MacNoob

After spending the better part of the last 25 years in the computer business, doing everything from low-level (assembly language) programming on mainframes to corporate I/T management, Apple has made a convert out of me.  About six months ago I spent around $650 on a Dell Studio Hybrid for my game-room entertainment center and I’ve regretted the decision ever since.  Unless the world changes dramatically, it is the last PC I’ll ever buy.  I’m done.  Kaput!

This is coming from a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Windows professional of 17 years.  I was such a die-hard Microsoft fan I bought a Zune!  Not one of the new, sleek ones either, but the first generation model shaped like a deck of cards, only fatter.  (I’m offering to give it away to registered readers of this blog, but can’t get enough people to sign up.  I think I might have done better offering a sharp stick in the eye!)  Many years ago I bet my professional future on Microsoft and have since made decision after decision that kept me on a Redmond-centric career path.  I don’t regret those choices too much.  In my professional lifetime there have always been ample opportunities to work with Windows systems and prosper.  That probably won’t change substantially for the foreseeable future because Microsoft is so entrenched in corporate America. But a new day is dawning and Microsoft’s sphere of influence is shrinking measurably.

Two and a half years ago I bought my first Apple product (a 30 gig iPod video) and my computing life was changed forever.  I had owned my Zune for about three months at the time.  My daughters all asked for (and got) iPods for Christmas that year and I was amazed at how much more user-friendly the whole iPod experience was, even with Windows.  Before the new year, I too was an iPod owner and eight months later I bought a new 17” MacBook Pro.  Since then I’ve bought an iPod Touch, a MacBook Air, an iPhone and two iMacs.  Yep, I got it bad.   Business analysts like to talk about the iPod “halo effect”, but for me it was more like a good nuking.  In fact, my only transgression was the afore-mentioned Dell.  I wish I’d bought a Mac Mini, but really thought I needed a Blu-ray player. The machine doesn’t do anything well. Its blue-ray player is skippy, and it seems like every time I want to sit down and watch something I have to wait for another update to finish and reboot. The only really good experience I’ve had with it is playing shared content with iTunes! Like most PCs, the Dell was long on specs but short on performance.

Maybe spending so much of my life immersed in win32 made switching to Apple even more of a pleasurable contrast.  Whatever the reason, moving to OS X re-invigorated me and I am constantly, pleasantly surprised by how well thought out the operating system is and how well everything works together.  Add to that Apple’s superb industrial design and I’m completely hooked.  I could (and often do) sit in front of this iMac for hours and enjoy the last minute as much as the first.  When I have to do something on one of my Vista machines I get the chore done and log off.  The day is fast approaching when the MacNoob house will be devoid of anything Windows and I can’t wait.  A wealthier MacNoob would have made this a reality already.

The only negative resulting from my switch: I still work in a veritable sea of Microsoft OSs, replete with barely manageable firewalls, anti-virus servers and a never-ending list of patches and zero-day exploits.  It was the same before I switched, I just didn’t know how bad I had it.  Now, wrenching on my Windows network has become a real chore.  It used to be fun before I realized how avoidable much of the effort is.  I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I’d taken the blue pill and never known the pleasure of using my Macs. Uggggh! I just got a chill.

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Joseph Kelley Apple Minutiae Apple, Mac, switcher

I still get a [cheap] thrill when I go to a meeting at work and break out my Macbook Pro.  While everyone else is trying to get through their Safeboot login screen, my Macbook is up and running.  No encryption, antivirus or other assorted nazi-ware required.  It’s the way their machines used to boot before the corporation mandated so much security software.  They ask when they will get their Mac.  I reply, “As soon as you’re willing to fork over $3,000.”  I could, as the IT manager, buy Macs for many of the users at my site, but the infrastructure mandated by the corporation makes it completely impractical if not virtually impossible altogether.  Besides, I’d completely lose my cool factor if everyone had a Mac.

It does get me thinking what the company offices would look like if everyone was using a Mac.

First, I could scrap the antivirus server and all the AV clients on every machine.  That saves the company over $15K annually in maintenance fees and licenses.  I wouldn’t begin to guess the productivity yield increase due to reclaimed CPU cycles and disk access wait times, but it would have to be significant.

Second, I could get rid of Sygate, its server, all the clients and the complete administrative nightmare it has become.  My department has spent ten times the resources installing and maintaining Sygate than we ever spent mitigating threats.  Ring up another $30K.

Third, say bye-bye to the Windows Update Server.  “Patch Tuesday” would become a thing of the past.  No longer would my staff and I spend countless hours figuring out why someone’s network shares got blown away or their MS Office templates quit working after we pushed an update.  $40K…cha-ching!

So far, I’ve already saved enough to offset the price difference of the desktop hardware.  The few software titles that require Windows could run in Parallels, Boot Camp or VMware.  I’d need to spend around $110 per workstation on a Novell client for the Mac, but that’s no big deal.  Maybe Microsoft’s licensing folks would even let me convert my Office 2007 licenses to Office 08 for the Mac.

The help desk calls would be cut in half so I might even be able to reduce the IT staff.  Say a $50K savings for starters.  People may even start liking the IT department!  I could even stop screening my calls!

Then I woke up.

Joseph Kelley Commentary IT, Mac, Office

My Dell XPS has been in its bag for over three weeks now.  It is my “official” company-issued computer, but I have a new Vista machine on my desk that I’ve started using for all the Windows heavy lifting.  The surprising thing is just how much of my job I can do on my Mac, once I installed VNC, that is.  (VNC is the remote desktop app we use to connect to any computer on-site.)  I have installed Office 2008 on my Macbook Pro and much of my work involves creating and editing documents.  That is, of course, unless the document contains any VBA code.  You see, Microsoft neglected to add that feature to the newest Mac version of Office.  Most all of the remainder of my job description can be accomplished by remote connections or via a web browser.  All my servers and about 95% of the desktop PCs at my site run the VNC server software allowing me to pop in by simply typing my password.  All our network hardware (printers, switches and routers) sport their own web servers and Firefox works just fine for them.  Most companies have hard and fast rules about using a non-company computer on the company’s network, but since I’m the IT manager (thus, the enforcer of said rules) I get away with using my Mac.

The corporation I work for has mandated so much security software on portable computers, they’ve rendered them virtually unusable.  The two main culprits are SafeBoot and Sygate.  Safeboot encrypts the entire hard disk with 128 bit AES.  In a word, it’s S-L-O-W!!!!  Never mind the stupid screensaver that kicks in every 15 minutes and is too moronic (CIOs call it secure) to remember your user name.  Sygate is the mother of all big brother applications and forces compliance to whatever corporate “security” policy the intellectuals at headquarters think is appropriate.  You must comply with Sygate policy before it will let you log into your network.  It’s just ill-advised paranoia mandated by upper management so they can sleep better at night knowing their network is secure.  Guess what, it’s not!  I suspect installation of this nazi-ware just enabled them to check a couple of boxes on some audit forms that weren’t checked before.  Now, at least, their jobs are safe.

“The CIO”

I’ve worked for three Fortune 500 companys in my life and the IT executives of each seem to read from the same playbook.  I think they are well-intentioned for the most part, but I sometimes wonder if they ever have a creative thought.  It’s almost as if they get all their security ideas from a Symantec brochure.  Oftentimes the initiatives they direct are last year’s solutions to a previous decade’s problems.  When I see the overbearing and machine-crippling “solutions” they’ve provided for us helpless sheep, I can’t help but wonder if they ever read anything current or browse the internet at all.

Using my Mac sidesteps the whole corporate security issue altogether.  There is no Sygate or Safeboot for the Mac because there are no real security issues with OS X and I never keep any proprietary data on my machine.  Yes, the corporate network is still quite safe.  Besides, I think the Mac is just a lot more fun and I really like being the non-conformist.  Actually, there is no company policy regarding any computers other than Windows machines, a loophole you could drive a truck through.  Come to think of it, I know how I can save the company millions.  Next, Ubuntu!

Joseph Kelley IT, OS X Corporate Security, Mac

I listen to a ton of Mac podcasts, read many Mac blogs and visit lots of Mac forums in my quest to become a better Mac user.  One of the issues I’ve always had with the Mac, the Menu Bar, is one of the most touchy subjects one can mention when criticizing OS X. Real fanboys look down their noses at those of us who dare question Apple’s wisdom in locking down this most valuable piece of screen real estate.  If you’re one of those zealots, read no further, I’m about to commit blasphemy of the highest order.
First, I get it.  The whole Mac philosophy revolves around a stable, consistent user experience.  To that end, Apple needs to limit the amount of “tweaking” users can do to their systems.  I also understand that for reasons of efficiency, it makes sense to have a single, dynamic menu system that changes to display the menu of the focused application.  OS X’s menu design saves a ton of screen space when you tend to have many applications open simultaneously.  But what about when I don’t need to save space?  What about when I’m using a 30″ second monitor and it feels like a half-mile hike to mouse back to my laptop display to use a menu function I can’t remember the keyboard shortcut for?  Is it too much to ask for me to be able to move the menu bar to a more handy location?  Would it unbalance the space/time continuum were I to resize or auto-hide the thing?

Send your hate-mail to: bikerfunjoe@mac.com

admin Apple Minutia, OS X Apple, fanboy, Leopard, Mac, Menu Bar, OS X

Well, it’s conclusive, the problem with my network attached storage issue is a problem with Leopard.  Linksys (i.e. Cisco) has done what I consider their due diligence.  They were able to fully reproduce my problem in their lab when using a Leopard machine, but when they used Tiger, everything worked fine.  The engineer I spoke with said they have been working on the problem since I reported it and couldn’t fix it.  What was really intriguing is the level of effort they put into the issue.  This Cisco engineer told me they had poured over the source code for the WRT600N firmware and found it to be 100% compliant with Apple’s Leopard API.  Even if they wanted to fix the problem, they wouldn’t know where to start.  I’ve been in their shoes before.  When coding to someone’s API you have to go on faith that the API does what it says.  If it doesn’t, you can’t fix a problem even if you know where it is.  Kudos to Cisco for giving it their best shot.  Even though my problem still exists, I will buy Linksys (Cisco) products in the future simply because of this experience.  I have never been involved with a support incident that garnered so much attention from the provider.  As for Apple?…Give me a hand. I called Apple’s tech support, and they weren’t much help but did agree to document my problem. I figure the more folks complain about this, the more likely it is to be addressed. Give Apple support a call at 1-800-APL-CARE (1-800-275-2273) if you’ve experienced network problems with Leopard.

Thanks,

MacNoob

More to come.

admin Apple Minutia, OS X Leopard, Linksys, Mac, network, OS X