I work for a large publishing company that puts on weekly shoppers, daily newspapers and weekly entertainment papers. The production and editorial department of this company has been all Mac for years now. Recently the company has revamped it's [sic] Tech/IT department with a new manager and this department is now keen to switch everything to PC. When I say everything, I mean everything.It's funny; back in 1997, there was a prepress service bureau in Los Angeles we had profiled for Micro Publishing News called The PC Bureau (I think that was their name). At the time, they were the only service bureau we knew of that willingly handled Windows graphics files (everyone else was steadfastly Mac-based)--and that was the key to their success, since at the time doing desktop publishing on Windows was still kind of a nightmare, mostly for font reasons. (I rarely credit my father for witty lines, but my favorite was when, during the development off the TrueType font format, they asked him what they should call it, and he said "You should call it off.") But even in 1997, DTP on Windows was still easier than it was in 1992.
The reasons given for this is that PCs are cheaper, the software we're upgrading to (InDesign creative suite from QuarkXPress) is cheaper for PCs, the ability for the PC Techs to remotely access and fix the PCs (this company is spread out over the nation, from coast to coast), supporting one platform is easier, Macs are expensive (we'd get more technology from less money with the PC)
What are arguments that I can use to counter this decision? The virus/spam problem won't be quite the usual PC problem as mail will be running though company filters. Can tech support on Mac OS X "dial" in to other computers and fix problems from afar? Can Mac users easily interact with Exchange mail servers? The IT department swears that the newspaper industry is moving all PC anyway, that LA Times made this switch, so I'm curious if anyone has info/evidence of these claims. Furthermore can anyone point to successful Mac to PC switches?
As much as I like the Mac (I've used it since Day One in 1985), when looked at objectively, the fact is that it is now just as easy to do desktop publishing on Windows. In fact, I have a Windows machine, and I run Photoshop and InDesign on it and the files I create are nearly 100% compatible with those same applications on my Mac, and vice versa. You can't fault companies for going with cheaper hardware, especially given the economic realities in newspapers these days.
Ironically, I find font handling in Mac OS X to be a colossal pain in the butt, since there are no fewer than three locations that fonts can be stored and fonts always seem to randomly appear and disappear. (Quark users have also reported horrific font problems under OS X, although I donlt know if that's strictly a Quark thing or a Mac thing.)
And after all, it could be worse: they could be switching Microsoft Office for publishing!
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