Mac Life

Macs at Work: Not Just for Designers

Low End Mac Reader Specials

Memory To Go Special: New 2008 iMac 2GB $42 / iMac Intel Core2 DUO & MacBook Pro 2GB $36 - 1GB $20. MacPro 8 Core Memory 8GB kit $286 / 4GB kit $143 / 2GB kit $93 -- Free shipping available. LIfetime warranty.

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, Apple Batteries and Apple A/C Adapters. Also Great prices on Used Apple Computers. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.

OWC: Upgrade to a Larger Hard Drive, Add Additional Drives SATA for Mac Pro and G5s, up to 1.0TB in each Bay. 500GB from $90!

Mac users can finally play Party Poker for Mac. Not only that, they can also learn how to play PokerStars for Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, laptops, and LCD TVs side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for a new cell phone GPS products or MP3 players. The Ciao network makes searching products easy for you.

- 2002.07.25

Do you use a Mac at work? Have you ever?

I have, but it's a fair assumption that the majority of the sneaky daytime peeks at Low End Mac are done from the, ahem, "comfortable" surroundings of a Microsoft OS. [Editor's note: 45.5% of all pages served in June were read on Windows computers; 44.6% on Macs.]

So what did I do on this Mac in the workplace, and, more importantly, how can you get my old job? Readers of my frequent ramblings on this site may know that I previously worked as a video editor, and the editing was done in Adobe Premiere 5.1 on a Power Macintosh G4/400.

Nice and typical, eh? Creative work. Web design, illustration, desktop publishing, even journalism (which is, sadly, more often creative than truthful) are all areas of industry which are atypical in their choice of computer - but they're far from the only industries which feature Macs.

At one stage of my life, I found myself working in a diagnostic radiology department of a large hospital, and lo and behold, what did I find? Macs. The main clerical duties were performed on dumb Unix terminals running Digital's DG/UX, the secretarial work was done in Windows, and the CT Scans were processed in Sun Solaris. But across the hallway, the Nuclear Medicine and Ultrasound departments ran the Mac OS - even to the extent of using Photoshop, presumably for retouching the less professionally taken images.

What I want to talk about is the difference in the two cultures when it came to the Mac.

Designers and other such dilettantes are fueled with obsession for their favourite computers - sure, they pretend they're above the Mac zealotry, but get a drink in them, and they'll start enthusing about how "Photoshop just runs better on a Mac." Like many of us who use Apple machines at home, they become walking, talking advertisements for the cabal at Infinite Loop, Cupertino.

Back at X-Ray, things were different. Now, I'm not going to make disparaging remarks about radiographers, but those that owned computers owned PCs. The clinicians were even worse.

Due to the obscene hours which I worked at said establishment, when I decided to buy an iMac Rev. B that I'd seen for £600, I had to nip out on my lunch hour (which, incidentally, was only 50 minutes - what is this, medical time?). Upon returning to the hospital with my iMac in tow, I was confronted by a registrar, "God, you haven't bought one of those bloody iMac things, have you?"

Doctors, pah!

I smiled, said yes, and tried to think of something suitably inane for the medical mind to take in. The last thing I needed to do was look like a complete lunatic by explaining that I'd always used Macs since I could afford them, and that I'd stop when my iMac was prized from my cold, dead hands.

Mac owners always enthuse about how, once you've used a Mac you won't want to go back to Windows. On top of this, we've all heard that to be successful in the home market, a computer must first be successful in the workplace. In fact, this is how Wintel PCs finally killed of the Atari ST and shrank the Amiga user base to almost nothing.

For years we were tortured with tales of our own impending doom - that we'd go the way of those machines.

It didn't happen.

What exactly is Apple's foothold in industry? Is it still largely confined to areas around imaging? If so, is this a bad thing? Macs have a habit of turning up in the oddest of places - small businesses where the owner has a personal passion for them, even large government departments such as the Northern Ireland Housing Executive use them, and if I recall correctly, the U.S. military is fond of them because there are so few Mac based crackers.

Mind you, I'm sure there are no BBC Microcomputers used by crackers either, so there must be more to it than this.

If any of you use Macs in the workplace, I'd love to hear from you (excepting Dan Knight, whom I already know uses Macs). What do you do for a living? What do you do on the Mac? Has the Mac in the workplace persuaded any of your colleagues to buy an Apple?

If you don't work in a Mac based environment, do your colleagues eyes glaze over when you mention your Mac? Do you feel it's your personal duty to promote the machine to friends and family, or do you just get on with doing what you do on it? LEM

Jason Walsh is a journalist and postgraduate student. These observations, though unscientific by any standard, derive from his studies in sociology of culture. One day soon he'll be a doctor, and then we'll all be sorry.

Recent Mac Life Columns

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2008 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.


Have a question?
Ask an expert!

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Best Used Macs
Video Cards
Email Lists
InfoMac's Low
End Mac Forum

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
MacMall
TechRestore
MacResQ
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.