71% of College Students Prefer Macs Over PCs According to Jamf Survey

[alexandr]

Not true. Users can “like the brand” due to it’s ease of use, reliability, syncing with their iPhone, etc. (Multiple answers were permitted.) That doesn’t mean they prefer it just because of the logo.

right? the brand is great, but it's not the only thing apple offers. it's their ingenious way of making everything sync and work together that makes people love the  product. imho.

 

[Gutwrench]

Any link to the survey results?

Here’s a link if someone hasn’t posted it yet.

https://www.jamf.com/resources/e-bo...tudent-device-choice-on-the-modern-workplace/

But it requires a form to be completed.

 

[Hicksmat1976]

Students pursuing higher education prefer to use Macs over PCs, according to new data shared today by Apple device management company Jamf.

71 percent of students surveyed said they would either use a Mac or prefer to use a Mac if cost were not a consideration. At the current time, of those students, 40 percent use a Mac and 60 percent use a PC. 51 percent of current PC users would rather be using a Mac.

67 percent of students surveyed said they would choose or stay with an organization that offered a choice between Mac and PC. 78 percent of students said that it's important for employers to offer their employees a choice between PC and Mac.

Students who said they preferred Mac over PCs offered up several different reasons. 59 percent cited ease of use, 57 percent cited durability, and 49 cited synchronization over other devices. 64 percent said they "like the brand," while 60 percent preferred the style and design of the Mac.

Among those who said they preferred PCs, the only dominant factor in the decision was price.

43 percent of students using a PC said that the Mac provides the greatest value despite its higher price point, while 80 percent of Mac users said that the Mac offers a better value. 83 percent of students currently using a Mac said they want to continue using Macs in their workplaces.Jamf's survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne, is based on responses from 2,244 current college and university students across five countries.

Article Link: 71% of College Students Prefer Macs Over PCs According to Jamf Survey

Jamf, who are of course the leading Apple orientated MDM solution. So not impartial.

though I think the scores are possibly not too far off. at MMU I'd speculate at least 50% of our students have a Mac as a personal laptop.

 

[x-evil-x]

Just goes to show how much college is screwing kids up. Paying 3000$ for a laptop most people only with real good incomes should be buying. No wonder the average kid is 60k in debt with a college degree.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

The numbers released above are fairly consistent with what I've observed the last several years with college students/faculty at a major university where I live. Right now there's about a 60/40% ratio between PC and Mac usage among students, and these days I'd say brand, style, and the ability to easily work with their iPhones (which still dominates with students, probably by 70/30% favoring iPhones over Android). Most students with iPhones favor Macs for easy interfacing to their phones. There are a couple of stats not mentioned which would be interesting:

* Of the students who prefer or use Macs, what models do they use? I see many more pre-2016 Apple laptops than the newer ones with no lit up Apple logo, and indeed, laptops that old have proved reliable for them. As a corollary, how satisfied are users of newer Macs with reliability and ease of interfacing to other devices?

* What are the percentages for students owning/using PCs or Macs less than three years old, and further, how about breaking that down by quality? Since Macs are expensive and considered high end, it would be interesting to compare Mac users to high end PC users. That would also present evidence as to whether price is a large determinant. If high end PC users are fairly rare among students, many of them bought PCs to save money.

* Run similar surveys of university faculty and staff. I personally observe more faculty usage of PCs in the science/engineering fields, Macs among liberal and fine arts faculty. Similar surveys of university staff would depend on what machines are purchased by individual departments, which most often purchase for bulk price point. U.T. Austin has long favored Dell since it is headquartered here in central Texas and Michael Dell himself started his company while a U.T. student back in the mid-80s. Dell has, since the 90s, offered large discounts to U.T. for Dell computers of all categories (laptops, desktops, servers).

I think you'll also likely find that most college age students purchase hardware similar to what they used prior to college, and most of the current ones probably began using computers anywhere from 5-15 years ago. I think we might be going through a large transitional period with computer brand usage, as older students in the mid-late twenties had considerably different home/school computer experiences than those 18-22 or so (undergraduates). They've all grown up post-2000, and technology has accelerated in a huge way during the last twenty years. I think one of Apple's failings the last ten years or so has been to neglect the secondary school market for Macs, and even iPads. Most secondary school systems can't afford bulk Apple purchases, and largely gravitate to PCs and Chromebooks. Those trends have affected the current crop of students immensely. Time will tell. As the students mature through the college education process, Apple will need to increasingly reach them through current offerings, rather than just reputation (good or bad). They won't care how great Apple was in the Steve Jobs era, but how it is currently perceived with its product offerings.

There's another factor to consider: gaming.

I believe that modern students and younger graduates game quite a bit, and if you're going to afford only one machine...the PC is where it's at. All 4 of my kids want a PC, even the 2 creative ones (cinema and graphic arts), despite growing up in an all-Mac household.

Then again, they all shun the iPhone due to it's lack of flexibility and the headphone jack dealbreaker (to the detriment of their relationships, I might add).

I guess they inherited my anti-social, counter-culture, the-emperor-is-naked attitude.

 

[johnnygee]

I'm not a student, but the last Windows laptop computer I owned was a Sony VAIO. The fan started squealing six months after purchase. Customer support was practically non-existent within a year. The battery barely lasted a year and a replacement battery wasn't available after <2 years. It was a struggle to neutralize Sony's goofy music program so I could use iTunes. Prior to the VAIO, I bought Toshiba laptops. The painted silver finish over black plastic quickly discolored and scratched and the batteries were exhausted after a year. The bloatware and crapware included with the computers was ridiculous. I bought a MacBook Pro 4 years ago and don't miss Windows laptops one bit. The battery is down to 70% of its full design capacity, but the computer can still be used as a portable reliably. Apple will give me $800+ if I decide to trade this computer in on a new Apple laptop. In light of all this, Windows computers represent a bad value overall. You get what you pay for. Make my next laptop a MacBook Pro.

 

[Patriks7]

A large number of those 71% will be greatly disappointed when they enter the real world.

I am one of those. At my old company I had no issues using a Mac for work, but my new workplace is Windows only. I admit I have gotten used to it very quickly and have no issues using it, just quite often I find very simple things that are better implemented on Mac and they have the tendency to annoy me.

 

[lietgrimes]

I don't understand all the bitterness directed toward imaginary college students in a lot of these comments. I'm a 28 year old UC Engineer working at a medium-sized company in Minneapolis--not a tech startup or anything adjacent--and I have a company-issued MacBook Pro. So do many of my colleagues.

For that matter, so does nearly everyone I know who works at the local Cisco office. So do many other colleagues who work at vendors I interface with.

Moreover, college students expressing a preference for Macs doesn't in any way indicate misguided naiveté, as a lot of these sarcastic comments seem to imply. These are your imminent future colleagues, and they're certainly not all doe-eyed idiots who don't know what the world is like. Many of them worked their way through college. Many of them will earn more than you in their first five years in the workplace.

Maybe get off your high horses. There are plenty of Macs in the "real world." Your experience isn't the only experience, and it's certainly not statistical data.

 

[alexandr]

A large number of those 71% will be greatly disappointed when they enter the real world.

what makes you say that? what does apple lack in the real world exactly?)

 

[TMRJIJ]

You do know Macs can run Windows, right?

Macs are great for students—before, during and after college. Especially CS majors... trivial to run Linux, MacOS and Windows, even simultaneously.

Agreed. I went in and out of college perfectly fine with my MBP. Very little to no problems in my CS classes.

 

[fathergll]

There's also the question... if price is your greatest concern, why not just buy a 2-3 year old Mac on eBay? It's not like they're radically different now...

Because buying on eBay will never be a mainstream way of purchasing goods for many reasons.

 

[curtvaughan]

Buying an Apple laptop today is not the same as what it was before, unfortunately. I agree with many that MacOS is fantastic. The latest MacBook Pro's, MacBook's, and MacBook Air's are great on their own. However, I am beyond disappointed in Apple's decision to only have USB-C ports. I have adapters that work with my MacBook, but not my iPad Pro. I have adapters that allow me to connect a monitor to my MacBook, but then flicker. Even Apple's own adapters have issues. Even today's hubs have stability issues. In my opinion, everything about USB-C is unstable....yet this is the only wired connectivity option going forward.

The USB-C issues are not limited to Apple's devices, but at least with many of the Windows laptops, they offer other connectivity options for external monitors and such. With as many people who have complained about keyboards, I'm shocked there's not more complaints about USB-C.

You'll see a lot more complaints (including my own) about lack of ANY ports other than USB-C, and the 13 inch only has one of those. If there are reliability problems with USB-C devices, what are they? Is it because of the port interface and plug itself, or that current USB device offerings are not reliable? I can't yet really document it, but I intuitively find the USB-C interface itself to be a little more fragile than the USB-A.

 

[alexandr]

Macs are also PCs. Can we stop treating Macs like a completely different type of device from PC, which wasn't true at least since the Intel transition in 2006?

can we also stop pretending like we don't understand what they mean by mac vs pc?

 

[TMRJIJ]

I could sorta see these statistics at my school. Mac Users outnumber the Windows users 3 to 1.

 

[69Mustang]

Here’s a link if someone hasn’t posted it yet.

https://www.jamf.com/resources/e-bo...tudent-device-choice-on-the-modern-workplace/

But it requires a form to be completed.

Yeah, unfortunately I posted that link earlier. Shouldn't have though. Seems like Jamf is just click baiting Apple fans to build marketing lists. Capitalizing on confirmation bias. Kinda scummy for a company that I like.

 

[boss.king]

The (sad) fact, however, is that said college students will end up using Microsoft’s OS as soon as they start working after college. Colleges have, in my opinion, an obligation to educate the youth on the tools they’ll later actually need.

That said: working on Windows remains torture

That depends where you work. I've been out of university for almost a decade now and have yet to touch a Windows machine in any professional capacity.

 

[GeoStructural]

You lost me....

You can’t imagine browsing the web on your iPad??? Umm, ok... what DO you use it for?

I use my iPad for teaching and video consumption.

Browsing the web is not perfect in iPad, for my job I need to work from a portal/website, most of its features are not supported by iPad, even something as simple as horizontal scrolling cannot be done and we need it due to long data arrays and visualizations... I have reached to IT department, their answer is more than explicit: use a real computer. And I agree.

 

[partydorm]

In reality they can't even afford one. lol

 

[ilikewhey]

90 percent of college students r also broke, they prefer Mac but uses windows, back when I was in a state college 5 years ago only 3 ppl in my class had a Mac everyone else used chrome book or dell

If apple really want to cater to the college student portion they have to drop their air model price a bit

Also a lot of college students get sucked into the free beats promotion apple throws in the summer

 

[Rogifan]

Just goes to show how much college is screwing kids up. Paying 3000$ for a laptop most people only with real good incomes should be buying. No wonder the average kid is 60k in debt with a college degree.

Since when is $3K the starting price for an Apple laptop?

 

[Hirakata]

They didn't have my category:

"Use Mac, but giving Apple one last chance by getting the Mac Pro right, otherwise switching to PC (after using Mac exclusively since System 7), but prefer Mac."

 

[mariusignorello]

Why mac?

1. brand
2. design
....
7. Best with apps



Drinking soya-latte and using instagram?


I wonder did the pc users answer to the question ”why pc?” 1. Productivity... because they didnt tell anything else than that 51% chose pc because of the price.

Checking jamf sites it looks like that the report was actually made and written to promote their services they invest and sell for education.

Also easiest to manage. A la the Jamf report. Managing Windows devices (and supporting them) is far more complex and more expensive.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Of course I know that.

But why spend more on an Apple computer and extra software cost and support costs to run Windows on a Mac? The cost to set up a Mac to run Windows and to train users on how to use it -- with VMware Fusion, Parallels, etc. -- is WAY more than the cost of just buying a PC with Windows on it. I ran Windows at home for over a decade using VMware Fusion on my Macs, but I would NEVER force a "normal" user to run Windows that way -- especially not in a business, domain-based environment.

I’m looking at it from the customer/user/employee perspective, not the corporate/employer viewpoint—though the real business world isn’t nearly as Windows-centric as you imply.

A high school student can take a MBP to college, graduate and rather effortlessly use bootcamp to run Windows if they need to at home (for the 8+ hours they’re sometimes expected to be more or less available off the clock—welcome to the real world).

 

[clayj]

what makes you say that? what does apple lack in the real world exactly?)

Just a few things off the top of my head:

• Can't join to a Windows domain without third-party software; even with that, it's not 100% feature-compatible with Windows
• A lot of third-party software has no Mac version or equivalent (e.g., document management systems like WORLDOX and OpenText/DOCS Open)
• Macs are less upgradeable and serviceable than PCs, generally speaking (e.g., adding RAM or storage)
• Lack of common ports means having to buy external adapters to provide connectivity
• Overall less support from the software industry for Macs vs. PCs, based purely on less market share
• Everything is just more expensive when you buy a Mac

 

[Yesterday]

This was my system of choice during college as well after windows based systems kept screwing me over