[kerby74]

This may be the wrong place for this topic, but there really didn't seem to be a better fit. What kinds of jobs are there that focus around the Mac that are not professional design oriented? As in if you are not a guru at film editting or a PhotoShop god, what kinds of jobs let you spend your whole day working on the worlds greatest computer?Is there a strong IT field for Macs? Maybe some kinds of work that could be done on the side to build skills up to springboard into full time work?What kinds of work do users here do in their professional life?

[James_Dempsey]

Writing
Music recording
Music editing
Photography
Printing (not design)
You can pretty much do anything on a Mac that you can do on a PC anymore, it's just a question of where you work and what they supply you with.

[MacKayaker]

As has been suggested, at the end of the day, the Mac is just a computer. How it gets used is as varied as the users of them. As a person who has been doing what you are thinking about for the last nine years, there are a lot more people looking for Mac support and training than just people using their Mac for the arts. DTP is my background, and I've also been involved with music at pretty high end levels and it's helped me have an understanding of those kinds of customers needs, but those kind of customers are only a portion of that part of my work.
Whether you can do it or not in your area is a matter of:
1 - Do you have the skills and knowledge - with machines and people?
2 - Do you have means to advertise - resources and channels?
3 - Is there room in your market for another support person?
I was involved with support sites and getting paid for support in my full time work before I went off to attempt it on my own. Getting the word out can take time and can be costly - and ongoing is costly. It's important to realize that the larger concentrations of Macs used for DTP often have support people already. It's the smaller one- or two-horse shops that are more likely to need help. If you are in an area with IT people that have been there a long time, done a good job, and advertise well, there may or may not be room for another. You have to research that. If you have an Apple store close by, they do attract a lot of support, so should be considered. They likely sell more systems than other retailers, too, so it can work both ways. Lastly, realize that the Mac is a lot more approachable to support, so there is that segment of users who are fairly self sufficient, that you might hear from once a year or every other year. If that's a large percentage of customers, it will be tough to earn a living unless you can get a lot of them quickly.

[kerby74]

Maybe I should be more clear on the questions. I am in healthcare IT. Are there healthcare applications that are moving to Mac. What other industries besides the ususal suspects (the arts, film, photo, etc) are starting to move to Mac?Are there any at all even?

[PeterG]

kerby74,
Apart from using an Intel Mac running Windows.
All the forms we use in Real Estate (CA) Winforms, were only accessible using a windows box. They have now created an online program for the Mac.
It runs through Citrix, it opens a windows server, but the forms have been created using Mozilla so now I can use my Mac. Before, Macs were completely ignored.
I can also use FF, to search for property but it isn't 100% active. But for simple checks, it works.
So my answer: Macs are slowly being utilized by web based programs.
Peter :)

[Velvet_Jones]

Quote

Is there a strong IT field for Macs?

Of course any industry where the Mac is strong, there will be need for IT professionals to support them. I've been lucky enough to be in that position for the past several years.
One area that is often overlooked as a Mac-safe harbor is research. Macs are widely used in the scientific research community and it's only getting stronger what with OS X's Unix roots. For example, the National Institutes of Health has over 1000 Macs on campus.
PeterG -
I hear ya. I currently support a real estate firm and it's disheartening seeing how Micro$oft has polluted the web with its proprietary crap. No one can access our local MLS without using IE on Windows (stupid ActiveX mess). The light at the end of the tunnel however, are the new Intel Macs. With Parallels my Mac people aren't left in the dark. When I started this job there were two Macs in the office, there are now six.

[madball]

I pretty much run my whole business (whole-sale and publishing of CDs) on my Mac, does everything I need as far as admin, web-design and everything else that I need to do goes. Only thing I still use my wintel laptop for is Photoshop as I haven't wanted to fork out for a Mac version until the new (universal) version of PS comes out... So far the Mac has done everything perfectly.

[maczan1205]

"Maybe I should be more clear on the questions. I am in healthcare IT. Are there healthcare applications that are moving to Mac. "

Here are a few interesting ones
MacPractice "Medical Dental" Practice Management
Osirix Medical Imaging and Viewing
Osirix Medical Imaging

[MacMonkeyTx]

I now work for myself and have an all-Mac set up. However, when I worked for others, I would commonly convince them to let me use my Mac portable exclusively or alongside their PC with the arguement that I would cover my own software needs, do much of my own IT, and would be one less risk for viruses. Worked like a charm - plus they couldn't spy on my email and web habits so easily.As for what I do professionally, publicity (public relations/promotion), marketing, design, branding, etc.

[charlieartist]

You may also want to keep in mind that many sever-based applications are becoming platform-independent. The back end may be Oracle or SQL that is remotely hosted, but any platform running a standards-based browser can fully utilize the applications. This is why Microsoft is feeling the heat from the likes of Google. From the posters in real estate--it is probably an issue of developers having no incentive to develop for anything other than IE/Windows since it currently is the dominant OS. Never mind IE isn't even standards-compliant in many areas...

Besides, the IT overhead is much lower for MacOS. And, the argument that there are more applications for the PC is a strawman in most cases, IMHO. After all, how many of the multitude of apps are actually needed?
And, as an endnote, there is a significant Jobs that uses Macs--the CEO of Apple...