Macintosh at work

[TheGray]

Howdy. New to the forum.

I realize I am breaking typical forum law by having my first post be a new thread, but I assure you I know how to use the search feature and have already used it to answer some of my dumb questions.

I work for a software development company directing our Q/A department. I am trying to get a grasp on how much Macintosh support we need, and therefore how much time I need to have my folks spend on the Macintosh platform.

My question to you guys is do you use Macs where you work?
How much of a presence do Macs have?
Are people running on Mac exclusively or are there windows users who also have a Mac?

Thanks in advance

 

[giulio]

1) Yes. At my job, I am the only Mac, and by request. I'm the lead web developer.
At my side business, I run solely on Mac.
2) Very little. We're not a design shop.
3) If I need to use a PC for testing or MS/evil programs I'll use VMware.

There are never PC users that also have a Mac. It's more like Mac users who are forced to use a PC.

 

[RiDE]

I too am the only individual in my office that uses Mac, also by request. I use our invoicing/inventory windows only software within Parallels.
I do not use a PC at work or at home.

 

[dalison]

This is probably not the best place to figure that out - the responses here will not really be representative of much and will have significant bias. What kind of things are you looking to QA? Do you develop web based software? If so, browser compatibility is likely to be a critical QA issue. If you have an existing product line that is accessible on the web then you should ask your IT Dept. or web master to run some logs for you on utilization - you can see which browsers and operating systems are hitting your current site.

That would likely give you a lot more reliable information than anything else. In my last company we worried mostly about Safari support on Mac. The Firefox implementation on Mac is nearly identical to the Windows implementation so you don't generally need to do comprehensive testing on both.

 

[sanity1082]

There are never PC users that also have a Mac. It's more like Mac users who are forced to use a PC.

Sadly there are and I live with one. She is an editor and has both a mac and PC at her desk. She complains every time she has to make the switch and use the mac.

 

[xtophercaa]

I'm the only Mac user in our office here at iNET. We have 12 employees here and several remote folks too. Everyone is using a flavor of Windows (XP or Vista) except for me. However, my Mac isn't a work-provided one. I bring my own 15" MacBook Pro to the office from home everyday, and it goes home with me every night.

When I do testing and need to see something in IE or on a PC, I use Parallels.

--C. A.

 

[technologist]

I am the only Mac user in my department, but I know there are a handfull of others others within the larger organization. My Mac is my only computer, but I can run Windows in a VM for legacy applications. My impression is that most of the other Mac users use only the Mac OS.

Prior to to getting my Mac at work, I would sometimes bring my personal PowerBook in to do some work for which it was better suited. I get the impression that there may be other "shadow" Mac users in the organization as well.