By silicon.com, 17 February 2009 08:00
COMMENT
Eager to use a Mac in the office? silicon.com's expert panel lets you know if it's possible.
Q: I want to use a Mac at work but it's not a standard option from our IT department. How can I convince them I should be allowed to use a Mac in the office?
Peter Cochrane, tech guru and silicon.com blogger:
The first point to understand is that IT departments tend to play it ultra-safe and often see new and different technologies as a big threat.
It is therefore unlikely they will help you and more likely they will dream up any number of excuses not to connect you. Among these will be: non-standard software posing a security threat; ditto non-standard or approved hardware; their inability to support Macs; infrastructure risks; company policy and so on.
So you basically have three choices: go with the flow and give up; go into battle and fight them; just do it and ask for forgiveness later!
I have always done the latter - and when they have played the 'no support card', I have pointed out that Mac users don't need much support.
If you take the 'go into battle' option, you need to find allies in the company - the higher up the better - and get them in on the agenda.
You can also search out all the giant corporations using Macs and offer these to your IT director as examples of how it can work. Or cite BP which encourages their people to buy their own kit and be support themselves.
If and when you crack this problem, tell everyone you know how to do it too!
Naked CIO, IT leader and silicon.com columnist:
If work places have a standard, there are generally reasons for it. I myself am in favour of policies of this nature - mainly because supporting and maintaining standard equipment is more effective, efficient and less costly.
However, sometimes there is a strong viable business reason for having a Mac that will make a user's working environment more functional. If you believe that a Mac is justified in terms of what your function is, then put these reasons down on paper to justify why you believe, in this case, an exception to standard policy should be extended.
Make sure there is a viable business reason beyond simply preference, and your chances will probably be better. Also please understand the necessity for standards in any work environment and while they may appear to be draconian, remember they will likely improve the business as a whole.
Seb Janacek, author of silicon.com column Minority Report:
If you want to convince the head of IT you should be given a Mac, you'll obviously need a compelling business-driven rationale. What will it be used for? What can it do that a Windows PC cannot?
If there isn't a genuine business need, there's no reason for even asking for one. That the head of marketing has a MacBook Air just doesn't cut it.
You might want to point out to the IT director how easy and cheap Macs are to support - they don't need to be constantly patched and monitored (though this info might go over less well with the helpdesk folks who may fear for their jobs).
You could make the head of IT feel slightly less anxious by pointing out that Macs can run Windows XP or even, heaven help you, Vista.
Do you have a question for our panel of experts? Send it to editorial@silicon.com. Or post a reader comment below.
Comments
There are 16 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Just tell IT that you need a Mac to work with your customers = e.g. to iChat, to publish (Pages) etc
You take the responsibility to maintain it.
You just need and IP address, please
I did just that and went away happy
2. anonymous
Buy it with your own money, use it for your own stuff.
If you ever use it for work, and if there's ever enough gratitude for what you've done to offer to pay a bonus, hand them a copy of the invoice.
If your employer is smart they'll match the invoice price and add a small extra. If they're not, then keep looking for another employer.
3. Dave
If they need reassurance - send them here - it dispells some myths about Macs in business:
http://store.apple.com/uk_smb_67752/browse/campaigns/mac_at_work
4. I hate Apple bois
Why in the world would you want to run the most propritary heap in a corporate environment anyway. Saddo journos excepted of course
5. Rob Garner
I,m with Peter, just bought one and started using it - now lots of people want to switch.
6. Kev
Have any of you EVER supported more than just yourself? The reasons that the authors make sound so trivial are in fact real. And by the way, after working in the suppport side for 20 years with both platforms, they are equally problematic. And when it comes time for support, the corporate help desk is the 1st place that is called. Perhaps we should also recommed that employees pick their own desk phone, utility provider, or management system. Heck, maybe employees can pick their own evalution and pay increase system.
7. Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
It also helps that a great deal of corporate apps are now browser based... so it really does not matter which type of OS or browser is being used to access the corporate network and apps...
8. anonymous
Just tell the HoIT that when the next virus catches out his security routine then he can borrow your Mac to download the fix: As HoIT I learned that lesson early and subsequently always had a MacBook handy - it saved the day more than once: I was always prepared to let any users have one too!
9. Ellen O
A Mac at work. It is very simple. Catch the IT boss in a compromising position, take a photo of him with your cell phone or Blackberry.
Tell him you have the photo and will anonymously send it to he company unless he allows you to use a Mac at work (and that the IT department should buy it for you).
It works every time.
10. Chris Anderson
First explain why your company should pay four times as much for a limited system that will not run the companies software packages. Then if you're thick enough, go and by one yourself and I'll gladly let you pug it in to my network if you prove to me it has adequate virus protection.
Of course if you're in Design or journalism this does not apply, as macs are your standard and your employers think if its more expensive it must be better.
11. Gary Sage
All great things come to those that ask - my experience has been that most enlightened companies will accede to a justified request to use a Mac.
As for the Kevs - most of us know what support is for - problem begins when support people begin to dictate policy based on whether they feel emotionally up to fulfilling their role or not.
BTW after converting from an all Win/PC to an all Mac office - we don't need 6 support people - one is enough.
12. Charles Smith
A Mac at work?
No problem - pay for your own support technician when anything goes wrong.
Oh you want support within 8 hours? Ok pay for to 2 hour response service.
If you want access to any of the company Applications please be sure to fund the conversion/emulation costs.
They are great for home and of course the Graphics Dept luvvie.
13. George
Why don't you see more expensive top-spec Mercedes company cars instead of Vauxhalls? They're so much nicer!
Oh yeah, because you'll pay twice as much for something that essentially does the same thing.
14. Richard Marshall
Like the PC equivalent of a Flat Earther, Charles Smith seems to have formed his opinions in the dark ages and is evidently disinclined to examine whether they have any basis in reality...
cf: "They are great for home and of course the Graphics Dept luvvie."
Strangely he's not alone in this stubbornly atavistic luddism. Several commenters here apparently formed their opinions once upon a time, long long ago, in a country lost in time... and never see any reason to reassess it, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.
Flat Earthers!
15. anonymous
What a lot of predicatable comments : expense (not on a like for like basis), too hard to support (I'll come to that), incompatible apps (ditto).
In my last job I had part of the job of supporting about 100 users. All I'll say about supporting the Mac users was - 20% of the users, probably only 5% of the support load.
IME the biggest hurdle will be incompatible apps. Well done to the person who suggested browser apps get around that - no they f***ing don't ! At my current place we have web based apps for all the management stuff - and nearly all of it works ONLY in Internet Explorer and ONLY on Windows. All the the developers work on the basis that nothing exists other than Windows and IE and aren't prepared to learn how to code the things properly. There's no excuse other than "can't be arsed".
At my last job, the parent company spent a lot of cash on having an intranet app built for them that was supposed to be cross platform - but guess what they found when we tried to use it with Macs, yup, it didn't work and the developer had been paid ages ago without this being tested !
Simple things like connecting to Windows file servers will be a problem - they need a simple registry setting to allow unecrypted connections as MS have done the encryption in a closed manner.
I use a Mac, but then I had the advantage of the MD having been more or less told to employ me by one of the larger shareholders when I was "let go" by my last employer - I simply made it clear that I would not be using Windows<period>.
One final point. To all those "use the standard unless you've got a business case" people - does tribunal payout for industrial injury count as a business case ? If I were forced to use Windows on a regular basis, then it would tip the balance in favour of work related stress. When you've used other systems, "looks and feels like Windows" is NOT a positive attribute - I find it the most horrible, user unfriendly, admin unfriendly, unintuitive pile of rubbish.
16. Peter Farrell-Vinay
I told my boss the client demanded it. I told the client the company used them as standard. The client really wanted the excuse. The client paid lots of money for me. My colleagues were evidently unhappy.