[trimethylpurine]

Disagree. Explaining that they can't fix Apple's Samba implementation isn't "treating Mac users this way" such as to be called a "bad IT team." Or the rest of the laundry list of bugs in the post. How do you recommend an IT team should handle Apple's inability to function for basic business file sharing so that the user's boss doesn't think less of the end user or the IT team?

They are being friendly, and objective. Their job is to fix problems so that employees can be productive. It's not to lie for them, or to them. It's Apple's marketing team who has that job. You'll notice they don't do much in the way of advertising to IT directors and business decision makers. Their focus is college kids, specifically graphic designers and iOS app developers. It's definitely not businesses.

IBM? These are software issues. IBM doesn't make desktop operating systems for end users. Do you mean Microsoft? Apple never was and still isn't the Microsoft of business OS. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

[giobox]

Of course I mean IBM - my point is the sheer volume of hardware Apple have sold to enterprise markets in the last 10 years. If things were as close to as bad as you describe this simply wouldn't be the case. IDC and others have Apple's marketshare in US enterprise markets at 23-25 percent as long ago as 2021 - using a Mac has long ceased to be an unusual or troublesome choice in business environments and I would be extremely unimpressed by any IT staff making these arguments today.

If familiar with Apple's history, the IBM example was deliberately chosen. Once upon a time one would have seen an army of IBM desktops in the enterprise, much like the MacBook today...

> https://osxdaily.com/2011/12/30/young-steve-jobs-gives-ibm-t...

[trimethylpurine]

IBM is not a good comparison, as I mentioned, because we're talking about Apple's OS software being bad for its users' careers. I don't think that's ever been the case for IBM or Microsoft. Anyway, the hardware is irrelevant.

> If things were as close to as bad as you describe this simply wouldn't be the case.

Selling stuff means you have good marketing, not good products. Microsoft isn't better than Apple because they sell more software, right?

So, I don't follow your logic on that point at all. I have 20% of my current employee base running Mac OS. Why would that imply that they are a good career choice for the end user to make in a desktop OS? It implies they are the 1 in 5 who will be left out of the discussion and then complain that their computer wasn't working.

That 20% accounts for much more than their fair share of help desk interactions. And their boss still sighs when they come up in conversation. Why would you advise anyone to shoot themselves in the foot like that?

And more importantly, how dare you judge my IT department (friendly joking tone here)? But seriously, do you have a solution to make Apple's Samba implementation work?

That's kind of a critical component for business if you're going to say that Apple is so good for business like IBM/Microsoft. Wouldn't you say?

[giobox]

Given one can only run Apple's software on their own machines, whether we talk about OS sales or hardware sales, we are talking about the same thing. Are you really prepared to argue 25 percent of the corporate computer market userbase are sabotaging their careers? I'd argue thats absurd, personally.

I'm not responding to the Samba critique because millions of people share files at work between virtually any OS and Macs, every day, just fine. Would I like Apple's Samba implementation to be better? Sure.

There are many studies that prove the opposite of your point, including one from IBM, and find the modern Mac significantly cheaper to support than Windows machines in business environments with less helpdesk tickets to boot:

https://www.jamf.com/resources/press-releases/ibm-announces-...

[trimethylpurine]

I don't think it's absurd. I've watched as they get skipped over for the graphics guy that uses Windows, can share files in meetings, and quickly interacts with their coworkers. And, honestly, why would you promote the guy that can't do that? I can't disagree with it. We should be promoting pragmatic thinkers that get stuff done, not people that intentionally choose machines with problems or make other such bad choices in life and in business.

Again, tell me about Samba. How do you call a machine with major problems interacting with a business network, a business computer?

(Should I answer that question? You blame the IT team, and say it's a business computer based on the sales data. It's all very illogical.)

>millions of people share files at work between virtually any OS and Macs

Right. Using cloud solutions. That's not practical in many applications, especially where medium and large businesses are concerned. You're going to make them download large files from the cloud every time they want to open them while their Windows counterparts are streaming those same files over a 10G fiber drop to the server?

Which one makes more sense here? One of these users is getting promoted. It's not the guy working the slowest, usually.

Anyway, the request to make Samba work comes from the users. I didn't go looking for a problem to solve, right? I prefer it when my phone doesn't ring, my pay being fixed and all.

[trimethylpurine]

Also this IBM article predates Apple's abandonment of AFP. That's a huge kick in the argument. At this time, Apple worked for file sharing, at least. It had many other problems for businesses at the time, though. But less so for medium ones, more for big ones. So I'm still surprised to read that from IBM.

Here's more recent research to the contrary.

https://prowessconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/PCs...

I don't go by any of this stuff, though. It's all marketing. I have my own data and experience to work with. And I've given some hard to debate examples where it's a problem for one's career, and it's not one their IT department, or whomever I'm talking to here can help them with.

[giobox]

The depracation of AFP (first announced in 2013) has no real impact on subsequent studies. Here's a more recent one from Cisco with a 130k Mac deployment:

> https://www.ciodive.com/news/Cisco-tests-Apple-MacBook-vs-PC...

The usual suspects like Gartner and Forester routinely run studies on this question too.

[trimethylpurine]

They had deprecated, but still supported it for several OS versions afterwards.

Big deployment in that article. I would guess we can find similar size deployments from Microsoft to the contrary. Again, it's all marketing. I wouldn't make decisions based on that. You should be looking at your data as an organization and making decisions based on the entirety of your infrastructure.

And the same goes for individual employees. If you work in a company where most people are on Macs, where you're not the odd duck with problems, maybe it's a smarter move for you.

But most people aren't at those companies. And for those people, being the odd duck with problems that can't get to the file share, or the guy with slower access to files than the coworkers you're competing with, might be the difference between "That guy always nails it. What's his name?" and "Omg, this dude always has problems sharing files. Just go up and present it for him. This is embarrassing. In front of clients? Next time John should present."

Trust me, you would rather be John in that situation. And as a non-technical user, you're likely going to find yourself in made for Windows presentation situations more often. There are simply more of them.

Mac OS X Server is discontinued. Mac is just not for business, and Apple agrees, it seems. Unless of course your business is entirely cloud operated. That might be okay if your company is so big that you get Apple products and theirs or someone's cloud offerings for nearly free. But it's not practical for most companies of any size. Especially when you consider the delays caused by opening large files over the internet.

Non-technical Apple users think Mac is better for graphics. That's Apple's marketing. We're talking about large files.