Macs in Art

[gibbo_ap]

as mentioned in another thread im looking at putting macs in our new art build

i am currently writing a report to suggest this.

what advantages are there to having macs in education apart from the obvious industry standard for design apps etc

[PEO]

1. It gives the kids the opportunity to experience a diffrent operating system
2. indisrty standard
3. reliable

[PEO]

very sexy too

[bladedanny]

The school I work at has all macs (we are a media arts school) apart from the obvious reasons you stated i think these are also good reasons:

Dual Boot - All new macs dual boot so if your licensed you can put xp/vista on them and have the best of both worlds

Stable - I find that Mac OS X is more stable than XP or Vista

Bult in software - Most Macs come with iLife installed which is great for the smaller media / art projects that might be going on.

One downside is the deployment of OS X and XP/Vista, if your only getting a few then you should be ok, otherwise it can take a while to deploy an image.

Like I said we have over 200 Macs in school (as I'm sure other do) If you need any more info just pm me.

Hope this helps,

Dan

[CyberNerd]

Your report needs to focus on the benefits to teaching an learning - it will ultimately come down to software ease of use etc. You shouldn't focus too much on stability (easier for you) or 'industry standards'
'industry standard' has no real benefit to T+L, infact many 'industry' applications are far too complicated for students. The industry is the education industry and so T+L must focus on the concepts rather than features.

If Imovie is easier for students to use, and teachers to teach than moviemaker then that is a real benefit to T+L.

[HodgeHi]

One downside is the deployment of OS X and XP/Vista, if your only getting a few then you should be ok, otherwise it can take a while to deploy an image.

Dan

Not necessarily true. If you mean the configuration of the partitions themselves then yes i would agree it can be time-consuming but i found the main issue to be Windows configuration. Joining the domain, renaming the computer etc. But this is because i need to spend more time getting it scripted.

Using Deploy Studio and leveraging OS X Server's net boot service can make deployment very quick. If you only need to deploy OS X then your way out front. Deploy Studio can rename accounts based on the computer name you give to the machines mac-address when you add them to the deploy studio console. You can create different computer groups giving you complete control over what you want to rename the set of machines. Also you can create workflows assigned individually to each computer group, giving you flexibility over how each workflow is used.

For example i have 2 computer groups, 1 ICT Suite, 1 Mobile trolley. I have ICT-Suite-01-15 assigned for the machines in this group and Macbook-01-15 assigned for the macbook trolley group.

I have created 2 workflows.

One assigned to the ICT Suite group and 1 to the Mobile trolley group. The first workflow has the partition tool, format tool, re-image tool and bind tool. These run automated one after the other.

The partition for the ICT Suite group is 100Gb (OS X) and 40Gb (Windows). I can copy this workflow and create the 2nd for the mobile trolley and change the setting for the partition creation to 40gb and 40gb. I can also change the default images to deploy. So the ICT image i created i can deploy to the ICT Suite group and the mobile trolley image to the mobile trolley.

These are examples but in all honesty the whole process once you have got it up and running is not that long. I did a suite of 32 in around 1 hour IIRC, All bound and name changed.

Hope this helps.

[bladedanny]

Using Deploy Studio and leveraging OS X Server's net boot service

We do use this but it takes 40-60 mins to deploy a dual boot image as oppose to fog which take 10 minutes for a windows only partition. I realise why this is, I just mentioned it as a comparrison

[PEO]

We do use this but it takes 40-60 mins to deploy a dual boot image as oppose to fog which take 10 minutes for a windows only partition. I realise why this is, I just mentioned it as a comparrison

is this over a gig connection?

We dont dual boot ours, but we have a lot of software on ours and it takes 10 minutes per machine from xserver.

[HodgeHi]

@bladedanny

Please accept my apologies

My experience may be down to the image sizes being deployed. I deploy the base image of OS X 10.5.8 and deploy apps usually afterwards using ARD. We don't use any of the Final cut stuff here so that keeps our image sizes down

[CyberNerd]

Please accept my apologies

This is the politest "Mac vs anything else" thread I have ever read.

Whats up with you guys ? I'm sure it's supposed to turn into a flamewar by now.

[PEO]

I must admit, two year ago I always said the only place for a mac is in the kitchen... changed my mind when I had to work on them... best thing since slice bread

[SYSMAN_MK]

This is the politest "Mac vs anything else" thread I have ever read.

Whats up with you guys ? I'm sure it's supposed to turn into a flamewar by now.

lol Think peoples flame throwers have run out of fuel today.