# Macs At Work



## themacnut (Mar 8, 2004)

How many of you work at companies where Macs are the majority, or the only system used? And what does that company do? I'm curious to find out if Macs are still holding their own in certain niches, or even possibly moving to new ones.


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## ora (Mar 8, 2004)

The other day i went to the main London office of the publishing company Penguin (in a huge and beautiful building on the Strand with lovely river views) as one of my friends works there. I was on the floor that does Dorling Kindersley books, who do mostly design-led reference books. I've never seen so many macs in one place, a whole enormous open plan floor of Sawtooth and Quicksilver G4s. All the editors have the big graphite apple crt monitors, but all the designers seemed to have 23" lcd screens.

There must have been at least a hundred of those huge, thin beauties in one room, i was drooling. In fact, if i hadn't been concerned that my friend would lose her job, a couple of those 23" lovelies would have to have been slipped down the back of my coat on the way out. 

"Yes Mr security guard, i have suddenly put on weight during the couple of hours that i've been here, honest! "


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## mdnky (Mar 8, 2004)

Slowly converting the powers to be at the office over.  2 of our Win2KPro machines recently got hit multiple times in 3 days with virii/worms, causing major headaches.  Meanwhile my little laptop kept chugging along unaffected.  Right now there's a single program that they use which prevents the switch...if that company gets off their u know whats and fixes the java system on their newer online version then maybe we can switch the remaining M$ boxes out.

The main company used to have B&W G3s for their marketing department, but they've been phased out from what I hear in favor of the dark side.  The guy who runs the IT there is a major...well, I'll refrain from saying but you get the idea.  Makes me wonder how he got such a job in the first place.

Oh, it's in Real Estate BTW.


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## delsoljb32 (Mar 24, 2004)

In my office we have just about one of everything (even those little nasties: Win98, Win95, Win2K, WinXp), and some good ones: Linux (red hat), and my Macs: iMac G4 and PB G3. We use all of them for testing the site we're developing. Its an interesting mix, everytime i bring up the site on the mac's the other guys are jealous. 

--Hey Gates! You can polish a turd all you want! In the end, its still a turd! hahahah!!!!--


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## powermac (Mar 24, 2004)

I work in the education field. Macs rule at our schools. Most of the employees even have there own Macs at home because they have found the experience to be a positive one.


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## Giaguara (Dec 6, 2004)

In hte office .. huindreds of macs. the proportion of pcs / macs is under 1 %. heh.
so i've got 2 macs .. and sometimes bring my own to work with that.


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## podmate (Dec 6, 2004)

I used to work for WGBH in Boston and it was almost all Mac (PC's for testing only).
Now I work for a University that has sold its soul to MS.  I am one of three Mac users in my department.  Of course, I have 3 Macs at work so whenever I get depressed by all the MS crap I can take my pick of which Mac to enjoy.


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## AdmiralAK (Dec 7, 2004)

We used to be mostly mac, and few PC. I was the only one who was bilingual pc/mac, so the boss yanked all macs, except mine, to have the others learn windows so that they can assist our customers


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## Cat (Dec 7, 2004)

I was the first to bring a Mac (15"PB) to work, but now already there's two of 'em (12"PB) and at least two other people considering buying one too.


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## brianleahy (Dec 7, 2004)

My father's office uses only Macs.  He sells raw materials for plastics manufacture.

There are 5 macs in his office, including one running OS X Server.

He was getting the office started in the mid 1980s, while I was in high school.  

I helped him computerize stuff.  We actually ran the office for a while on a Commodore 64 running Microsoft (bleah) Multiplan.

Then we upgraded to a Fat Mac, with the "Apple Hard Disk 20" - a nearly-forgotten product that connected thru the external floppy port, providing 20 megs of storage.  (I now have a keychain drive with over 10 times that much storage...)

Then we went to an SE-30, and a variety of other macs, until today,when the office now has an iMac, a blue/white G3, a G4 tower and 2 powerbooks.


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## callieX (Dec 8, 2004)

I work in the IT dept of a Children's Hospital.  It is interesting that the policy is we do not support or buy Mac's , except for the research people.  The top research people demand Mac's and they get them.  Thereofore the research leg of the hospital is about 70% Mac and the Hospital is 98% PC.  We have a 7 person pc tech squad which are over worked fixing PC's and no one fixing Mac's.  The problems we usually have wiht the Mac's is connecting to our Novell network.
When I worked at Westinghouse is was the same deal.  The Engineer's requested Mac's and were given PC's.  In the late 70's most of computers we used in experiments at Westinghouse were Apple II's.

calliex


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## AdmiralAK (Dec 8, 2004)

I hear you 
I used to work for a hospital for a summer (in between school) and the majority of their computers were windows based, and of course their techs did not know how to handle macs. When I applied, since I was a mac geek, they hired me on the spot.

fun job, but kinda sad when a 17 year old (me) knows more than a 30 year old who does this for a living


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## callieX (Dec 8, 2004)

The problem at most companies is that the people using computers have little say as what they get to use.

People running the show at compaines like to run with herd.  The old adage was no one ever got fired for going with IBM is true.  Of course now IBM is out the desktop computer business.  For some reason there was a fear or hatred of Apple in Corporations that I can not explain.  Most the people who were against them ever used one.  I used to hear real computers use DOS and type commands only sissies need a GUI and then windows 3.1 came out and they though it was the second coming.  Remember Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop, etc. all started on the Mac. Years before they exsited for Windows.

Also IT departments would be out of work if wasn't for PC's.  They are constantly updating, removing viruses, re-imaging, fixing incompatiblies, etc.  With the Mac especially OSX there is little of this.

Sorry for the rant I have done that it  while

calliex


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## brianleahy (Dec 8, 2004)

Giaguara said:
			
		

> In hte office .. huindreds of macs. the proportion of pcs / macs is under 1 %. heh.
> so i've got 2 macs .. and sometimes bring my own to work with that.




Ah, you work for Apple, don't you?


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## nixgeek (Dec 8, 2004)

callieX said:
			
		

> The problem at most companies is that the people using computers have little say as what they get to use.
> 
> People running the show at compaines like to run with herd.  The old adage was no one ever got fired for going with IBM is true.  Of course now IBM is out the desktop computer business.  For some reason there was a fear or hatred of Apple in Corporations that I can not explain.  Most the people who were against them ever used one.  I used to hear real computers use DOS and type commands only sissies need a GUI and then windows 3.1 came out and they though it was the second coming.  Remember Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop, etc. all started on the Mac. Years before they exsited for Windows.
> 
> ...



Ironically, it's because of all the viruses, exploits, and updates that techs likemyself aren't ever able to get anything productive done.  Currently, I am working on removing spyware and installing updates on this Windows PC (I'm posting from Mozilla in a self contained directory.  ).  I would rather be working on getting the wireless for the school's portable classrooms active, as well as some other projects, but I can't.  Sure, it's job security (irony in that statement ), but I can't ever do anything to get my two schools optimized.  And the sad fact is that this district is phasing out Macs in all the schools for Windows PCs.  I would much rather be in a school with all Macsand only worry about optimizing network performance as well as implementing useful technologies.  Instead, I'm here fighting viruses and spy/ad-ware.


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## Natobasso (Dec 8, 2004)

The office I contract in is 50/50. The poor accounting department uses Peachtree for their duties! Ugh. Not exactly the most powerful program in the world.

Usually, wherever I've been it's been Macs for Creative and PC's for everyone else.


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## AdmiralAK (Dec 8, 2004)

callieX said:
			
		

> Also IT departments would be out of work if wasn't for PC's.  They are constantly updating, removing viruses, re-imaging, fixing incompatiblies, etc.  With the Mac especially OSX there is little of this.
> 
> Sorry for the rant I have done that it  while
> 
> calliex



I have some machines which I need to have in working order. The majority windows, a couple macs. It takes me 5 hours weekly just for the normal updates to make sure all patches are in, updates and virus defs are done so that they don't get infected. My macs? less then 1 hour every 2-3 weeks LOL.

It's not in my job to worry but I continually waste my time now keeping this junk running. If I had some sort of extra compensation it would be cool to continue to do so.


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## callieX (Dec 8, 2004)

AdmiralAK said:
			
		

> I have some machines which I need to have in working order. The majority windows, a couple macs. It takes me 5 hours weekly just for the normal updates to make sure all patches are in, updates and virus defs are done so that they don't get infected. My macs? less then 1 hour every 2-3 weeks LOL.



You can imagine a hospital with 3000+ PC's what the maint. is.


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## Giaguara (Dec 8, 2004)

brianleahy said:
			
		

> Ah, you work for Apple, don't you?



well .. the house i live in. we are 6 people .. of which 6 do work for the fruit company, heh.  ::angel::


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## wvphoto (Dec 16, 2004)

i have 5 windows machines.. and 3 macs.. just got a new.. used imac G4 .. those are sooo cool on ebay .
love the macs.. turned one of my employees into a believer.. he says .. they are bullet proof. !!


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## RGrphc2 (Dec 16, 2004)

in my office job, we got 4 PC's runing Windows 2000, and 2 Macs running OS X, guess what i'm on.


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## CaptainQuark (Dec 17, 2004)

Amazing that there seem to be so few graphic designers out there. The Mac has pretty much been the industry standard in the business and so many people are so rabidly anti-Mac that I kinda assumed that most of the people on this forum were somehow connected to the biz. Just goes to show that, _very_ occasionally, even CQ can get it wrong!   

Apart from the very first company I worked for that got into "desktop publishing" as it was called in the mid-80s, where I used Aldus Pagemaker v1 on a Wang 33MHz 386 running Windows 1.03 (yes, CQ really IS that old!), I have always used a Mac.

Anyway, to get back to the point, I work in a graphic design studio. The senior designers (including Yours Truly) have G5s, while the juniors use our hand-me-down G4s.

So to sum it up, we have:
2 x G5 1.8MHz
1 x G5 1.6 MHz
1 x G4 865 MHz DP Quicksilver (my old Mac and, IMHO the best looking Mac Apple have ever made!)
2 x G4 700MHz

All of the above run OS X.

We also have 1 x G4 400MHz with a 1GHz processor upgrade card which runs OS 9.2.2 which we use for scanning and a variety of iBooks.

There are 2 lowly PCs in the company: 1 for Admin & Accounts and 1 used to test websites on a variety of Windoze-based browsers.

MACS RULE OK!


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## Tetano (Dec 17, 2004)

I work in a research institution (http://www.icgeb.org, if you want to see what we do...). Here we use both Mac and PC, but the macs are the majority, since a good number of biological apps are better supported on macs


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## markceltic (Dec 17, 2004)

Well I don't use my mac for "work". The other day while paying a bill at the local newspaper there in the front was a couple of eMacs,running OS9.On the next block over there is a print shop that uses macs as well.The owners son is part of the Apple developers community,last I heard anyway, he's getting to that age now where the girls are starting to turn his head,so you know what that means.


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