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Architosh Staff ([email protected])
14 Aug 00

 

London MacUG helps architecture firm stay Macintosh

Architosh reader Stephen Mulligan sent us this interesting story about how the London Macintosh User Group (LMUG) helped a prominent London architecture firm stay Macintosh.

Stephen wrote in to say:

"Two weeks ago I received a copy of a report from an architectural practice in London which proposed that all their Macs should be abandoned for a PC network by a new IT manager with what appeared to be a very Microsoft-centric point of view.

As I am the webmaster for the London Mac User Group I forwarded the report to our e-mail list and received some very useful rebuttals to just about every paragraph in the report. A counter report was prepared and this was discussed in the following week.

The counter report had a quite devastating effect. The criticisms of the IT manager had him visibly shaking and at the end of the meeting a director was heard to say that the PC network proposals were 'dead in the water'."

The report and the counter report were published in the newsletter of the LMUG and will be published in part here. There are a number of interesting items in the report and we naturally wanted to comment on some of them. It is a very interesting read.

Why do PC people so disparage the Macintosh?

The PC-centric IT person involved in this report was of the classic anti-Mac sentiment: all religion, biased truths and falsehoods, and hardly a cent of admission that the Macintosh is 'best of breed' in a number of areas, including graphics.

Why so monoplatform and Windows-centric?

It appears that despite the accomplishments of the Macintosh platform and Apple's resurgence in the last few years, many IT professionals steadfastly resist acknowledging the many benefits of the Macintosh platform. Mac pros—at least the ones reading Architosh—however, are much smarter than this and admit that there are pros and cons to each platform. Thankfully, this London architecture firm was able to find balanced views and make the right decision.

Excerpts: IT Report on Macintosh Versus Wintel For Architecture

The original report was entitled: Advantages of NT Computer Networks (Windows 2000). Architosh comments in grey.

 

IT Report

Macintosh Rebuttal Report

Windows 2000 is a sophisticated network system that offers a number of advantages compared to Macs.

Macs are computers, not an operating system. W2000 should be compared to MacOS X or Linux. - Philip Bath

Philip is absolutely correct. This initial counter points up the fact that the IT person who authored this report is immediately held suspect as even qualified to make such judgments. But for his credit, we'll assume he has been careless with his terms.

 

IT Report

Macintosh Rebuttal Report

NT offers a high degree of network security and even offers more refinements when compared to Unix. Apple networks, by contrast are geared to small networks (under 12 users) and its management tools are too crude for larger environments. Consequently there is no real network security in operation at XYZ Ltd.

Simply not true - our main file server is an Appleshare IP 6.3 G4 which happily serves 70 + users without batting an eyelid. It's management tools are basic by some standards however they are at least in one place rather than having a mixed bag of preferences all over the place - why for example is the File types handler accessed through the Folder Options control panel!!? What has any of the above got to do with security - you say that NT (or do you mean 2000 - they are radically different products!) has a high degree of security. Why then have a number of organisations, notably the US Army in recent months, ditched their NT servers in favour of Appleshare IP Servers after repeated security violations by hackers. Since they switched there has not been one successful hacking attempt. - Matt Wynne

The Mac OS is geared for far more than 12 users and features many robust tools for larger networks. That's why such large publishing sites as the New Yorker magazine and Time/Warner deploy large Mac-cenric networks for their entire enterprise. Even more powerful, especially in regard to the Web and security is Mac OS X Server, with the industry leading Apache Web Server.

 

IT Report

Macintosh Rebuttal Report

Currently logging onto the network is complicated because each server requires a separate log-in. This also makes it very complex to set up an efficient security policy and encourage sloppy practises such as allowing everyone full access. Under a Windows NT Domain a user only needs to log on once when they start up the computer and the security information access is handled centrally making it easy to up a flexible access policy.

Mac OS 9 has Keychain Access built-in which provides single password access to many servers or services. - Michael Speechleyhacking attempt. - Matt Wynne

It really appears that this IT person is making a pro NT argument without any real understanding of Mac OS 9 (or X coming up). What is described under NT is exactly what is possible with OS 9's Keychain feature. Though the features are not identical, NT doesn't have some features of the Keychain.

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