Apple in the IT industry

[VI™]

So who here works an IT type job, whether it be programming and design to network engineering or cyber security?

How big of a presence does Apple have in your company, the companies you serve, and just that you see in general on a daily basis?

I worked in an IT company for a government contractor for about 9-10 years and Apple had no presence what-so-ever in our company and the government office I worked in. We were a small department but what servers we operated were Dells by contract that were provided to us and the desktops were either HP or Dell depending on what the ESA contract decided to go with for the current refresh.

I'm back in school and I'll be looking for a new job in the IT industry here after I graduate and I'm hoping not to get stuck in a similar government job again. I know there are a lot of companies out there that support iPads and iPhones, but are there any IT workers out there that use a Mac to trouble shoot on or just to work on in general? My personal computer is a rMBP with Windows and OS X on it and I prefer that over any Dell laptop I've had to use.

 

[maflynn]

Apple is virtually non existent in IT. I actually work in a shop that has Macs but we're a minority. The macs are mostly for the researchers, they seem to prefer Macs over anything.

 

[Mr Rabbit]

Relevant thread - https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1700606/

I work as the Mac admin for a large non-profit so obviously I use Macs almost exclusively, however the rest of the IT staff (14 others) does as well for the most part. The only time most of us have to use Windows is when we're working directly with the exchange server or one of our VM boxes.

Kinda repeating what I said in the thread above but our organization consists of about 500 users. Right now the number of Mac users is hovering around 40%, about 200 Macs or so, which is up significantly from just a few years ago. We still rely heavily on Active Directory and whatnot but if the trend continues then we might see a switch to more Apple centric management in several years.

iOS is a whole different story though, easily 70-80%, if not more, of our employees have either (or both) company owned iPhones or iPads.

This might be a location thing but I know the majority of educational market around here (Kentucky) is heavily entrenched in Apple technology, simply because I did educational onsite repairs state wide for several years. If you work in a university, elementary or high school then chances are good you'll be using or at the very least supporting Macs and iPads. There were very few times when I'd see a Dell or whatnot sitting in the IT person's office.

 

[fcomstoc]

I currently do IT work at Arizona State University(ASU), it is about 5% Macs, we have some Professors that love and only use Macs, but the vast majority is PC. The entire campus is domain-controled and we have site licenses for all Windows products. Management is all Windows, Mac support is an afterthought and we are not set up to manage it. Those that do use macs (at least in my department) have local accounts and must do their own backups and deal with their own software. It is frustrating, but with such a small percentage its not worth the time and money to get the Mac side set up right. At work I use a PC but at home and when I am doing web development work I am all Mac.

 

[moviebiz]

I work as a developer for a small enterprise company in California. Most of the technology organization uses Macs, which is about 1/6th of the company. However, most of our time is spent logged into Linux servers.

 

[Crusoe]

I've worked in three large financial services organisations. None had significant Mac desktop/laptop/server environments. Typically only present where there were in-house print shops and publications departments. At my last employer there was one Mac server and around 10 Mac desktops/laptops in an organisation of around 2,000 staff. At my current place, none at all.

On the mobile front it's changing. BlackBerry used to have the market sewn up but after the big RIM outage a couple of years ago which damaged their reputation badly things have changed. Plus, Apple devices are starting to get government security approval, a vital level of credibility. I'm seeing increasing use of sandboxed corporate mail apps like GFE on personal devices, and senior management loves iPads.

 

[VI™]

How many of you use something like a MBP in place of a Wintel notebook and dual boot Windows and OS X?

Do you actually get a choice of what type of computer you get to use or is it assigned to you?

 

[MattG]

I've been working in IT for 11+ years, in higher education. Apple was completely non-existent where I work when I first started here. Now, it's still dominated by Windows, but Apple does have a presence. We've got a handful of Macs in our labs. We have Mac classrooms for our design program, and it's not uncommon to walk up to our student lounge and see more people utilizing Mac than PC laptops. We actually have a handful of faculty who, despite being provided Windows PCs, opt to use their own Mac laptops for doing their work. At one point we even had an Xserve which served as our QTSS broadcast server, but that has since been replaced with cloud-based streaming services. Also, we used to use only Blackberry for our mobile devices. We did a pilot with Android (didn't like it), and we're about to do away with all of our Blackberry and Android devices and hand out iPhones instead. Lastly (and I put this last because I'm still not convinced they really have a place here), we are utilizing iPads for some situations.

It's nice to see more and more people realizing that Windows isn't the only option, and that there are better ones out there.

EDIT: I should also add, as part of the IT Industry, I used to take a lot of crap for being the "Apple guy." That doesn't really happen so much anymore.

 

[ElectronGuru]

I spent 10+ years in an IT career, exclusively Apple. PowerBooks and later MacBooks for the field engineers, Power Mac and later iMac's for the office staff, and various Apple servers and other IT equipment. I made the choice to find such a company and spent months scouring want ads for the words Apple or Macintosh.

The company I own now is smaller but naturally all Mac. They're out there, you just have to find them.

 

[MattG]

I spent 10+ years in an IT career, exclusively Apple. PowerBooks and later MacBooks for the field engineers, Power Mac and later iMac's for the office staff, and various Apple servers and other IT equipment. I made the choice to find such a company and spent months scouring want ads for the words Apple or Macintosh.

The company I own now is smaller but naturally all Mac. They're out there, you just have to find them.

For my next job, that's what I would really like to look for -- an all Mac environment. We joke about Microsoft this and that but, it really would be nice to get away from it. I've been using Microsoft products since roughly the DOS 5.x days, around twice as long as I've been using Macs (I started using Macs around the "Flower Pot" iMac days). In the past few years Microsoft has made some really poor decisions (hopefully Ballmer being ousted is a good thing), and from a professional perspective, I'm getting tired of dealing with it. Sorry in advance for the cliche but, it'd be nice to work somewhere with equipment that "just works," where you spend more time being productive and less time trying to fix bulls***.

 

[VI™]

I also understand that Apple will be more expensive. Your typical office worker can get away with a PC that will run Office and basic apps. The cost difference between a base wintel box from Dell or HP vs. the cost of a Mac Mini would add up if you had a larger company (like a government office with over 350 people, like where I work). There’s very few users in my building that require anything that has a lot of power. Plus, the contracts we have provides the PCs, refreshes them when they’re aged and includes the tech support, so our branch would have to find a contract that did that with Apple computers and if there is one out there, it may not even be feasible price wise. I say this since at some points late in the fiscal year, it’s hard to even get paper for the printers.

I’d just prefer to use OS X for what I could and then Windows through a VM or bootcamp for whatever else. Especially since you can remote in to a Windows machine with OS X. I do that with my mini to my WHS box at my house without issue. Not to mention the form factor. My rMBP is a great laptop. I prefer an Apple laptop over a Wintel laptop any day of the week. If I needed extreme portability, an air would be a great computer for onsite trouble shooting vs. the standard Dell notebooks that are issued out to everyone in my agency.

 

[benzslrpee]

the company i work for dabbles in some IT, but the brunt of it is outsourced so of course we get that company's laptops by default. my manager did not care what i use so i use my own MBP. recently my company decided to trial MBAs... the waiting list is now measured in quarters