Common Craft Blog
Project Platform Wars
By leelefever on July 21, 2005 - 10:56am
This is a story about something that many of us are faced with – the dominance of the PC and the appeal of the Mac.
I’ve worked on a project at a local Fortune 50 company on-and-off for over a year. When the project started, we all had PCs. We didn’t have a hard time getting onto the company Intranet, using VPN, sharing docs, etc. It worked pretty smoothly.
Along the way, the team morphed and a Mac user came on. He struggled with integration, downloading multiple tools and using virtual PC. He made it work and all was well.
I left the team for a few months and in the mean time, a number of new people came onto the team- all Mac users. When I came back, I came back into a Mac world – I was the odd man out with a PC.
The team I needed to work with were all saying I needed to switch so we could share docs more easily (namely OmniGraffle / Visio docs). It was suddenly my problem for *not* having a Mac and not being able to use OmniGraffle.
Still the odd man out, I didn’t have any answers. I felt (imagined?) this tension of the team saying “Lee, you’ll love the Mac and if you switch, it will make our team more effective.†Costs and viability aside, I decided that I couldn’t switch.
The platform issue got escalated, as it had the potential to cause major problems. As it turned out- the answer was simple. Our project leader simply said that the company uses Microsoft products and that means that all diagrams, wireframes, etc. need to be done in Visio because of future hand-off to enterprise teams.
Suddenly, all the Mac people were faced with the possibility that the Mac was not perfect in every way. It can’t use a standard program of the enterprise. They were suddenly the odd men out.
Of course, being playfully triumphant, I could only turn to my team after hearing the news and say with a smile “UH! In your face!†It was not my problem anymore.
The reality of the situation, good or bad, was suddenly crystal clear. The enterprise world is a PC world and the enterprise expects you to play well with their systems. The Mac being better designed, more secure, more compliant, more cool doesn’t matter (unless you're a designer).
At the end of the day, I really just want things to work together. I value great design and impressive hardware, but I really just want to make sure that I can work with everyone on a team using the same documents. It would be great if it were a Mac world, but it’s not in most companies, so I’m OK with the PC for now.
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Geeky question: The problem we were having was related to being able to save OmniGraffle and Visio files as XML documents and then sharing them across platforms. When we did, the diagrams would get rearranged and generally funky. Does anyone know a solution for sharing OmniGraffle and Visio docs across the Mac and PC?
Project Platform Wars
As someone who makes a lot of diagrams in my day job, I definitely think part of the issue is there being no current version of Visio for the Mac.
Although I find OmniGraffle a way more satisfying way to create diagrams, it's common enough for corporate clients to require Visio or PowerPoint so that the diagrams can be edited by Windows / Office users in the enterprise.
Of course, the other issue with Visio is its lack of compatibility between versions of Visio. When I recently started doing lots of work in OmniGraffle, it was because I was in a situation where I either had to go to Graffle or upgrade to a new version of Visio on my PC, since my older version wasn't compatible enough with the newer one.
In fact, IMO, OmniGraffle is more compatible with the current version of Visio than older versions of Visio are with the current version!
In general, Windows OS always suggests to me that I'm slaving away at work, and Mac OS always suggest to me that I've got fun creative things to do. So, it's easy to want to avoid having to use a PC to work in Visio--but, obviously, Micosoft gets some value out of making diagraming synonomous with slaving away at work, and many big companies are attracted to that aspect of the MS model for software. ;-)
Project Platform Wars
The answer is...
...certain versions of OmniGraffle and Visio XML play nicely together, and others don't.
Also, some advanced layouts don't seem to translate nicely. Yep, that sucks.
Project Platform Wars
Just use both, its just like driving a stickshift. Good to know how to do incase you have to.
Project Platform Wars
Lee,
This has always been the big issue. Way back in 96-97 when I was at Glaxo US ALL their websites were developed on Macs, much to IT's chagrin. The problem was we all needed twice as much deskspace because we all needed to have PCs too (for e-mail, memos, etc). When I moved to Glaxo Canada the company was so anti-Mac that I came to the same realization ... Macs might be great, stable, secure, but since the work world is Windows ... sometimes it's just easier to love your Mac at home.
Me? While I don't love Windows, I haven't seen a compelling reason for me to switch when time for the next machine rolls around.
Project Platform Wars
We get around this problem by having a headless XP Pro PC on our server rack. When someone at a mac needs to fiddle with PC-only software of some kind, they use Microsoft Remote Desktop (on the mac) to bring up the XP desktop. This works very well, especially on the LAN:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/misc/rdc_update_103.xml&secid=80&ssid=10&flgnosysreq=True
On the PC-side you'll need XP "Pro", and here's how to turn it on:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/getstarted/remoteintro.mspx
You can also do this with http://www.realvnc.com/, with more flexibility.
In a couple years this will all be moot, cuz there will be a hack to run windows API sw on intel-based macs.
Project Platform Wars
Anthony - I never learned how to drive a stickshift or use OminGraffle. All of sudden, I feel very at-risk. Maybe they will be added to my what-to-do-instead-of-school list this summer!
Project Platform Wars
Sachi- That's ok, those things are for Nerds, and I know you never hang around with NERDS! do you?
Project Platform Wars
How can you do this?