April 16, 2008 1:02 PM PDT
IBM considering giving Microsoft the boot?
IBM Research is running a pilot program to gauge the interest in and feasibility of moving its employees from PCs to Macs. So far, the response appears to be an enthusiastic, "Yes, please! Is this PC recyclable, or should I just dump it out back?"
Why is IBM doing this? An internal document gives several reasons:
- Alternative to Microsoft Windows (IBM, like many enterprises, is concerned about being locked into Microsoft)
- Less prone to security issues
- Widely used in the academic world, with which (IBM) Research has close ties
- Many new hires are more comfortable with the Mac and lately asking for it
- Growing Mac community in (IBM) Research and within IBM that finds the development environment on Mac more convenient
- Growing acceptance of the Mac as a consumer and business-oriented client platform
- Strategy includes significant investments in achieving the Mac platform parity (IBM needs to support multiple platforms, and a policy of using those platforms internally makes support for them easier)
Of the still-small number of participants, 82 percent declared that the Mac offers a "better or best experience," compared to their ThinkPad-running Windows, and 86 percent asked to keep their Mac rather than be manacled to Windows. IBM employs 300,000-plus people. That's a lot of Macs, if it expands the pilot.
Imagine that.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
And serious hurt to the Open Source community.
But it probably won't catch on - IBM can afford to Go Mac, the average Joe can just dream about it - that's why the move didn't already happen 10 years ago!!
If IBM really wants to find a good alternative to Micro$oft, they should go with the enterprise products from Suse or Redhat.
Oh yes it does. If IBM go over to Mac, they then cease to *use* Linux - and so Linux will have lost a powerful friend. the money that M$ would lose on the deal is a lot to you and me - but chicken feed to IBM and M$.
Linux doesn't need money, but it does need powerful friends.
*That's* why this is bad move for open source.
Plus it just shows how childish geeks can be when surveyed, doesn't it?
Further, it says that they are considering tossing their support for Windows (presumably) since they say Microsoft as specifically mentioned so for all you know- other Linux powered units just might continue to run Linux if they have been. And some possible Microsoft areas are considering switching to Mac.
So shift the market to an even more closed system than windows and what happens? You open the door for more Linux fans.
I would think that LINUX would be the next platform I will see on my laptop and many others within the company. This would continue the logical progression from the top down. And it would save the comapny TONS of money,
The real problem is the cost of a MAC. I own one.
I am telling you, this whole article is crap because most IBM employees get crappy computers, some crappy old IBM thinkpad, thinkCenter, or whatever. It doesn't matter what they get, IBM is IBM. IBM is holding on to its legacy systems, designs, and technologies. Sure it has the processors, db2, infomix, and patents but it has nothing big. Most of their technology developments are for the supporting their existing employees pension, liabilities costs, and others.
Linux and OS X are no go because IBM is about squeezing every dime out of every employee, it is what is it. By saying that, I doubt that IBM would dump cheap Windows PC for expensive OS X machine. It could be experimental but I don't see it. IBM doesn't have anything in them to do this.
Typical OS X cost at least 25% more than Windows PC Counterpart. Also, IBM has heavily entrenched Notes platform into windows platform. Is there Notes for Apple? I don't think there is. IBM has huge Notes application installation. I can't imagine they would abandon their own platform to please some lemmings in open source community or apple community.
Cost of Apple isn't a myth. Apple cost more in actual support cost and actual hardware/software cost. there is no significant productivity increase Apple over Windows machine. And whole thing with Virus is rare in windows as it is rarer in Apple. If you have anti-virus scan, vast majority people are safe from the virus problems. Most viruses are spread from downloading porns and illegal software.
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27011238
Must have been fired or something??
I recall my previous employee had made a mass-exodus the other way Mac -> PC after being a Mac shop from the beginning.
I remember a similar story in Australia with Telstra - they threatened to move their entire user base to StarOffice as opposed to Office due to the low $ per unit. In the end Microsoft got the message - dropped their pants and provided competitive licensing. I believe it was a ploy by Telstra ... and they never had any intention of migrating ... but we may never know.
there are fewer viruses on macs purely because fewer people write viruses for the niche market. As Mac grows and gets a bigger profile (for example, if idiots like IBM move that way), then the virus writers will surely follow.
There is nothing 'safer' about Mac architecture.
I still like to know why our illustrious author thinks this is in any way shape or form "good news for open source".
I guess we're at M$'s low point in the cycle. Six weeks time, he'll be telling us how they are changing for the better ;o)
- by jolysmoke May 23, 2008 2:24 AM PDT
- There are still some who would like to claim that there are fewer "viruses on Macs" and fail to realize that there have been no (zero!) successful Mac viruses for over ten years. And it is very much in the interest of companies trying to sell antivirus to Macs to succeed in getting one onto a Mac, even experimentally onto one of their own, so they could tell the whole world about the danger. They haven't. And to avoid smokescreen quibbling, by virus I mean malware that spreads from machine to machine, from program to program, and can wipe out whole collections of pics or MP3s or docs. There was once about 3 years ago a sort of bomb someone placed on a website, that if clicked on by a Mac could damage its OS, but it could not run any contagious virus program, even though a pro-MS section of the press spoke of it wrongly as a virus. In the end about 40 machines were damaged by it in the whole world, a pinprick by PC standards. And we have not seen a repeat of the exploit.
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