iMAC's in QPs and Lounges

[2muchplastic]

Someone's gone and changed the thread title!

Pedantry.

That's ok then. I thought I was going mad for a moment!

 

[BlueAU]

Just to add more to the Mac vs PC. I am a Mac user, I've used them since 1987, yes, the old Apple IIe's !!!

Having said that, I am also a PC user, but only in the work place if they don't have Mac's. My last work place was 100% Mac and everyone loved it. All the newbies to the company were PC users usually and hated moving to Mac, they had no choice, but now they converted their home to macs. It's pretty efficient. My home is now 100% mac and cisco, in the process of converting parents. I run vmware at home on my laptop so I can use blackberry desktop manager to update the rom on my blackberry, and also use IE 8 to see compatibility with some sites I've developed.

I now no longer argue with people why a PC is better or a Mac is better.

The other day I had to setup my Dad's PC. I had to ghost it, put Windows 7 on it, install all the apps, some drivers and Office. This took about 4 hours. Yesterday I setup a new Macbook Pro 15". Installed apps, office, OS X was already on there, so just did 10.6.2 patches. It only took under an hour.

I know Mac is more expensive, but Apple is a "luxury" computer, which is probably why they try to appear in public places, TV shows and movies to "be flash".

Apple makes hardware, and their own software, so they can tweak things to be optimal and efficient. Some of the Apple marketing videos are clver, but actually do have some truths, ie energy savings and how they manufacture things like 7 hour batteries and batteries that can take 1000 cycles before requiring replacement. Now that's cool!

Anyway, if someone wants a PC then let them have a PC.
If they don't want a mac, don't force them, it's like forcing someone to lose weight when they don't want to .... they have to make the step.

But once they make the step, there is NO going back to the dark side

 

[oz_mark]

Re: HKG Qantas First/Business Class Lounge

Hope you get it back soon - back in the day you'd just swap out the card in the store, so I hope it's nothing too serious. I've witnessed a few Nokia nightmares, so I would certainly hope it's nothing like that.

Been to the shop - but not resolved at that level, so off to Mac hospital it was...

 

[samh004]

In relation to Mac’s in lounges, I guess they’re quite popular these days and quite often you’ll see a fair percentage of people in the lounge with a mac, so to be fair to them when they don’t have their laptops with them, there should be equal numbers of Windows and Mac boxes.

I suppose you could make an argument for Linux, but I’m not so sure there’s such a high percentage of Linux users who fly enough to use lounges.

Either way, it’s nice to have your default OS waiting for you when you get to a lounge, whatever that is.

 

[thewinchester]

This whole mac vs. pc debate for the lounge computers gives rise to an interesting suggestion.

There's obviously a sizable portion of people who are used to PC's - so why not just make the mac's dual boot, or add a windows virtual machine - with a simple menu or desktop icon option allowing you to switch operating systems.

Saves the windows users being put out of their comfort zone and would reduce demands on lounge staff from people asking 'how do I do this?'.

 

[samh004]

This whole mac vs. pc debate for the lounge computers gives rise to an interesting suggestion.

There's obviously a sizable portion of people who are used to PC's - so why not just make the mac's dual boot, or add a windows virtual machine - with a simple menu or desktop icon option allowing you to switch operating systems.

Saves the windows users being put out of their comfort zone and would reduce demands on lounge staff from people asking 'how do I do this?'.

I suppose virtualization could work, as performance isn’t that highly sought after in a lounge is it? But dual booting takes more time to do than just starting a virtual machine.

Besides all that happens when you dual boot is you get a load of macs with Windows running on them constantly and then everyone asks, why didn’t they just buy cheaper dell boxes

I wonder what you’d find in Photo Booth on these machines

 

[BlueAU]

I wonder what you’d find in Photo Booth on these machines

For HKG lounge: Security policy settings clear caches, files and everything else. It is treated as a guest user. I tested this at the HKG lounge

 

[drewbles]

This whole mac vs. pc debate for the lounge computers gives rise to an interesting suggestion.

There's obviously a sizable portion of people who are used to PC's - so why not just make the mac's dual boot, or add a windows virtual machine - with a simple menu or desktop icon option allowing you to switch operating systems.

Saves the windows users being put out of their comfort zone and would reduce demands on lounge staff from people asking 'how do I do this?'.

Virtulisation is not going to work in an environment such as the qantas club (under VMWare/Parallels type arrangement). Too many support headaches for people.

Yes, you could have them working under boot camp but then the question of 'why buy macs?' comes up when Dell and the like do a lot of small, neat compact desktops that would suit the bill for pc.

just 'switching' OS's isn't that simple for most. I'm sure the lounge staff don't want to keep hearing the mac 'ding' all day as people change to PC.

One option would be to use windowed modes of VMware to run PC programs in a stand alone window within 10.6's environment so it appears to be a standalone app, but it's all too complex if something breaks.

What are the computers really used for in lounges? web browsing, the odd bit of document printing and maybe some IM'ing. The Mac is perfectly capable of it, and if they put a few links on the desktop saying 'browse web' 'microsoft word/excel/powerpoint' etc, most people will not even mind. Office will save in a docx or non docx format for compatibility so there should be no issue.

I use VMware on a daily basis (as MS refuses to release Visio for Mac and I'm still far quicker in that than something like Concept Draw, and I have a lot of visio icons that simply don't work in any other program for my job) and it's clunky without memory. I have 2 gig in my machine which is probably under-spec'd these days, but windows runs exceedingly slow, even with all the settings tweaked to give more cpu/ram to the vmware process.

I guess the real viable option would be to have both Windows and Macs

 

[tuapekastar]

Someone's gone and changed the thread title!

Pedantry.

That's not pedantry ...this is pedantry - A Mac is a PC! <hides behind desktop PC>

 

[anat0l]

That's not pedantry ...this is pedantry - A Mac is a PC! <hides behind desktop PC>

Strictly speaking, you are correct.

 

[Skoogle]

There's obviously a sizable portion of people who are used to PC's - so why not just make the mac's dual boot, or add a windows virtual machine - with a simple menu or desktop icon option allowing you to switch operating systems.

Windows 7 running on iMac hardware is an interesting direction. It would have an OS that more people are used to, and hardware that has a better green reputation. What a sick idea.

 

[simongr]

Oops - did I start something?

I used PCs for many years and was on the cusp of building one from scratch - a monster power machine. But I had just bought an iPod and was erasonably impressed.

I also wanted to get into some video editing and had seen some of the stuff my wife had done on work Macs. I then saw the iMac itself and noted the saving in desk real estate and was very impressed.

So I bought a Mac and now we have three plus two iPhones and an iPod touch... I will most likely buy the new mac tablet when it is released as well...

What I like about them is the ease of maintenance/installing new software/hardware. In the main it just works. Buy a new camera? PLug it in and up it pops in iPhoto. The same goes for printers, hard drives etc.

What is frustrating is that the next stage - tweaking some of those devices for optimum outputs is sometimes harder as the manufacturers dont seem to have invested the time in the drivers that they would for a PC.

My biggest issue now is to work out how I can sync my work Office Exchange diary (and contacts) with my iPhone over the air without installing any software on the work locked down laptop (I could install to a USB in theory if that could work) - any ideas?

 

[samh004]

I will most likely buy the new mac tablet when it is released as well…

Then you’ll be required to post an initial review of it here so we know what it’s really like.

What is frustrating is that the next stage - tweaking some of those devices for optimum outputs is sometimes harder as the manufacturers dont seem to have invested the time in the drivers that they would for a PC.

Which is odd when everyone knows Apple is selling a lot of them now, and while they’re still a small share of the overall market, if your customers use a mac, you’d think you’d want to keep them happy.

 

[medhead]

My biggest issue now is to work out how I can sync my work Office Exchange diary (and contacts) with my iPhone over the air without installing any software on the work locked down laptop (I could install to a USB in theory if that could work) - any ideas?

I thought iphone now supported exchange server. Before that I just got IT to install itunes for me. Of course it helped that most of the directors and the CEO have iphones.

I'm a bit late getting back but I just can not agree that Apple PC are expensive. Maybe for the hardware spes they look expensive for what can be purchased as individual components. But once you buy all your components and assemble them you then have to go out and but a lot of software, not least of which is windows.

In my case I looked for about 9 to 12 months for an option as a DVR PC. I ended up with a Mac Mini. Why because for the price in was the cheapest option in the smallest size. All I had to add was a TV tuner, which came with great, intergrated TV software and also after market video editor/burner software. All prebuilt windows machines in the small case cost the same as my mini and tuner, self build might have been a bit cheaper. But to that hardware I would have to add video, burner, photo, DVD player, TV tuner, etc software. That might not even be compatible.

Finally, I can't believe I'm reading the suggestion that imacs in the lounge need to run windows for windows users. Come on. People aren't stupid, they know how to click on a mouse, they know how to use a browser. Hell even I can manage to sit down at a mac or *nix distro and use the browser without any problems. :shock:

 

[notzac]

My biggest issue now is to work out how I can sync my work Office Exchange diary (and contacts) with my iPhone over the air without installing any software on the work locked down laptop (I could install to a USB in theory if that could work) - any ideas?

Sure. Assuming your work Exchange server has ActiveSync enabled, just set up a connection in your phones' mail application - you can choose to sync mail, contacts and calendars (in any combination or not at all). Too easy!

 

[oz_mark]

Re: HKG Qantas First/Business Class Lounge

Hope you get it back soon - back in the day you'd just swap out the card in the store, so I hope it's nothing too serious. I've witnessed a few Nokia nightmares, so I would certainly hope it's nothing like that.

Starting to turn into the Nokia saga. They don't know what's wrong with it, when it will be fixed, when it can come home.

Pathetic.

 

[jpk]

Virtulisation is not going to work in an environment such as the qantas club (under VMWare/Parallels type arrangement). Too many support headaches for people.

One option would be to use windowed modes of VMware to run PC programs in a stand alone window within 10.6's environment so it appears to be a standalone app, but it's all too complex if something breaks.

That is how they are setup and are supposed to work. As said though, it is a tricky image to support, that has had a few teething issues, which is why you often see some with out of order signs. I know that this is being worked on by the parties involved so hopefully this situation will improve soon.

 

[JohnK]

I'm not a Mac fan either, but they're starting to pop up in various QP"s around the place. Syd Dom J has them, as does another lounge that I can't recall at the moment.

I don't know what it is with iMac's but I have trouble using them. Obviously I am not used to the desktop or browesr (and highly unlikely to get used to it anytime soon) but the keyboard layout also feels different (and very thin) and I seem to make the same sort of typing mistakes. I try to avoid using the iMac's where possible but in some lounges there is no choice. I think the QF/BA SIN Business Lounge is now using iMac's.

 

[anat0l]

I don't know what it is with iMac's but I have trouble using them. Obviously I am not used to the desktop or browesr (and highly unlikely to get used to it anytime soon) but the keyboard layout also feels different (and very thin) and I seem to make the same sort of typing mistakes.

I think it is a natural reaction that when greeted with a different keyboard you will inevitably make some mistakes. PC keyboard to PC keyboard maybe not as many, unless the size of the keyboard dramatically changes (e.g. full 101-keys then onto a netbook).

The mistake I keep making with Macs is the ubiquitous cut/copy/paste. The modifier is the Command key, not Control.

The spacing on some Mac keyboards of the keys such that there is a clear divide between adjacent keys could throw out some people too, because as most PC keys are laid out right next to each other, people develop their dexterity from relying on the feel of such a layout.

 

[samh004]

The mistake I keep making with Macs is the ubiquitous cut/copy/paste. The modifier is the Command key, not Control.

I much prefer Command to CTRL, as the latter is much further apart from X, C, V.

But it is a big difference.