Curious to hear from readers at universities or colleges: does your university IT department support OSX? I've just learned that my university has a "recommended" system and that it isn't Mac. No support for OSX, no site license (which is fine, but we do have one for Windows), and an Exchange environment that makes communication tough without support and updates. I thought Universities stopped excluding Mac OS at around the turn of the century, and every IT web site I've visited includes clear shows of support for OSX. How does your university or college handle multiple operating systems with respect to support and update programs?
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University IT Support?
- Thread starter Bees
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depends on the school. At Texas Tech they had a site licences for most of Microsoft software (both Windows and OSX) but very few of the departments used macs because the software they need does made for windows only. University respond to what industry is using and most industries do not use Macs end of story.
At TTU the only place I saw OSX was in a few labs in the library and in the art departments. Everywhere else it was pretty much windows only.
but we're the only group to do that 
I've found that most University IT departments are made up of PC geeks who don't know anything about Macs. It doesn't matter what they "recommend" because it's always going to be a bunch of outdated BS. If you want to use a Mac, go for it. I'm sure there's plenty of people on campus who do the same thing.
Hell our school had over 1/2 the people on campus using Macs and the IT department still didn't admit to wanting to use/support them. Idiots.
Hell our school had over 1/2 the people on campus using Macs and the IT department still didn't admit to wanting to use/support them. Idiots.
It depends on the school. I worked help desk for my alma mater years ago. I think we may have been some kind of weird exception. We had Macs in all our computer labs and had 2-3 Apple certified techs on staff. The top-level admins used Macs (university president and support staff). We also had limited support for Macs on our networks, but our main focus was on supporting university owned equipment. We were very understaffed, so we couldn't really support student owned equipment.
This was years ago, though, so I have no idea what it is like now. I left about 8 years ago, so things may have changed now. One amusing thing I remember is when we bought a bunch of first gen iMacs and put them in labs. It seems the people purchasing the machines didn't know they had no floppy drives. I later got a call from an angry prof who was annoyed that his students could do their work on the Macs, but had no way to save their work and take it with them. Oops. They later had to buy a bunch of USB Zip drives so students could save their stuff on external media.
This was years ago, though, so I have no idea what it is like now. I left about 8 years ago, so things may have changed now. One amusing thing I remember is when we bought a bunch of first gen iMacs and put them in labs. It seems the people purchasing the machines didn't know they had no floppy drives. I later got a call from an angry prof who was annoyed that his students could do their work on the Macs, but had no way to save their work and take it with them. Oops. They later had to buy a bunch of USB Zip drives so students could save their stuff on external media.