Irish SMEs and Apple Macs
Written on June 3, 2008 by Conor O'Neill
I’ve just been talking to a small local business that uses Apple Macs exclusively for all their computing needs. The owners expressed frustration over the lack of support they receive from state agencies in areas like training etc. In fact, they said that grants were offered at one stage to help small biz buy PCs but Macs were excluded!
These people almost felt like they were the only small biz using Macs in all of Cork. I refuse to believe that. It’d be great to hear about IT support people, accountants, trainers etc who have Mac expertise in the Cork area. Heck, would Apple not sponsor some local small business training on Macs to grow their SME customer base here?
I’ve been a Mac fanboy-baiter for many years calling them pretty toys. But to be honest I’ve seen more and more technical people switch to them as the perfect balance between the mainstream-ness of Windows and the power of Linux. I’m actually starting to fall for the story they tell. Seeing this client today express his joy at the ease of use of his iMac was particularly convincing. Also the discussion on anti-virus and security software was pretty short! Anyone want to lend me one for a week? 
We use a mix of Windows PCs and Macs here at FeedHenry. I don’t think there is a case for being exclusive either way. They work together well and it comes down to what the individual using the computer is comfortable with and what they need.
We are a technically skilled lot though. There would be more problems if we were a non-tech business attempting to mix Macs and Windows.
I’m a big fan of mixing platforms but this person is very happy with Mac, they just wish there was more support in general.
True. In our situation I find Enterprise Ireland are quite Microsoft centric which can unwittingly bias proposals around Microsoft tech. and operations. Burdening a start-up with Office and Windows license requirements isn’t what they intend but that is what happens (EI documents don’t work very well in OpenOffice or Apple’s word processor.) I’d like to see more awareness from EI and the Irish government when it comes to “alternate” systems.
I’ve run into that OO problem too. If I had time I’d put properly formatted copies of some of the standard Enterprise Board docs I use up on Google Docs or Zoho to show how much more sense that makes. Heck, ideally I’d create some simple web-forms on one of the online hosted DBs and show how all their application and response docs should be done!
It’s heading towards a year since the Tech-Check doc templates were done and the planning for a full CMS/DMS was started but there is still no sign of it appearing. I assume they had to follow the formal tender process rather than just getting it built quickly for pennies. II was very tempted last Christmas to build the whole thing in Zoho in a day or two or get someone to do same in a few hours on Drupal to prove the point. Then platforms, OSes, Office Suites and all that legacy stuff becomes moot.