Testing the Mac Waters
I first learned to program Basic on an Apple IIc, but Windows has been my primary workstation since version 3.11 and I manage an IT department that is primarily a Microsoft shop. But as of two days ago, I am working off of a Macbook Pro as my primary workstation. I want to explain how I did this and my initial impressions, but the focus of this post is why.
Macs still only occupy and small percentage of the total PC market, but ever since OSX was released and the switch to the Intel architecture, they have chiseled away at market share, not to mention that they have caught Microsoft in stock valuation and revenue. But more important than market share, Apple has captured a lot of mindshare. This is only emphasized by the sucess of of the iPhone and iPad.
As an IT Manager, this affects my job. Employees company-wide and even my CIO have caught Apple’s vision and become fans of OSX & iOS based technology. They come to the Service Desk and request these items or bring their personal items and want to connect them to, or use them within our corporate environment. This is a major switch from the days that IT always dictated the technology, where now we see pressure from the consumer space on IT purchasing decisions.
While I understood what OSX was capable of, and we currently support almost 40 Mac systems in our Marketing department, I had no real experience with the technology. So now the experiment begins. My goal is to assess the viability of, and ROI in, Mac based investments in a mid-size enterprise environment (1000+ employees). My game plan is to use a Mac as my primary machine for several months. I also plan to do as much as possible in the native OSX environment as apposed to WIn7 in Parallels. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll document my findings and thoughts here.
