- Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)
- 14 Aug 00
London MacUG
helps architecture firm stay Macintosh
Architosh reader Stephen Mulligan sent us this interesting story
about how the London Macintosh User Group (LMUG) helped a prominent
London architecture firm stay Macintosh.
Stephen wrote in to say:
"Two weeks ago I received a copy of
a report from an architectural practice in London which proposed
that all their Macs should be abandoned for a PC network by a
new IT manager with what appeared to be a very Microsoft-centric
point of view.
As I am the webmaster for the London Mac
User Group I forwarded the report to our e-mail list and received
some very useful rebuttals to just about every paragraph in the
report. A counter report was prepared and this was discussed in
the following week.
The counter report had a quite devastating
effect. The criticisms of the IT manager had him visibly shaking
and at the end of the meeting a director was heard to say that
the PC network proposals were 'dead in the water'."
The report and the counter report were published in the newsletter
of the LMUG and will be published in part here. There are a number
of interesting items in the report and we naturally wanted to comment
on some of them. It is a very interesting read.
Why do PC people so disparage the Macintosh?
The PC-centric IT person involved in this report was of the classic
anti-Mac sentiment: all religion, biased truths and falsehoods,
and hardly a cent of admission that the Macintosh is 'best of breed'
in a number of areas, including graphics.
Why so monoplatform and Windows-centric?
It appears that despite the accomplishments of the Macintosh platform
and Apple's resurgence in the last few years, many IT professionals
steadfastly resist acknowledging the many benefits of the Macintosh
platform. Mac pros—at least the ones reading Architosh—however,
are much smarter than this and admit that there are pros and cons
to each platform. Thankfully, this London architecture firm was
able to find balanced views and make the right decision.
Excerpts: IT Report on Macintosh Versus Wintel For Architecture
The original report was entitled: Advantages of NT Computer Networks
(Windows 2000). Architosh comments in grey.
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IT
Report
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Macintosh
Rebuttal Report
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Windows 2000 is a sophisticated network
system that offers a number of advantages compared to Macs.
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Macs are computers, not an
operating system. W2000 should be compared to MacOS X or Linux.
- Philip Bath
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Philip is absolutely
correct. This initial counter points up the fact that the
IT person who authored this report is immediately held suspect
as even qualified to make such judgments. But for his credit,
we'll assume he has been careless with his terms.
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IT
Report
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Macintosh
Rebuttal Report
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NT offers a high degree of network security
and even offers more refinements when compared to Unix. Apple
networks, by contrast are geared to small networks (under
12 users) and its management tools are too crude for larger
environments. Consequently there is no real network security
in operation at XYZ Ltd.
|
Simply not true - our main
file server is an Appleshare
IP 6.3 G4 which happily serves 70 + users without batting
an eyelid. It's management tools are basic by some standards
however they are at least in one place rather than having
a mixed bag of preferences all over the place - why for example
is the File types handler accessed through the Folder Options
control panel!!? What has any of the above got to do with
security - you say that NT (or do you mean 2000 - they are
radically different products!) has a high degree of security.
Why then have a number of organisations, notably the US Army
in recent months, ditched their NT servers in favour of Appleshare
IP Servers after repeated security violations by hackers.
Since they switched there has not been one successful hacking
attempt. - Matt Wynne
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The Mac OS is geared
for far more than 12 users and features many robust tools
for larger networks. That's why such large publishing sites
as the New Yorker magazine and Time/Warner deploy large Mac-cenric
networks for their entire enterprise. Even more powerful,
especially in regard to the Web and security is Mac
OS X Server, with the industry leading Apache
Web Server.
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IT
Report
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Macintosh
Rebuttal Report
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Currently logging onto the network is complicated
because each server requires a separate log-in. This also
makes it very complex to set up an efficient security policy
and encourage sloppy practises such as allowing everyone full
access. Under a Windows NT Domain a user only needs to log
on once when they start up the computer and the security information
access is handled centrally making it easy to up a flexible
access policy.
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Mac OS 9 has Keychain
Access built-in which provides single password access to many
servers or services. - Michael Speechleyhacking attempt. -
Matt Wynne
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It really appears that
this IT person is making a pro NT argument without any real
understanding of Mac OS 9 (or X coming up). What is described
under NT is exactly what is possible with OS 9's Keychain
feature. Though the features are not identical, NT doesn't
have some features of the Keychain.
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