This article is more than 1 year old

Scientists love MacBooks (true) – but what about you?

When users get freedom to choose

Work, damn you!

For those scientist choosing Macs for the low frustration factor – and it's rather a lot that do – there's a genuine right for the Apple fanpersons to crow. A lot of scientific software is written for Linux/Unix and thus generally works just fine on Macs. This has increased the number of Macs in Science by default, and made it a more socially acceptable choice.

As such, scientists wanting to use a Mac "because it's easier" don't face the bizarre social stigma and peer pressure that, for example, systems administrators do when choosing a Mac. At the end of the day, Macs are easier for end users. So given the choice, more people choose them.

While Apple in the enterprise adoption is growing, IT departments are still very reluctant to let people use Macs. Plenty of software just wasn't written for Macs, and departments still carry a lot of that 90s stigma around.

Academia is different. You're going to have to support Macs in academia. There's just too much software that requires Linux or Unix, and Apple produces the only OS that will run those applications that is actually usable by normal people.

When you're a sysadmin for a university, what's the difference between having to support 500 Macs and 1500? You have to invest in the time, tools and training anyways, you might as well just let the boffins have what they want.

Surely, it's about style!

The Windows fanpersons will typically interject here with some comment about "fashion" or "style". Surely the scientists are all choosing MacBooks only because the other scientists are all choosing MacBooks! Herd mentality! Sheeple! Ad Hominem!

If we were having this discussion about a café full of hipsters, I might agree. Having had some really good debates about this with various scientist friends around the world, however, I'm swayed towards the belief that this isn't the case in the scientific community.

The simple reason I don't buy "style" as a rationale for Macbook uptake among scientists is that computers aren't a status symbol to scientists**. Not in the way that they are to systems administrators, and not even close to how they have become a status symbol to hipsters.

I'm not saying scientists aren't possessed of raging egos and the living embodiment of raging narcissism. They are, and academia encourages this in every facet of its social, economic and political construction.

What I'm saying is that computers are just a tool to the majority of scientists. They'll get all angsty over the details of data collected, or the algorithm they've written to parse that data, or (more often) who got published where, when and how many times.

For me, this rules out "style", "fashion" or a herd mentality as possible explanations for increased Mac uptake in this group.

The important takeaway

The important takeaway here isn't "smart people choose Macs". As most scientists aren't computer experts I'm not sure that their choices regarding computers should be considered more valuable than, say, that of a systems administrator.

What is important is to note that scientists tend to operate in environments where they have a freer choice regarding the selection of their computers, and the result is Mac usage that is disproportionately high when compared to your average enterprise.

This says to me not that Macs are chosen more amongst scientists, but that Macs are chosen less in enterprises. In other words corporate policy, culture and even peer pressure from IT are suppressing uptake of Apple in the enterprise.

This is borne out by empirical evidence. Cisco, for example, has a policy allowing people to choose their computer of choice. In 2012 the company saw consistent uptake of between 20% and 30%, regardless of where the employees were located in the world.

All things being equal, people choosing computers to use simply as yet another tool they have to use everyday would choose Macs far more than the seven per cent penetration we see in enterprises today.

While scientists – and scientific conferences – are a fairly visible subset of this phenomenon, it seems to me that they are representative of a schism between end user preference and the availability of that preferences in the list of available choices.

Given the rise of shadow IT within companies, BYOD and staff generally just not doing what IT tells them to do, it may just be time to throw in the towel. Users want Macs. They want them more than we give them opportunity to use them. Make of that what you will. ®

*To be fair, I'm miserable to everyone.
**Actually, computers are a status symbol to some scientists, but we're usually talking about computers measured in megawatts of power consumption rather than notebooks.

Trevor Pott is a full-time nerd from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He splits his time between systems administration, technology writing, and consulting.

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like