A fool and his money are soon parted. By Apple.

[Kitsune]

The owner of a small business that I provide service to is very enamored with Apple.  When I first started work on their network, they had a single Macbook Pro with a smattering of XP machines, but now only one workstation remains that runs Windows, down from five a couple months ago.  The immediate irony is that the employees need Windows to run the programs necessary for the company's operation, so every machine has a copy of Parallels running Vista, and a couple of the employees almost never leave the emulator, so they're basically working on vastly-overpriced PCs, and were spending about $600 per workstation in Microsoft software on top of paying Apple for the hardware.  (Office 2008 for the Mac, Office 2007 for the virtual machine, Vista Business for the virtual machines.)

This last week, they were hiring some new guys and had blown another $4000ish on celebratory Macintoshes for the new hires, and wanted me to set the computers up to work on the domain, install the software, etc.  I went in and set up the Macs as requested, but as they hadn't yet made user accounts or mailboxes for the new employees, I was unable to do things like configure Entourage with their mail accounts.  I explained this to them at the time, told them to just call me when the new employees were given accounts and I'd take care of it for them.

A couple days go by.

*ring* says my phone.
"Hello?" ask I.
"We just logged in John on his computer, and his mail's not set up!" says the voice of the owner, with the exasperated tinge of a customer who thinks they've caught me doing a less than thorough job.
"Well, of course he doesn't," I reply, "I told you on Monday that I couldn't set that up without an account for him."  I'm used to dealing with people with the attention span of a gnat, so this isn't at all ruffling.  The highly-trained IT consultant really can't afford to sound ruffled, and even moreso can't add '...you idiot.' at the end of a sentence, no matter how much we may want to.  So I rolled with it; if he was that impatient, best to resolve it on the phone immediately.  "But it will only take a minute, Entourage just needs like two things to be typed in to connect it to his Exchange mail box; I can tell you what to do right now and he'll be all set."
"Oh, okay."
"So, is he logged in right now?"
"Yes."
"Is there an Entourage icon on his dock?"
"...No."
"Okay, we'll need to open the Application folder and drag Entourage onto the dock so he won't have to go digging for it every day.  Just open a Finder window."
"What's that?"

[Non-Mac-User PROTIP: Finder is a Macintosh's equivalent of the My Computer window and Start Menu rolled into one, the core of the OS.]  At this point, there was a little whimper in my brainstem, but I plowed ahead.  Lots of users have little knowledge gaps, and not knowing that the window was named Finder is an understandable one.

"You know that window that lists the folders and drives on the computer?"
"...No."

There was no comfortable denial left to hide behind, no excuses to be made.  The truth stood out for all to see, center stage, pinned by harsh spotlights in front of an aghast audience.  This man had just spent over twenty thousand dollars on Apple hardware and didn't have the first god-damn clue how to use it.  We're not even talking about an obscure feature of the OS here, but its very foundation.  I froze for a few seconds, desperately wrestling with the impulse to ask, "How the fuck have you had a six-thousand-dollar Mac Pro in your office for four months and a three-thousand-dollar Macbook Pro and not once seen the Finder?"

Eventually, I settled on saying, "Click on the smiley face in the lower-left corner, then press and hold the key with the cloverleaf symbol and hit the N key."  When finding the Application folder in the Finder proved too much for him, I remotely logged in later in the day to do it for him.

[Merusk]

He's the owner, so he's what, in his 50s?  I figure there's a LOT of guys out there that age that are completely clueless about all machines and see no reason to learn. They're "too important" for all this "computer bullshit."   Fuck, my department head 2 jobs ago had to have his assistant log him in and do anything more complicated than hitting the "new email" button.   The man who runs my entire department hasn't clue one about the program that's required to even be employed in my field outside of his position.  (Autocad. This isn't exaggeration, if he were to be eliminated from the company he could not get employed elsewhere as an Architect because he's never bothered to learn how to draw in the post hand-drawing days).

[Bunk]

You know what makes me really proud? The fact that my 60 year old father taught himself Autocad and Inventor, to the point of using it at a professional level as the engineering manager for a heavy equipment company.

[rattran]

Yeah, it was a proud day when I was sitting with my dad (after a nasty bout of his chemo) and he started telling me all about setting up, troubleshooting, and maintaining the AS/400 machines they had at work. Really got into some detail, which was impressive for a 55 year old. Especially since at the time he was an executive bringing one of the major Islamic banks into the 21st (in some ways 20th!) century. He went on about all the upgrades they were going to do once he got back to work. The new RS/6000s seemed so much neater to him then circa 1990 as/400s.

So it's not all old bosses are clueless on the hardware, just yours :)

[Engels]

Although I'm quite lucky, I know bosses' age may or may not have much to do with it. I work in Civil Engineering, and our department chair runs 6 computer -at home-, has a custom configured application server with an access front end that launches all he needs from remote desktop. He knows some stuff about IT that even my boss and I don't know. Just the other day I came to him about to chew him out for leaving one of his file servers without a password (since it logged in automatically at boot) and he grinned at me,"Have you heard of Tweak UI? That lets you put in a password that'll auto log on at boot without the need to type it"

I went,"oh"

[Tige]

Apple, the Neman Marcus of computers.  Pay more to call yourself a unique snowflake.

I really like my iPod, I kinda like my iPhone 3G, I've owned one Apple computer (Apple IIgs) and recently considered a Mac.  After spending a bit of time with a friend's Mac I just can't see any advantage to owning one at their price point.

[Sky]

Why would you need to Apple-N after clicking the Finder dock icon?

[Yoru]

Why would you need to Apple-N after clicking the Finder dock icon?

He's making sure it was in the foreground. If another app's in the foreground, then Apple-N might do something else entirely. I think.

[stray]

Not sure if this is an Apple bitching thread or a dumbass thread.

[Jobu]

My father-in-law called us up one day in a panic, because his iMac wasn't working right. He was worried that the "wheel of fortune" kept replacing his mouse and then disappearing.

[Samwise]

Not sure if this is an Apple bitching thread or a dumbass thread.

Both.  The bitching is about the ease with with Apple fleeces dumbasses.

[SnakeCharmer]

Which is strange, really.

Because if Apple made it easy -or- the customer knew what he/she was doing, the OP would be out of a job.

[Venkman]

Welcome to computers.

None of this shit is intuitive. Mac was only intuitive to people trained on DOS. When talking about truly "intuitive", your first stop is with the mouse (which way do I hold it), second is the cursor (draw with this pen but look to your left while doing it), third is with the pretty pictures on screen, fourth is trying to figure out what this thing moving on screen has to do with those pretty pictures.

[Miguel]

So because a user doesn't know how to use Finder, this reflects on Apple how exactly?

[Paelos]

So because a user doesn't know how to use Finder, this reflects on Apple how exactly?

I think this is moreso because the "user" is the primary decision-maker for the entire company, and because he went out of his way to get an apple setup that's not optimal for his office without even knowing how it works at the most basic level.

This kind of decision gets made daily at most major corporations. No CEO knows how their systems work.

[Kitsune]

So because a user doesn't know how to use Finder, this reflects on Apple how exactly?

Paelos speaks correct.  It's not Apple's fault that this guy's a moron, it's just galling that he went out and blew tons of money on completely replacing his IT infrastructure for no more reason than a vague belief that Macs are better, only to turn out that he hasn't a clue how to even begin to use a Mac.

He has three Macbook Pros, one iMac, one Mac Pro with the 30-inch widescreen.  That's approximately $17,200 in hardware.  He then bought five copies of Parallels ($300), five copies of Vista Business ($1350), five copies of Office 2007 ($1925), and five copies of Office 2008 ($1350), along with extended warranties on all the hardware ($1470), for a running total of $23,595.  For that sort of money, I could easily build a 15-workstation network, complete with server, copies of Office on every machine, and labor.  He singlehandedly spent the most money I've ever seen a customer spend on computers in the space of six months, and he did it to buy computers that neither he nor his employees know how to use.

[Grand Design]

I had a boss like that.  He stayed on top on new technology by watching cable tv, so anytime he learned a new buzzword, it was my job to try and talk him down from implementing it.  Once, he saw a documentary about string theory on the Science Channel and I spent a solid four hours trying to reason with him that it was not applicable to our IT needs.

Anyway, at one point he heard the term 'terabyte' and he wanted one.  So, we built him two new redundant servers with terabyte RAID 5s.  This was to hold roughly 250 gigs of data that spanned 10 years of business, but it was his money and not mine.  This would go perfectly with the grossly unused T1.  Once the servers were built, I pointed out that we had no server room and these would need to be mounted somewhere cool and with ample access points.  His answer - drop four anchors through the attic and mount the servers on the ceiling of the IT room.  Despite my cries that "heat is bad, and heat rises", and "I can't work on a server that is ten feet in the air," the studs were located and the servers were ceiling-mounted.  At least I won the battle that the 500 lb death trap not be located above my desk.

Within six months, hurricane Katrina hit and put four feet of standing water in the office.  The ceiling-mounted servers were unscathed and I knew that I would never be able to argue with the boss again.

[naum]

I had a boss like that.  He stayed on top on new technology by watching cable tv, so anytime he learned a new buzzword, it was my job to try and talk him down from implementing it.  Once, he saw a documentary about string theory on the Science Channel and I spent a solid four hours trying to reason with him that it was not applicable to our IT needs.

Anyway, at one point he heard the term 'terabyte' and he wanted one.  So, we built him two new redundant servers with terabyte RAID 5s.  This was to hold roughly 250 gigs of data that spanned 10 years of business, but it was his money and not mine.  This would go perfectly with the grossly unused T1.  Once the servers were built, I pointed out that we had no server room and these would need to be mounted somewhere cool and with ample access points.  His answer - drop four anchors through the attic and mount the servers on the ceiling of the IT room.  Despite my cries that "heat is bad, and heat rises", and "I can't work on a server that is ten feet in the air," the studs were located and the servers were ceiling-mounted.  At least I won the battle that the 500 lb death trap not be located above my desk.

Within six months, hurricane Katrina hit and put four feet of standing water in the office.  The ceiling-mounted servers were unscathed and I knew that I would never be able to argue with the boss again.

 

[Oban]

Vertu cell phones get better reception.

[Samwise]

So because a user doesn't know how to use Finder, this reflects on Apple how exactly?

Paelos speaks correct.  It's not Apple's fault that this guy's a moron, it's just galling that he went out and blew tons of money on completely replacing his IT infrastructure for no more reason than a vague belief that Macs are better, only to turn out that he hasn't a clue how to even begin to use a Mac.

It's not Apple's "fault" per se, but it speaks to the efficacy of their marketing campaigns; this guy's "vague belief" didn't spring out of nowhere.  Of course, selling morons things they don't need for more than they're worth is what capitalism is built on, so good on them.

[Selby]

Within six months, hurricane Katrina hit and put four feet of standing water in the office.  The ceiling-mounted servers were unscathed and I knew that I would never be able to argue with the boss again.

While it was complete chance that it even worked out in the boss' favor, I have been there, done that a few times and all you can do is shake your head and laugh.  Sometimes idiotic ideas work out in your favor despite going against everything you would know or think about the situation (purely through chance).

[Righ]

Its worth noting that the major brand PCs with extensive support networks charge similar prices and sometimes EVEN MORE than Apple for the same hardware. And yet millions of business owners are still buying IBM and HP workstations, laptops and servers. Where Apple's prices are out of touch is in the hobbyist market where people are happier to use minor brands with questionable domestic support if they feel that they can replace components easily.

However, buying a machine through the retail channel that is bundled with an operating system that doesn't support the applications that you want to run and then buying virtualization software and retail - rather than OEM - copies of the operating system that you need is pretty stupid. But Apple aren't coming in and making this pitch while giggling all the way to the bank - so its not the fool being parted from his money by Apple, but by his own idiocy. Contrast a case back in the 1980s where the UK division of a company who famously made one of the first mass market laser printers managed to sell a well known pharmaceutical company some 3,000 laser printers at 18,000 pounds sterling each. One for every (already networked) PC in the statistical division. It took a multi-million dollar management consultancy contract to point out where they could save money. Yes, the management consultants were laughing all the way to the bank too.

[Daeven]

So because a user doesn't know how to use Finder, this reflects on Apple how exactly?

Paelos speaks correct.  It's not Apple's fault that this guy's a moron, it's just galling that he went out and blew tons of money on completely replacing his IT infrastructure for no more reason than a vague belief that Macs are better, only to turn out that he hasn't a clue how to even begin to use a Mac.

He has three Macbook Pros, one iMac, one Mac Pro with the 30-inch widescreen.  That's approximately $17,200 in hardware.  He then bought five copies of Parallels ($300), five copies of Vista Business ($1350), five copies of Office 2007 ($1925), and five copies of Office 2008 ($1350), along with extended warranties on all the hardware ($1470), for a running total of $23,595.  For that sort of money, I could easily build a 15-workstation network, complete with server, copies of Office on every machine, and labor.  He singlehandedly spent the most money I've ever seen a customer spend on computers in the space of six months, and he did it to buy computers that neither he nor his employees know how to use.

Maybe one day I'll tell you about the corporation that blew over $1,000,000 USD on Oracle and Weblogic licenses + hardware to host what amounted to a corporate intranet wiki.

And that doesn't even touch the consulting fees to write the 'necessary' software.

Then again, maybe not. It's still to damned depressing.

[Kitsune]

The fact that I deal only with residential and small business clients thankfully spares me from the sight of vast corporate waste.  If one of my customers tried to waste a million dollars, I'd be inclined to tackle them for their own good.

[naum]

Maybe one day I'll tell you about the corporation that blew over $1,000,000 USD on Oracle and Weblogic licenses + hardware to host what amounted to a corporate intranet wiki.

And that doesn't even touch the consulting fees to write the 'necessary' software.

Then again, maybe not. It's still to damned depressing.

And I could tell similar tales about SAP that dwarf that figure (and previous to that other proprietary platforms like CASE tools, other esoteric code generators where vendors locked client into their own provided consultants and mandatory training for employees at exorbitant prices on top of the marketing, legal, and licensing largess already extracted…)…

But, yes, first time Apple converts can be funny… …in 2003, when I first made a Mac switch, a friend asked me to help with a client of his that went and splurged on shiny new Power Macs and a bunch of cinema displays and who didn't even hardly know how to power the machine on. Then he was stuck with thousands of art files in a custom Windows program (cannot remember if it was Corel or some other program…) file format he needed to convert over so his Mac could read…

But then again I recently worked for a company that required me to update multiple ticket/project tracking software panels, fill out paper forms and obtain multiple signatures, etc.… to simply change phone numbers on a application support wiki web page… …and then have to wait for another department to actually make the change and then return the ticket back to me before I closed…

Leaving the corporate world has probably kept my sanity intact and added years to my life…

[eldaec]

Within six months, hurricane Katrina hit and put four feet of standing water in the office.  The ceiling-mounted servers were unscathed and I knew that I would never be able to argue with the boss again.

There is something about floods which makes people believe they don't exist.

Tell someone that something is a fire risk and they'll be all over that shit, but report that a facility of any sort is vulnerable to flooding and you open yourself to weeks of tiresome excuses and pointless circular discussion.


Floods seem to emit some kind of special nerve gas that robs people of all memory of their existence if they aren't on the news that exact day.

Anyway, all this appears to make your boss some sort of god of risk management.

[Surlyboi]