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Yes, I’ve posted about this subject in the past. But here’s the thing: the debate is ever fascinating and always changing. Since our last foray, Apple switched over to Intel chips. They’re also able to run many PC programs via Virtual PC. Apple has also taken a larger, er, byte out of the market share, now owning about 5%.
So it’s worth exploring once more, especially as it relates to work. In my office, for instance, most of us have PCs, except the art directors, who have Macs. (At home, my wife and I have both platforms, though I use our Mac almost exclusively.)
My boss has been pushing for Macs all around, but our IT dept claims they’re more difficult to maintain, protect, and update. I say this is a bunch of hooey. I say, what it really comes down to is price. Imagine the discount HP gave my non-profit when the order came in for 200 units. Apple doesn’t really shave much off bulk orders, even for dot.orgs, and let’s face it, Macs are a pantload more expensive to begin with… so… it makes economical sense to go with HP.
My hunch is PCs are also easier to service, making them better suited for most large offices. My hunch is, we’re actually leasing our PCs, and when one goes down, a clone is swapped in at little-to-no extra cost. So I get it. I also get that Outlook is easier to sync with a BlackBerry, or at least my IT guys tell me.
And don’t get me wrong, the PC I use at the office is perfectly adequate and mostly reliable. Still, every time I pass through the art directors’ wing, and see those 20+” cinema displays, I do start to salivate a little.
What about you all? Where do you stand on Mac VS PC in the office? Which one is better and why?
Past Office Rat-A-Tats:
Comments (28)
Comment
As much as I like Macs, either will do at the office, really. With regards to you IT guys’ remark, macs are actually much easier to maintain, that’s a known fact. Mac’s total cost of ownership as well as return on investments give them the edge over PC if you looking at just cost. Companies who’re Mac-only usually have about 40% less it staff compared to similar-sized companies who are PC-only. You’re IT-guys are just scared they’re losing their jobs!
posted by macsterdam on 10-22-2007 at 5:02 am
Mac all the way for me! I also use both my eMac at home and a PC at work (as well as a Windows lappy at home), and I have to say, once you go Mac…you know the rest.
posted by Joel in Springfield on 10-22-2007 at 5:07 am
IT prefers Windows for one reason - IT personal were trained on Microsoft equipment. As a group, I find IT personnel to be among the poorest educated least knowledgeable group of people I’ve ever come across. Yes, I spent years in the field before getting fed up and moving into the real world.
posted by david on 10-22-2007 at 5:17 am
I doubt very much that HP offered any discount to your non-profit for quantity purchased, especially not for such a small quantity of 200 units. If you received any discount at all it had more to do with you being a non-profit.
posted by Trevor on 10-22-2007 at 6:40 am
I haven’t owned anything but Mac since the old Apple II, but I’ve used PCs at work, and have never been tempted to switch. The price thing USED to be a factor, so I bought used Macs til I bought a new Mac Mini. The total setup (Mac, keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers) cost me around $750. Unless you are a graphic artist or a game collector, this is all you need.
posted by Miss Cellania on 10-22-2007 at 6:55 am
i use a pc at work and always have. i was a pc person until my dell died a little over 3 years ago and i bought a powerbook g4 to replace it. that powerbook has been in dutiful service since that time. during that time my office had saddled me with a laptop, me being on call it made sense. that laptop lasted about 8 months before it was nearly useless because of performance issues. it just couldn’t handle running development software, being packed up and put to sleep for days. it just kept getting slower until we convinced people our budget could take desktops. now that we have desktops everything is great. this is one area i think apple has done a great job. OSX is just a better portable OS.
i just got a new intel imac. after using windows and OSX side by side daily for 3 years i’ve come to the conclusion that i just like OSX better. it’s less intrusive, has less overhead, and i’ll admit just looks nicer. and now that i have intel chips and access to MSDN software from work, i’m going to use it to develop windows apps at home. the prospect excites me and i’m really glad apple went the extra mile to figure out a way to accommodate everyone. yes i’m aware that sounds like fanboi speak and i’m perfectly aware that apple has other motives for doing so. but the fact remains that since apple switched to intel chips the price gap isn’t that large.
for $1800 i got a dual core desktop with an amazing looking 24″ monitor that will be viable for 3 years at the bare minimum. they key difference here is that in that 3 years the only thing i’m going to upgrade is the RAM. i defy you to say the same thing about a PC and be happy about it at the end of 3 years. there’s the fanboi again, but really, this opinion has formed after a reasonable time of real world use.
i also don’t see the issue from an IT perspective. my company makes web based software using .net and java. we have macs in the office because we support them from an end-user standpoint. it was a breeze to set up, we’ve got remote access to it from our desktops to run tests. IT didn’t bat an eye when we told them we wanted one. granted it doesn’t run mail or need to sync to any devices, but it’s still on their network and they didn’t have any hooey about security or whatever. we also have developers that bring their macbook pros from home to work on. yep, developers, guys writing in .net, on their macs. no worries from IT about outside macs on the network. dev doesn’t seem to mind things run a hair slower. they glossy display just makes code easier to read :)
in my mind the gap is rapidly disappearing if not already gone. at this point it almost comes down to a preference of OS and i think that is really what apple is shooting for. because really, if developers that have traditionally used pc/windows their whole lives are switching, what else could it mean?
posted by Jared on 10-22-2007 at 8:06 am
It’s always been Macs at home for me (unless you count the Commodore 64 we had when I was 5), and I kept that habit into college. At the moment I like my iMac for doing artistic things. At work it’s strictly PC’s as we’re using a lot of stat and GIS programs that don’t have Mac versions. Therefore, I find them both to be important.
posted by Katherine on 10-22-2007 at 10:04 am
David: “IT prefers Windows for one reason - IT personal were trained on Microsoft equipment.”
That’s certainly the impression I get from our IT department. If hardware/software doesn’t have a “blessed by Microsoft” label on it, they don’t want to even consider using it.
As a result we run our own “rogue” Ubuntu servers to set up the blogs and wikis we need. IT doesn’t believe in open source.
posted by Tim on 10-22-2007 at 10:20 am
In my job, where I’m IT manager, we all of our servers from Dell 2850s for the only purpose of file serving. We use those as network attached storage heads (NAS heads). They were all running Windows Server 2003 so every 60 to 90 days the file system was corrupted and we used to loss almost everything we had in there. i convinced the board of directors to switch everything to OS X and after just firing the Apple servers up in Juky 2006 with windows sharing (Samba), we haven’t had a single problem. The servers work just like any kitchen appliance, where you turn on and expect them to work without any kind of manteinance. I found this mind blowing. We kept one Dell server as backup and guess what, three weeks ago it did it again. The file system was corrupted and everything was lost. I decided to trash windows and install Ubuntu Linux in it to have the same kind of robustness of an Apple server but on a Dell machine (minus the exquisite remote desktop software that Apple has).
posted by Alejandro Lobos on 10-22-2007 at 10:23 am
As an IT professional I have to admit that when it comes to dealing with the Pebcak’s of the world, a Mac would probably make life easier….I have MS as the key operating systems for all our users….and thin clients at that, so no “real” PC’s….What do I have at home?….Mac G4…….
posted by Chris Thorpe on 10-22-2007 at 10:32 am
I’ve used Windows and Linux on a PC my entire (computer) life. I’ve wanted a Mac since OS X came out.
A few weeks ago, I got to use one exclusively for a while. It drove me crazy. From keyboard behaviors to installing programs. It was pretty, but it just wasn’t what I was used to.
So I guess it just depends on what you “grew up” with.
posted by Eric on 10-22-2007 at 10:57 am
My company (45 people) is a Mac and Linux shop, with a few rogue Windows users. We don’t have an IT department. We do have occasional hardware failures (most of the machines are laptops and spend their lives traveling), but we get the three-year Apple warranty on stuff and readily get repairs at the Apple service center…next door!
We’re quite happy with our Apple-centric world. :) A few of our sales staff wanted to run Outlook so they could integrate with Salesforce.com better, so they installed Windows using Parallels on their Intel MacBooks — this lets them run Outlook (a Windows app) side by side with their Mac OS X apps. (It works surprisingly well, if you have enough RAM.) This is a major win for our business — we get the reliability and low-maintenance of the Mac, with the ability to safely run Windows for those who really need it.
posted by Higgins on 10-22-2007 at 11:21 am
I’m surprised no one has brought up Vista! That’s the reason I’m going mac- (well besides that I feel in love with them during college)- all PC’s I’ve looked at come exclusively with Vista. Any businesses out there using Vista? I’d be interested to know how people respond to it.
posted by Kelly on 10-22-2007 at 11:47 am
Yes, and then there’s Vista. Microsoft, not to be outdone by Apple’s constant need to take a great product and shoot themselves in the foot just to make it different (read, incompatible, hard to learn) has given birth (and an unholy one at that) to Vista.
I don’t know Linux, but if I’m going to have to learn everything over, I might as well go with Ubuntu, as it’s free…
posted by jim on 10-22-2007 at 1:01 pm
I recently took my mother’s laptop to my house to run updates on it since they have dialup at their house. I was 5 minutes into the windows updates when the computer decided to become infected with malware. I have been so used to the lack of viruses in the mac world, I didn’t even think about updating her virus protection first.
posted by AJ on 10-22-2007 at 1:18 pm
I oversee IT and all technology for a medium-sized non-profit (and have for many different dot-orgs for 15 years). Everywhere I have worked we’ve had a mix of Windows and Macs both on the desktop and the server.
Without a doubt our PC users cost us far more than our Mac users. We primarily use Dell hardware and it fails on a regular basis (often it shows up dead) and have to be replaced every few years. Our Macs start to fail after 4-5 years and still we get good life out of them.
We have *never* reinstalled the Mac OS while we’ve repeatedly had to reinstall Windows XP. We have viruses on the PC and never on the Macs. These items alone make the PCs far more expensive to operate.
Our Mac users almost never call the helpdesk, while our Windows users face a queue of frustrated people ahead of them.
As my IT guy says, “be suspicious of any OS where ‘reinstall the OS’ is one of the first troubleshooting steps.”
Plus: all the new Macs run WinXP better than the Dells under BootCamp (and I would say even under Parallels with enough RAM).
posted by Rich on 10-22-2007 at 1:48 pm
First, a few factual inaccuracies to clear up. Mac users can run Windows (not just Windows programs — an actual, real, full version of Windows and anything that runs on it) via Apple’s Boot Camp or other programs such as Parallels or VM Ware. Virtual PC was used before Apple ran on Intel chips, but it is not used now.
Second, as stated previously, Macs are really not more expensive anymore. Feature for feature, they’re the same price (or cheaper) than Windows machines.
I use a Mac at home and Windows at work (although I am soon getting a Mac with Windows at work). Macs are just so much easier in every sense.
In fact, I am converting my grandmother and my mother to Macs soon. Neither one of them have the interest or the know-how to keep their computers safe from viruses and malware. They want something they can just use and not worry about — and that’s a Mac.
posted by Kellie on 10-22-2007 at 2:21 pm
I’m Mac at home, PC at work. My husband has PC at home, and he gets all the spyware. Though I have noticed, it seems spyware is starting to bother my Mac more these days.
I love my Mac. I’m SO EXCITED about this Virtual PC thing you mentioned. Off to research it. Yippee!!!
posted by Jena on 10-22-2007 at 2:24 pm
An IT friend of mine told me that if Macs were the norm in workplaces, he would be out of a job.
I have an iMac at home that i purchased last fall. it cost me a bundle but it was well worth it. at home i also have a pc laptop that is currently collecting dust because i haven’t turned it on in at least 8 months.
for work i have a pc laptop.
i consider myself a mac user now and will likely not return to pcs.
posted by basil on 10-22-2007 at 2:27 pm
oooook….
Apparently thru a strange twist of fate: mentalfloss readers = macfans
While I think both have good and bad things about them, many business specific programs do not have mac versions, such as the ones we use.
As for me I prefer PC for personal use, surprised I’m the only one….
posted by Rerun on 10-22-2007 at 3:28 pm
Point the first: I find it amusing how people always refer to the computers as Macs and PCs. The thing is, Macs arePCs, technically speaking (the term PC meaning “Personal Computer” (formerly “Microcomputer”), distinguishing it from the monolithic mainframes and terminals). The real debate should be “Mac vs Windows vs Ubuntu/Linux.”
Point the second: The cost of ownership of a Mac is only slightly more now days. And, in the case of laptops, to get a Dell configured with the same options as a MacBook, it’s actually more expensive (it’s an informal study consisting me me entering things in on Dell’s website). Moreover, Macs are viable for longer. Instead of each new release of an OS slowing the computer down to the speed of Molasses in January-time, each release of OSX seems to make Macs run faster.
It’s also fun to mention that my Mac is made of more third-party PC parts than it is Mac parts (Samsung displays, Segate HDs, Logitech mouse, pioneer DVD-RW, generic DIMM RAM, non-mac keyboard made with klicky-spring keyswitches). So the whole “Macs are harder to keep in maintenance” thing is a myth.
I just find Macs less distracting than other PCs with all their flashing lights. And Macs are nearly silent.
And then there’s all the Unix-Linux things you can do with Macs, too.
posted by Steve on 10-22-2007 at 4:13 pm
Macs, for all the reasons already stated above. We’ve never had a problem with them, never have the frustrating crashes that PCs seem to go through. As a non-computer literate person I find them easier to navigate and more intutive than PCs which I’ve used at work.
posted by Cyndi on 10-22-2007 at 4:33 pm
OK, one last rant before we put this one to bed?
1. Hi,we’re Microsoft, and we own the world (well, we used to). We spend all of our time thinking of ways to force you to upgrade your word processors and spreadsheets, even though your needs haven’t changed in 15 years.
2. Hi, we’re ANM (Apple’s not Microsoft). We make some great products (not computers), and then we systematically mess them up (sorry we can only pay you $100 back for the $200 you overspent on your iphone if you stood in line to buy it).
3). Hi, we’re Linux/Unix/whatever. Our OS will change it’s name tomorrow when Bob,living in his mom’s basement, adds some print drivers. Only people who still enjoy overdriving processors will understand our product. But hey , it’s free…
posted by jim on 10-22-2007 at 8:55 pm
@ Rerun: You must’ve missed my comment. I’m a Windows and Linux user.
@ Steve: Your first point isn’t really an issue. Even Apple themselves push the “PC vs. Mac” thing (you’ve seen those commercials, right? “Hi, I’m a PC. And I’m a Mac.”).
posted by Eric on 10-23-2007 at 12:48 am
As an IT professional, let me fully agree with the above statement that if everyone was running Macs (especially now with the groupware features of Leopard Server) then many of my compadres would be jobless. So, all you existing businesses that bought into the MS nightmare and are too scared to pull out - thank you!
For myself, and my own business, Mac all the way. Can’t afford all the hidden costs that come with a Windows environment.
On pricing - nobody runs their business off of built-in-a-garage-with-no-support $300 PCs and when you’re talking about pricing out the features and functions of a real knowledge worker style computer, one quickly finds that Macs are actually better priced; even just on hardware and again ignoring hidden gains like productivity gains, included software, and the ability to use an iPhone instead of a BlackBerry on the road :)
posted by Amit on 10-23-2007 at 1:06 am
I want my computer to be able to run almost 100% of the software out there. My next computer will be from Apple.
posted by Fred on 10-23-2007 at 5:37 am
The only thing wrong with Macintosh computers is its users. You guys are more annoying than Scientologists on extasy in your efforts to change EVERYONE’s minds about their computers. If I’m happy using my PC, then why not let me go in peace, and enjoy?
And some decent video games would be nice too…why does Mac bother with superior graphics capability if you’re not going to exploit them with the latest games?
posted by Fat Fredd on 10-23-2007 at 10:24 am
To those PC users who are happy with Vista why are you at this site reading a Mac VS PC discussion if you don’t want to read about Mac users enthusiasm for their OS? Do you expect only accolades for Vista? It’s easy just go to another site, relax, play a game on your PC. OBTW games have moved to game consols in peoples rec rooms and living rooms where the graphics are displayed on huge flat panel HDTV’s. Fewer people wanting PC version games anymore.For little less then a high performance PC graphics board you can buy a PS3, Wii or Xbox.
posted by Ken Todack on 11-1-2007 at 7:39 pm