Comment by evanjrowley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by evanjrowley | Hacker News Reader

Seems like the main reasons why I use Macs at work are not covered by this article, so here they are:

1. At trade shows, the superior battery life and screen quality make our 1:1 demos stand out. It impresses a lot of PC-focused prospects. I can't go one day at a trade show without someone basically saying "ooh, wow, a Mac!"

2. Using a Mac with an iPhone means I can send/receive texts messages with customers/coworkers from both devices. Also, they like to see the blue bubble in Messages.

3. When used together with any Apple device, AirPods save a small but VALUABLE amount of time when a headset is desirable for meetings/calls. Seriously, AirPods are the least fiddly of any headset I've ever had to use with a computer.

4. Microphone, noise cancelling, and camera quality are quite good on Mac/iPhone. The experience has been better than any PC I've used and it's the general consensus at the company.

The benefits are so good that I would avoid working for another employer who didn't offer Mac as an option.

Also, screw Apple for their ridiculous prices, lawbreaking, gaslighting of their users, their stance on repairability, the lack of "Alt+Tab" in macOS, the lack of "Right-Click > New > Text Document" etc. in Finder, and other intentional choices made by Apple to limit functionality of their devices.

> Also, screw Apple for their ridiculous prices, lawbreaking, gaslighting of their users, their stance on repairability, and intentional choices to limit functionality of their devices.

Why would I care about repairability of a work laptop? If something breaks, I talk to my IT department and since they have a business contract with Apple, I take it to the Apple Store and if they can’t repair it right then, they give me another one.

True AirPods aren’t fiddly. But neither are just plugging in wired headphones.

>True AirPods aren’t fiddly. But neither are just plugging in wired headphones.

Setting Apple aside, bluetooth multipoint is a game changer for how I use laptops and headsets. I agree that wired headsets are fantastic. For years I used OnePlus phones because they held on to the venreble 3.5mm jack longer than other Android phones. When traveling, however, the bluetooth multipoint headsets are considerably more convenient than wired headsets. With the work Mac and iPhone, Apple's proprietary fast switching makes this very seamless. I look forward to the day when the similar Fast Pair from Google works on non-Chromebook laptops.

>Why would I care about the repeatability of a work laptop? If something breaks, I talk to my IT department

We are a remote company, so going to the IT department is not always the most feasible option. In addition to the Mac, I have Linux and Windows computers for work. My employer lets me do things like expense M.2 drives and install them on those systems. Virtual environments are helpful and having both operating systems helps to validate our on-prem offering works with KVM and Hyper-V. Due to the soldered storage (and ARM CPU), I accept this is not feasible with today's Macs, but also recognize this was Apple's choice and it did not have to be this way.

I’ve worked remotely for 5 years did three companies - two of those allowed Macs. Both would just express ship me a new laptop if I had an issue.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my current company - a third party AWS consulting company - wouldn’t just buy a laptop from Apple on their corporate account and tell me to pick it up from the local Apple Store and ship my old one back to the company.

That’s how I got my original one when I first started

Amazon - the first company I worked for remotely - had me use my own personal computer and log in to corporate approved internal AWS Workspace with the same software as they image their Windows computers until my Mac shipped. They would have done the same if I needed a replacement.

As far as installing drives, Thunderbolt is more than fast enough to use any external hard drive

Those laptop provisioning experiences sound great. I too found myself working from & deploying software to AWS Workspaces - cloud VDI seems like a great solution for a lot of businesses.

My remote work journey started with IBM in 2015. A few team members got Macs while the rest were issued beefy ThinkPads. It was one of the first large organizations I've seen that intentionally chose not to use Active Directory for their PC fleets. Unsurprisingly, IBM had IT service centers globally distributed. Despite the wider availability of service centers, I also installed extra storage and RAM myself on that ThinkPad.

It's great that remote work has taken off especially since Covid-19.

Active Directory works with Macs. Amazon used Active Directory for their employees across Macs and Windows. They also had their own MDM software. Now we use a combination of GSuite and Rippling (a YC company) for our IDP/MDM software.

Thanks for sharing about Rippling. I'll take a closer look at it: https://www.rippling.com/device-management

The other company I've worked at that chose not to use Active Directory was Tenable. They even acquired a company that specializes in AD security, but ended up deciding AD was too insecure for their IT infrastructure.

Rippling can also serve as a “PEO”.

https://www.rippling.com/products/hr/peo

If you work at a small company, HR, benefits, tax reporting is handled by Rippling as if you are their employee even though for everything else is handled by your employer. You are “co-employed” by both companies. As our company grew, last year we all got “terminated” by Rippling (initiated by our company) and had to “re-apply” to our company as far as new tax forms.

Nothing changed day to day. It was merely an accounting, legal, tax thing.

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