🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 09 Jul 1997 14:30:57 -0400, "Mike Roca, Jr."
<mcr@concentra.com> wrote:

>B T H wrote:

>Do you refute the reports by DataQuest, AMPS, and META group showing
>23-28% of Mac based web browsing?  Are you really shading yourself from
>reality?  

I wouldn't refute it but I'd ask when these surveys were done. If not
in the last 6 - 12 months, I'd say they aren't particularly useful
today.

>Wow, you are using the exact same arguement as those countless others,
>while still avoiding the simple fact that the Macintosh is the superior
>product.  You have not given any indictation about why you think
>Windows95 is a better choice, you simply ignore the facts and purely
>focus on your own perception of market share.

Well this statement that Mac is the superior product is simply flame
bait. I'm an NT PC user and a software developer. The tools I need to
do my job are simply not available on the Mac. Therefore the Mac is
not the superior product. Awhile back GTE bought several hundred Macs
and PCs. They bought mostly 6100 Macs, but I'll use the 8100 to more
fair in my comparison (32 meg RAM, and, what, 100 MHz CPU clock?). The
PCs are 90 MHz pentium machines from Micron running NT, 32 Megs
memory, SCSI disks (Adaptec 2940) and PCI-based ethernet cards. Here's
the areas where the PC is head and shoulders above the Mac:

   1) Cost: PC less expensive
   2) Network speed: File transfers from web sites, PC is 7 times faster
       than the 8100. Copying files from the Mac to a network drive, about
       the same (PC is 7x faster).
   3) Disk drive speed: Save a large file (>=5 megs), PC is 2x faster.
   4) Word, Excel, Powerpoint: PC is faster in all cases (varies from just
       barely faster to 2x or 3x depending on the task)
   5) OS stability: NT PC's crash on average once a year. Mac OS, once
       a week or so. More sometimes.
   6) Printing: Same document in Word on both machines: PC is roughly
       5 times faster to give back control to the user to continue using Word.
   7) OS Productivity: with NT I can hop between working apps and do far 
       more concurrently than on the Mac. I'm a bright engineer so once I
       learn the admittedly (in some areas anyway) more complicated file 
       manager, this is not an issue. My pet pain in the neck for the Mac OS? 
       I bring up the print menu, and the new menu window lands right on top
       of something I need to see in the document for some reason. Can I
       move this window out of the way? NO I CAN'T! Amazing!

I could go on and on. GTE (like many other large companies I suspect)
has a new policy that all our Macs will be phased out over the next X
years (I don't know what X is). This is due in many cases to the fact
that the applications we need to run aren't available on the Mac, due
to the fact that PC's are cheaper, and due to the problems we have
with inter-platform operability (admittedly this isn't Apple's fault
entirely - I'm sure it's hard to force 3rd party software vendors to
develop perfectly interoperable applications. But whoever's "fault" it
is, Apple should try to do something about it so that companies like
GTE don't abandon the platform (well, maybe they can't make the
decision for us, but they could work hard to remove some of our
objections and concerns).

>But then again, an official report of a "cost of ownership study" would
>be better suited.  It all boils down to the fact that the Mac allows you
>to get your work done more efficiently.

Simply not true, not here at GTE. We get more work done faster on our
Pentium PC's. 

>Michael Moon, director of executive programs at GISTICS, a respected
>media technology research firm, recently presented data at the Australia
>Seybold Seminar series that supports the premise that Mac OS-based
>computers are much less expensive to own than Windows-based computers.
>At the seminar, Moon presented slides with the following information. 
>
>Mac OS users, when compared with Windows users: 
>
>     Spend 38 fewer hours per year fussing with files 
>     Save U.S.$ 4,950 annually on support and training 
>     Use more software applications (14.3 vs. 8.3) 
>     Save U.S.$ 2,211 in their computer's three-year cost of ownership 
>     Earn U.S.$ 5.01 more per hour 
>     Constitute 62 percent of the top 10 percent in personal income
>
>Mac OS (vs. Windows) firms: 
>
>     Earn U.S.$ 12.22 more revenue per hour of labor 
>     Produce U.S.$ 25,550 more in annual revenue per person 
>     Create U.S.$ 14,550 more profits per year per person 
>     Earn 32 percent more net profit per project 
>     Achieve platform payback in 7.2 months (vs. 13.9)
>
>(Source: GISTICS, Larkspur, CA � 1997) 

And with regards to cost of ownership, I don't know how they came up
with all these amazing figures. And I wouldn't expect Mac advocates to
do their best to present objective data at a Mac seminar either. 

Cost of ownership is a complicated issue. We at GTE don't change our
hardware configurations very often, so Mac's superior plug-and-play
isn't much of a factor (we buy our machines and keep them. Period. We
don't open them up and add this and that as a general rule). The
issues of OS comprehendability/usability and software version
distribution and control are a much bigger problem here. Our biggest
problem is when some software vendor comes out with a new version of a
product. I'm not sure who's going to have a better answer to that
sooner than who.

Having said all this, I prefer my Mac at home for the music stuff I
do. For me, the software drives the hardware platform. When I chose my
software, the Mac was the best platform to run it. I don't know if
that's still the case today for the software I use. And I'm sure there
are areas of dominance for the Mac (graphic artists, etc.). But we
only have a few of those here. Mostly we have engineers, marketeers,
and support staff. They seem to have learned how to use their Intel
PC's pretty well.

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