15+ year tech field worker here with approximately 400 deployed win 7 boxes, most of which have dual video cards supporting 4 monitors. Maybe your IT team sucks, but with products out there like Operations/Configuration Manager/HP SIM, I'm down to one helpdesk guy. My infrastructure guy pushes out driver updates to all 400 boxes in seconds. Same for configuration changes. If a machine crashes for some reason I can PXE boot the machine remotely and push a fresh OS over the wire, and with all user settings stored on the server, my helpdesk guy doesn't even need to touch the machine. Whole process takes 10 minutes from beginning to end. All our boxes run SSD's and heat sink based video cards/CPU's, so they are pretty much solid state except for the PSU fan. Unless you manage 10,000+ old computers, there's something seriously wrong if you have to touch that many computer's per day.
I wasn't talking OSX in a corporate environment, I was answering the OPs question as to wether it was worth going all apple at home. I'm not in IT, I'm a systems engineer for the military. My team and I deploy our systems to various desert locales, so it's not a matter of "call the helpdesk" for us, ever. If shit breaks in the field I/we have to fix it, and in my experience that happens a lot. If your environment is comprised entirely of the absolute best of the best like you say it is - first off, that's an enviable position to be in, but secondly one might question the financial justification for people like secretaries, admins and general marketing schleps needing hardware that current. I'll go out on a limb and say that your "everyone has an SSD" environment is not the norm.
Meanwhile, I've yet to find a competent network management product to handle our few macs. Apple support doesn't give a shit that we're a company when we call and are treated like any other consumer. Constantly deal with domain login issue's with the Mac's, of which apple has already issued three patches to try and correct. Apple's answer? Take them off the domain and use mac mini's as servers.. ROFL. You may have issues handling your PC network which is fine, but I'd be curious as to whether you think you could manage the same number of macs any easier..
Everything is tailored to Windows, so it makes sense that managing them is a lot easier. There's a reason my environment is mixed Windows/Linux. Price being the main point, but not far behind that is exactly what you're referring to - large scale support for OSX just isn't there. I won't disagree with that at all, especially with virtualization being about as good as it's ever been.
Again, I am NOT saying that OSX is the best for a corporate environment. I'm saying that as a guy who uses it at home I'm glad I do. I AM saying, however, that if someone tries to tell me that they 400+ Windows boxes and never have a problem, they are full of shit. I mentioned that I spent 10+ years in IT and have an MSCE to point out that I'm a pretty solid Windows guy, and despite what every anti-Apple person things, not everyone that posts something complimentary about OSX is posting it from Starbucks while sporting a neckbeard and a turtleneck sweater while listening to Radiohead.
Edit: And in response to the obligatory neg:
Izo_sl said:
Apple server, apple backbone devices, apple storage, apple business backend, apple supprt for corporations? No? Sounds like you were never an IT manager but more of front desk on the floor guy - Izo
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here, but the "path" to being an IT manager usually involves wearing all of the other hats beforehand. Not that it matters, but like most people in that position I started out as a desktop guy, then a network/sysadmin, then moved up to have my own staff. IMO, someone that just gets a degree and dives into any kind of tech job is not going to be as good as someone that's actually slogged their way up the chain. There's a reason they say "everything works in the lab". You can build the most to-the-letter-perfect network/system environment imaginable, and everything goes out the window the instant you add several hundred end users to it. You can't teach that kind of thing, or the kind of patience it takes to realize that sometimes you just need to do the same exact thing a few times in a row for it to "fix" the problem. That's especially true for windows. Good IT staff are hard to come by. I know plenty of people with degrees who are awful at their job, and plenty of guys who just have the knack for it who are amazing.
