OS X at Work?

[wzpgsr]

Who is using OS X as their main system at work?

[Phil St. Romain]

I work in a number of places, but carry my Pismo with me wherever, and it's performed very well even in a Windows work place.

[cadder]

I use OS X as my _only_ work system.

I would be dead without my iBook 600 running OS X. I work in a totally mixed environment. I'm a field consultant/engineer and I work with 15 different platforms on an almost daily basis. My client, of course, has no Macs anywhere at any site. The only OS that allows me to integrate with all of the different platforms I work is MacOS X.

- AB

[BurghFan]

I run a small business with three Macs all running OS X 10.1.2.

Apps in use Filemaker Pro, MS Office, BBEdit 6.5.2, Stone Studio, Graphic Converter, Quicken, Interarchy, Stuffit Deluxe, MacLink Plus 13, Notes. And of course iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Quicktime, etc.

[AHunter3]

I didn't do the poll because none of the four available answers quite describes the situation.

I use OS X at work on Fridays. It has come a long way (and/or I have acquired a lot of nice hacks and apps that help disguise or modify the UI to make OS X usable).

I use a PowerBook G3 Series (WallStreet), though, and under 9 I have use of my RoadRocket card and therefore a second monitor. Under MacOS X, there is not as of yet a compatible CardBus 2nd-mon card, so I'm stuck with one screen.

We're still using FileMaker Server 5 (not 5.5) here, so I can't do server administration under MacOS X either.

And the Open/Save/Save As dialog boxes still suck the big one under OS X, and probably will until DefaultFolder for X comes along and rescues us.

So Monday through Thursday I use 9 by preference and choice.

[rebug]

I'm the only mac user in an office full of windows machines, and no one seems to have noticed. I'm running a lime 333 iMac and an iBook 600, and they get along fine with the rest of the office.

[lidar_researcher]

Use X on my TiBk about 70%, 25% under FreeBSD and 5% under classic. As a scientist, I was most intrigued with X's un*x underpinnings and, as such, can now have the best of both worlds: the facile communication with the "office" world and, from the scientific community, access to many standard un*x science apps. Long live open-source.....

My most used apps include: Office X; Igor Pro (which, btw, has just been carbonized 4.0.5); Omniweb; Canvas; Mathematica 4.1; Matlab 5.1.2 (still a classic app as Mathworks does not support Macs anymore); X-windows with ice-windowmanager; gnuplot; Emacs; Octave; GIMP and a host of untilities.

lidar

[stevetech]

In my previous job I was using OS X on a WindowsNT network. It was great being able to use SMB to file share with the NT servers.

-Steve

[dogboy]

I try to use OSX 100% of the time. The setup that we have however (NT4 servers, and a whole lot of OS9 boxes) means that in some cases X doesn't cut the mustard...

Buggy Appletalk means that using servers is a pain (How to get at those HUGE Photoshop files?), and using SMB as a connection protocol means I can't see Servers inside Classic Apps! What a pain!

Well, I will keep on trying, apples going in the right direction, but if they want to keep the graphics market happy they need to address the dismal networking issues...

[saint.duo]

I'd say I'm in, um... a unique environment. I work for an Apple Specialist. ;)

We're still running FileMaker Server 3, so we can't up FileMaker to 5.5 for X yet, so that runs in classic. Our accounting system is also 9 only, and we don't trust it to run correctly in classic.

All the iMacs that aren't tied into the accounting system (all but 2, sometimes 3), run X all of the time. The Beige G3s in service run 9.2.2, due to the speed issues on them with Mac OS X without adding PCI video cards.

So, I'd say that where we can (75%), we use Mac OS X, and it works great. Where we can't, we don't.

We're looking to upgrade to FileMaker Server 5.5 soon, so that will only leave the accounting system in 9.

[gowrann]

Have been using OS X as a file/print and web server - definitely find it to be rock solid - however I am in a publishing environment and the only app outstanding to be OS Xed is Quark which is the preferred layout program here..so no workstations can make the move until Quark gets its finger out!!

[edlake]

I've volunteered to be a test user at work when they start seeding out OS X machines. I use it at home for everything, and can't remember when I last booted into 9. I use Quark in Classic at home and hope to see how it works in Classic at the job.

[rcombes2000]

My company got me a dual 1 GHz G4 last week and since then I've been using OS X 95% of the time. I'm the only programmer running on a Mac and soon the only one to be running Windows XP, 98, 95, ME and OS X on a single machine, that is once my updated Virtual PC 5 arrives.

The only time I reboot to 9.2.2 is when I use Macromedia 8.5's 3D functions which runs slower in the Classic environment on a dual 1GHz than in 9.2 on a single 500 MHz. A bit sad but not surprising.

I've been trying to use Lightwave 7.0 (for Mac OS X) but it crashes quite often. But Lightwave for Mac is a mess so that wasn't too surprising either.

Everything else works fine from linking to file servers (yay no more Dave) to running Quake III for those afterhours office carnage.

No system crashes except for the one time I pressed the LCD monitor's power button during Quake III.

So far I've run the following applications in Classic mode without problems:
Macromedia Flash 5, Director 8.5, Ultradev 3, and Adobe Photoshop 5.5. Even Unreal Tournament runs in Classic mode.


- Roland Combes

[JayBee]

My work system and home system are the same thing, which is good in some ways (nobody cares if I turn up for work in a bathrobe and slippers) but bad in others (imagine never being able to "go home" from work)

Anyway, my system is a true frankenstein's network. Old iBook 366 SE running X 10.1.3, a REALLY old PII 400 running win2k, and a shiny, spanky new G4 733.

Unfortunately I broke the bank getting the G4 (which is my main work machine now), so I couldn't afford a new printer/scanner/monitor. This means that I have to have my PC still chugging away for whenever I want to do anything non-net based.

This was a real pain until recently, and I discovered VNC - kind of a free, cut down Timbuktu client/server combo. Now my iBook basically runs my windows desktop over the network, and I can print jobs from my G4 via samba shares, scan stuff, test web apps on "standard" windows browsers etc without having to switch monitor cables over. And when I do switch monitor cables, I can use VNC on my G4 to share my Apple keyboard and mouse!

And the best bit? This damn useful and flexible setup took about ten minutes to put together thanks to OS X...

yum - choc full of Aqua-y goodness:)

[sbur]

100% OS X for 6 month.

I have a G4 400Mhz desktop at home and a 600 Mhz iBook, both running 10.1.5.

I have Gaussian 98M (unix) running non-stop on both, and the rest of my use is Word, Chemdraw OS X version), and Excell. PowerPoint occasionally, pymol (Xwindows/unix) and Chem 3D frequently. Of course mail and a web browser (finally switched to Mozilla and am kicking myself for not doing it sooner) are almost always running too.

I say 6 months because my old iBook was running 8.6, then I got a new one. The G4 has been 100% OS X since 10.1 came out.

I have a beta of Endnote 6, so things are going well. I now have a hard time orienting myself on a pre- OS X system. :)

[joraamn]

We've had OSX running on a dual 500 G4 serving out a mysql database since Sept 10th. I'm going to have to reboot once Jaguar gets loaded, which will be sad. Being in NYC and having a twin-tower up since the day before the real ones fell has been a nice kind of tribute. I have purposely avoided any restarts, but I'll have to give in eventually.
Overall- rock solid experience on our side. I've got 5 other X boxes here that are the envy of all the 9-bound Quark users.

[pink]

I've been using OS X at work (a molecular biology lab running a group of 30 Macs in an environment of otherwise Windows users) ever since the 10.0 came out. What has kept most Mac users from using OS X were missing Retrospect (which is out now) and Endnote (a citation manager, still missing). Maybe 10.2 motivates some of them....

[sbur]

Originally posted by pink
What has kept most Mac users from using OS X were missing Retrospect (which is out now) and Endnote (a citation manager, still missing). Maybe 10.2 motivates some of them....

Endnote is now avaliable for OS X. (press release (http://www.endnote.com/pr-en6mac.asp))

[thlandgraf]

I am using OSX in an UNIX (SUN Solaris, Linux, ...) environment and it works great, XDarwin and fink are really helpful.

[taikahn]

Originally posted by dogboy
I try to use OSX 100% of the time. The setup that we have however (NT4 servers, and a whole lot of OS9 boxes) means that in some cases X doesn't cut the mustard...

Buggy Appletalk means that using servers is a pain (How to get at those HUGE Photoshop files?), and using SMB as a connection protocol means I can't see Servers inside Classic Apps! What a pain!

Well, I will keep on trying, apples going in the right direction, but if they want to keep the graphics market happy they need to address the dismal networking issues...

I work in the same setting, digital pre-press with NT servers ... the issue is with the NT servers NOT Mac OS X... time to upgrade your NT server, PERIOD. Its what we are hoping to do ASAP with an Xserve and Mac OS X.