More Windows problems…

 

Currently I have a PC in my studio that is connected to a USB printer, and this printer in Windows is being shared to the network.

I also have a couple of Mac’s that access this shared printer, and occasionally use it if the main workhorse A3 laser printer is busy.

This has worked fine on the Mac side, but occasionally, about once a month, the Mac’s connection to the printer doesn’t work.

The standard way to fix this is:

Test the PC to see if it still prints, 100% of the time it doesn’t, so we call in our in-house Windows IT spods to recreate the printer and share it again.

The Mac’s then work normally again, with no reconfiguration at all, they simply pick up the new printer and they’re good to go.

The mantra is, “If the PC prints, then the Mac will print also. Automatically.” This is why I use the Mac, it just works.

 

However, last week this wasn’t the case. The Mantra didn’t work.

As usual the Mac stopped printing to the shared USB printer. However this time, the PC printed fine.

So I asked the Windows IT spods to recreate the printer anyway. They did, it still didn’t work.

So I recreated the shared printer on the Mac and this is where we got to the bottom of the problem.

When you connect to a shared Windos printer on the Mac, it asks you for the login information for the PC. We knew this info, and we put this info in correctly, however the PC wasn’t accepting it, giving a ‘NT ACCESS DENIED” error, whatever that is.

So we thought the problem was with the Mac, and after half an hour trying different things, I gave up, telling the Mac-user to print to the A3 printer instead in the meantime.

I thought that was that, except next day the Windows PC wouldn’t log in to it’s desktop at all. The same log in info now wasn’t working on the PC either.

The spods came in, took it away, seemingly recreating the user with a new account & login.

Guess what, when I tried recreating the shared PC printer on the Mac – it worked fine.

So the problem was the PC simply deciding that it had had enough with that account and the only solution was to create a new one, which in turn solved our printer problem.

One day, Windows simply decides it’s not going to work anymore and needs massaging back to workability, and a whole career has been created around this concept.

I can see now why WIndows IT people are needed – and why they are scared sh*tless of the Mac.

 

What switches a switcher..?

There’s a process of thought in marketing that outlines the different strategies in which businesses can operate. You can be ’sales orientated’. This means that you go out to your customers and you target anyone who may want to buy your product, and hard sell them.

Another is ‘marketing oriented’. This means you perform extensive market research and find out what it is your customer wants and you fill that market. Another (and quite outdated) is ‘production oriented’. This means that you create a great product, regardless of whether you know the market wants it, and you advertise that product, hoping the market will come to you. This approach is commonly known as, “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

Now, which approach do you think that Apple ought to follow?

Let’s face it, the first (sales) ain’t Apple strong point. They’re famous for making great ‘brand-awareness’ advertising, but when it comes to product, their adverts are strong on concept, but lacking in hard-sell. The reasons for that a partly down to the long-term plan they have for the brand. Put simply, they do not wish to cheapen the product line. I can see the idea behind this, as they are not a mass-market supplier, they fill a niche and fill it well. This isn’t the best approach to increase market share however.

What’s next – the marketing approach. Apple are famous for abhorring ‘focus groups’, instead relying on gut instinct. Interesting. You can argue the business sense of this, but hey, the are the original ‘crazy ones’.

Thirdly we have the ‘production’ orientatated approach. This approach is all but dead in modern business practices, but Apple generally follow this plan with good success. The idea being is that you create best-of-breed product and hope that the market will notice and beat a path to your door.

You’d think that this approach would not work as people simply buy what advertised to them strongly enough (i.e. Windows). It doesn’t matter if it’s an inferior product, there is a hugely strong ‘herd’ instinct in buying all high-tech products where a degree of knowledge is required to make an informed purchase. Most people lack the courage to go against the flow. Everybody else chooses this computer, so it must be right. It’s tragic I know, but Apple has something else up their sleeve that backs up this production orientated approach (hardware) and that’s SOFTWARE and it’s effective.

Let me impart a story that shows how it’s effective.

A work colleague of mine has used PC all his life. He’s never come across a Macintosh at all. His opinion is like most PC users – indifference, he’s no power user. He’s never used a Mac, doesn’t see what all the fuss is about and doesn’t have an opinion either way.

Anyway, this colleague was brought into my design department in order to help out with some simple graphics work. After a hasty crash course in Quark Xpress & InDesign, he’s pretty well up to speed, and has helped a great deal in the more mundane work in the studio.

After showing him the obvious, (such as how to do forward deletes, where all the applications are in the dock, the menubar is always at the top of the screen etc.), he, like most Mac newbies has picked up the Mac basics pretty quickly, and it’s been interesting to see a virgin Mac user up close, going through some of the trials & tribulations that most new switchers must go through.

It has taken him about 3-4 weeks to realise he can experiment with his system without breaking it. It’s taken him about 3-4 weeks to suddenly realise that his computer hasn’t crashed or frozen. It’s taken him about 3-4 weeks to realise that all the viruses we get sent via our company-wide emails don’t affect his computer at all. It’s taken him about 3-4 weeks to suddenly realise that he’s had no problems printing. I could go on, but you get the picture.

I first saw the glimmers of a switcher when he saw my iBook, which I bring into work. He asked the price, he asked what it could do, whether it could run Office, Adobe CS etc.

One day he brought in a DVD. This DVD was a DVD that a local company had created showing a wedding that a member of his family had attended. He wanted to know whether it could be copied as the company that created it was going to charge £200 for this, on top of the £1000 it took to create it.

His father (who owns his own PC-based photography business), had tried to copy it, but to no avail, and he said that it looked like ‘one of those Mac-DVD’s’. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but I took a look at it.

Straight away I realised that it was created in iDVD. It used the ‘flowing curtains’ effect and looked really impressive to the layman. I realised that it was OK, but certainly didn’t push iDVD at all in the effects department, and was quite amateurish actually.

I pointed this out and showed my colleague iDVD. He was stunned. “So this DVD was created using software that comes free with all Mac’s?” he said. I answered in the positive. It turns out that his father had seen this DVD, and wanted a slice of this business. He had looked around for a PC-based program that could do this, but to no avail.

I left my colleague with this information and thought no more of it until a few weeks later when I was asked by my work colleague which Mac I would recommend to create these sort of wedding DVD’s. I gave a few suggestions and now his father is the proud owner of a top of the range iMac G5, with DVD Studio Pro. It doesn’t stop there however.

All this happened about 6-12 months ago, and at this point he has all but transferred his entire business over to Mac’s, and guess what gave him the final impetus to switch totally? it’s Apeture, the latest software from Apple that’s directly targeted at his sort of business.

And what of my work colleague? Well he’s just offered to buy my iBook from me for a very good price. It means I can replace this iBook with a brand new one for a couple of hundred pounds.

So there you have it. The reasons for these 2 PC-users switching were exposure to the hardware (my work colleague), and exposure to the software (his father). This approach by Apple is an approach that is unique in the computer industry and I can tell you now that it IS working.

Applescript to the rescue again…

I have over 4000 sheets of perforated A4 paper that need to have printed on to them a 2 colour graphic in specific places. This will then be put through a special ink-jet label printing device which will print out tickets that reference a database of descriptions & prices.

Simple you’d think, however here’s the problem. The paper is of low quality (I did not purchase it, it’s for a client), and the high volume laser-printer I am using simply jams after a couple of prints. I assume it’s because of the way the paper is heated as it prints.

The solution (as I found out the hard way with trial and error) is to only send 1 print, let the printer cool down and then send another – 4000 times.

Having realised that it wasn’t practical to babysit InDesign, pressing command P every 50 seconds, I realised that Applescript could do this. After a quick search on the internet to get the code structure correct, I came up with this:

repeat 4000 times
set CR to ASCII character of 13
tell application “System Events”
tell application “InDesign CS” to activate
keystroke “p” using {command down}
keystroke CR
end tell
delay 50
beep
end repeat

In case you don’t know the wonders of Applescript, what this script does is to set character 13 (which is return on your keyboard) to the variable CR, it then tells the background application “System Events” to tell “InDesign” to come to the front, System

Events then types “command-P” and “return”. InDesign is already set up to print just one print to the correct printer. It then waits 50 seconds and does it again, 500 times.
If you don’t know Applescript I suggest you try it out. I have only basic knowledge of the code, however in my view it’s perfect for solving repetitive tasks just like this.

Keeping IT under control…

About a decade ago I made a decision that changed my working life. No, I didn’t choose the Macintosh; that decision came almost a decade earlier, and has been a choice that has richly coloured my life ever since.

No, the decision that changed my life for a second time was to move away from the more traditional feeding grounds of the Mac, such a advertising agencies, printers & imagesetting bureaux, and towards areas where the Mac was making inroads into larger, Wintel-based companies.

After the slow-down that hit the UK advertising industry in the mid-nineties, I decided that I couldn’t base my career around such a unpredictable & volatile industry, where losing one client could mean the company cutting it’s wage bill in half.

I took a job working for an ‘in-house’ studio, as part of a larger PC-based organisation, and in the following years I have worked for several companies, but all of them have followed this ethos. By and large, this working environment is much more agreeable, and has allowed me to relax and plan a future for myself and my family.

I say agreeable, but there has been one aspect of this arrangement that has proved irksome – IT departments.

I have many a horror story to tell of my dealings with stubborn Windows Managers, too many to go into here, but I must make a clear distinction of who I am talking about. By Windows Managers I am talking about people in a business setting who have had no contact with the Macintosh or Mac-people whatsoever, and whose only reference to Macintosh are the odd sarcastic article in PC magazines. I in no way refer to the countless numbers of Macintosh IT Managers who in my experience do an excellent job of managing Macintosh & Windows based networks.

I always gave Windows Managers the benefit of the doubt, thinking that the Mac-hating attitude that they’d so often dish out was simply an isolated incident, and didn’t reflect the wider opinion of IT professionals and Network Managers. However, having looked back over 3 or 4 separate companies of which I have worked for, and the opinions and attitudes of the IT staff therein, I’m beginning to see a pattern.

When a particular company first decides that it makes business-sense to bring their design & repro in-house, they are at a loss as how to approach it. What tends to happen is they bypass the usual avenues for buying IT equipment, i.e. they don’t approach their IT department. They ask their current provider for advice, be it a design house, printer or consultant. They will recommend the industry-standard – the Apple Macintosh. Then recruitment begins, and it’s usually these recruits that set the whole studio up. As you know, the Mac’s so straightforward, this is just a matter of a couple of days.

Then the problems start. Usually you need some information from IT, in order for the Mac to integrate into the PC-network. IP addresses, SMB printer file-paths, email, internet, proxy settings, the list goes on and on, and it’s here where I usually hit a brick wall, (with a Windows logo on it).

What follows are endless arguments, one-sided discussions and vitriol on their opinion of the Macintosh, which I try my best to avoid getting involved in. This exact scenario has happened on more than one occasion, and it begs me to ask the question, ‘why?’, and I think I have an answer.

The reasons for this are quite simple, and in the UK at least (which has to be the anti-Mac world-capital) it seems to be hard-wired into these people. They have spent their entire working lives keeping Windows stable and operational. They know nothing else. Most don’t even know that the Macintosh exists, and of those that do, they would never contemplate recommending them, and thought that in their working lives at least, they’d never have to go near one.

IT underpins businesses of all kinds; the bigger the business, the more powerful they become. Company Directors become slaves to their IT departments, and they slowly begin to lose control of the company that they run. All business decisions at some point must be run through IT, if IT thinks it’s a bad idea then it won’t happen.

Slowly but surely, this power starts to go to their heads. When Windows decides that it’s not going to work, whole companies grind to a halt. Then a multitude of IT staff crawl out of the woodwork like ants, swarming over each computer, re-setting it all up, while the company is paralysed, losing money every second. On asking what has gone wrong, or how long will it take until things start working again, you at worst get a mumbled grunt, or at best get a cacophony of gibberish of what has happened. They feel powerful, wanted and they are in control. How many times has this occurred in your company?

Occasionally, amongst all of this chaos sits a lone Macintosh studio. A simple set-up, just four or five Mac’s, monitors (colour managed), fast colour laser printer, slower colour accurate proofer, scanners, tape-back up and maybe a small server, with a smattering of external hard drives & digital cameras. It works, all the time. No down-time, no glitches, no errors (at least none that cost money). When the Windows server goes down, the Mac-studio continues without a hiccup. You even get other people in the office coming to you to print their Word, Excel or Powerpoint files for them, because the Windows network isn’t working or their printer keeps eating their jobs. To make matters worse for IT, Mac staff (horror of horrors!) also know how to install applications, they know how to troubleshoot printing problems, manage their fonts and their systems, and what’s worse; they are allowed to!

IT staff feel impotent, unwanted and not in control in Mac-situations. They just don’t ‘get’ the Mac, and why should they? If they did they’d realise they’d be out of work. Had they
been involved at the out-set, Mac’s wouldn’t have been allowed in the company. A standard Wintel-box would be recommended, just like the accounts department. They might not understand reprographics, but they do know what’s best for the company that they control. They make the fatal mistake of assuming because they know computers in a business setting, this somehow gives them an insight into computing for specialised industries. They don’t like the idea that somebody in the company knows more about computers than they do, or has a more powerful computer than the Windows Manager – this gives them cold sweats in the middle of the night.

‘Colour-management’, they’d say ‘what do you need that for?’

‘Back-up?’ they’d retort, ‘you don’t have to worry about it.’ (Until you need a file that you’ve accidentally deleted, and you have to wait days to get it back because they’re too busy).

‘Colour-proofing? Use the companies colour-laser like the other 400 staff have to.’

‘Server? What do you need that for? use this soulless Wintel box like everyone else.’
I once even had a Windows Manager state that the studio shouldn’t be allowed to accept files from outside the company, in case they contained a virus! Having then pointed out that this was the way the department made money, by printing clients files, he quickly relented.

It all boils down to one word, ‘CONTROL’. They control the company, anything that jeopardises this cannot be allowed to happen. The Macintosh suddenly introduces a variable in the company they have no jurisdiction over.

All of this may sound extreme, and I expect a lot of you, even Mac users, & especially in the US, will say that this diatribe is a load of biased rubbish. But things are very different here in the UK. Getting an Apple Mac into a company that isn’t graphics oriented is near impossible. Anti-Mac bias is all around you, on the TV, (the BBC is the worst), newspapers, (IT specials regularly trash the Mac), in computer stores, (PC-World staff have to be seen to be believed), banks, (try online-banking and you’ll be amazed at how you’re treated as a paying customer), and even the government, (try to fill out on-line tax forms).

If Apple want to succeed in the UK, they need to approach things very differently here. My experience is to bypass IT completely, you haven’t a hope in selling to them. Concentrate on the real people who run the company, the Directors. In my experience they just want the best solution to the problem, and in the area of reprographics that will always be the Macintosh.