Inertia and the best machine for the job

Posted on August 16, 2003 @ 13:55 in General

Robert Cringely wonders in his latest column why large organizations don't use more Macs, even as the number of Linux machines rises. According to Cringely it comes down to the fact that Macs in general need so little attention from the IT staff, that they would effectively be making themselves superfluous.

I used to think it came down to nerd ego. Macs were easy to use, so they didn't get the respect of nerds who measured their testosterone levels by how fluently they could navigate a command line interface. Now, I think differently. Now, I think Macs threaten the livelihood of IT staffs. If you recommend purchasing a computer that requires only half the support of the machine it is replacing, aren't you putting your job in danger? Exactly.

Cringely thinks that Windows and Linux have enough knobs to twiddle with to keep the IT staff busy. For Cringely this is only part of another, bigger argument, but thinking about the big organisation I'm working in myself, a university, I think there are a couple of other factors to be considered. Especially when you think that our IT department recently refused to take any responsibility for a pretty standard PC that wasn't purchased through them. And this is an organisation that a few years ago squeezed the last Macs out of the only Mac stronghold we ever had: the philosophy department.

So why are only the Dell machines purchased by the IT department supported? I think the main factor is inertia (and the other reason of course is bureaucracy). Wintel machines make up the bulk of all office machines deployed and changing that is like changing course on an oil tanker: it can be done, but you need miles and miles of wide open sea to even make the slightest adjustment in direction. Inertia is not only a technical thing, where all the backoffice stuff like automatic updates, Systems Management Server, and the training of the IT staff is geared towards supporting Wintel machines, but it's also a social thing, because people, IT staff included, generally don't appreciate change and the new as much as they like what they already know. Gradual change, enhancements are often chose above radical changes. So why is Linux making some inroads? One benefit it has over Mac OS is that it generally uses the same hardware as Windows. That might seem only a small issue, but thinking about it in terms of inertia, it means that you're repurposing existing hardware (that you already know) to run a new kind of software, whereas switching to Mac OS means that you're going to deal with both new hardware and new software. Probably another reason why an X86 port of Mac OS X would be a good idea.

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  1. Hello. Just thought I'd post a quick nuance on this rather... slandering blog, crowning IT-technicians world-wide lazy no-change-allowed ticks.

    1. "Mac means so much less work than an intel box"
    No, no and no. What demands work is supporting *different* platforms at the same spot. MacOS doesn't mean any less work for an IT-technician. When it comes to the comparison to Intel/*nix-boxes, that's a very uninformed statement. MacOSX is built upon Unix, so the "command-line fetish" of the IT-technician isn't lost. In fact, most IT-technicians I know prefer Mac over PC nowadays.

    2. "Macs were thrown out by IT-technicians who wanted to prove their value with more cumbersome machines"
    I'm sorry, but apparently you weren't around in the days of apple-talk. Believe you me, getting rid of macs back in the birthing days of ethernet was a tremendous lowering of work-burden. And all that work you think they do because the Wintel computer is so bad and always break, they would've had to be doing with a mac as well. Also, much of the work you see but don't understand is them making things that make your everyday work possible and better. You don't see it, just like a husband doesn't see his wife everyday cleaning the house, just like him you just see the status quo of normality, and think you work so much harder and she just sits around with her friends chatting.

    3. "IT-technicians have to prove their worth by keeping with cumbersome hw/sw"
    Do you own a car? Has that car ever broken down? Did you then take it to a garage? How many cars did that garage have to fix, would you say? And how many such garages were there per capita, give or take? Now consider one IT-technician, say at a university. He most likely has around 30 employess to support, and then some guest appearances. To that, there's probably around 50 computers for the students. This one person must handle not only the engine breaking down, to stick with the car analogy, but also teaching people to drive, getting all the crap when they misread a traffic sign and end up in the canal, he has to salvage wrecked cars, take care of break-ins - where he also is expected to get all the stolen stuff back - and he has to perform - most of the times forcefully - mileage check-ups. Add to this, he most likely also must know how to build a car, and how to build roads, signs, and maps.
    And you tell me that this car-repair-guy is lazy? Please.

    And please please please, if only people could get it into their heads - COMPUTERS ARE ALWAYS DEFECT. It is NOTHING short of a MIRACLE that a computer works! That you can have that sort of machine in your HOME! That your 2-year old SON can use it! THAT is amazing - that it EVER works. That should be the exception to normality. When we get used to magic, the magicians become grunt workers. But don't forget, without them, there would be no magic.

    Posted by Pete on August 19, 2003 @ 13:50

  2. Well, I hope most of that critique is directed at Cringely's column and not my post, because I certainly didn't mean to say any of the things you mention under 1, 2 or 3. And I certainly don't think that I have said that IT staffers are a lazy bunch.

    I agree though that I could have been clearer on the fact that I don't necessarily agree with what Cringely is saying. In fact, I don't really agree with what he's saying in this column (especially that Macs would be less work than other computers), but I do find it interesting that there are so few Macs in larger organisations, whereas Linux seems to be gaining some ground.

    Your point that supporting two different platforms is what makes a lot of work is a point well taken. However, that raises the question /why/ Linux should be gaining ground on the corporate desktop and not Macs. Linux and Windows are two different platforms, are they not? One of the points I make addresses that point specifically, and I offer that Linux might have an advantage here, because it (generally) shares the same hardware platform with Windows.

    The other point that I'm introducing is not very much about the technology at all, but about 'big organisation culture' and the fact that change there doesn't happen that easily.

    As for Macs being thrown out in favor for more cumbersome machines, whereas Macs can be as or more cumbersome... Well, that was more a remark at big organisations tendency to homogenise and unify their organisation's image and experience as much as they can. One dept. clinging to their Macs is the Gallic village kind of resistance you find in the Asterix comics. I tend to prefer independents over large chains and I like to see a bit resistance to the great swathes of homogenised anything.

    So, in short, if you're a hard working IT staffer, come on over and let me hug you! Especially if you're the guy or girl who can convince the IT management to install a spamfilter on our Exchange server.

    Posted by Frank on August 19, 2003 @ 14:26

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