[domerdel]

I just started at this company. I'm the only graphic designer here and we may shift into a whole new marketing department. The company is already at 150+ capacity, with Sales, Customer Service, and even their own in-house IT/Development department.

With the possible shift towards an in-house marketing department, I'm trying to give them the heads up that the art department will need to run on MAC. Unfortunately, they are very ignorant when it comes to MAC and I get an immediate head-shake NO when I just murmur the word Apple to them.

They currently have me on a PC w/ dual monitor. It's probably a under $1,000 PC, single processor, and I get maxed out on multitasking when it comes to Runing Adobe and Macromedia products in parallel. With my Dual G5 at home, I don't have this problem.

The short of this all really is I need some sort of credientials, a strong reference to the efficency of MAC in my realm of duties (print/web design). I think they're afraid because they run all these PC's on a domain base, and it's dynamic for them to sort of control permissions and filters. I think they just don't realize I'm not an entity of their sales/customer service software.

If you have time and want to docture something up, that would be great.

[mitchell_pgh]

You can't beat the IT department most of the time... and if you advocate too hard for a Mac, you could look like a crazy person. I did it at my company... but it took some convincing.

My suggestion:
- Talk to your printers and ask them what they prefer.
- Talk to freelance designers and see what they prefer.
- Talk to a few publications and see what they prefer.
- Detail exactly what you need and justify it by such things as "Purchasing one mac can save us $XXXX over a 12 month period"
- Be a little over-dramatic. Example: "With one font problem... a brochure could be delayed weeks or months" "Perhaps we could have a designer create a template which I could manipulate to save thousands and raise the bar regarding design" etc. etc.

I was able to convince them by saying "We don't have any Macs at the office, but by having one... we could save a considerable amount of money" and I then went on to describe how we would do that.

When they say: Well, why can't you just use a PC... reply with:
- PCs can have serious font problems
- It's what most outside designers use
- We do want to be compatible with our printers don't we?
- Color management (and other graphics things IT people don't understand)

DO NOT MISREPRESENT THE TRUTH... it's going to be expensive. Hardware + software for me was over 5K for my single unit... and I went dirt cheap-ish.

[Westbo]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

You can't beat the IT department most of the time... and if you advocate too hard for a Mac, you could look like a crazy person. I did it at my company... but it took some convincing.

My suggestion:
- Talk to your printers and ask them what they prefer.
- Talk to freelance designers and see what they prefer.
- Talk to a few publications and see what they prefer.
- Detail exactly what you need and justify it by such things as "Purchasing one mac can save us $XXXX over a 12 month period"
- Be a little over-dramatic. Example: "With one font problem... a brochure could be delayed weeks or months" "Perhaps we could have a designer create a template which I could manipulate to save thousands and raise the bar regarding design" etc. etc.

I was able to convince them by saying "We don't have any Macs at the office, but by having one... we could save a considerable amount of money" and I then went on to describe how we would do that.

When they say: Well, why can't you just use a PC... reply with:
- PCs can have serious font problems
- It's what most outside designers use
- We do want to be compatible with our printers don't we?
- Color management (and other graphics things IT people don't understand)

DO NOT MISREPRESENT THE TRUTH... it's going to be expensive. Hardware + software for me was over 5K for my single unit... and I went dirt cheap-ish.

Hi domerdel,

In addition to Mitchell's comments:

1. MacBooks and IMacs now have intel chips and can run Windows AND Mac OSX . The next generation of G5s (or whatever they'll be called) will as well. You/your company can have the best of both worlds.

2. COMPATIBILITY!!!! Most of the creative/graphics and prepress world is Mac oriented. Sending AND receiving files, art, images AND especially fonts cross platform can cause major issues and be very problematic.

3. The Mac OS is extremely STABLE and much to the chagrin of your IT dept, easy to maintain and simple to resolve. (less time and $ lost due to system crashes, freezes, etc). However, with all due credit, the stability issue that historically plagued the Windows OS has become much less an issue. PCs are becoming much more stable.

4. There are minimal viruses, spyware, worms and other sorted on-line maladies that can infect a Mac and OSX. There has been an increase in incidents however, it is a small fraction of the crud that bombards the PC world. Anti-virus people are just not keeping up with it.

Good luck

W2

[himself]

Actually, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Mac OX suffers from no viruses whatsoever. Spyware, worms, and trojans may be different (not that I've heard of any serious threats from any of those either), but those are likely only proof-of-concept anyway, and not out in the wild.

But I'd agree with the advice that was already given. Do some research on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), font and color management (add in some info on digital proofing and its cost savings if you really want to get their attention), prepress support, and reduced IT support, and draw up a proposal to present to your superiors. Once they actually see all that is involved in the design and production process and how the Mac (not MAC, by the way) is geared for these specific tasks, it would be really hard for them to justify not taking your advice.

You can probably find most of the info you need at apple.com/pro.

[iMOTOR]

Here's a simple challenge for anyone in opposition to having Macs in an Art Department:

Name one successful competitor that has a PC only Art Department.

If they can name any, I would guarantee they're not a serious competitor.


PS:

Sorry, I couldn't resist,

MAC=Media Access Control

Mac=Macintosh.

[red rocket]

Then again...

At the turn of the 1980s, there was a project called Annie inside Apple. Apple employee Jef Raskin was not happy with names such as “Lisa” and “Annie,” which represented a sexist approach according to him. He changed the project’s name to Macintosh, a deliberate misspelling of “McIntosh,” which is a variety of Apples.

McIntosh was also part of the name of a stereo manufacturer called McIntosh Labs. The name was brought under contention when Apple tried to trademark it, but Apple eventually managed to buy the trademark. During the legal battle, Apple considered acronyms such as MAC, for Mouse Activated Computer. There were alleged jokes within Apple that “MAC” actually was an acronym for Meaningless Acronym Computer. For a short while, there were even efforts to change the project’s name to Bicycle, which alluded to a quote from Steve Jobs about personal computers being “bicycles for the mind.”

"Meaningless Acronym Computer," lol.

[mitchell_pgh]

P.S. I'm in a similarly sized company and am the only person to have a Mac. In the 1.5 years of usage, I've never called the IT department.

I can't say the same for most other people.