Comments on: Apple’s undiscovered country: Macs in the enterprise

By: connectionfailure

connectionfailure — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:10:47 +0000

Anyone reading this thread that is new to the issues would do well to visit the MacEnterprise site and join the mailing list. Also see managingosx.wordpress.com , afp548.com and macwindows.com for more tips about enterprise integration.

By: connectionfailure

connectionfailure — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:05:35 +0000

“Inability to cope with the thousands of incumbent “H:\some\stupid\mapped\drive\path” file urls that live embedded in the Windows monoculture in every organisation.”

I’m a mac administrator, and yes this has been one of the issues. Have you tried WinShortCutter and PathSnagger?

As for ActiveDirectory integration, yes it has been buggy and required a lot of research, but it works again. We have Snow Leopard and WinServer 2003 happily talking to each other. I even have Address Book talking to the LDAP directory.

We have several iPhones but haven’t investigated the Deployment tools.

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:46:52 +0000

Fair call :)

By: ahrenm

ahrenm — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 03:15:20 +0000

An interesting disection of the Apple’s position, however your still on a 15 minute freeze out for bringing up the magic quadrant….

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:43:46 +0000

+1 to this. Agreed.

By: Peter Holland

Peter Holland — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:33:39 +0000

the best way to control them is to ensure that the business specific critical component is divorced from the standard system. utilising a citrix / windows terminal server / rdc type environment prevents the two areas overlapping and being effected.

you can have your mac, and there isn’t an issue.

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:44:38 +0000

There is an increasing trend towards letting people bring their own home PCs in. I think it depends on the seniority of the staff, myself. If it’s a new employee who’s not very experienced, you want to pretty much control them and their environment until they work out all the ground rules.

On the other hand, for experienced staff who know their stuff and pretty much just want you to get out of their way so they can do their job on their own terms, you do that.

By: Peter Holland

Peter Holland — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:56:46 +0000

two words for you renai, Home computers.

if you provide the access to the network and resources to your staff, and let them bring in their computers from home, all macs / pcs etc, by using a citrix ica client, the computers are a business system, but they are also as individual as their owners.

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:48:18 +0000

Epic post, Marc. I pretty much agree with all of this!

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:47:17 +0000

I completely agree with this — if I ever get to the point where I am hiring staff for my own business, I will be picking Macs. They just break less. It’s the same reason I recommend them for my family and I use a MacBook Pro as a laptop.

However, no Mac has been flexible enough yet to meet my desktop computing needs … maybe the Mac Pro would be — but it’s too damn expensive!