Writing a grant for booth-y things.

[FMEng]

While it may seem like Apple is proprietary, its no more proprietary than Windows. It's more like a car company since it's vertically integrated.

It is proprietary when you want to repair one. Apple has to repair their stuff, and they will only do it if they feel like it. On a generic, Windows desktop machine, there isn't any component inside that I can't easily get. Dells are a notable exception, but I don't buy them.

 

[macsound]

I mean, if you want to replace the logic board or the display, they are easiest obtained and installed by Apple or an Authorised Apple Repair shop, but doesn't mean they can't be purchased through many other legitimate places.
In many cases, I've been more willing to replace the guts of any mac because of iFixit.com's in-depth guide and parts catalog for all apple products than on any PC.

If a Lenovo or HP or Toshiba machine doesn't work in some unknown way, it's hard, nay, impossible to send it back to the manufacturer. You have to trust whoever they contract or best buy or your local few-and-far-between PC repair shop. And if it's not one of the current 87 models released in the past 8 months, chances are there are no parts available.

Also, what are people commonly replacing on their computers besides hard drives and ram?

And if these are Macs purchased new from Apple, they'd be on warranty for at least 3 years.

Better yet, follow the front office's lead and lease the machines. Then at the end of 3-5 years, you get a new batch of computers and all the district sees the piddly monthly bill that never changes!

 

[Aaron Becker]

I'm always a fan of Macs. I have lots of them and they're easy to support, both short and longterm.
They also have a far higher resale value than PCs and in a pinch, you can pick one up at a local Apple store that is identical to a broken or misplaced one.
A big reccomendation is get that wired ethernet sorted. Ubiquity gear is amazing and in line with consumer stuff. And buy the dongles for the mac laptops so you have them when you need them. Wifi is ok but not when the box office is backed up, there's a Zoom call in or whatever.

+1 for hard-wiring as much as possible. this should always be the way.

I have a couple virtual Windows 10 machines on my macbook pro and I use them in snapshot mode so that every time they reboot they are in the exact same state, no updates, no viruses, no changes. All the data is on a separate partition. (can't do that with the M1, only downside)

Whatever works for you, but this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen since Windows is just going to keep looking for its updates every time you boot it up.

And as much as support is annoying, if you have 5 identical mac minis and 5 identical macbook pros, support is far easier. You can use a 3rd party management system like fleetsmith or do it manually, but your spreadsheet will look far simpler than with a dozen mismatched machines.

There are enterprise options for standardizing even a diverse Windows environment, but obviously that requires someone to actively maintain it, and that's not always an option for a lot of those in the theatre industry, especially below the pro-level. It's not something that's suited for small theatres, for sure.

As an IT Guy who works with non-profits, I fully agree with @Aaron Becker. Every non-profit I have worked with are either as he described or had someone give them a grant for computers 5-8 years ago and are in the same boat as you now are. Rather than let everyone roll their own, the greatest bang for the buck long term is to establish a standard desktop environment for the back office. While Mac has it's place on the artistic side, I am a Windows fan for back office functions. If your AD is creating brochures and programs, then publisher (which only runs in a Windows environment) is really the right application for him though he may want to have a mac available for some of the artsy stuff.

Let's not forget about the Adobe Crowd! but Adobe CC works on both Mac/PC.