Ditch your Macs, Dell tells EMC staff Staff at EMC who go out into the world to meet customers have been told their Apple Macs aren't allowed to come with them. Amid Dell's looming takeover of EMC, an edict has been issued insisting that Dell customers must only ever see Dell laptops during meetings and consulting engagements, EMC insiders have told The Register …
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@AC & Windows 8/8.1
I recently speccd and am provisioning new desktops for a client. (side work). Got some nice HP micros with the Windows 7 downgrade rights and ordered media for another $5. What a treat. You get Win7 Pro or whatever, along with Win10 for the system on real DVDs!
Not one word of a lie about this:
At the moment I am working in a company where all staff are now being required to transition from MBR15 laptops to Lenovo Thinkpads P, with Windows 10. Apparently the rationale behind making 500+ video and image editing and marketing staff move to Windows is simply because in the new workspace they are moving to the designers *preferred the look of the Lenovo chargers to those of Apple*.
There are 'transition' meetings, which are coupled with explanations for the the new mot du jour 'Agile Desking' ("no, it is NOT 'Hot Desking', it is about 'shared office environments and better use of your time management"). The new office is apparently all about harmonious working conditions and the blending of ergonomic colours into the working environment - which the bland white Mac power adaptors do not fit into.
Quite how this accounts for the expense of junking close to £1m of new Mac laptops is a puzzle to me. In addition is why you would want to make your video editing staff trash Final Cut Pro and retrain on Adobe Premiere (more huge and unnecessary expenditure) is a further enigma.
Letting the interior designers dictate the computer platform? Are you working for Sir Steve Bong?
I can almost see the expression "Agile Desking"; the best desk is to the most agile. Will the insurers allow you to vault over desks to demonstrate your agility?
"Apparently the rationale behind making 500+ video and image editing and marketing staff move to Windows is simply because in the new workspace they are moving to the designers *preferred the look of the Lenovo chargers to those of Apple*."
I'm stunned...
Get some black Apple compatible chargers, perhaps?
Please tell me you made it up!?
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Of COURSE this is the case... heck, as a prior poster put it, I am sure there is a ban on HP and Lenovo gear as well... as their should be.
I work at a large Canadian tech firm as a consultant... I would never wear a logo from my competitor to a business meeting... ESPECIALLY if my company was providing me with their own logo-wear... (for the record, I wear business attire, so it is a non issue... lol)
I'd liked to have been able to identify one from a similar team yesterday by his shirt, but as it said Trend perhaps we should have, he crashed an entire microelectronics research facility, by plugging one unrelated cable into a Trend outstation hub. Cost in lost time, research etc runs to six figures plus. Just hope todays university wide network fiasco doesn't turn into the expected fuster cluck... But as arsesolutions and Trend are both involved some how I doubt it.
<sarcasm> Right. Because what the guys from Cupertino have banged together in China looks absolutely identical to what the guys from Texas have banged together in China, with its cheap plastics and overweight chassis. </sarcasm>
Put a little less sarcastically, not gonna work.
I could see this more half a decade or so ago, nowadays I see plenty of tech firms where by far the majority of engineers are carrying macs. Speaking for myself it's been 6 years now since I used windows in anger, forcing me back to it would be a huge productivity sap for many months. I wonder if those dells can be turned into hackintoshes?
I wonder if those dells can be turned into hackintoshes?
Oh sure, set the company up for MASSIVE fines. I can see the sense in having to force people to use your own brand, because you don't want to send the message that even inhouse staff prefers to use something else. It's rather entertaining that they now face the consequences of having tied their ship to Microsoft - unless, of course, they install the only viable alternative OS for PCs..
I feel sorry for the staff, but with W10 Slurp, Redmond has at least a pretty direct insight into how much people hate the new OS..
I did some consulting for HP back in the day, and as a contractor I was bringing my own laptop. But the project I was on required customer visits, and the exec in charge of the project had a problem with me showing up at the customer site with a laptop with a Dell logo. So I put some black electrical tape over the logo, and he was satisfied.
Dell's issue may not be so much one of trying to force everyone to use their hardware, but having a big Apple logo staring back at customers around a conference table isn't what they want those customers seeing. Cover it up, and even if those who look more closely can tell what it is, it isn't in your face during all afternoon customer meeting.
"[...] but you can't fault the design or materials. Makes the Apple kit look dated."
I agree with you that Dell mobile kit has come a long way in the last few years in materials and quality both, and I did intentionally overstate my sarcastic remark (that's why I put the tags around it...). Still, my point really was that Dell kit looks nothing like Apple kit (and I am not putting a preference on that, just pointing out they look vastly different). Hence my statement that a sticker across the logo isn't going to fool anybody.
Macs are a great little number for versatility. Unix based OS, runs Virtualbox for Windows or other UNIX flavours, lightweight, good battery life.
Regular MacBook: excellent. Regular MacBook with iTerm 2 installed: pure friggin' bliss. It has probably saved my bacon a few times now with its ability to load a layout profile depending on host. I normally don't have both production and test open at the same time but when I do, the fact that production systems come up with a red background forces me to think twice before I hit enter.
Sometimes it's the small stuff that makes a difference.
Pity they cost so much, but it's not as gross as people like to make out.
I used to buy pretty potent Sony Viaos, and the hardware was about equivalent in price. Where MacBooks definitely pay back their costs is in usability and the far lower price of damn good software. An example: Microsoft Visio: around the $300 mark, and frankly terrible after Microsoft ruined the UI (even before they made things worse with the %^$& ribbon). Omnigraffle Pro for OSX (which also handles Visio files): $199, and far, FAR more usable, not to mention a far better and more professional looking output without doing anything special. The only software that's still worth the money is the new Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, and that only became a Windows product after they had the OSX version working - oh, and none of that subscription lark.
IMHO, the price of a Mac is only "high" if your time has no value and you only use pirated software. The moment you run one professionally, the TCO actually creates questions about any continued use of Microsoft products instead - certainly if you stick to Linux on servers.
No, the BYOD is cancelled and everyone will be given a new, fairly good I have to say, Dell laptop. So no more BYOD.
However, there are things you can do about it. Install Linux on the laptop and run the corporate image as a VM. Even though the mac won't be allowed, at least you can work in linux and have a vm for incompatible stuff.
Well... you can't. Corporate policies are strict and you cannot have OS XYZ on your laptop if OS XYZ is not in approved list. Right now only Windows 7 is in the list. Having my past experiences with "widespread" use of Linux on enterprise workstations, the only way is vice versa - have Linux VM to work comfortably. At the moment I know I am only one. Previously there was another one, who gave up finally due to issues with requirement on using corporate communication tools, which are, naturally, only Windows/Mac compatible.
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>Well... you can't. Corporate policies are strict and you cannot have OS XYZ on your laptop if OS XYZ is not in approved list.
Yeah, I worked for a bunch of a*holes like that ... came in early one morning, started by installing Windows 2000 again, without domain (I am a grown-up and responsible person, I think I can choose my desktop background) ... then, later, installed Linux ... nobody noticed ... especially when Nimda, Sasser, or whatever (cannot remember) brought down everybody's desktop except mine ;-). After that, anybody with one or more working braincells migrated to either OS X or Linux.
Rules are made to be circumvented ... gimme awk, sed, vi etc and a decent shell (NOT CMD.EXE) and I can get more stuff done than the rest of the team combined ... ;-)
At one point we had an 'IT specialist' whos one and only qualification was some MS cert in setting up Windows XP.
So most of us in the QA department switched to Linux - the OS which our software was running on anyway. Asked nicely and corporate opened a port on the exchange server for Thunderbird. The only windows application we needed was a test case repository, which we either ran from a seamless locked down XP VM or wine.
Was great until $CORPORATION took over and forced their Windows 7 corporate network domain laptops on us. (Though thankfully we had skipped Vista).
I made friends with our IT department. Then, I asked them for an old desktop, one they were going to recycle. I ended up with a ultra small form factor Dell system, which works fine, as long as I prop the top open (seriously -- the HDD reads 10-15C lower than when buttoned up). Bought my own HDD for it and installed Linux Mint on it. Named the machine so they know who has it on the network. All is cool, as I use it to do things my official Win7 machine can't (image editing, scripts, etc)
I also asked if I could have a laptop out of the recycle bin. Supplied my own HDD again (as they had shredded the one it came with) and now have a nice little Linux Mint laptop at zero cost.
When IT needs something out of the ordinary, I help them out. We have an excellent relationship.
Agree about the high-end Dells, but not just for gaming.
I use the XPS 15 with the top end processor (quad core i7) and it's really very nice. The reasons I stuck with the 15 inch MacBook Pro previously was the trackpad (or course), and the centralised keyboard (no numeric keypad throwing everything off centre). The XPS 15 has basically the same layout and feel (trackpad close even if not quite as good, but keyboard better IMO). Only problem is faffing about with the 4k screen - very nice when the application uses it properly, but some software can't handle the scaling very well. Mostly not a problem though, just an occasional irritation.
On the OS side of things, I still flit between Windows and Mac, and I have to say that I am baffled by comments about OS X being more usable than Windows 10. On the whole, I find OS X 'nicer' for casual stuff, but Windows is better for heavy multi-tasking (development work, market research analysis, etc). Swings and roundabouts, horses for courses, and all that.
Bottom line, though, is that the XPS is the equaliser when comes to comparing Mac and PC in the high end 15 inch category, and the Dell is a lot cheaper for a significantly higher spec at the moment. Will be interesting to see what Apple does with the next Mac refresh.
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From my experience, for research purposes, it is possible to get OSX to play nicely on a non mac x86 machine if you are strict with your hardware shopping list.
However, as you mention, one downside is licencing, the other is updates - if an exploit is patched and sent as an official update, the hackintosh kernels don't phone home to Cupertino and so don't neccessarily get the same updates.
Some years ago there was a lawsuit in the US, arising from fiddling with the brand markings of sports shoes. As I recall it, somebody under contract with one of the big manufacturers was wearing shoes made by another, then fiddling them to look like the first one's. I think that it was the second manufacturer that sued.
As for me, neither Apple nor Dell is offering me endorsement money to be soon in public with its goods. Until that happens, I'll use what I use.
"As for me, neither Apple nor Dell is offering me endorsement money to be soon in public with its goods. Until that happens, I'll use what I use."
Do you work for Dell / EMC public facing team?
if yes, you WILL use it or find another Job. If not, your statement is utterly pointless.
They do it all the time on TV, covering the Apple logo with a grey sticker. It just makes you go "Nice MacBook Pro, logo's covered so Apple must have said No'.
It would be obvious once MacOS fires up anyway.
What they should do is say 'You can use your own machine but we'd rather you carry a Dell, here's a healthy discount on an XPS or Precision'.
If the job can be done as efficiently using a cheap Windows laptop, show your staff how to do it. If they can't do it, ask yourself why.
Personally, I have little tolerance for support staff who insist on running "something special". I'll give some freedom for more RAM and a beefier processor in order to run different VMs, but the base OS and environment on the VMs should be what the customer or end user is using. When things go wrong, support staff should be the first to spot problems because they are using those services to do their jobs.
Yep. Years ago my brother in law formed a company to do web design. His partner persuaded him to buy (bil was putting up the VC) Mac G3s because " they were the best".
He didn't seem to have considered that anything they designed would be viewed mostly on PCs and that he would need to "sanity check" everything on a PC anyway. He was convinced that the software they were using "was only available on the Mac" and was nonplussed (I'd always wondered what that looked like) when I showed him that not only was I running that very product on my old XP machine, I was running a better version than he had.
And I lost count of the times he arrived on my doorstep begging to use my "crappy" XP machine to do something because he either didn't have the software to do it himself or his machine was back in at CompUSA waiting for "the Mac guy" to show up - he worked only on Tuesdays and only then if he felt like it.
And then the G3 power supply quit and he was faced with the standard Mac servicing fee hereabouts: 1 limb. I stupidly offered to open it up and take a look and got a first hand up-close-and-personal close encounter with the "better design". Suffice to say I wouldn't own a Mac on a bet afterwards.
I was shopping in Richer Sounds a few years ago when it was the UK's best high street seller of audio kit. There was a bloke in there asking for their worst set of speakers. He was a recording engineer and he wanted an artist to hear how his/her music would be played by a typical consumer.
I just did a little moonlighting job tidying up the cables behind someone's Home Entertainment system because they were having an argument with the cleaner over them not sweeping under the spaghetti (yeah, he's a bit of an arsehole). Anyway, they'd spent £9k down at the Sony shop back in 2010, DVD player, top-of-the-line 5+1 Home Cinema amp & mahoosive speakers, big plasma screen job.
I had to ask him who he'd pissed off down there, because the amp had never been wired in at all and the speaker cables had not a single clamp or screw mark on them.
"You didn't notice that your £9k surround sound system sounded like an couple of earbuds sat in coffee cans?"
"No, the guy from the shop told me it was all good to go."
"And the fact that the remote volume control didn't move the knob on the amplifier?"
"Is it supposed to do that?"
"And that the scary bits in Aliens you didn't hear the slavering beasties sneaking up on you from behind and breathing down your neck?"
"I don't watch those kinds of films. I just watch the news mainly, and the wife watches the odd Bollywood."
*facepalm*
*realisation... money to burn*
"Well, it's all working now. That'll be £500 please."
A company supplied system from Dell also has a custom OS image on it and is pretty locked down regarding what you can and can't install or run. Local admin status for your workstation is severely crippled if it is granted at all. A non standard image will have a lot of issues trying to connect to corporate via VPN. But with that many employees for the under appreciated and understaffed IT support team to service, the rules and policies are understandable if not enjoyable.
The funny thing is that more than a few Dell Sales engineers are sharp enough to know the workarounds to at least run the OS they prefer and are able to install and run tools they need...Its a tribal knowledge thing and I sure won't spoil it...but for the new EMCers that actually hang around, a quick question over drinks at Tech Summit to the right folks will yield interesting options.
"A company supplied system from Dell also has a custom OS image on it and is pretty locked down regarding what you can and can't install or run. Local admin status for your workstation is severely crippled if it is granted at all. "
Luckily, Dell makes it very easy to change HDDs. One with the corporate image, one with your choice of OS. Same laptop, two completely different personalities! :-)
Compaq did the same thing to Tandem Computers when they bought us, and it was field staff first followed by internal. We were located down Stevens Creek Blvd from Apple and besides the green screens for our mainframe systems, we were mostly an Apple shop so it was pretty wrenching for all of us.
No matter the power of Dells being offered to EMC staff, these alternative computing devices cannot honestly be considered as " nice replacement kit" when they still run Microsoft Windows operating System (OS) software, which is probably the reason these EMC folk chose Apple in first place.
The fact that Dell has placed it's complete being and soul in the hands of Microsoft, for Server OS, Mobile (Wow!) and most likely storage software shows that they have no regard for the most advanced, efficient/high performance , reliable and secure EMC solutions based on Linux, and for Apple iOS/Android Mobile platforms.
Denial is not a river in Egypt, it is the disconnect from reality being exhibited by Dell in their servile relations with Redmond.
Sad and sic.
I really don't see a problem here. All vendors have a preference, their own deals for notebooks or happen to be manufacturers themselves; if Apple acquired EMC, I doubt they'd leave them using Dell/Lenovo notebooks, if the shoe was on the other foot.
Besides, for an industry that's supposed to be technical, I really don't see what the fuss is about using a PC from the fruity company that has the same guts as your average PC notebook, yet costs four times as much and runs a derivative environment that's based on a 50+ year old OS, with a silly and superfluous amount of GUI animations that makes me dizzy, everytime I see it.
Every Apple owner I know complains, after a year or so, that their Mac is "running slow" and it's off to the Apple Store, who will more than happily extort £100+ from them, to "fix the problem". The hang-up with anyone who moans about Windows/Linux is that they're a fashion victim - everyone's got an expensive PC (Apple Mac) so I should not feel left out.
As a Mac-touting pointy-haired Senior Manager at EMC, I can confirm that nothing has been said to anyone about ditching their Mac and that all of this is pure speculation. Only Sales and Pre-Sales are currently being issued with new Windows 7 Dell laptops.
I would also point out that this isn't really a suitable forum for this discussion.
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