[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.