[superblue]

We're a small, young Tokyo-based design agency focussing predominantly on web work. We're currently split between Macs (OS X) and Windows (2000). My boss isn't impressed with the performance of OS X and is thinking of moving entirely to Windows.

Production-wise we're using Macromedia and Photoshop products, no hard-core programming or anything. We may move into video work eventually too.

I want to stay Mac, but need to put forward solid arguments as to why. I agree with his performance point at the moment - the Windows boxes beat app on app performance, not to mention browsing speed and initial purchase cost everytime. But I'm confident that within the next year or so, OS X will catch up on pure speed. Whilst I'm well aware of the useability advantages OS X offers, it's difficult to quantify that and put it in a report.

I'm the only non-Japanese staff in the company, and OS X's international strengths are a real bonus for me - but that means little to the other members of the team. And whilst I'm well aware of the ease of maintenance with OS X, evertyone else comes from a Windows (or Mac OS >9) background, so OS X is foreign to them and actually initially more difficult than Windows.

So put your thinking caps on for me and help me write a good report this weekend!!

[dbergstrom]

The front page of MacNN this morning had a link to an InfoWorld article praising the use of Mac OS X (both client and server) in a business environment. The quality of the interface and ability to massively multitask were some of the big winners.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/...OPcurve_1.html

You can cite that in your report.

[Eug]

For video: Final Cut Pro, and if you're gonna get into DVDs, then DVD Studio Pro.

[moreno]

buy a mac for yourself. save your agency of the X doggie performance and work with windows.
The Macromedia Flash application is fast, clean and not buggy on windows.

[- - e r i k - -]

Tell him to wait till after Panther.

[superblue]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Tell him to wait till after Panther.

We're already using Jaguar - have been all year. Moving to Windows would mean investing in additional PCs and relegating the current Macs (2 G4s) to nothing more than testing cross-platform compatibility.

The way I see it now, is that performance-wise, OS X is coming out of a trough, and will before long catch up with Windows... what I'm wondering is whether or not Windows will go into a similar trough in a few years when they update to Longhorn... If so, then putting up with the performance difference now would put us in a good position come that update...

Re: Moreno's post, I have my own Mac, so it's not just a case of trying to get myself a fancy computer at work! However I can't deny my personal preference to OS X, and don't want to disadvantage the company by putting that preference above what's best.

Re: dbergstrom's post - thanks for the link. Although it's more technical than I need, the multi-tasking point is a good and relevant one.

[DaGuy]

Is speed the only factor for leaving? Here are some factors for staying.

1. Lower maintanence costs.
2. Higher speed, if you upgrade.
3. So much better security
4. Better user experience = productivity
5. You are not hip or with it, if you don't have a mac, period.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by superblue:
I want to stay Mac, but need to put forward solid arguments as to why. I agree with his performance point at the moment - the Windows boxes beat app on app performance, not to mention browsing speed and initial purchase cost everytime.

Panther reportedly offers a large speed improvement over Jaguar, so like the others said, wait for it. Also, be realistic about your expectations based on what hardware you have - if your G4 is a three-year-old dual 500, for example, you can't expect it to compare to the latest Pentium IV 3 Ghz. See if you can find some way for your boss to see what performance is like on a G5, especially after Panther comes out. Its performance will compare favorably to any PC.

If you can't show him a G5 in person, give him this article from PC Magazine (not going to have any Mac bias there!) which has tests that caused them to conclude that "the G5 is generally as fast as the best Intel-based workstations currently available". Point out to him that the G5's in this test were running Jaguar, so a new G5 with Panther on it would be even faster.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1274138,00.asp

I'm the only non-Japanese staff in the company, and OS X's international strengths are a real bonus for me - but that means little to the other members of the team.

What?! If the staff are Japanese, they should understand the advantages of OS X's excellent Unicode support!

And whilst I'm well aware of the ease of maintenance with OS X, evertyone else comes from a Windows (or Mac OS >9) background, so OS X is foreign to them and actually initially more difficult than Windows.

So what? OS X is not hard to use - they will learn quickly, and once they do, they will have a much easier time because they won't have to worry about stupid things happening when the Registry gets corrupted, and they won't have to reinstall Windows XP once every two months and then spend two weeks getting their system the way it was each time!

[theolein]

There are a number of points that OSX really does have in its favour. I'll run through the way I see it (and my last job was system admin for 20 WinXP computers in an NT/Netware network).

Security: OSX is by default more secure than Windows. This is a point that I noticed so often in my last job (and recent security problems with Windows such as the RPC vulnerability exploited by the MSBlast virus). With Windows, you can keep your machines secure, but it is a lot of extra, unecessary work. You have to make sure there is a good firewall up, that the Windows systems are patched and that Outlook's scripting is turned off. And you always have to be very vigilant in keeping the anti virus software up to date. OSX is less vulnerable due to the default firewall, no known virues, its unix permissions system and its PPC cpu and its decent mail software.

Flexibility: OSX runs all the software you need for web design and devlopment. Adobe, Macromedia and Microsoft software run on OSX. Apache, PHP and MySQL run in their unix configuration (which is how they will be deployed). You have the full complement of unix tools (perl, python, tcl, gcc) as well as an excellent integrated java environment which will be very important for your company's future if you start doing Java backend stuff. Not only this, but OSX integrates itself into both Windows as well as unix networks without having to install or buy extra software.

Reliability: Macs have a deserved reputation for high quality of manufacturing. I have never had the sort of part breakdown regularity that I have had with Dell or no name machines, which were, on a percentage basis, very bad. OSX is very robust, which means you are less likely to lose time with system down time, due to software crashes.

Windows has certainly improved in that Windows 2000 and XP are quite stable, and Adobe and Macromedia wrote the last iteration of their applications with Winodws in mind. Adobe seems to have changed this with their CS suite, and I'm sure that Macromedia will work better with Panther as well.

I think it would be premature and short sighted of your company to discard OSX as a work platform.

[beg-ne]

You can add this to your report. The source code for Half-Life was stolen by a hacker using exploits in Microsofts shoddy products.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1307532,00.asp


Although its "just" a game, valve has potentially lost Millions in licensing their engine and sales. As anyone, most importantly their competition now has access to 4 years worth of programming work. As well as cheaters who can write exploits with ease.

In terms of your company, a hacker could use exploits to hack in to your companies Windows based computers, steal the source files for Flash work, or any coding you use, such as secure login areas for any of your clients etc.

Here is an article abouth how windows is insecure by design:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true

There are currently tens of thousands of active windows viruses out there and currently ZERO for Mac OS X. OS X is built on stable and proven UNIX, is much more secure out of the box, and won't require constant maintenance to keep your machines running and virus free.

Here is an article on the number of viruses for Mac and windows:
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2003/08/29.1.shtml

My expereince at work using a 2Ghz PC vs. my 800Mhz iBook regarding "slowness" only looks bad against the Mac on the surface. Windows may appear faster because its UI is more primitive and does much less than OS X, however when the system comes under stress the UI will tend to freeze up or do weird things where as the Mac handles increased load fine. Panther should feel much faster as well.

Also my work PC is in dire need of a reformat and reinstall, this will be the second time in just over a year. I simply can't afford to take the time to reinstall.

Furthermore upon installing WinXP SP1 three of Microsofts competitors products no longer worked. I was unable to install a new build of Mozilla after apply the patch for about a month as all installers would crash when ran, including the same version i had prior to updating XP.

Java could no longer draw windows correctly for about 3 months until 1.4.2 beta came out.

And RealPlayer no longer can play video at all sans the first frame of any movie, i have tried uninstalling and reinstalling every version of RealPlayer, deleting every file and preference related to it etc, and to this day cannot view real video files on my XP box.

We also use lots of fonts on our computers and it seems that some of them are corrupt (nothing wrong with the fonts themselves just windows corrupting them when it installs them as removing and reinstalling can fix this) as selecting that font in any application, such as Flash, Fireworks etc. will instantly blue screen the system. Not very graceful and I highly doubt OS X would do the same.

[piracy]

You will likely be extremely interested in some of the stories and resources discussed here, in MacInTouch's "Macintosh Justification" series:

http://www.macintouch.com/macjust.html
http://www.macintouch.com/macjust02.html
http://www.macintouch.com/macjust03.html

[mitchell_pgh]

Look to what the big boys use and follow. They are all using Mac. VERY few design firms are using Windows... and the few that do tend to have major issues... and big pockets.

[superblue]

Thanks for all the input everyone, I've got a good range of source material now... time to get stuck into the report!