Hello, Gentle Reader. Can I ask you a question? Do you have any children?

I remember when my son was 2 years old. He seemed to think that just because he wanted something, he should be able to have it. You couldn’t reason with him; he was only two. If you didn’t give him what he wanted, he would throw a temper tantrum. Sometimes his mother would give him whatever he wanted just to shut him up. That never helped. It just created a larger sense of entitlemtent for the next time, and there was no argument against it, since she had just given in.

Alright, I don’t actually have a son, but I’ve known plenty of kids who acted just like that (myself included). All children act that way at some point in their early lives, when they’ve not yet “gotten over” themselves, and when they still think that the entire world revolves around them. It’s called egocentrism, and Piaget theorizes that this stage occurs somewhere between the ages of 2 and 7.

On a completely unrelated note, I was talking with my McUsers the other day (all 4 of them) and they suggested that since we have “so many” Macintosh users these days, perhaps IT ought to give them special software and special considerations. Now I understand that Messiah Jobs has recreated our childlike sense of wonder, but did it necessarily require a childlike sense of math to come along with it? Let’s put it this way. Assuming I have 10 employees at Journyx (we have more), you’re still 40%, and only 40%. While it’s a relatively-large tail in such a situation, it’s still not large enough to wag the dog, children.

As I denied this request, I had one of the McChildren say to me, “But I’m a special case.” Oh, yes. Of course. I completely forgot the “special case” clause. You see, this particular developer has development environments installed on his personal, not-backed-up workstation rather than the RAID-ed and network-monitored VM build station which others use. Yessiree, Bob! You’re a special case alright. You’re just Yet Another Damn Mac User (YADMU) who ignores policies and procedures because they just don’t apply to you.

After this conversation, I then had 2 of the YADMUs come to me individually to “present their case” for why they should be given special treatment, special hardware, and special software. I spent the next 30-40 minutes attempting to blow them off while they treated me like a special specimen who should probably be wearing a helmet. I finally resorted to the 1st Law of IT: If you ignore them, they eventually leave. They did. That was nice.

Personally, I have nothing against the Macintosh. Actually, I think that Apple has put out a pretty fantastic product. It’s just that I believe strongly in the proper tool for the job. Breaking down my 4 Mac users in the company, we have “the web guy” which makes sense since he’s producing content and posting web stuff, and it makes his life easier. We have 2 professional services coders, and that makes perfect sense, since they… umm… spend most of their time in a terminal window… on a Linux server… writing code. Okay, maybe that doesn’t make any sense. Finally, we have a developer. See the part about the professional services coders, except this guy also builds our Windows installation on his Mac. While that’s a “neat” thing to be able to do, I certainly wouldn’t chock it up under “business-critical” when an equivalent Windows machine costs roughly 20% of what his Macintosh cost. Oh, we also have a couple remote users who use Macintosh, but they don’t count since they’re not here.

I guess what I’m getting at, here, is that I have nearly 100 machines up and running in our infrastructure at any given time. You’re a lousy 4%, guys. 6% if you include the remote folks. 2% if you only include people who actually NEED a Macintosh to perform their job more effectively. And, you know what? In most companies these percentages are going to be about the same, so where do you get off with a childlike sense of entitlement?

Oh, I forgot. You’re a special case.