. It's more of a "rising tide lifts all boats" phenomenon -- a side-effect of their main strategy, which is consumer-focused and not enterprise-focused.
He/she never said "biggest". But an increase in corporate penetration would increase the value of OS X as a malware target, and that is what drives malware.
But an increase in corporate penetration would increase the value of OS X as a malware target, and that is what drives malware.
Are that many corporate LAN/WAN really run so badly that people can run botnets out of them on a regular basis? If that's the case, it's disappointing. If it's not, then I'd be a bit shocked at the prevalence of illegal corporate espionage.
This thing of people always asking for hard numbers, sources, proofs for everything one says and if you can't provide them your words are worth zero is getting a bit tiresome.
Sometimes you can also express personal opinions, you know, gut feelings, and you can discuss about those even if you don't have numbers to show. Those discussion are also usually slightly more entertaining than numbers.
This thing of people always asking for hard numbers, sources, proofs for everything one says and if you can't provide them your words are worth zero is getting a bit tiresome.
Well, I said the first part of the above, but not the second. This thing where people put words into your mouth is getting a bit tiresome.
The data is interesting in its own right!
Many scientists would urge you to be skeptical of your memories. The human mind is subject to many unconscious biases:
Actually, I think my comment confused you because I lumped pretty much everything that could comprimie my system in the malware bucket (including both things like rootkits and tools to find exploitable vulnerabilities.
I have no evidence more enterprise adoption will increase the overall threat to my system, however, I could prove my statement technically true by writing a script that uses a rainbow table to attempt to access my keychain. Being "technically correct" is meaningless to me, though.
Instead, I believe my initial comment (with the context above) stands: more enterprise Apple adoption will increase the number of attacks against OS X and the quantity of tools available for the hacker. A root kit with a key logger to steal the CEO's credentials will work equally well to steal my bank account information.
i cant really take an article serious that compares Apples growth to PC like that. Apple has an almost non existant market share in the enterprise, growing 66% is super easy compared to the PC which is nearly everywhere in enterprises. In total, 4.5% of a lot will probably still be much more than 66% of almost nothing.
Also how serious does Apple take this ? If it would matter to them, why do they discontinue their XServe and other hardcore enterprise machinery ? Id say they dont care too much about the enterprise market and they dont really need to.
Penetration of Mac into the enterprise is going to have to have a generational component. New businesses can start out on Mac and be proud of their difference. Businesses that are already on PC aren't going to budge. Businesses where Macs have a significant footprint might expand that, however.
So, a business strategy that will take 15 years to come to fruition? Who knows? It's as likely to happen by accident as anything else. (And yes, the odds seem long.)
"Businesses that are already on PC aren't going to budge."
I'll call BS on that. I work for a large multinational with a 20+ year history of PCs in the workplace, and Macs represent a growing proportion of the workforce laptop pool. They still have to be special-ordered, but I've yet to hear a request denied, and IT will support them. Meanwhile, iPads are the incentive du jour, and iPhones have just been added to the approved list, where Nokia and Blackberry once ruled. I have none of the above, but I see the future, and the future is white.
[Edit: And why is everyone talking about servers? There's no mention in the linked article, or the original about servers...]
I'll call BS on that. I work for a large multinational with a 20+ year history of PCs in the workplace, and Macs represent a growing proportion of the workforce laptop pool.
This is one case where I'm glad to be called BS on!
You're totally right that it has a generational component. But it's not just the generation of the company, it's the generation of the employee.
Consumerization (apologies for the buzzword) of internal business technology is an undeniable force that even slow-to-notice Gartner recognizes.
A few things are conspiring to help move Macs into the enterprise, even in older companies:
* the Internet. (the biggest reason of all. So much of info workers use all day is on the web. Good ol' I barely-care-what-OS-you're-on web).
* desktop virtualization like VMware Fusion made it so employees who could do 90% of their work w/out Windows, could still login to that one timekeeping app that required Windows.
* the iphone (especially) + android were so much better, so far ahead of Blackberries that Exchange-friendly connectors were written.
* BYOC (Bring your own computer) movement. Multiple enterprise IT departments, even in old school companies, are using a system where a stipend is given to an employee to buy his/her own computer.
* Google Apps (see also: The Internet). But more specifically, Google Apps dislodges the Exchange/Outlook roots that are the number one reasons big corps can't leave Windows.
31 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 54.9 ms ] threadOriginal article, much longer, here: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/20/apple_makes_hu...
Unfortunately, key details are missing, notably what they are being used for. For example, are these being bought as unix servers? Much enterprise and turnkey software is not available native for Mac. Perhaps this is mostly for running open source stuff like MySQL and Apache and they are buying them instead of Linux machines because they are well configured? Or are they installing Windows on the Macs? I have seen a number of Macs the last couple years in professionals offices which are running Windows.
We should also note that the more expensive OS X Server edition is gone for Lion, having been merged with the cheaper consumer version. This will probably accelerate adoption for server use as well starting later this year.
DEFINITELY nobody is picking them up as "mysql and apache servers instead of linux" because OSX is a terrible server OS and not worth the cost.
(Interestingly, their web-servers are Linux boxes, run by contractors.)
It is my understanding that this is a pretty common scenario as far as OSX Server use cases are concerned.
My company is rather Mac heavy, but we run Linux fileservers. Way more bang-for-the-buck.
That said, there are still problems: poor AFP performance when fetching directory listings from a large filesystem, and the necessity of using resource-fork-aware mv,rm,mkdir, etc., commands when on the Linux shell, in order to preserve metadata and resource forks.
What still uses resource forks? I can't speak for your company, but the only files with resource forks I still have around are historical curiosities. Modern OS X apps generally don't use them at all.
Some colleges use it for lecture capture. It's pretty decent by itself.
However, the logical extension is iTunes U which is devoid of any real support, except via a forum, and an email system which sends out the dumbest canned responses I've ever read.
I tried for several weeks to get iTunes U set up properly, and no amount of expensive deluxe enterprise support could do the job. Even on a priority ticket, Apple techs and my sales rep told me repeatedly, "Uh, support for that is via email only."
And then the canned email responses were utterly Kafka-esque, as in, "Oh gee, did you break your iPod? Did you lose a file on your hard drive?" When I called in desperation to their iTunes support (as they instructed in the email), they could not get past their own support screen which demanded a product serial number. For iTunes U? No serial number, no service, next! Thank you, come again!
I'm an enterprise customer. Or was.
The rest of Apple enterprise support is solid, but if you're just setting up iTunes U in 2011, it's a ghetto. It's so bad that after months of training, evaluation, vendor selection etc., after investing tens of thousands in Apple hardware, software, training and enterprise support, we killed the project because the iTunes U part was just brain-dead support-wise.
That, and we started to feel like we were just shilling for Apple's proprietary stack, paying for the privilege, and then getting the insult of hearing "there's an app for that." Yeah, but where's the support? We paid a lot to find out it doesn't exist for iTunes U.
So that's why I'm a tad disillusioned about enterprise Apple. (I've been Microsoft-free for 12 years, by the way.)
"Not worth the cost" I can certainly see, but why is it a "terrible server OS"? Not saying you're wrong and I'm not in a position to argue the opposite, just curious.
The other issue is that Mac OS X just isn't tuned for serving a lot of requests, Mac OS X Server is fine for calendaring and the other applications that come standard with it, and I would even suggest them just for ease of use, but for mainstream server applications you are better off with Linux/FreeBSD and for much cheaper as well hardware wise.
Regarding your experiences, could you be more specific as to what manual configuration might get broken by the GUI?
Also, regarding tuning, are you talking about app-level tuning (like Apache) or OS-level tuning? I'm curious because I'm a UNIX person without OS X knowledge.
Haven't used it in a couple of years now... might no longer be an issue.
The kernel design it uses (while having some advantages) is unfortunately slow at many tasks, which is detrimental to server performance. After years of tuning they've got it working well enough for the local user I suppose.
Not sure if it will ever be able to perform as quickly as a monolithic kernel such as linux.
Server software for mac: http://www.apple.com/uk/server/macosx/specs.html
You can use a VM, which are now quite mature, if you require some Windows-only app.
Mac integrates well with MS Exchange now (for corporate e-mail and calendaring).
Beyond mere compatibility:
The build quality of Apple laptops is excellent, which is a positive incentive to move over.
And, most importantly, if you've personally bought in to the Apple ecosystem (iDevices, iTunes), or use a work-provided iPhone or iPad, then you have an incentive to actively move off your Windows system.
They're not being used as servers, or for open source apps. Put yourself in the shoes of some "knowledge worker" at BigCorp, contemplating what his/her next "seat" will be. You'd have such a choice every ~3 years, so there's a delay between when the choice is obvious and when you can actually do it.
I don't think Apple cares hardly at all about this, BTW. It's more of a "rising tide lifts all boats" phenomenon -- a side-effect of their main strategy, which is consumer-focused and not enterprise-focused.
I stand corrected.
But an increase in corporate penetration would increase the value of OS X as a malware target, and that is what drives malware.
Are that many corporate LAN/WAN really run so badly that people can run botnets out of them on a regular basis? If that's the case, it's disappointing. If it's not, then I'd be a bit shocked at the prevalence of illegal corporate espionage.
Sometimes you can also express personal opinions, you know, gut feelings, and you can discuss about those even if you don't have numbers to show. Those discussion are also usually slightly more entertaining than numbers.
Well, I said the first part of the above, but not the second. This thing where people put words into your mouth is getting a bit tiresome.
The data is interesting in its own right!
Many scientists would urge you to be skeptical of your memories. The human mind is subject to many unconscious biases:
http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/10-ways-...
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Bias
I have no evidence more enterprise adoption will increase the overall threat to my system, however, I could prove my statement technically true by writing a script that uses a rainbow table to attempt to access my keychain. Being "technically correct" is meaningless to me, though.
Instead, I believe my initial comment (with the context above) stands: more enterprise Apple adoption will increase the number of attacks against OS X and the quantity of tools available for the hacker. A root kit with a key logger to steal the CEO's credentials will work equally well to steal my bank account information.
Also how serious does Apple take this ? If it would matter to them, why do they discontinue their XServe and other hardcore enterprise machinery ? Id say they dont care too much about the enterprise market and they dont really need to.
So, a business strategy that will take 15 years to come to fruition? Who knows? It's as likely to happen by accident as anything else. (And yes, the odds seem long.)
I'll call BS on that. I work for a large multinational with a 20+ year history of PCs in the workplace, and Macs represent a growing proportion of the workforce laptop pool. They still have to be special-ordered, but I've yet to hear a request denied, and IT will support them. Meanwhile, iPads are the incentive du jour, and iPhones have just been added to the approved list, where Nokia and Blackberry once ruled. I have none of the above, but I see the future, and the future is white.
[Edit: And why is everyone talking about servers? There's no mention in the linked article, or the original about servers...]
This is one case where I'm glad to be called BS on!
Consumerization (apologies for the buzzword) of internal business technology is an undeniable force that even slow-to-notice Gartner recognizes.
A few things are conspiring to help move Macs into the enterprise, even in older companies:
* the Internet. (the biggest reason of all. So much of info workers use all day is on the web. Good ol' I barely-care-what-OS-you're-on web).
* desktop virtualization like VMware Fusion made it so employees who could do 90% of their work w/out Windows, could still login to that one timekeeping app that required Windows.
* the iphone (especially) + android were so much better, so far ahead of Blackberries that Exchange-friendly connectors were written.
* BYOC (Bring your own computer) movement. Multiple enterprise IT departments, even in old school companies, are using a system where a stipend is given to an employee to buy his/her own computer.
* Google Apps (see also: The Internet). But more specifically, Google Apps dislodges the Exchange/Outlook roots that are the number one reasons big corps can't leave Windows.