Letters, We’ve Got Letters

By Doug Barney

In our last newsletter, I complained that Apple is doing little to nothing to address the business, IT, and engineering communities. Many of you agreed (so I’m not entirely crazy)!

Here we go:

“I ]am] probably one of the few supporters of Apple for the engineering world, mainly because when in college I supported Mac labs for multimedia efforts and got to use them extensively, and ]saw] some amazing stuff get done using them. I know the horsepower is there.

My “dream cluster” has always been to build a system of multiple G-series CPUs running Linux — but, even as an executive R&D manager could never get anybody in IT to step up. I needed a flexible, but speedy computational cluster to run CFD, FEA, and other programs for complex system analysis – but “if it can’t be done with Windows” forget it!

The software producers are partly at fault – they want to push the Windows based programs, and reap fat subscription fees. Only in the last couple years or so have the products begun to really be “desktop friendly”.

Nevertheless, I know from experience that the Apple technology is robust, simple to maintain, and blazing fast if configured right. If Apple had an engineering system that offered multiprocessor performance for strenuous computing, I’d take a solid look. —Jim

“I guess you missed the memo. Apple ceased to be a computer company and is now a consumer electronics company. Not that long ago, they changed their name from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. I hope this should make it self evident as to why you are not seeing what you want to see WRT Apple and their IT efforts (or the lack thereof).

They are made for the counter culture crowd who will do anything but to conform and of course with Apple’s recent popularity, it’s no longer cool to have an Apple in the /. world.

Having served in my former lives in both IT management and Engineering management, I can only speak from my own experience. It’s just not worth the effort to try to be an anything but Wintel house. … Why fight a losing battle? People much smarter (they make this stuff) already made the decision that it’s not worth it.” — Dominic

“I use SolidWorks at work and have a 24” dual core iMac at home. I could load my iMac with XP or Vista and do SolidWorks. I don’t think the hardware is the issue. The question may be whether SolidWorks (or whoever)  wanted to get serious about OSX. Maybe operating systems will converge in the future with the best of both worlds as a gift to all mankind! But until then I will suffer with Windows and keep IT pros employed and use OSX at home and keep my wife and myself carefree and happy. BTW, I do home recording using Apple logic and it is much superior to Windows apps. It just works.

I am not really an Apple fan but see that consumer and commercial markets are not the same in terms of expertise and support.”  —Richard