[thelist] Switching to Macs

[Arlen.P.Walker at jci.com]

>I've been lurking on this debate for a few days now, and this bit caught
my
>interest.  I think this is a little bit derogatory towards "Windows
people",
>whomever they may be.

"Whomever" is Windows users.

You could be right. This was a generalization drawn from the first-person
experience of being a Mac user in a Windows shop, and from anecdotal
evidence gathered from several sources (including being a consultant to Mac
users in other Windows shops) and, as with all such generalizations, cannot
not be applied with justice to 100% of the class, though I'm afraid I'm
still convinced it exists in the majority of cases, and perhaps even the
vast majority of cases. To any who feel I have unfairly derogated them, I
offer my apologies.

In my experience, the Mac/Windows choices are all too often made on
emotional (as opposed to rational or technological) grounds, which is
probably what accounts for the hostility; a counter choice is seen as a
personal challenge, because of the lack of more objective basis for the
original choice. My personal preference is for diversity; I think the less
your company relies upon a single OS, the less likely a defect in any OS
will do significant damage to you. It's axiomatic in biology that a diverse
gene pool helps to ensure survival of the community; I think the same
applies to computing. Yes, that means that while I prefer Mac, I have
specified in the past, and expect to continue in the future to specify
Windows and various Unices for projects.

I think it was Dvorak who once proposed that companies no longer supply
computers to their employees. Instead, they define some widely-known
standards for networking (such as TCP/IP, NFS. CIFS, etc.) and for document
formats (such as RTF, or XML -- though the proposal long antedates either
SGML or XML) and the employees supply their own computers and work within
those standards. The unspoken assumption was, of course, that the lowered
costs created by employees supplying their own computers would be passed on
to the employees to be used for those computers. It was an intriguing idea,
I thought. The unspoken premise is, of course, that the standards chosen
are widely implemented. I know a case where a network manager insisted
AppleTalk be blocked at every router because it was too "chatty." He was
fine with NetBIOS and IPX, both of which are also quite "chatty" in their
own right, so I asked for some details on this decision. He produced a
network traffic report that showed AppleTalk was 4% of the net traffic,
while less than 1% of the devices. I pointed out how most of the AppleTalk
traffic came from two DEC machines with misconfigured print queues, and
showed him how after correcting the VAX print queues the AppleTalk traffic
levels would drop down below the "normalized" levels for either IPX or
NetBIOS. He corrected the queues, but continued to use the original traffic
report to justify his decision to block AppleTalk; he wasn't interested in
solving his bandwidth problem (I showed him how to do that, too, but that
didn't fit his agenda); he simply wanted to eliminate the Macintoshes from
the company using fair means or foul.

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen.P.Walker at JCI.Com
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Opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
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