Just who is Apple's most frustrated fanboi? Surprise – it's GOOGLE Major Apple customer Google says it has been forced to go it alone when supporting a large-scale deployment of Macs. The advertising giant claims it has to develop much of its own tools for managing Macs at scale due to Apple's neglect of enterprise management platforms. "We don't use any of Apple's tools to manage the Macs …
The only one OS that can be out of box supported on enterprise level is Windows, does not matter like you it or not, what you feel about company and what dollar sign you put in its name, it's proven fact. Everything else and especially Tux requires set of crutches and, what is even worse, different one for every task.
I won't even start talking what a piece of junk Linux desktop is and it seems it's just getting worse every year, every singe and all of them. Pathetic.
Downwotes from Linux nazis to follow.
When was it proven that Windows is the only enterprise ready OS? Your post seems to have very little fact and an awful lot of opinion.
The company or the dollar-signs might not matter, but security does, and in that sense Windows sucks.
Your comment about the Linux desktop is particularly childish. If you perfer a previous version of the Desktop you're free to use it. I fail to see how a particular version of a Linux Desktop ( any of them ) can degrade over time.
I think the last word of your penultimate paragraph nicely summed up your post - pathetic.
"When was it proven that Windows is the only enterprise ready OS? "
Around year 2000 when Win2K was released, undisputed till now. Wanna argue ? Don't, because you obviously never tried manage tens of thousands of either Windows or non-Windows desktops.
"Your comment about the Linux desktop is particularly childish."
Well, it really reflects state where Linux desktop is - in a kindergarten, for last 10 years at least, must be one retarded child. Seriously, why would anyone in the world use it for anything else than running Firefox ?
You can discuss this with Linux fanboys, once they setup DNS and NFS between two machines they think they became the supremo sysadmin. Very few of them have ever managed more then a dozen machines, and almost noone of them has every managed complex networks with thousands of machines and a complex logical topology.. Those who do, don't spend their time posting everywhere how good Linux is, have no time for that... too busy to cope with a design thet didn't change from the '70s when there was far less machines. After all Apple lacks tool exactly because it is builot upon another *nix incarnation, the *BSD one.
That's why company like BeyondTrust develop tools to allow *nix machines to join an AD domain and be administered from there.
Tux fanboys should really take the time to install a Windows Domain Controller and learn how much you can do from that, even without adding more sophisticated tool like System Manager or the like. Windows competitor years ago was Netware, which had the tools required to manage large networks. That's why Windows had to implement them.
"Tux fanboys should really take the time to install a Windows Domain Controller and learn how much you can do from that, even without adding more sophisticated tool like System Manager or the like."
..or they could just fire-up a LDAP server and do much the same basic admin using a number of freely available front-ends or go to someone like Softerra and get something that admins openLDAP and MS ActiveDirectory (LDAP with bells) as well as Novell eDirectory (yuck), Oracle Internet Directory (double yuck) and Lotus Domino (good grief, still going ?). Not as nicely presented often, true - especially the free ones, and certainly not as powerful, easy to use or relevant in a Windows enterprise - but there's a lot you can do without really knowing anything about what's under the hood.
Not saying you'd necessarily want but it's there if you need it or fancy a look. It tends to get overlooked as smaller networks typically don't need it, and larger networks often just buy in management software for Unix or mixed networks.
"When was it proven that Windows is the only enterprise ready OS? "
Around year 2000 when Win2K was released, undisputed till now."
Undisputed by whom ? Citations ?
"Wanna argue ? Don't, because you obviously never tried manage tens of thousands of either Windows or non-Windows desktops.
Must have come as a shock to all those enterprises who ran, or are running, on Solaris, HP-UX or AIX then..... probably news to CERN too (see e.g. Quattor). Many have moved to Windows, or other *nixes, but that can hardly be attributed soley to the extent OS being 'not ready' for the enterprise.
Note - i'm not slating Windows as far as enterprise deployment goes, I am disputing it's the only enterprise ready OS.
"Your comment about the Linux desktop is particularly childish."
Well, it really reflects state where Linux desktop is - in a kindergarten, for last 10 years at least, must be one retarded child. Seriously, why would anyone in the world use it for anything else than running Firefox ?
Quite frankly, one of the best examples of proving the OPs point i've seen ever... genius !
"Must have come as a shock to all those enterprises who ran, or are running, on Solaris, HP-UX or AIX then"
Yeah, no understanding of how server different from desktop either. Go read something, try it yourself, anything, you have zero idea what you are talking about.
Excuse me? where have you been hiding for the past couple of years? We're not on windows95 anymore, which had crap security. Windows security has made massive strides and is now considered a secure platform. Go at each other's throats for all i care, but don't talk crap.
@DainB
My down-vote was because I have never seen an installation of an "out of the box supported" version of Windows, other than that for home or small business use...
Oh! Perhaps you meant that you could use expensive ^H standard ^H third-party tools to run out Windows in the Enterprise.
I wonder how my team then manages over 30000 machines running Linux. Hmm, since there are no tools to do the management, it must be that we do this by using magic.
Oh, and the MacOS team at Google must also be using magic, since there are no tools to manage so many machines on anything but Windows.
Well, that's not really true is it? You can't support Windows "on an enterprise level" out of the box either. You still need tools like System Center or other third party things.
So Windows is exactly the same as the Mac — it's just that Apple doesn't really do it's own full-on management tools (silly Apple!) so you always need a third-party tool or two (or three, or four). And, to be fair, there are plenty of them about, both open-source and commercial. But if you want to do the full-on management policy GPO-style thing (and imaging/deployment with a whole fleet of Macs (or iPads) then... you can. No problem.
>several Google-developed open-source tools, such as crankd, Cauliflower Vest, and CanHazImage.
Do American universities not teach their computer programmers to use sensible names for objects? "Cauliflower Vest is an end-to-end Mac OS X FileVault 2 recovery key escrow solution." Yup, first thing that comes to mind. It would be nice if we could assemble a tool set without having to remember the pop culture and in-jokes of a bunch of 30 something nerds.
> It would be nice if we could assemble a tool set without having to remember the pop culture and in-jokes of a bunch of 30 something nerds.
I agree with you in the general case, but not in this specific case.
Cauliflower Vest et al are internal tools, likely used by the people who developed them. As such, they might have been named after an event that the team remembers -"Hey, remember that time we were writing that boring tool and Bob spilt cauliflower soup down his shirt?". Names like "Tool 654" or "OSXFV2RKES" are instantly forgettable by comparison. Should they open-source CanHazImage, they can rename it then, just as consumer software often has an internal codename before release.
Software for the public does benefit from a more intuitive names. Media Player, Notepad, Paint etc give a clue to their function. The GIMP? Not so much, and if Penguins really wanted to broaden the adoption of desktop Linux it is something they might want to address.
They might *currently* be used by the people who developed them, but that sort of thinking leads to massive problems down the line when those people leave or move elsewhere in the company. What's more it will lead to communication problems with people outside their group. And they *will* need to communicate outside their group.
See also the stupid Debian naming scheme and the stupid OS X naming scheme. In both cases unless you just memorise a list of idiotic names you have no idea whether wheezy was one or three versions before etch, or whether Leopard preceded or followed Lion. This makes life harder than necessary for those who have to only occasionally know what's going on. Such as users asking for support.
And then when someone else comes out with a similar product you end up with two products named Filevault Escrow. The people who use it are a niche audience, and anyone googling for a FileVault Escrow solution will find it right away. It's not rocket surgery.
Can't speak for NA universities, but during my CS course in the UK we were specifically encouraged to come up with more interesting names, especially for version releases. It's a bit of fun in an otherwise cold environment.
I still encourage interesting names (especially backronyms) in my professional life, and it does add a small amount of humour to planning meetings that the team can enjoy together. Just the other day we were discussing when "the new OWL will be ready", rather than "version 2 of Monitoring Tool".
True, it might be more appropriate as an internal thing, but it's hard to argue that names such as Yahoo, Flickr, Google, Git, Ubuntu, etc., are descriptive of their services and unrecognisable by the general masses.
@ David Cantrell
Just wanted to add that I agree with you on version naming. I normally espouse a more Ubuntu/Android-esque style of each major version starting with the next letter in the alphabet. No one can be confused if Mozart or Picasso is more recent.
Anyone who uses a Mac, as an engineering workstation, will tell you it's a great platform. Unlike Google, Apple doesn't seem to recognise this, so Macs simply don't fit into into a large, modern organisation. Add to that the fact that the senior IT guy is really just the bitch of the senior security guy, these days, and it can only get harder.
Apple has never has had the enterprise management tools Microsoft does. I'm sure that's a barrier to Macs seeing more acceptance in that role, but it is sort of a chicken and egg thing. It is difficult to justify the development effort when (almost) no one is deploying Macs in large scale. If they built it, getting people to use it would be yet another battle, since as Google and one other poster in here demonstrate, companies deploying Macs have already developed their own tools and would have little incentive to become Apple's beta testers.
Apple would have to eat its own dogfood, and replace whatever they must be using internally to manage all their Macs to be able to whip whatever they developed into good enough shape to become a product...
If it is coded like most internal use stuff, it would be very specific to their environment, and not at all flexible to other environments, so starting from scratch with a new solution would be quicker than trying to modify their solution to be flexible and configurable enough to be an acceptable solution for others.
If that would be the case, they would be excellent on a mac but their not.
Google is building their own platform. Mostly based on Android. They use macs at the moment for that. They started refusing windows after security issues they had. Before those it was optional for each worker to choose his platform.
Linux simply isn't as dynamic as OSX. It's fast and great for many tasks. But it's a much more fragmented base to build on. And support for specific configurations may simply not be there. OSX has much less of that hazzle. And basically everything is easily portable between the *nix'es and Unixes.
If that wouldn't be the case Google would be using Chrome Books.
OOOh that must be killing them !!!
Google may love Apple kit but the only thing Apple loves is selling its kit ... they can't care less about their customers, unless there is a class action they won't replace your iPod battery let alone provide you with a tool.
Google let's say you are not worthy ... so shut up or they will get a restraining order. You won't be allowed anywhere near an Apple Store & your IPs prevented from connecting to their online version.
/Made on a
PS : Google your chrome browser for OSX is a real piece of dungware.
Apple sold so many iPods that at one point new batteries were easily available from Maplins for a reasonable amount of money- so I guess it worked out happily enough.
(Fortunately for me, my iRiver used the same battery, albeit with the connector polarity reversed).
When Apple pulled the plug on its server range it was a pretty clear indication that they were not actively pursuing the enterprise market. Apples main focus is the consumer market. Managing 1000s of clients is not a trivial task and most enterprises have deployed third party tool in order to help them manage be it windows, Linux or apple clients. Google has the resources to roll its own solutions but many IT shops are struggling with this as they don't have the internal resources or expertise to manage that many apple clients. with the rise of BYOD the management overhead for IT shops has increased dramatically and many are not convinced about productivity increases from people using their pet hardware/os.
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