I hope and wish for some time (since coming of OS X) that there would be an option for very basic OS installation. Where I could choose not to install not needed apps and drivers and fonts, but add them later when the need arrives.
I do not use iTunes, iLife, FrontRow, TimeMachine, iChat, Dashboard and......chinese fonts and so on and on. Most these apps just sit in a folder, but some of them try to connect home sometimes.
And then there could the other for enterprise folks.

I haven't needed to install the OS in years (it isn't Windows :D ) so I could be wrong, but I believe there is a custom install option that will let you do much of what you're asking.

iLife typically comes on a separate DVD all together these days. You can also do a custom install and uncheck the printer drivers and languages, I do so for all my images. If anyone actually needs that stuff (which no one does) then I add it to the machine manually.

summer project pics. Collecting, inventory, and reimaging thousands of macboks!

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/2...0008vr9.th.jpg

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/1...0010nq2.th.jpg

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/1...0011nd1.th.jpg

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/5...0012lx8.th.jpg

That is not even all of them!

.............holy......crap.

You are wrong. Custom install does not allow you to choose not to install most of iStuff. Yes you could scip printer drivers, language kits (but you still have chinese, arabic, russian and so on) and iLife (like Garage, iMovie, iPhoto), but not iTunes, iChat..............

That is weird, almost every new Mac I have has iLife on a separate DVD, but that could be due to we are ordering in bulk? I wouldn't think Apple would change that though, seems unnecessary.

Well, been a bit since I touched this thread and I am currently going to migrate this stuff to my blog, but I thought I'd give an update to let everyone know that Apple systems can be used in enterprise environments.

We reimaged 6,000 Macbooks with a dual booting Widows/OS X image, and did it all using the Casper Suite from JAMF software and accomplished it in less than one month. Our record was around 600+ Macbooks in one 12hour day of working. Not too shabby.

We are also looking at deploying some Mac Minis in a pretty innovative way. Due to circumstances we decided to mount some on the back of LCD monitors for a slim computer solutions. You can see them here:

http://www.tlarkin.com/blog/new-way-use-mac-mini

Well, I have been getting lots of questions from others looking at deploying large Mac deployments and organizations doing 1:1 deployments. I was getting emails and phone calls from some companies that wanted my opinion on how well it works. So, I decided to start a blog which will come out in three parts. Part 1 is half way done and I will continue to finish part 1 in the next week or so.

http://tlarkin.com/blog/apple-and-en...ployments-pt-1

The continuation of part 1 will likely be done later next week while I am off for winter break. It will mainly reflect my 1 year experience of running a pure Mac environment, with out Windows at all. Of course we do have windows in our image for one particular application and I will cover that, but I wanted to just basically speak my opinions of how I find it to work after working with it for over 1 full year now.

i'm afraid i don't have a reply, heck, i don't even know what an enterprise is! all i'm trying to do is find out the best wifi printer to use w/ my mac via a linksys router. presently i have an hp all-in-one 2600 which i can connect to, however, i can't figure out how to print w/ just the black cartridge, everything comes out in color no matter how i try to change it. i'm not @ all savvy w/ my macbookpro running os x 10.5, & i'm the not @ the [I]least[I] technically oriented, so [B]please[B], whomever answers my question, i beg of you, please make it very simple for me to understand. also, i don't have hundreds of bucks to spend on a printer, but i am looking for a good all-in-one that not only prints quality documents, but quality pix as well. i'd also like one that has an easy to use scan feature w/ which i can easily scan documents onto the computer. in all the years i've owned the hp 2600 i have never once used the scan or fax features, not because i didn't want orneed to, but because i've never been able to figure out how despite an exhaustible # of attempts & more phone calls to hp "support" than u can imagine. any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. then from there i can ask the billions of other mac how-to questions i have (i figured i start w/ a simple one first!).

Well to resurrect a dead thread.....I found this published today on Digg.com

http://software.silicon.com/os/0,390...?tag=mncol;txt

I plan on writing a counter article on it, proving some of the claims to be slightly off, but it does make some good points.

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Glad to hear it! There’s a lot of great stuff in here -- an interesting read, even though it’s far outside my areas of expertise. :)

-- ArcticStones
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There is a high cost of ownership when changing to any platform and Apple is late in the game. I think they bring a lot of good features to the Enterprise level, and I have been using them for 3 years now at my job. I also think that deploying Macs in an existing Windows environment is not that hard, and when third party suites like Casper you don't even need to buy any Xserves or run Open Directory to manage your Macs.

Hi Tom,

I noticed you hadn't weighed in as yet on Craig's thread (End of the Xserve) up in the OS X Server forum.

I'm wondering if you had an addendum for this thread as well perhaps?

[or... anyone?]

Essentially the Xserve and the Mac Pro are almost the same hardware. Just no more rack mount cases, which sucks because a lot of people (including me) have data centers and data center-like setups.

I am not happy about this decision but hopefully Apple will open up virtualization on non Mac hardware for OS X Server.

Or are they going to unveil something Totally New™ later on, much like WWDC 2010 was perceived as the end of the Mac?

:rolleyes: The frustration here is palpable. :rolleyes:

well it is a bad idea as their servers are nicely priced and they come with OS X Server already with it.

If they open up their server OS to run native on any x86 based server, or say even a blade server, then I will be OK with that.