Comments on: Obama: Where are our Macs?
The new U.S. president's incoming team is frustrated that it can't have its Macs, but this is the first of many lessons that change comes slowly in government--and life.
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About The Open Road
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 general manager of the Americas division and 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.
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"The white house, now powered by Mac osx"
Btw, i am the proud owner of a custom made by me PC, in case any trolls decide to start ranting!
...until you linked to a Karl Rove editorial. Without apparent sarcasm or irony.*
From that moment I ceased to take you seriously.
*CNet does sarcasm and irony very badly in general (see "Technically Incorrect").
Mac's what?
"savior."
"accolytes."
Bitter much?
And I'm sure that's exactly what this whole no-macs-in-the-white-house thing is intended to provoke.
The state is almost entirely Windows-based, except for a few enclaves of graphics folks and Macs at a number of "educational" agencies. Macs are not listed on the state pre-approved purchasing lists. So, it takes a papal dispensation to get a Mac. I began the process to get new Intel-based Macs for a few of us at my agency last April. We're still waiting for them, though they were ordered.!
Apple a computer company that is based in California. I wonder what ever happened to "shop local and shop California."
Don't even get me started on how Macs are virtually virus and spyware free! Our agency spends hundreds of thousands of dollars prevent viruses and spyware. I've been using a Mac in state government for nearly 20 years with NO attacks or problems.
As the old saying goes, "Penny wise and Pound Foolish."
I hope Obama and his crew set the standard for good government IT by really looking at open source and operating systems other than Windows.
If you think I'm just being a bleeding heart, think about how many used computers just get tossed out, how many are just virus laden and running windows which could be fixed by formatting the hard drive and then have an OS installed. Think about how many are currently filling landfills and how many of those could have been fixed and given to someone in need, fixing two problems; the amount of computers clogging junkyards and the lack of technology in order to help raise those children out of poor conditions.
What's this got to do with the White House and Obama wanting Macs and wanting to promote the use of Open Source? It's all connected, open source gives a way to do things for others without any one person carrying to entire burden. The current Mac OS is built off of Unix, it's one of the biggest success stories around for Unix based OS's. Linux is based off of Unix, but it's open source. It's freely created and tweaked and worked on by whoever wants to tweak it or work on it or create from it. Make the White House as open source as possible and you have Obamas transparency achieved. Giving away the old hardware, fixed and renewed, is one of the perks of being open source.
@tm_anon ... so Macs are so secure there is never a way in? Check your facts. The only computers that are not vulnerable are the ones that are turned off (or not networked)
the only secure computer is one that is in hardware off, not networked and in a locked room
read my comment again. Did I mention anything about Macs being 100% secure?
What I said was that Windows was too INsecure. I'll take 85% over 10% security any day of the week.
Are you a frickin moron? The "Apple Tax" you're talking about is one of many pieces of FUD thrown around by Windows fanboys. The truth of the matter is that, when comparing systems along with software and native abilities, the differences in price are negligible, sometimes the MS product costs more and sometimes the Apple product costs more, but never by that much. If those fortune 500 companies were paying attention, they'd realize that there are currently several user friendly Linux distros including ubuntu, the one I'm on. I got it for free, no charges ever. MS is cheaper for the first year, maybe. After that, the price keeps climbing up and up and up. Apple products work and they work well, the price climbs only for every new release of the OS, but those aren't necessary, they're perks. Upgrade every 3 versions and you're fine. Linux is free for life, setting it up takes slightly more time if you're completely new to it, that's it. After you've gotten it set up how you like, it's more stable, more secure, more capable and can run on older hardware, newer hardware, whatever you give it, faster. The fortune 500 companies you're talking about are bleeding money from their IT departments for that very reason.
Change indeed...at our expense. =P
When the time comes, call me,
888MacDoctor.com
I voted for you and I am local!
Sven
Macs are attractive systems and people should be free to use them. But they are expensive and much more subject to vendor lock-in. More to the point, Apple, they're business model, their business practices, and especially their products are about as far away from 'open' as any company in IT.
How you deduced that Apple was subject to MORE vendor lock in is way beyond me. I think you meant that "other" one.
1 employee at about 40k/year which is ~$20/hour.
3-5 hours of training - $60-$100
Training material - $50-$200
Trainer (~$50/hour) - $150-$250
Support (~$20/hour) - maybe 1-3 hours per user - $20-$60
Lost time because employee doesn't know how to do something that wasn't covered in training and won't call support to ask - 5-20 hours - $250-$4000
Employee works slower then normal due to lack of confidence - 10-40 hours - $2000-$8000
Average loss to company to change to a new system: $2530-12610
Average cost to stay with MS products: $250-500
No brainer for any fortune 500 company. The new system in this case is Linux which adds no value over Windows so the upfront cost is a complete loss and provides little to no ROI. No company will move to a new system unless it provides an advantage over time.
You forgot to mention how, after that $2530-$12610, the cost stops, the IT department can be downsized to maybe 2 guys for a fairly large organization, just to give them both a day off.
Once Linux is set up, you don't have to buy programs to run on it, you don't have to worry so much about viruses, though running an antivirus program is still recommended and can be gotten free of charge.
You also forgot to mention the lack of need for defragging the systems, which causes down time for those employees productivity when using their systems both during the defrag and during the long periods of time people tend not to defrag.
Downtime caused by upgrading programs, downloading security patches and having to restart the system also go away. For the most part, Linux doesn't ever need to restart.
You also forgot to mention that, once they have gotten used to the system, their productivity goes up, as in, way up due to the ease of organization and ability for using multiple desktops for various assignments throughout the day.
Also, you forgot to mention that there will never be another need to pay for licensing fees for that particular OS, ever.
In fact, once many people are used to a Linux distro, they find Windows to be a pain, terribly insecure and poorly designed.
That average loss to the company you spoke of mentioned being somewhere between $250-$4000, that obviously didn't include the licensing fees to purchase Windows in order to be installed on each system or the training necessary for each program in order to get the most productivity of those programs. Believe it not, not everyone uses Windows and when they begin, they need to be shown how things are laid out.
Also, once an employee gets a virus, they work slowly due to lack of confidence, so add that same cost multiplied by however many times the employee gets a virus, the cost ends up being much higher.
I trained myself on Linux, I'm only a slightly better than average user. It took me maybe 1 hour to install and learn the basics of Ubuntu. It took me about the normal amount of time for customization as it would for Windows. Once I knew where to look and what to look for, it can now take me roughly 1 hour to have my system completely installed from the ground up, fully customized and capable of running any media I put on it, looking at any average document given to me and still not be riddled with viruses.
The hardest thing I ever had to do with Linux is set up Flash. The hardest thing I ever had to do with Windows? Get rid of a virus infestation which nearly killed my hard drive and made the OS unusable in normal mode. Perhaps you should recheck that math of yours.
Windows cost less? Haven't laughed that hard in a while.
Wow, I guess you deal with monkeys. No, you're just regurgitating M$'s "inflated" "facts". You really have no self respect, do you. Pathetic. Why don't you go do that somewhere else?
I'd say that closing gitmo and secret prisons around the world, and stopping the torture and kidnapping of foreign nationals is a good break from the past.
I don't think Obama is the second coming but this is good work.
And it must be a first for someone to imply that Windows has to be used for security purposes. You can hack a Mac if you really want to but ...
By the way, my memory banks recall that Clinton's people were appalled by the IT system left by George H. W. Bush. I am sure things got overhauled when George W. took over (not just those fictive missing W keys). It's time for another overhaul.
The supposedly hardened versions of Windows in use by the US and British militaries just experienced rampant virus outbreaks on a massive scale.
Frankly, I'd rather they spend the extra couple of tax dollars and get the staff to use the best tools available.
Considering they're more familiar with OS X, they'd be far more productive using it instead of Windows don't you think?
It's not like the technology in place worked as advertised anyway. The Bush gov. made every end run around any record keeping requirements they could - where are all of those missing e-mails anyway?
Of course the computer's were 6 years old, that was the last operating system microsoft produced!
Closing Gitmo: It's a lot easier said than done and will likely be completed no faster than if Bush had remained in office. In times gone by, we shot or hung people like this with very little due process and not many qualms. And it was and still is perfectly legal. I bet people will sing a different tune when some of these guys are released into the US because no one else will take them. These same people will be for torture when the time comes.
People should use what makes sense to them not something based on a philosophy (however hypocritical it maybe) especially if you are using computers as a tool.
Matt has another article where he states he's AGAINST mandating open source software for the same reasons he's against mandating proprietary software. Let them use what works best for them at the time (it might be M$ junkware now, but it might not be in 5 years - or it might be Linux now, but it might not be in 5 years ...). On that front I agree - it's the file formats that should be mandated to be in open formats, let them work with what software they want that can produce that format.
Where does this myth about how closed Apple is come from? Not that it's all perfectly open, but it's certainly more open than anything M$ has ever regurgitated.
Apple's software stack is a little more open than Microsoft's. Mac OS X's foundation is built on open source (Darwin anyone?). Safari (hence webkit) is also built on open source. Apple's favorite programming language Objective C is open source as well as some of the traditional components of the Cocoa framework (originally called OpenStep) which are being revolutionized by projects such as GNUstep and Etoile. Apple maintains openness where it makes sense whereas Microsoft always find a way to squeeze blood out of a turnip (while pretending to be open about it)!
Any input from Linux users ?
From the little time I have had with Linux , it is rock solid and fast and has a small footprint. When I tried OSX , it seemed like an eye-candy gimmick and won`t run my games or lots of other things I use.
;-)
What you might not recognize is OSX is built on Darwin, an OpenBSD derivative. Yeah, it's proprietary eye candy (called "Aqua") on a unix core.
I agree they should go with Linux (it would work on the existing equipment), but it shouldn't be "mandated". Let them use what they want, what works for them. (OK, personally I'd like to see them "mandate" an M$ BAN for security purposes, but I recognize the hypocrisy in that. Brutally secure the network instead and don't allow every single machine to access the internet.)
- by Chapmaniac January 22, 2009 1:37 PM PST
- No, the "whole no-macs-in-the-white-house thing" is not intended to provoke Apple into resolving the issue. It's simply because the White House is run by a massive government which progresses slowly and cautiously. By the time they consider moving to another platform, that platform will most likely have either dissolved or evolved. I do wish Mr. Obama the best of luck though!
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