Bought a Mac

It's okay. Apple is going to buy Telsa and Elon will become the new Apple CEO. We just need another kook at the top.
 
Two parts of a computer purchase - the hardware and the s/w.

I think Apple has a pretty good reputation in both.

As far as my experience with Macs goes, my daughter got her Macbook before she started college. 4 yrs of undergrad and 1 yr of grad school later and it's chugging right along.
 
Matthew said:
Two parts of a computer purchase - the hardware and the s/w.

I think Apple has a pretty good reputation in both.

As far as my experience with Macs goes, my daughter got her Macbook before she started college. 4 yrs of undergrad and 1 yr of grad school later and it's chugging right along.
Click to expand...

Yep, I'll vouch for that. Drop-proof and beer-proof. :wink2:
 
But... for the price of one Mac, you could get a new Windows laptop every couple years.
 
Matthew said:
But... for the price of one Mac, you could get a new Windows laptop every couple years.
Click to expand...

the initial purchase price isn't the only cost of buying a windoze machine.

but, if you don't value your time, have at it...

:)
 
SCCutler said:
Back to the original post (and this is funny): The "MBR" is Master Boot Record, likely a hardware issue (hard drive), not a Windows problem. Funny.

---

I like a lot of Apple's design ethic, but (as of now) there is no way I could run Mac for business use. As we (ironically) get closer to returning to terminal/server, Macs are becoming more rational. One of my lawyers likes his Mac keyboard (a little postcard-looking thing with chiclet keys) better than a regular keyboard, and he's productive (running Windows in an RDP session), so it obviously works.

I assume that, if I just jumped in with both feet, I could get up to speed on Mac in no time flat, but I can't just bail on Win, as that's where all the software for our luddite world lives, but I don't have time to learn a new way of doing things just yet. I got tired of trying to figure out what it was doing (what's that bouncing icon mean? Why is it making that low farting noise?).

Win 7 is our standard for now; 8 works just fine, but its UI is stupid. Since 7 came out, no blue screens, no crashes, everything works like an appliance.
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We've transitioned LOTS of users from PC to Mac in our company. Many of them way less technical than you are.

Every person has agreed that it takes less than a week to feel completely comfortable.

The biggest problem is that we've yet to find a PC laptop that's not junk compared to a Macbook Pro. Software aside - just talking about hardware. Any laptop we buy needs to be able to drive two 27" external displays. Very few PC laptops can. The ones that remain are absolutely junk from a build quality perspective.

Used to buy a lot of Lenovo but after their latest stunt we'll do everything we can to never give them another dollar. They made SSL completely worthless for their computers by preinstalling what can only be described as the worst kind of malware that was implemented in an incredibly insecure way. Use one of those Lenovo laptops on a public wifi connection and the result would be no security on any SSL page you viewed (but it'd look fine to you).
 
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jesse said:
We've transitioned LOTS of users from PC to Mac in our company. Many of them way less technical than you are.

Every person has agreed that it takes less than a week to feel completely comfortable.

The biggest problem is that we've yet to find a PC laptop that's not junk compared to a Macbook Pro. Software aside - just talking about hardware. Any laptop we buy needs to be able to drive two 27" external displays. Very few PC laptops can. The ones that remain are absolutely junk from a build quality perspective.

Used to buy a lot of Lenovo but after their latest stunt we'll do everything we can to never give them another dollar. They made SSL completely worthless for their computers by preinstalling what can only be described as the worst kind of malware that was implemented in an incredibly insecure way. Use one of those Lenovo laptops on a public wifi connection and the result would be no security on any SSL page you viewed (but it'd look fine to you).
Click to expand...

I rather suspect that - eventually - we'll make a transition as you have described. I love the form factor of the Mac Mini - for most of what we do, I think one of those would do just fine.

And there is no question (in my mind) that Apple laptops are vastly better in terms of quality of assembly and engineering.
 
Alright Jesse...

How do you handle Apple IDs on Corporate Macs?

I spent an hour reading their crap on their website, and another hour talking to three different groups at Apple who couldn't give a solid answer to the question:

"The IT department is setting up a new Mac OSX machine. The first thing it asks for to do a Yosemite update is an Apple ID. What should my installer, who may or may not yet even know the name of the person receiving this machine, let alone whether they have a personal Apple ID, type in?"

They babbled about managing the machines with Profile Manager (need to install a Mac with OSX server) and signing up for Deployment Services (requires the company have an Apple purchasing account which we aren't big enough for yet nor do we have, OR the reseller number which we also do not have because the machines so far have simply been purchased at retail outlets), or running a configuration management tool designed for iOS devices that doesn't even manage OSX devices. (That last one was fun. I pulled up a screen shot of the tool the Apple Enterprise doofus was telling me to use and pointed out it wasn't made to do anything with OSX and he kinda got quiet. He had been babbling about managing iOS devices bought through a cellular vendor like Verizon.)

They were all sorts of damn confused on how to handle an organization that has less than ten Macs owned by the company, no Apple Purchasing Number, and wants to set up system management properly right from the start.

One Enterprise guy babbles about third party management software for twenty minutes. I calmly reiterated that I do not have nor do I want an OSX server in the data center room. I want to know how to properly manage the initial install of the machine while not screwing up the individual users ability to buy stuff for themselves via the App Store.

I'm also not a participant in the old Volume Licensing Program for any reason.

Attempts to sign up for Deployment Services (which sounds exactly like what I'm looking for) ran up against the wall of not having an Apple purchasing account tied to the company's DUNS number which I dutifully offered up but was still stopped by not having an account.

Gotta hand it to them. They're a pain in the ass. I shouldn't need a purchasing account to utilize deployment/management tools and running OSX Server locally is retarded. I don't want a damn non-rack mount Mac Mini in my server cabinet. And they killed XServe, not that I would have paid their prices for one of those overpriced Xeon crap jobs anyway.

Sigh.

I was sent down this path by another one of our engineers who set up the deployment stuff for another company large enough that they had the purchasing account and they love it. He did it late last year when their sign up system was so screwed up they'd simply send you a thirty page licensing document on paper and have you sign and return it. No account even required.

What a mess.

I absolutely hate Dell with a passion but you know how hard it is to add a retail purchased machine to the management tools and service contract online? Type the serial number. No purchasing account required or linked to the support stuff at all.

Beat head here. That was a waste of two hours I won't get back.
 
jesse said:
The biggest problem is that we've yet to find a PC laptop that's not junk compared to a Macbook Pro. [snip] The ones that remain are absolutely junk from a build quality perspective.
Click to expand...

This is exactly the reason why I bought a Macbook Pro. Last time I went to Best Buy all the Windows laptops had the build quality of "non-working display models" except they were real ones. :(

That doesn't mean you can't get a quality non-Mac laptop. But as someone else said, time is money. Who has time to go through the dozens of models each manufacturer offers?

As far as OSX, the GUI is alright, I don't think it is significantly better or worse than Windows. It took me awhile to get used to it (longer than a week), but I didn't have anyone helping me. However, being based on Unix is an advantage for anyone working in the tech industry.
 
jesse said:
We've transitioned LOTS of users from PC to Mac in our company. Many of them way less technical than you are.



Every person has agreed that it takes less than a week to feel completely comfortable.



The biggest problem is that we've yet to find a PC laptop that's not junk compared to a Macbook Pro. Software aside - just talking about hardware. Any laptop we buy needs to be able to drive two 27" external displays. Very few PC laptops can. The ones that remain are absolutely junk from a build quality perspective.



Used to buy a lot of Lenovo but after their latest stunt we'll do everything we can to never give them another dollar. They made SSL completely worthless for their computers by preinstalling what can only be described as the worst kind of malware that was implemented in an incredibly insecure way. Use one of those Lenovo laptops on a public wifi connection and the result would be no security on any SSL page you viewed (but it'd look fine to you).
Click to expand...


Lenovo is a Chinese company and there's a good reason they're not authorized for use in the DOD and Intel community. Not just in the U.S. but also UK and Ausi. Huawei is another one...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Oh, as the OP I'm able to report being able to rebuild the Windows 8.1 laptop MBR and now it works just fine. I copied the data I wanted and I'm sure it'll be mostly reliable, but between the iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV it just makes sense to keep the MacBook. I did install VMware Fusion and I now have an 8.1 VM I can use if needed. I can live with that. :)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
dmspilot said:
That doesn't mean you can't get a quality non-Mac laptop. But as someone else said, time is money. Who has time to go through the dozens of models each manufacturer offers?
Click to expand...
We have the time, and we've tried, every few years we fresh the PC laptops across the company. Each time we order whatever the best each manufacturer claims to have that can drive two 27" displays. Never find anything that's worth a crap.
 
denverpilot said:
Alright Jesse...

How do you handle Apple IDs on Corporate Macs?

I spent an hour reading their crap on their website, and another hour talking to three different groups at Apple who couldn't give a solid answer to the question:

"The IT department is setting up a new Mac OSX machine. The first thing it asks for to do a Yosemite update is an Apple ID. What should my installer, who may or may not yet even know the name of the person receiving this machine, let alone whether they have a personal Apple ID, type in?"

They babbled about managing the machines with Profile Manager (need to install a Mac with OSX server) and signing up for Deployment Services (requires the company have an Apple purchasing account which we aren't big enough for yet nor do we have, OR the reseller number which we also do not have because the machines so far have simply been purchased at retail outlets), or running a configuration management tool designed for iOS devices that doesn't even manage OSX devices. (That last one was fun. I pulled up a screen shot of the tool the Apple Enterprise doofus was telling me to use and pointed out it wasn't made to do anything with OSX and he kinda got quiet. He had been babbling about managing iOS devices bought through a cellular vendor like Verizon.)

They were all sorts of damn confused on how to handle an organization that has less than ten Macs owned by the company, no Apple Purchasing Number, and wants to set up system management properly right from the start.

One Enterprise guy babbles about third party management software for twenty minutes. I calmly reiterated that I do not have nor do I want an OSX server in the data center room. I want to know how to properly manage the initial install of the machine while not screwing up the individual users ability to buy stuff for themselves via the App Store.

I'm also not a participant in the old Volume Licensing Program for any reason.

Attempts to sign up for Deployment Services (which sounds exactly like what I'm looking for) ran up against the wall of not having an Apple purchasing account tied to the company's DUNS number which I dutifully offered up but was still stopped by not having an account.

Gotta hand it to them. They're a pain in the ass. I shouldn't need a purchasing account to utilize deployment/management tools and running OSX Server locally is retarded. I don't want a damn non-rack mount Mac Mini in my server cabinet. And they killed XServe, not that I would have paid their prices for one of those overpriced Xeon crap jobs anyway.

Sigh.

I was sent down this path by another one of our engineers who set up the deployment stuff for another company large enough that they had the purchasing account and they love it. He did it late last year when their sign up system was so screwed up they'd simply send you a thirty page licensing document on paper and have you sign and return it. No account even required.

What a mess.

I absolutely hate Dell with a passion but you know how hard it is to add a retail purchased machine to the management tools and service contract online? Type the serial number. No purchasing account required or linked to the support stuff at all.

Beat head here. That was a waste of two hours I won't get back.
Click to expand...

That is indeed a big frustrating problem. There is no good answer. I can tell you what we do offline.
 
jesse said:
We have the time, and we've tried, every few years we fresh the PC laptops across the company. Each time we order whatever the best each manufacturer claims to have that can drive two 27" displays. Never find anything that's worth a crap.
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised. I guess I was speculating that, somewhere out there, there must be a decent Win laptop. Maybe I was too optimistic.

btw, I didn't mean for my comment to look like a rebuttal to your post. I was simply using it as a springboard to write my own comments on the topic.
 
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jesse said:
That is indeed a big frustrating problem. There is no good answer. I can tell you what we do offline.
Click to expand...


Fair enough. Ugh. Sorry I went into rant mode there for a bit. Long day and two more hours of talking to doofuses at Apple (I swear they're taught to never say "no we don't have a solution for that" which probably works for the masses but really ticks IT managers off... Heck I know this stuff is hard but don't babble to me about things I didn't ask about as if they're the fix to my problem) and I was grumpy.
 
denverpilot said:
Alright Jesse...

How do you handle Apple IDs on Corporate Macs?
Click to expand...

hmmmm, a few weeks ago I "upgraded" my work MBP to Yosemite, I didn't enter an Apple ID. Perhaps because I used a Yosemite install package provided by my company's INFOSEC team?

I know the Apple ID on the laptop is not initialized, neither before nor after the "upgrade" to Yosemite.
 
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