Mac Misconceptions

This weekend I attended my first Circle
meeting. These meetings are attended by our work clients, which are partners in accounting firms and their IT leadership. If you are not familiar with accounting agencies, let me warn you that they are nearly 100% Microsoft shops. Being a Mac/Linux guy myself I chose to use this as an opportunity to introduce some of them to the concept of another operating system. These folks tend to be stuck in the "Ew! It's Apple!" crowd. Since accounting firms tend to be 4 to 6 years behind in technology (even our Circle members, who are way ahead of the curve tend to be a bit behind the main stream) these folks haven't yet seen how cool the Mac is. Anyway, here are the misconceptions I encountered most this weekend:

1. It's just a pretty box; you can't use it to work unless you're some kind of designer. Actually, I find that the Mac is a very nice platform to run from as a web developer. If you are in an enterprise environment using Microsoft Exchange, it's not so nice (Entourage is a PoS). However, if you do not run Exchange, I'd say that Windows has very little advantage over the Mac. Even if you run Exchange, you can run Windows on Mac now and get Outlook to run there anyway. I'll let you know when I get my new MacBook Pro how well that works out.
2. There aren't any good Anti-Virus solutions for it. Well, this is true, but it's also true that you don't hardly need Anti-Virus on a Mac. I got really skeptical looks from the IT folks across the table when I said it and said that there really aren't any major viruses for the Mac and I've never heard of anyone with a Mac getting a virus. Could it happen? Certainly. It's possible, but because of the built in limitations and security implementation, it's rarely a problem. I'm hoping that the UAC
   features of Microsoft Windows Vista might provide a similar security improvement for reducing the need for AV, but we'll see how well those security features really work over the next few months.
3. Finally, my favorite: Yeah, but it's only got a one button mouse. Simply not true. The Mighty Mouse
   from Apple now supports two buttons. Not only this, but two button mice have been supported for years. Even with just the one button mouse, you get essentially the same functionality (context menus) by holding Control while clicking the mouse button. After about 2 minutes of using it, I didn't notice the difference anymore. This one is especially insidious because even after I explained this to the folks present, they continued to believe this fallacy as if I hadn't spoken and this is the least true of all of them.

Before I go, I don't want anyone left with the feeling that I'm insinuating that these IT folks are backwards, blind, or stupid. They're good at what they do and the accounting profession, in general, simply doesn't have a need for anything but Windows. None of the specialized software they require will run on anything else, so why would they bother? Until CCH, CSI, Intuit, or another major vendor comes up with something on another platform, they will continue to ignore what they don't need to do their job and focus on getting better on what's actually applicable.

Of course, ASP
services are also on the rise and as that happens, it's going to matter less and less what OS you use. The OS will not be a lock-in for applications anymore. As that happens, I suspect that the existing accounting firms will continue to use Windows because that's what they've always done. However, new firms might consider alternatives based on merit. Yet, given the shortage of new blood in the accounting profession, I expect that more of accounting will be outsourced overseas rather than anything changing in the way of OS in the United States.

Cheers.