Mac and Business

Do many business people use macs? Or is business usually a PC world? I am heading off to college, but plan to work on wall street afterwords....thanks!

 

Every firm and/or business is different. I've worked in enviroments that have used both. It was up to the managers on what they wanted. Years back it was a know fact that Apples only required 10% of the time a PC did. My current finical adviser is using macs.

 

hmmm interesting thanks

 

Indeed it's all dependent on the business and what they do or what orientation they want. I know that at the office where I work part time(software development company) use both Macs and PCs but our servers are PCs on Windows.

That being said, if you're unsure buying a Mac does insure being able to run both platforms whereas a PC cannot run OSX.

 

Having interviewed around on Wall St. before on the technical side...they don't really use Mac anywhere. On the front end analysts run statistical packages and often Excel w/ Macros etc which currently won't work w/ Office for Mac. Traders run mostly custom software packages on huge multi-screened PC setups along w/ locked down $1,800/mon Bloomberg terminals so you really can't work on a non-connected system. Non-traders have VPN access but if they want you working from home, they give you a laptop which inevitably won't be a Mac. On the back end, the trading systems are often J2EE platforms that can pretty much be Unix, Linux, or even Windows but whether you have a Mac or a PC is irrelevant when working on enterprise software. A lot of times they preferred .NET front ends for rapid GUI development which sticks most clients with Windows systems.

It's a bit early to be basing computer buying decisions on a career path choice before you've taken your first class. I would lookup the courses at your school and find out what packages they use and base your decision on that rather than asking if Wall St. uses Macs b/c you're going to use whatever systems they use and you might as well find out if your courses will be Mac friendly or not. Your personal machine will long be obsolete by the time you finish and if you're not the janitor they'll be providing the systems so having Mac OS on your resume likely won't make a bit of difference. I assume you'll be doing either Finance/Econ and if you wind up using any stat packages I can safely guarantee none will force you to run OSX. You can certainly bootcamp a Mac into Windows and get by just fine but that's a personal decision if you like the computer or not. I don't recommend trying to make every program they require to run in OSX when its just easier to run Windows if that's how the course is taught.

 

thanks alot mishap! you work on wall street?

 

Medium-to-large size businesses are at least 95% Windows on their personal computers.

Some small businesses use Macs. And Macs are common among creative professionals such as graphic designers. But they are just not used much for business stuff at larger companies.

 

Nah, I took a shot at interviewing up there back in '06. I got out of my 1st undergrad in Econ from an Ivy in '03 but being clueless about recruiting and it being post 9/11 getting a job over there was tough. I did a 2nd undergrad in CS back home in Atlanta and after a yr of working in the tech industry I thought I'd give it a shot since a lot of my classmates had made their way over there and I had the NYC bug.

I interviewed w/ over a dozen companies (bulge bracket down to boiler rooms) and burned all my vacation days making 7-8 trips to NYC over a month span staying with friends but couldn't get anyone to give me a high enough offer to make NYC work out better than how I was doing in Atlanta. For the most part Wall St firms were looking for tech geniuses but anyone on the level they were looking at wanted to be on the trading floor and not writing code. I made it to the 3rd round (they flew me up just for the last round) of a quant hedge fund and got dinged for my Math SAT score not being high enough (95th% and it was a lot lower than my verbal). Given it was a room of PhD's, I could understand their desire for high test scores but I was going in as a developer. After that, I took a break and just moved companies in ATL (that paid more than most companies in NYC were offering) and started on my MBA.

If it's your lifelong dream to be a master of the universe on Wall St., get the grades and the internships and build your college plans around getting into the interviews. Also I hope you're in a school in the Northeast or a top 20 school otherwise b/c beyond that it can be rough getting the attention of a recruiter. If you're not in one of those schools, work on blowing out your classes and transferring or grad school. Of my classmates, a few have made it as high as director (note the guy's not yet 30) and makes stupid money but most are still VP at most and toiling away 60-80 hrs a week probably making only a bit more than me and dealing w/ 2-3k/mon in rent to live in Manhattan.

 

Macs are huge in academia. Another business next to artists that really thrives on these machines.

 

Thanks....im goin to rutgers this coming year for finance....as they may not be the best business school...it was the greatest deal for me because of money. They may not be a "top 20" school but i feel they have very strong ties with wall street companies. thanks for the info

 

in 4 years, we won't even be using laptops. we will be using something so futuristic and awesome that we can't even comprehend it yet.

 

Yeah, like IPad. lol

 

+1 , so true

 

Consumer - yes - Business - Highly doubtful.

 

Short answer - In business, typically - no - (and no I don't work on Wall Street, but I've worked in the Financial Services industry for over 15 years) - you rarely see few Apple/Mac/OSX applications and hardware across the enterprise. This is even more of a rule the larger the corporation is.

And that's for obvious reasons, Apple's products and applications are primarily consumer driven - not business driven.

Though, there's been a recent "up-tick" in usage recently. We have a *few* Macs (along with the iPad) for purely proof of concept scenarios/applications - however, it's solely R&D / Marketing - dog and pony show, etc. If anything there takes off from that perspective - odds are that it'd be ported to Windows and it's various technologies in order to develop and create the actual true product that would be brought to market.

Could that change? yes - but it'd be a major paradigm shift and a hard sell across the industry in order to facilitate such a move. Not to mention that the toolset(s) necessary to create and support enterprise-level applications on/with Apple products just isn't there, at least in a comparable form.

Additionally, if you're going to go that route - you might as well run direct Unix/Linux (OSX is, of course, a closed/proprietary Unix variant) - and not deal with the closed/proprietary system issues involved with developing/coding on Apple's platform.

 

Most business will use only Pc's , but hey you can always too buy using bootcamp.

 

business will be PC. it will remain PC because of Apple's high prices and ease of compatibility across corporate networks regarding support, software development, and network management.

remember, in the business world, computers are purely a means to an end. that means the cheaper the better, so long as they're reliable. that's why Lenovo and Dell do so well. they products are fairly reliable and they (well, speaking for Dell) have the best customer service in the business.

I know Apple's is great...you talk to Americans...blah blah blah. But Dell? they'll mail YOU parts next day air. they'll send someone to YOUR home or business to repair your machines. there's no back and forth...no hassle. no traveling to a "Dell Store" and making "an appointment with a Dell Genius" to get your stuff looked at. Call in, tell them what's wrong...parts in the mail next day or someone calling to schedule a in-office service inside of 24 hours.

There's really nothing Apple can do to find broad support on the enterprise level. too much need for cross-platform consistency. but yes, bootcamp is okay, I'm sure.

 

Actually Mac use in business is on the rise. IT departments are starting to appreciate that Macs cost less to manage and can be integrated easily.

 

The survey seems to be anecdotal given they just say higher or lower cost w/o any information on actual per machine spending, desktop/portable mix, and how PC/Mac %'s. If there are a few dozen Mac Pro machines used in the art dept compared to 10,000 laptops from 3-4 manufacturers in the rest of the workforce...the Macs won't be on the IT dept's radar. It also ignores the factors of user types. In most mixed computer environments, you don't distribute Macs to everyone b/c there's no cost justification. If the art guys have been using Macs since grade school, it's likely they can deal w/ their own issues w/o trying to contact the unwieldy beast that is the Help Desk. Hand a MBP to a clumsy consultant and it may not survive its first year regardless of being a sleek aluminum unibody or an iMac to someone almost computer illiterate and you're still going to deal w/ common support problems like messed up configurations, networking, and printing.

If I'm building a company from scratch, Mac should be a consideration. If you're consistent on hardware and users properly trained, there can be some cost savings if you shift everything to Apple stores. If working w/ existing infrastructure (licenses, support hardware, processes), then it's a much steeper justification given the problems you can run into transitioning and then trying to recoup the much higher up front costs. The higher capex up front may not look good compared to just having ongoing costs w/ a service contract or the occasional support person since you can't just ditch all support people by switching to Mac.

Macs also tend not to have the level of service options that are available to mobile workforces like Next Day Business service, on-site, and other options like going to 4 yrs. When my Nvidia card on my Dell died, the tech support was in my condo the next day repairing it. Imagine a consulting firm trying to get traveling consultants Genius Bar appts while they're on the road. If your workforce is always in a major city next to an Apple store or your own repair dept, then you can lower your support costs but otherwise you're in for a treat.

The OP wants to work on Wall St...most of his analytical courses will likely use Excel/VB and other primarily Windows based analysis packages. If the school uses Windows for its courses, then I'd use whatever they use out of simplicity. Mac Office 2011 may offer VB support but there's no guarantee it's 100% compatible so why add to the risk if they can clearly identify that a PC will in fact work?

 

I agree that a PC is the safer choice in this instance. My comment was based on others saying that Apple will never make it in business.

 

Yes - it's certainly on the rise - however, I'd maintain that it depends on the type of business where there is a rise. As with any "study" or poll - you can find criteria to support said study/poll. I'd be really more interested in what breadth / depth of the businesses/industry the study centered on (i.e. new businesses / established businesses? small or large - or both?)

There is also question of support, etc., to be addressed. Make no mistake, there are *just* as many issues identified with supporting Apple's OSX / Applications as there are with supporting other platforms and applications designed and developed for Microsoft / Unix / Linux. In business - it all boils down to marketshare, and what trends are happening, etc., to determine if a business makes a decision to fully support that platform as an enterprise alternative...

 

I wouldn't say "never" - however, until Apple chooses, as a company, to provide the necessary support, tools, management, required by business (as noted by ajreynol) - it won't become a viable alternative... It'll be simply a case-by-case alternative for people in positions that have the ability to justify that they "need" a Mac.

 

I am a CFO of a medical research institute. I run my Windows virtual server based accounting programs, Office, SPSS, CS4 and Acrobat on my 27 inch iMac using Parallels without any problems at all. Also running same programs at home on MBP.

 

translated: I use Windows for all my serious work.

you kinda did more to prove the point than OSX is not for serious business applications than to refute it. using a Mac at work means nothing if you're ultimately using Windows to get things done.

 

my comp has over 10k computers
only less than 1o Macs.
You got the idea.

 

What with that motorized carriage thing... no one uses those, a horse drawn carriage will get you everywhere you need to go, and everyone uses them!

 

Yes b/c a PC is driven by an Intel powered horse that is somehow exactly the same as the one in the Mac horse drawn carriage. Of course the Mac only has a 3 wheels, nice billet aluminum construction, and 3 models along w/ a serious price premium but they sure do look good. A Mac isn't some quantum leap into the future here...it's built in the same factories from 95% the same components alongside those outdated HP and Dell horse drawn carriages you look down upon so fervently.

Businesses aren't charities or popularity contests. If Mac makes sense, somebody will make a business case for them no matter how slick the HP sales guy is. For Wall St., it doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel even if it is a shiny sleek aluminum wheel which is the original poster's question which has been answered. Suggesting he buy a Mac to be part of the future is rather stupid if he winds up spending all his time inside Windows for compatibility reasons when its unlikely Wall St. will swap over to Mac software in the next 3-5 yrs given the sheer amt of infrastructure they have in place.

 

I never said it was a comparison... I also never suggested to get a Mac.

My point was more to the whole of business, not a single user... they stick to what they are currently using because thats what they use... why change cuz its working. just like COBOL is still highly used in business and taught in school... there is much better things available, but its so widely used people don't want to change.

 

You just gave me a headache just thinking about when I took COBOL in college. It drove me away from wanting to be a programmer, such a waste of time.

 

It's not that people don't want to change, it's that the cost of changing is greater than leaving the legacy system running. COBOL isn't really taught much in school anymore so programmers that can effectively use it are starting to command a premium. As long as that premium is less than the cost of developing a new system, they're going to keep using that b/c capital expenditures on a new system are far higher than paying a consultant to come and fix it here and there. It's why you see companies do leases instead of buying something outright...the cost of capital is greater than the interest rate (maintenance costs).

That said COBOL still does the job as effectively as many new systems today so its not exactly a horse drawn carriage. It's more akin to a 50 yr old diesel locomotive that's still working. It's more expensive to run than the new ones but doesn't require a big expenditure and re-training the whole workforce.

Of course the new trend is to move toward software as a service which negates the operating system issues and possibly making Macs more viable. Assuming Office 2010/2011 can better leverage their Azure cloud w/o resorting to all ActiveX, then the end user platform is far more agnostic. This means Macs do have a possible future in business if they can build a more solid support structure, provide real TCO savings and offer the types of service coverage that businesses want. I can see if products like Salesforce.com et al are the primary tool for a companies sales reps, Macs when combined w/ your standard Office Suite can essentially compete for corporate sales against Thinkpads. They may need an integrated WAN solution but those are shrinking by the day and I'm sure they can find a few sq in to squeeze one if when the day comes.

 

I can understand the thinking here but it doesn't take into considerations things like open office being a free replacement to MS office. MS office seems to be the biggest factor when people say they cannot switch to a Mac. As much as MS likes to say they fully support Macs with Office, they make sure there are enough differences that people are afraid to make the switch to a different operating system. MS knows that without the office advantage they will lose OS customers.

 

Actually, depending on the size of the business/corporation - the MS/Open Office applications are just a small part of the overall larger piece of puzzle. You have many other applications (VPN software, Enterprise Distribution and Management software, Anti-Virus Software, Driver Support, other internal/in-house developed business applications) that are in use by the business that may or may not have a direct equivalent on OS X (or Linux/Unix/[NameYourOSHere] for that matter).

Yes - MS Office may be one of the determining factors for the switch - but it's not the *sole* reason..