In Response offers a weekly roundup of feedback from TechRepublic members intended to help inform you and your peers about critical issues in the world of IT. This week, we view a few opinions from our members regarding the use of Macs on a PC network.
Some points from Point and Counterpoint
This week, In Response takes a page from the weekly Point and Counterpoint column, published every Friday here in the Support Republic. Recently, I asked TechRepublic members if it was a good idea to have Macs on a PC network. The response was tremendous. After receiving many e-mails and threaded discussions on the topic, I picked out a few responses that I thought best summarized the question at hand.

The members respond

  • Nichomach
    ”The success of Apple in resurrecting the Mac is neither an argument for nor an argument against its adoption; it’s irrelevant. The Mac may be easier to install, but if you have a mixed network, you’re complicating your support tasks needlessly.
    ”Macs are expensive for what you get. Macs come with the equipment for connecting to an Apple network built in. So there’s a lot of trouble trying to get it to play nicely with the other computers. NT has a friendly enough user interface, and if properly configured is also pretty hard to screw up.
    ”Anything a Mac can do, a PC can do faster, cheaper, and consistently with the rest of your network. As far as my network is concerned, over my dead body. No, actually, over the dead body of whichever yo-yo suggests it.”
  • Ellis M.
    ”This is my very first look at your site. I am writing this on my PowerBook G3, so it is obvious where I stand on this issue.
    ”We are a marketing and communications company that deals heavily in the graphic arts. We use Macintosh almost exclusively, even though the majority of our clients are PC-based. We find that the speed and flexibility of Macs allow us to create projects and convert them, when necessary, for use on PCs and save time in the overall process.
    ”Our Mac network downtime has been nearly zero for the past few years, thanks to our great IT department.”
  • Pat B.
    ”I have a network of roughly 250 computers of which about 80 are PCs. We run NT Workstation, W95, W98, and W2000 Professional. The remainder is Macs running OS 7.6.1 through 9.0.4. The servers are Windows NT 4 and W2000 Server.
    ”Everything works well. The statement that ‘the network runs better if all the machines are the same OS’ is simply not true. Admittedly, we are running two protocols: IP and AppleTalk. The PCs use IP for everything. The Macs use AppleTalk for network printing and file sharing to NT 4 Server. All other network activity is IP. There have been no adverse effects from this setup.
    ”We have Macs that have never been touched by IT in three years because they work so well. Other Macs receive constant attention, but only because the users can’t keep their hands off the System Folder. So the comment that ‘it’s almost impossible to screw up a Mac’ is untrue… a tinkering user can screw one up royally.”
  • Cav
    ”As has been pointed out in this thread, you should pick the best equipment for the job—not what makes you comfortable. We have a mixed Mac/NT/Windows network that is about 40 percent Mac. I have no more problems to deal with than I would with a one-platform environment.
    ”However, I do have to be informed on what is going on with each platform, resulting in more work, but on the plus side I wind up spending almost twice as much time dealing with PC problems as I do with Mac problems. The Macs actually make my day-to-day work easier.”

In Response offers a weekly roundup of feedback from TechRepublic members intended to help inform you and your peers about critical issues in the world of IT. This week, we view a few opinions from our members regarding the use of Macs on a PC network.
Some points from Point and Counterpoint
This week, In Response takes a page from the weekly Point and Counterpoint column, published every Friday here in the Support Republic. Recently, I asked TechRepublic members if it was a good idea to have Macs on a PC network. The response was tremendous. After receiving many e-mails and threaded discussions on the topic, I picked out a few responses that I thought best summarized the question at hand.

The members respond

  • Nichomach
    ”The success of Apple in resurrecting the Mac is neither an argument for nor an argument against its adoption; it’s irrelevant. The Mac may be easier to install, but if you have a mixed network, you’re complicating your support tasks needlessly.
    ”Macs are expensive for what you get. Macs come with the equipment for connecting to an Apple network built in. So there’s a lot of trouble trying to get it to play nicely with the other computers. NT has a friendly enough user interface, and if properly configured is also pretty hard to screw up.
    ”Anything a Mac can do, a PC can do faster, cheaper, and consistently with the rest of your network. As far as my network is concerned, over my dead body. No, actually, over the dead body of whichever yo-yo suggests it.”
  • Ellis M.
    ”This is my very first look at your site. I am writing this on my PowerBook G3, so it is obvious where I stand on this issue.
    ”We are a marketing and communications company that deals heavily in the graphic arts. We use Macintosh almost exclusively, even though the majority of our clients are PC-based. We find that the speed and flexibility of Macs allow us to create projects and convert them, when necessary, for use on PCs and save time in the overall process.
    ”Our Mac network downtime has been nearly zero for the past few years, thanks to our great IT department.”
  • Pat B.
    ”I have a network of roughly 250 computers of which about 80 are PCs. We run NT Workstation, W95, W98, and W2000 Professional. The remainder is Macs running OS 7.6.1 through 9.0.4. The servers are Windows NT 4 and W2000 Server.
    ”Everything works well. The statement that ‘the network runs better if all the machines are the same OS’ is simply not true. Admittedly, we are running two protocols: IP and AppleTalk. The PCs use IP for everything. The Macs use AppleTalk for network printing and file sharing to NT 4 Server. All other network activity is IP. There have been no adverse effects from this setup.
    ”We have Macs that have never been touched by IT in three years because they work so well. Other Macs receive constant attention, but only because the users can’t keep their hands off the System Folder. So the comment that ‘it’s almost impossible to screw up a Mac’ is untrue… a tinkering user can screw one up royally.”
  • Cav
    ”As has been pointed out in this thread, you should pick the best equipment for the job—not what makes you comfortable. We have a mixed Mac/NT/Windows network that is about 40 percent Mac. I have no more problems to deal with than I would with a one-platform environment.
    ”However, I do have to be informed on what is going on with each platform, resulting in more work, but on the plus side I wind up spending almost twice as much time dealing with PC problems as I do with Mac problems. The Macs actually make my day-to-day work easier.”
  • Hugh K.
    ”I currently support four Macs on an NT network. These machines are a nightmare to the tech support staff. No one is trained to support these machines, and why should they be, when Macs represent such a small proportion of the total. Resources directed toward the Macs tend to be at the expense of the majority of users. It is more a matter of economics than which machine is ‘better.’”
  • Adrian G.
    ”I work for a school district and our schools run both Macs and PCs on a single network. In my experience, running Macs on a network is problematic. If Apple would stop shooting themselves in the foot by releasing OS upgrades that you have to pay for and run pure IP, it would be better. Also, the folks at 3com and Cisco charge extra money to run AppleTalk protocols on their equipment.
    ”If the folks at Apple would just give in and give up in the networking area and do what Novell and Microsoft did—stick with industry networking standards—they might be ‘apple’ to concentrate on what they do best: desktop multimedia and making it impossible for vendors to write software for one OS before they charge for the next one.
    ”The fact that the real world is mostly PC is beside the point.”
  • Gary W.’s reasons to run Macs on a network:
    1. Macs are much easier to install.
    2. Macs are much easier to maintain.
    3. Macs can be networked right out of the box.
    4. Macs are an order of magnitude easier to learn to use.
    5. There are clients available to support most popular client/server databases.
    6. Skills learned on one Mac application transfer to others easily due to the user interface standards Apple set up 17 years ago, while the first Mac was still in the planning stage. Since then, Mac publications and users have given thumbs down to applications that did not follow all the standards.
    7. Apple supports the OS, including automatic software updates for those with Internet connections.
    8. MHz for MHz, they are faster than IBM clone machines.
    9. You can get UNIX and Linux for Macs, although the support is not great.
    10. With Windows NT & 2000, Mac and PC users can easily share files through shared volumes on the server.
    11. Apple offers software that allows Macs to “see” PCs on the network.
    12. There are third party packages that allow direct networking of Macs and PCs, including file exchange and format conversion.
    13. Many of the market leading applications support both platforms, and some even use identical file formats, at least for their application specific proprietary formats.
    14. Apple provides, and others market, extensive file conversion packages for converting file formats that cannot be used on other platforms “as-is.”
    15. Macs have had built-in networking support since 1984. Almost every Mac model introduced since the PowerPCs has had built-in Ethernet. The Mac OS has had standard peer-to-peer file sharing standard support since OS 7.

Do you have an opinion on this topic?
You’ve heard the thoughts from a few of your peers, but what do you think? Feel free to express your thoughts on the topic by posting a comment or sending us a note.
By submitting a response, you agree to let TechRepublic publish your thoughts on its Web site. You also agree that TechRepublic may adapt and edit and authorize the adaptation and editing of each submission, as it deems necessary. TechRepublic may or may not publish a submission at its sole discretion.

  • Hugh K.
    ”I currently support four Macs on an NT network. These machines are a nightmare to the tech support staff. No one is trained to support these machines, and why should they be, when Macs represent such a small proportion of the total. Resources directed toward the Macs tend to be at the expense of the majority of users. It is more a matter of economics than which machine is ‘better.’”
  • Adrian G.
    ”I work for a school district and our schools run both Macs and PCs on a single network. In my experience, running Macs on a network is problematic. If Apple would stop shooting themselves in the foot by releasing OS upgrades that you have to pay for and run pure IP, it would be better. Also, the folks at 3com and Cisco charge extra money to run AppleTalk protocols on their equipment.
    ”If the folks at Apple would just give in and give up in the networking area and do what Novell and Microsoft did—stick with industry networking standards—they might be ‘apple’ to concentrate on what they do best: desktop multimedia and making it impossible for vendors to write software for one OS before they charge for the next one.
    ”The fact that the real world is mostly PC is beside the point.”
  • Gary W.’s reasons to run Macs on a network:
    1. Macs are much easier to install.
    2. Macs are much easier to maintain.
    3. Macs can be networked right out of the box.
    4. Macs are an order of magnitude easier to learn to use.
    5. There are clients available to support most popular client/server databases.
    6. Skills learned on one Mac application transfer to others easily due to the user interface standards Apple set up 17 years ago, while the first Mac was still in the planning stage. Since then, Mac publications and users have given thumbs down to applications that did not follow all the standards.
    7. Apple supports the OS, including automatic software updates for those with Internet connections.
    8. MHz for MHz, they are faster than IBM clone machines.
    9. You can get UNIX and Linux for Macs, although the support is not great.
    10. With Windows NT & 2000, Mac and PC users can easily share files through shared volumes on the server.
    11. Apple offers software that allows Macs to “see” PCs on the network.
    12. There are third party packages that allow direct networking of Macs and PCs, including file exchange and format conversion.
    13. Many of the market leading applications support both platforms, and some even use identical file formats, at least for their application specific proprietary formats.
    14. Apple provides, and others market, extensive file conversion packages for converting file formats that cannot be used on other platforms “as-is.”
    15. Macs have had built-in networking support since 1984. Almost every Mac model introduced since the PowerPCs has had built-in Ethernet. The Mac OS has had standard peer-to-peer file sharing standard support since OS 7.

Do you have an opinion on this topic?
You’ve heard the thoughts from a few of your peers, but what do you think? Feel free to express your thoughts on the topic by posting a comment or sending us a note.
By submitting a response, you agree to let TechRepublic publish your thoughts on its Web site. You also agree that TechRepublic may adapt and edit and authorize the adaptation and editing of each submission, as it deems necessary. TechRepublic may or may not publish a submission at its sole discretion.