Mac or PC?

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Ahles on July 10, 2008 at 7:36pm

I imagine all of you following this discussion can see the circular nature of the debate. Wearing my teacher hat, I want to put in the most appropriate machines to support the teaching and learning environment. I want students to have the widest possible access to technology, regardless of platform. Wearing my technical hat I know that putting in a platform that cannot easily be supported by technicians causes havoc. This can be because of lack of experience or familiarity with an OS, or as in our case here in Victoria, Australia, being tied back to a Windows enterprise architecture. They actively tell technicians that they will have problems with any other platform.
We went through the MAC /PC debate years ago and slowly resolved most of the issues. Now schools are looking at UMPCs and Open Source software so are putting in Linux based systems and we are working through the exact same issues. For me, it is grin and bear it.

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on July 10, 2008 at 7:48pm

Well said.

For the most part any computer with either OS X, Windows or Linux will be able to support educational applications. From my experience there are some 'holes' in the Apple solution for larger deployments, but that does not mean they should be avoided.

The point you raise is one I forgot to mention... there is a cost to 'retrain' people to use a different OS and different applications... so it is tough to switch.

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Permalink Reply by David Huston on July 12, 2008 at 7:14am

When choosing either hardware or software, everyone--teachers and IR folks--need to put the kids first. Everything has to start with the quality of their experience.

So, the "solution" is to allow kids to make THEIR choice. We recently purchased 50+ iMac 20" aluminums running BOTH MAC OS 10.5 and Windows XP. Students choose either OS at boot.

Bottom line: the more comfortable students are, the more focused and productive they are.

We have MS Office license available on both. But increasingly, students are using Web 2.0 applications for lots of their work.

A staff of three IR folks handles ALL of our 200+ machines and network.

96% of our machines are working at any one time.

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on July 12, 2008 at 11:25am

David:

Small installations like yours are much easier to maintain than large installations. My district maintains 2600+ computers, 33 serves and several web based applications. We have seven technicians to do this. That is a ratio of one support person for every 371 machines. The same environment supports roughly 6600+ users for a ratio of 942 users to one tech; though we do have five instructional technology specialists who assist our elementary teachers (Apple OS X users) with software and integration of technology in the classroom (that would bring the ratio down to 550 per support person overall, but there are less faculty and staff at the elementary level than the middle + high level so that is not an accurate break down.

Depending on what source you use tech to computer ratios are supposed to be 125 or 150 to 1... so my IT department is working well over that and getting the job done. The ration of three for 200 comes out to one support person for 66 computers.

The Windows side of the house accounts for 1500 of the desktops and the OS X side of the house the remaining 1100.

To contrast the difference our Apple support team consists of three technicians, five in building helpers (they do other things during the year) and one summer intern. It takes that team a full two months (July and August) to prepare their buildings (1100 computers). The Windows team consists of three technicians and one summer helper. It takes the Windows team roughly one month (mid-July to mid-August) to complete their buildings (1500 computers). In this particular case because of the tools available for Windows computers the Windows team is able to complete their job in half the time with one less person and they are working on 400 more computers.

In our new help desk the Apple support tickets are roughly the same as our Windows help tickets... and that is again with the Windows computers and users outnumbering the OS X computers and users.

I hear what you are saying about putting the kids first, but in most cases kids don't have a preference when you first introduce them to computers. The other issue is that in the end I would think it best to have students familiar with the computers they are likely to work on (Windows) or a number of platforms (Windows, Linux, OS X).

If Apple would 'allow' OS X to boot on other computers (and it is possible other than their TPM check) then it would be possible to boot both OSes at a fraction of the cost.

In the end the ability to properly maintain the computing environment and the ability for students to adapt to multiple environments outweighs the need to allow them to choose a platform. With Web 2.0/3.0 apps starting to replace traditional apps the need to choose a platform because an application is only available on that platform is also going to reduce the OS choice in importance.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on July 12, 2008 at 2:18pm

I don't know that I've ever encountered someone with such dedication to disliking anything Apple.

I prefer Mac OS X to any flavor of Windows, but don't do IT stuff. In my classroom, I have a mix of PCs and Macs. The kids prefer the Macs, but mostly because they look cool. In the end, we're just using web 2.0 apps (aside from some movie and podcast stuff, which the mac is far better for) so the operating system doesn't matter.

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on July 12, 2008 at 6:57pm

Mike:

I am sorry that you feel I am dedicated to disliking anything Apple; that is not the case. My problems with Apple could easily be fixed if Apple would simply code the tools needed. I do not expect that because Apple as a company is not focused on enterprise level deployments.

I do take issue with people making assertions of lower TCO with out ever giving details, but that is because my experience is different. I would love to see the details on the TCO so perhaps I could assist my Apple Sys Admin to reduce his 'fires' and allow him to move things forward.

What is amazing is that simple things like login and logout scripts, which you can do on an individual mac, appear to be problems for the OD environment. There are things I can control, by user, with local accounts that are not available in the tools I have been shown for managing OD. Those things are actual frustrations and not a dedication to disliking Apple.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Anderson on July 14, 2008 at 5:55am

I think that in todays world a new term is needed! Perhaps the new term should be Enterprise Computer or EC. Along with the EC we could have EC capable operating systems. This would help us to seperate the PC's of the world to ones that are appropriate for Enterprise Computing. From all my dealings with Macs, they are good PC's (Personal Computers), but they do not really fit the enterprise very well. It is not necessarily all Mac OS X's fault either, but more a lack of enterprise utilities available for the operating system. There could be certain criteria that would have to be met, before a computer or operating system would be classified as an "EC", otherwise they would just be known as "PC's".
On a side note (not for Indigo, but for everyone else), Mac's (Apple), Inspiron (Dell), Pavillion (HP) are ALL personal computers, and can be compared to each other. Mac OS X, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Ubuntu, Suse and the many other distributions of Linux are all operating systems and can be compared to each other. When people compare "Mac" or "PC" hardware, they should compare it to another hardware manufacturer. When they compare OS features, then they should compare it to other operating systems. Hardware is not all the same, it is the individual components that make up the computer that determine how good it is. Most of the components that are inside a Mac PC are made by the same companies that make parts for the other computer manufacturer's. (sorry for the rant)

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on July 14, 2008 at 6:30am

^^^^ Well said, sir. Well said.

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Permalink Reply by Preston Holmes on August 6, 2008 at 2:32pm

While it is not baked into OD/WGM - loginscripts can do anything you can do with scripts.

For example I have a login scripts that checks a network mount for additional scripts and runs each of these. I have it freshly create an appropriate list of printers for each computer/User/Group

I can install critical updates at login time (if they are small and won't delay login too much) or tell the computer to power up at midnight and run a full FS scan for updates with Radmind.

It is the power of the BSD unix layer, and Apple's clear layout in the OS architecture that makes them pretty good Enterprise machines when you have the skills on hand. There are not as many good admin tools and you have to roll your own/use whats available in the community. While the discussion has been on clients, I'd say that at the server software layer, Apple products are actually a lot cheaper than a MS AD/Exchange etc solution.

-Preston

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on August 7, 2008 at 4:21pm

On price a Mac server is cheaper as a directory service because I do not pay per seat -- $499 unlimited users.

I agree with scripts you can do anything... that is how I have solved my problem (though I made it an application bundle so I could have it hidden as a preference).

Running login scripts from WGM requires an authenticated binding... which is easy unless you inherited an environment in which that was not done like I have. The fact is that OD is not enterprise in structure; it is work group in structure. WGM does not allow you to have OUs for users, workstations or servers. I can not apply policies the way I can with NDS or AD.

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Permalink Reply by Preston Holmes on August 6, 2008 at 2:23pm

There are better tools for "completing buildings" (reimaging?) than your techs are using. They should look into multicast ASR, or Radmind, they could then do their building in under a month. With Multicast ASR and good network infrastructure, they could do it in under a week...

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on August 7, 2008 at 4:24pm

I agree... and I will be pushing for that over the course of this year. When I took over the Windows side of the house we have one building that was not getting done in the two months of summer and the tech in charge had people believing it was not possible. I was in charge of the two other secondary buildings and finished them in 7 to 10 days depending on the level of change. When she left the district I was given control of all three buildings and her 'impossible' building got done in nine days. I have some Linux based tools that we might be able to use as well as those you have mentioned.

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