Roger Fingas
IBM is benefiting hugely from its internal Mac adoption program, saving about $270 per Mac versus Windows PCs, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a Tuesday fiscal results call.
IBM already has over 30,000 Macs in circulation and is adding about 1,900 more each week, Cook remarked. The savings are allegedly due to reduced support costs.
At a JAMF conference earlier this month, IBM claimed that only 5 percent of its Mac users need help desk support, compared with 40 percent of its Windows users. The company is paying a higher upfront cost for Macs, but expects to save money in efficiency and not using as many tech support workers.
In July, plans were announced to deploy roughly 50,000 MacBooks at IBM by the end of 2015. Ultimately, the company should hit between 150,000 and 200,000 units.
Once rivals, Apple and IBM have developed deep ties since the summer of 2014, when they launched the joint MobileFirst program to sell iOS-based apps and platforms to the enterprise market.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
32 Comments
"It is 1958. IBM passes up a chance to buy a young fledgling company that has invented a new technology called xerography. Two years later, Xerox was born, and IBM has been kicking themselves ever since."
For years Apple fans have been crying in the wilderness about TCO and how Macs are NOT overpriced when you factor in reliability, support costs, hardware longevity. Nobody listened and we all sat there at our desks with cheap plastic or metal gray boxes with Dell or HP stickers on them, boxes we were constantly calling tech support about because they crapped out when our reports were due. I remember watching some tech support dude work for hours on my desktop PC because Outlook wouldn’t connect to the corporate network properly. I had to go out in the equipment room to find a working machine I could use to get my timesheet in that day.
Given how CFOs and "finance" in a company make IT decisions (or greatly influence them) I'd expect this to continue to pick up speed as a story over the coming months. IBM seems "all in" so I expect more supporting stories that show Apple products in a good light, I expect quite a lot of companies to follow. It will be very interesting to watch this space.
Paging @DaveNM... :rolleyes:
Windows PC's are a mess in comparison to Macbooks. I have a gaming PC but heaven knows if i'm doing anything else but gaming, it's on my Macbook or Chromebook.
Because there's literally nothing I need to do...Power it on and use it. Windows 10 interface is still gross amalgamation of touch based and mouse based actions that really don't make a whole lot of sense. I'm fine playing the latest Battlefront on it, but that's about it.