Got a happy little training day at work-an Apple seminar on the tech aspects of iLife '09. Now, folks who know me know I've been on a bunch of different platforms over the years. My first computer was a TI-99-4a, then I went to Amigas, then onto an AS-400 running RPG programs and J.D. Edwards cadcam software, and concurrently getting into PCs running Win 95, 98SE, and ultimately XP, and finally getting into the educational paradigm and finding myself in a world of Macs. When I finally got exposed to Macs again, I had not touched one since the days of OS7; currently, I support machines running 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5. The differences between iterations of OSX are sometimes as profound as the differences between Win98SE and XP, so it's like having a foot in each of three different games, and now some of the PCs are migrating to Vista.
Happy, Happy, Joy Joy. Ultimately, I keep my sanity by remembering that they are all just platforms. Some run this software, some run that. Some running a particular software look and act like this, while their kin, running a later OS, look like that, within the same software. Thankfully, I'm not really expected to be a software guru for every package; while I sometimes encounter disappointment when I can't provide an instant-answer to a software question, I feel like the staff I support understand that mission one for me is making sure the machine itself works, talks to the network and peripherals, and is CAPABLE of running the software. After all, THEY use the apps everyday-I do not.
Still, my zeitgeist is, if I don't know the answer, I will try to help YOU find it. I maintain this posture with staff, faculty and students. The cool thing is, the students seem to respond to it best. I think it gives them a feeling of competency, when the tech guy says "I don't know-let's see if WE can figure it out." And often, it IS a collaborative effort that achieves the solution, and now we have BOTH learned something useful.
These are some of the reasons I love my job.
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I don't know anything about the place you work but it's unusual they don't standardize a platform. It's extremely hard to maintain security when have to accomodate different versions of an OS besides factoring in mac and windows. Setting up corporate firewalls along with all the external interfaces to the world become tough when you don't have a standard OS.
ReplyDeleteI managed an IT department once in a similar situation. I had problems remotely pushing out updates and patches to workstations over the network.We also had problems controling the software to make sure nothing but approved, legal, software was installed. My network was pretty small, only around 220 users, but life got easier when the company finally standardized a workstation design.
All that was a few years ago. Things have probably gotten better as to maintenance and upkeep, especially at controlling the workstations over the network and getting them secure.
I work in a Middle School, Duke, so the concatenation of platforms is par for the course. We don't take working machines out of service until they are hopelessly out-of-date; ergo, in the 300-something Macs in the building I have 10.3, 10.4 10.5 and now a few 10.6 machines. I have XP and Vista PCs, but only a dozen or so. And of course, some iterations of core softwares, like iWork and iLife, will only run a machines of 10.x or greater, so I spend a lot of time helping kids deal with the fact that they made their project on a machine that sports Pages from '08 but the machine they're on now won't run '08; there are easy workarounds but it still takes up some of my time. And pushing out patches and updates can be a treat, as you can imagine.
ReplyDeleteStill, I love my job!
Thank you for the Monty Python reference. The world can only be made better by quoting Python.
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