IT wants to replace aging Macs w/ PCs :(

I've lived through this personal hell storm and management ended up buying a couple Macs after IT pulled this stunt and brought production to a screeching halt. We were basically dead in the water with Mac customers after switching to an all windows environment.

[1] Mac disks wouldn't mount.
[2] Couldn't open Mac files that didn't contain '.three' file extensions.
[3] Mac Fonts wouldn't load.
[4] Changing software licenses was a pain.
[5] Couldn't convert our old Mac font library which left us stuck when working with old layouts. (You'll have to buy a whole new set of OpenType fonts and convert every font within existing documents)
[6] Font management on the PC sucks beyond belief! (You have to use the 'style' palette to pick 'bold' and 'italic'. It's the only way as you don't see the styles you have loaded. Hopefully you don't create a faux style on a font you don't have loaded)
[7] Of course color management and monitor calibration.

There are a ton more issues but I tried to block that entire nightmare from my life.

When we did this I made the IT staff take entire responsiblility for any extra labor / software costs and lost business. They said it wouldn't be a problem and it came in WAY more than they imagined.

I keep a running list of issues as they happened and kept senior management comprised of the impact on a daily basis. I'm not entirely sure how you interact with customers but you're in for a real mess.

This is good to know. Just curious... How long ago was this? I know some issues between Mac & Windows have smoothed over, but...

I love that idea, but IT doesn't have time for that. Too busy fixing broken Windows stuff! No, really. :O

Tell them they don't have to administer that computer at all, minus the email and internet connection (easy!). Maybe that will sway them, but for the most part they aren't going to listen to you unless it's their idea.

Your macs I assume are on their own network? As a result, it's much easier for them to all share files as all Mac than shoving one pc in the mix.

You could suggest to them that the new MAC computer will be fully maintained by you (Barring anything catastrophic or beyond your ability) and they won't have to worry about it once its set up. No viruses, etc. This could be your best selling point as the IT department's time can be quantified.

You can now run Windows on a Mac:
http://www.apple.com/getamac/

Any new computers they buy will be preloaded with Vista and most likely won't be 'downgradable' to XP (drivers for new video cards and processors are the reason for this). I'm almost sure IT doesn't want to try to integrate one rogue Vista machine into their still all XP network.

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Powerpoint is not a design application

Thanks to both of you for your help. I sure hope we can pull this off!

well...check out this banner Armit Gupta found. It was placed on a page reviewing Microsoft Vista:

http://www.vimeo.com/396000

It should give your IT a good idea.

(-_-)

One thing I thought of on the way home from work yesterday was the whole concept of using the right tool for the job. If this was 20 or 30 years ago, "management" wouldn't walk down to the art department and tell them they need to replace the aging line camera with an adding machine, or that they should start using #2 pencils, which are much less expensive than X-Acto blades. In many ways, I really see the forcing of artists to use Windows as a modern version of the same.

I think I need to approach the subject trying to convince the powers that this is not a computer, per se. Yes, there's a keyboard and mouse and all that, but this is really a piece of equipment used to do a job: just like the janitor uses a vacuum cleaner, and the maintenance department uses a drill press. IT will need to maintain the POP settings, but other than that, the Macs really don't need any admin like the customer service and accounting machines do. What little maintenance we need here (Pretty much summed up in: Shut it down on Friday evening; boot it up on Monday morning.), the Mac users do it themselves.

IT people don't tend to care what the end user's preferences are. I'm blessed to work in-house with an IT manager that is a die hard mac-user. But that hasn't always been the case. IT tend to focus on what they believe will make their job easier and that usually means locking every machine down as much as humanly possible and making the hardware as homogenous as they can to "improve" their use of time (and track user's use of their time).

If they are going to count beans however it would be worth while to have them look up your analytics data over the past few years for any websites your company hosts. They can't deny the rising marketshare of apple in the online world. Our analytics has shown a growth from under 4% a few years ago to around 8% today. It is widely projected to continue growing. That only means your company is ever more likely to encounter files being submitted from the mac platform. If your company is involved in publishing or printing in any fashion they also know that market share is much, much higher. Do they want to play nice with customers or not? It's as simple as that.

I hope this is useful.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

In a PC work environment. What happens to us is that our IT managers ussually just quit. . .lol they literally hand in their resignations and walk out the door. . . this 'multi-platform' life is not for them. Every time we interview for an it manager and you ask them: "Macs?" they say "Yes" then ADD: "I've fooled around with them around 1998 or so. Nice colors." Then they see the new G5, get faced with UNIX and realise somewhere in their A+ trained brain that "I'm WAY out of my depth here."

Added to that our corporate head office sends instructions and these poor local guys scratch their heads and wonder how they are going to set up 'Active directories' on the Macs in the creative department. When they told me they were going to do that I told them that if it IMPROVES our WORKING experience then go ahead. If not: "No Thanks" No Active Directory thus far.

Lets not even GET into the virus sphere. . . we were told to install Virex on all the macs. . .its sitting in a drawer somewhere. . . then they want to shut down MSN because it may be a "security Risk". . . DesignDaddy is right, they want to 'count beans' and make sure that the resources are being used for what its used for. That's why we don't have a wireless network . . . can't be monitored it seems!

Good Luck. I would like to know how it turns out so that if they try that with us I can be prepared!

"Try not, Do! or do not, there is no try."
-Yoda

Thanks again for the additional comments.

One thing going for the Mac users here is that we still have some "key staff" that will remain on Macs at least until our machines get too old or busted to be productive anymore. I suppose the main thing that concerns me is that if they "get away with" replacing one Mac with a Windows box, it will set a precedent that none of us likes.

Let them know that PCs are a dying breed. If they "standardize" on Windows now, they'll be screwed in 5-10 years without a doubt. Windows won't be the standard for long.

See here: http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/11/19/it.turning.to.macs.linux/

Jt Hollister
www.whywaitwebs.com

...here at out work place we have exchange mail server set up fine, i'm not an IT admin by any means, but encounter no issues with macs and pc's running through this exchange server.

We have all PC's running XP and Outlook, all macs (Intel and PPC) currently on Tiger using Mail. Not sure what exchange server version we have.

According to the exchange mail server configuration, for Exchange to work with Mail, Exchange administrators need to configure the Exchange server for IMAP access. Some system administrators may refer to an Outlook Web Access Server as an Internet Information Services (IIS) server.

If set up of exchange is the only thing stopping them, then they probably need to be a bit more clued up with the configuration options. It may end up to be more cost effective than to fork out for new PC's.

Andrew

The problem is: know-how..

If the IT's knowledge is strictly in the Windows environment, then they cannot spend time learning anything else. Many establishments are taking that path because of the availability of IT resources. Resources for anything Microsoft can be easily found, a dime a dozen.. I just wish Windows was a good enough operating system; it's the only OS that suffers from viruses and severe security issues.

Where I work, IT tried to replace our Macs with Windows. I objected and clarified we're not responsible for any low quality of work or delayed deliveries if you insist on the switch, Windows is simply not the tool for us.. They calmed down eventually.

Waleed
www.waleedsgallery.biz

I think Waleed nailed it.... know-how and lack of Mac familiarity. Honestly, I think our IT director is curious enough about the Mac that he's not entirely opposed to them. The vibe I'm getting is that the opposition is coming from a higher authority.

As for Mail.app working with Exchange, I don't know enough about mail services to know how to implement it, or even to communicate it to the IT staff. We tried it a while back, and I couldn't get it to work from the Mac side. No clue what version Exchange we're running. I tried Entourage as well, but that didn't work, either. (Plus at the time, Entourage screwed up Illustrator keyboard modifiers, and didn't play as nice with all the image format attachments we throw around.) Also, Entourage would be yet another nail in the Mac coffin here, because that would present additional cost. Our Mac-based staff seems to really like Mail.app anyways.

At first I thought your headline was very Gollum-like:

"It wants to replace my Mac-ses with PCs? NEVER!
We'll never lets you go, my precious...."

heh

Good God! Entourage?

A much cleaner way is to access the Exchange server directly through your browser -- https:// IPaddress / exchange

Of course it doesn't bother you every minute or so with an automatic send/receive function, but it stores your email on the server (which is the way most Outlook or Entourage setups are), gives access to shared folders, as well as most of the other features including Calendar, Contacts & Tasks.

The best thing: no bloated Microsoft software.

Believe me, I am fully aware of the webmail side of Exchange. We have to resort to it for at least a few hours at a time at least a couple times a month when the POP service craps out on us. Several of us also use it for accessing our messages remotely.

As for the public folders, calendars, etc., it's very crippled when you're using any browser except the Windows version of IE. No offense, but webmail is hardly an elegant solution to begin with (from any service, including gmail, .Mac, et. al.), but adding Windows IE on top of that is more suckage than I care to handle.

Firefox handles webmail pretty well, though some features are in different places.

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Powerpoint is not a design application

If your pop is crapping out a few times a month. Some boys should be worried about their jobs. There are allot of IT pro's out there that can keep exchange servers up and running 100%. Sounds like sloppy setup/maintenance.

FF used to be fast. Now that it has been developed to accept all these open source apps, it's just another slow browser unless you use the extensions (which are worth their weight in gold). Try Opera for your webmail. It's a nice lean browser.

I can see why using IE7 is frustrating. In all reality IE7 is now more standards compliant than any other browser out there. This can be both a blessing and a curse.

Saying a prayer for you man. Hope things get worked out soon.

Cheers,
-Jon

I've been in IT for about 15 years, starting with basic support, working my way up through network engineering and data room administration and up into management. I've used all flavours of Windows, starting at 3.1 and working my way up to Vista Ultimate (including the server and back office ranges).

I use a Mac at home. I tell all my friends and colleagues to buy Macs. There is simply no better solution in the marketplace that combines ease of use, features and security with top end hardware. Maybe as more people switch to Mac that will change, but at the moment:
* I have no viruses
* no malware
* no registry hassles
* no complicated install and uninstall
* a suite of free software (iLife)
* built-in camera, speakers, mic, firewire, USB, ethernet, wi-fi, bluetooth
* X-Windows for unix GUI apps
* BSD kernel for unix command line apps and shell scripts
* Fully featured mainstream games including lightening fast 3d shooters at 1600x1050 resolution with antialiasing NATIVE on OS X
* Ability to dual boot into Windows for the occasional old game like Diablo (which is the only thing I use Windows for).

I still use MS Office, for compatibility with documents from the mainstream, but otherwise I don't touch MS products. There are simply too many problems.

Wow... thanks to everyone for your input!

A couple things from my scratch pad that I've been jotting down lately as "issues" have been coming up that I've been finding that Macs shine here where I work. We get many many files from outside sources here (Yes, natobasso, even .ppt files), and most of out Mac-using staff are responsible for making customer-supplied art printable in our environment (kinda like prepress, but not exactly).

- Macs are more font-agnostic (They play relatively nice with PS, TT, & OT.)
- Our Mac users rarely get a file they can't open. If they can't open it, the file is hosed.
- There seems to be some credibility with our customer base in saying that we can accept Mac- or "PC" format files. We obviously know this is a somewhat antiquated way of thinking, but right or wrong, I do see the level of respect customers have for our artists jump up a notch or two when they hear we use Macs.
- Illustrator (mission-critical for us) is supposedly more stable on the Macs here than on the Windows machines. (I work in a slightly different environment than most of our Mac staff, and I have never productively used Windows, so I'm just passing along what I've been told.)
- This one is a little harder to put into words, but I have had a couple of the artists mention to me how much easier it is to work in multiple visual apps simultaneously on Mac vs. Windows. You get more visual feedback from all open apps. This is a big deal for our workflow here.

Of course we can make Windows work around most of the issues we have, but the fact is that we would have to constantly be making Windows work around those things. It's so much easier to use the tool that works as-is instead of constantly re-shaping a tool that's better suited for other things.

The first thing I thought of (after hauling myself up off the floor, where your IT people's suggestion sent me) was cost.

It will take you longer to turn jobs around in a Windoze environment. In order to stay competitive, you won't be able to increase your rates to cover the additional time.

Perhaps even more importantly, you may well lose clients whose files you won't be able to process. Macs can handle a wide variety of the file types your clients are likely to want you to use. Windoze is woefully limited by comparison.

The person who mentioned that a place using Windoze to manage graphics output will strike many potential clients as poorly managed. This also translates to lost revenue.

BTW, you cannot uninstall Mail.app because it's integrated with the Mac OS. Trying to do so (like by dragging the .app and plist files to the Trash) will still leave artifacts. Modern Mac users know this is asking for trouble.

Your IT people are only trying to get everyone to use what they feel comfortable fixing -- even at the risk of corporate profit. Let's see them justify that to top management!

Mara

i don't think i've ever had it lock up on me or cause any real problems.

being a cross-platform guy, i think most of the complaints from mac users about PCs are based more on FUD than actual real-world issues. in the end, they're both just tools. 5-10 years ago, i may have seen more legit issues btwn platforms, but today it's really more about what you're comfortable with instead of which one actually will do design work better. as far as i'm concerned, they both work equally well.

i've been through a switch from mac to PC in an inhouse situation before and the biggest issue to be overcome is designers' fear of the PC and buying into the "mac v PC guy" commercial mentality. and you're bound to actually lose some designers over the switch because some just aren't willing to even try it.

maybe my viewpoint is a little different as more of a "power user" kind of person, as far as technology goes. but i really do see them as tools and, for the most part, don't necessarily care which one i'm working on. when i was freelancing, switching back and forth could be a PITA, as i had to remember which keystrokes to use for shortcuts and the like (made worse by working on indesign/PC one day and then quark/mac the next). but as far as accomplishing a day's work, both were equally effective (as long as the hardware was up-to-spec, which wasn't always true when freelancing and getting the "freelancer" hand-me-down machine).

Is loss of freedom. The IT people usually leave Macs alone because they don't have CLUE as to how to go about doing "power user" stuff on them. When they plonk you down in front of a PC they KNOW that they have total control and you don;t so you have to keep running back to THEM to fix or install anything that you need. That way they can control what you do on the tool provided.

"Try not, Do! or do not, there is no try."
-Yoda

Hate to bring my own thread back from way down below, but I've spent most of the morning working in Windows for the first time in a VERY long time, and I've discovered a few more niggles with that dime store OS. Perhaps these might apply in someone else's situation and help them.

In my particular situation, any one of these things, though they seem very trite, would be a deal-breaker on the switch to Windows -- at least in my sense of accounting!

- No triple-click to select a line of text in non-graphics apps (email, notepad, etc)

- No drag-down/up to select text to the end/beginning of a single line.

- No easy creation of symbol characters (like alt-R for ®)

Oh, and so far, we haven't lost any Macs... yet!