IBM Says Macs Are Up to $543 Less Expensive Than PCs Over Time

[LordVic]

Ah ok - I see what IBM have done here:

1/ Changed the entire support model. Hired Apple experts and set up a dedicated help desk.
2/ Allow users full admin rights via a local account. No Active Directory connectivity
3/ Make users use Lotus Notes and Sametime (required a seperate Notes user name and password - no Single sign on)
4/ Limit the number of apps they can use. No VISIO or Project (for example). Solution is Citrix or local virtualisation product. They say majority of apps work. Be interesting to see what the apps are.
5/ Ship default image but configure at the users desktop. This takes a long time.

Essentially, they have redone the entire client compute model to use a totally different model, some would argue - compromise security, by providing local admin access in the pursuit of simplification and hire an 'expert' helpdesk dedicated to Macs, staffed by Mac advocates.

If they did the same for a Windows 7/10 PC - would the experience be any different?

This is my biggest issue with this report.

I work in enterprise ack ends for banks and financial institutions and if you just give every user a Mac, with this sort of "open" model, sure, there's likely going to be little overhead.

But banks, and enterprise or live in that world. GPOs and Active directory integration is insanely Important. I've seen such implementations that go as crazy restrictive so that the user can literally launch a single program. Or only have access to certain resources online, etc.

Currently there is no way I know of to enforce most of these GPOs onto a Mac. Which means its impossible in a corporate environment to properly secure macOS based systems to fit into corporate and regulatory compliance. This actually dramatically increases the cost of supporting macs. That and most of the worlds financial software is windows and unix based, with no MacOS support, requiring boot camps support or parallels. Not something large scale enterprises want to spend time and money on, when they can just get the windows machines that offer these required functions out of the box

And if IBM is making the claim they are, then they shouldn't need Citrix, which is essentially a fancy RDS. Which isn't cheap or easy to implement. So they've just moved the costs of support from the end user workstation to the Citrix back office. That has nothing to do with windows or OSX. And it makes IBMs claims dubious and sounds more like marketing than a real world benefit

 

[jonen560ti]

It's not viable, nor even remotely necessary, to manage Macs on this sort of scale with ARD.
[doublepost=1477074110][/doublepost]
Do you have any sort of management tools in place for those Macs?

apart from teamviewer and Active directory integration. no. but i doubt they would help with the issues i have encountered. the most memorable cases of Mac support i can remember:

a guy couldn't login to his Mac using his AD user, turned out Mac os only accepts AD users login using the exact same name format they enter when you join the machine to your domain. i cant remember the specifics but i think due to the way MacOS essentially seems to create a local account and sync that account to ad rather than considering both the local and ad account to be one and the same. as a result the user tried to login with username@domain.com or domain\username when MacOS simply demanded just username. on Windows, it would have accepted all 3 options. i added aliases for the 2 other formats to allow the user to login using either of these.

Smaller issue, but still a good example of an issue that is far more common with Macs. video inputs. i had a user that needed to be able to connect to any projector. in other words needed VGA, HDMI and DP outputs. the Macbook pro in question only had mini-dp/thunderbolt. With our developers using Zbook 15's, they already have VGA and DP and only need hdmi-to-dp adapters. with our reglar users using Folio 1040's, they only need an official hp VGA adapter and the aforementioned hdmi-to-dp adapter. i'm not saying that's ideal, we have choosen machines with inbuilt VGA and DP as our next machines. with the MB-pro i had to daisychain a bunch of adapters toghether to ensure he could use every standard, and mind you daisychaining adapters doesnt always work due to video standards and directions and such. we didn't have a mini-dp to vga adapter so i had to take a minidisplayport-to-hdmi adapter and connect it to a hdmi-to-vga adapter iirc to get VGA output from it. the fact that it actually worked at all was surprising

printing issues i've had to help with a couple of times. getting our remote printer to work at all with Macs was a trial and error ordeal. then the CEO's mac suddenly doesnt work with it giving no errors whatsoever. after a lot of trial and error getting nowhere, it turned out the DNS servers were not pointing to our DC's with the CEO claiming to have no idea how that happened. whether this issue would replicate on Windows i dont know, never tested it.

Then i've had to deal with some general support, users needing a quick tutorial on parallels, remote shares, etc etc. at least twice have users had issues understanding how parallels syncs folders between the VM and the host and one user managed to get himself stuck in parallels fullscreen and once Windows didn't respond to input somehow. may have been parallel's fault, may have been microsoft's fault. but the problem was, turning the VM off simply makes it hibernate. you can only turn off the machine from the virtual machine itself, which didn't respond to input so we were stuck. requiring me to terminate the VM's process through process manager or whatever it was called to actually be able to turn off the VM(had to deal with this trying to install the VM too using network deployment. if the vm cant find a source to boot from on startup, it just keeps trying without giving you a way to shut it down. terrible design from parallels)

 

[techdudester]

As a pro tech supporting both Macs and PCs in the private and government sectors since 1986, this entirely agrees with exactly what I discovered over 25 years ago. Unless you have lived it, your comment really doesn't carry much weight or validity at all, suckers. Offering an opinion regarding something you know little or nothing about, is pretty much the same as lying.

 

[calzon65]

As a diehard iPhone and iPad supporter but equally a diehard Windows supporter (as I type this on my Dell running Windows 10), this is a very interesting story.

I would never have believed this, but IBM seems to be making some detailed assertions based on a large sample set and internal experience.

 

[rjohnstone]

As a pro tech supporting both Macs and PCs in the private and government sectors since 1986, this entirely agrees with exactly what I discovered over 25 years ago. Unless you have lived it, your comment really doesn't carry much weight or validity at all, suckers. Offering an opinion regarding something you know little or nothing about, is pretty much the same as lying.

Stand back fellas... a day one newbie is laying down the law.

 

[Shad0wLandsUK]

What I can tell you from my own experience is in a university with 2000+ students a good portion (around 80%) own Macs.

I know exactly what you mean. I just finished an IT contract at Imperial College here in London. And so many of the students are also on Macs. I even advised the ones on older systems that if they were not going to use the new connectivity they could simply get an SDD and more RAM in their older machines and gain a number of years more out of it.

I have had my MacBook Pro Early 2011 15" for 5 years running now. Solid machine to use on my contract and I have used it constantly over these last 5 years also. I am not saying they are necessarily better machines, but the maintenance I have spent on it compared to other machines is massively reduced.

 

[lockerc18]

I worked for IBM for many years, and during the last years I was there I participated in the BYOD Mac@IBM program. I bought my own Mac and was allowed to use it as my primary workstation. We got no support from the official channel's and simply relied on a self help forum to deal with anything that came along. At the time, there were about 6,000 of us. I actually felt bad for my colleagues that used the high end company supplied Lenovo machines. I would say that at least every 6 months each of them would have some catastrophic problem with their machine that would result in several days lost trying to get it resolved and usually needed a re-image. IBM also had no company backup program for the Windows machines; so often work was lost. Never mind the fact that my brand new Lenovo machine which I received and put in a box under my desk; was slower at doing almost anything than the same running on my MacBook Air with less RAM. I was even able to get connectivity in our different offices when I traveled, easier than my colleagues.

Now in fairness to the other side; IBM's image for the Lenovo machines was bloated with Symantec crap including a very unreliable whole disk encryption program that I'm sure contributed greatly to the problems. Running a Mac, it wasn't necessary to run that crap. So part of the savings here is the simplified image that they are probably now running on the Macs. It also helped that the IBM software (Notes, Sametime, etc.) that probably most people don't run; were all available for Mac's to run Native.

My understanding is... that the MAC@IBM team did a really nice job of automating the imaging process to get Macs up to the company office environment standard. Also, the partnering between Apple and IBM on enterprise projects was a factor in moving more to Macs, too. And, IBM often deployed Toshiba POS laptops running Win7 to new employees, but some Lenovos, too. Lenovos were also available at refresh time, but like most office systems, those still ran Win7 because IBM never certified Win8 for internal use, and the Win10 cert got really bogged down. So most Windows users were stuck on Win7 until recently. IBM wanted to get away from Windows and mandated some groups to use Linux on office systems, too, but that was cumbersome and wasn't very popular, kind of like mandating use of Symphony over Office. Cost management in action.

AND, Macs were the glitzy products that the folks wanted, particularly any customer facing folks. It wasn't great form to have customer briefings with systems running an n-2 version of Windows. Hence, Macs, and lots of IBMers were real happy about that.

 

[AppleScruff1]

25 years ago, who would have thought the Mac's great defender would be IBM?

Apple is now IBM. Dare to be different.

 

[alexgowers]

IMO macs make sense financially overtime. They last much longer in my experience as the initial specs are medium to high end. They hit a sweet spot that while expensive are equal price or better to windows laptops. At the time I bought mine, there wasn't a haswell, with an SSD the same size that didn't lack a feature like high resolution screen or poor battery capacity. The value of apple is the hardware being consistently appropriate rather than fitting a budget and spec chasing on only a few components.

I've had so many windows based machines over my many years and they work great if you build them yourself or pay similar money as a mac. As soon as you scrimp and save with cheap machines and compromise on specs/budget you just screw yourself over.

 

[mrxak]

Man you guys are hilarious. I love all the people trying to use personal anecdotes about home computers or small company networks to either "back up" or "refute" IBM's data of tens of millions of dollars saved on nearly a hundred thousand computers. I especially enjoy all the people arguing about the manner in which IBM saved these tens of millions of dollars, whether it's hardware, software, backend, support... It really doesn't matter guys, what matters is they saved between 25 and 49 million dollars by giving their employees a choice (and a lot of their employees happened to choose Macs which is the only reason it headlined here, but that's a rather small part of the story). They're a very large company and their experience may not be typical, and nobody at IBM is claiming it is. All the paranoia about this being some Apple-IBM marketing ploy cooked up in some board room just doesn't line up with what they're actually saying.

IBM was doing this with the expectation it would cost them more, and they stated as such, early and often. But this was never about the money, it's about employee satisfaction so they can retain and hire better employees that will... okay, make them more money. We only heard about this because some VP at IBM is trying to promote IBM's new corporate culture of giving their employees more options, and allowing Macs was just one of many things they've done internally. They're not promoting Apple at all, they're promoting themselves and talking about their surprise in how well it turned out for the bottom line, too (likely so the stockholders relax). The main audience for these public disclosures are other very large businesses, and I'm sure none of those businesses will blindly follow IBM without evaluating their own particular situation and needs.

So yeah, argue about Active Directory and custom-built gaming computers, troll your Windows friends with the link and whine about Apple's complete lack of interest in the Mac, but you are all massively missing the point. The point is IBM managed to save some non-trivial amount of money on tech costs by taking a number of steps that may not be appropriate for any other company or individual. They want to do a public victory lap because they were more clever than they thought they were and some VP of Employee Happy Feeling Times managed to justify his job with hard figures.

 

[shadowmatt]

Where to start...

I manage the IT for small ish company, but we go through a fair few mac purchases a year, + usually 1 OS and 1 Adobe suite update.

Macs used to be near cutting edge, you spent a lot but you actually got a decent package, current tech + the fact Apples usually pushed the latest bus tech like Firewite etc...

Being able to easily boot any machine from an external hd is still a bonus compared to what Windows puts you through. Just being able to securely wipe a drive in a laptop going in for repair with 6 or 7 mouse clicks its so much easier.

But the hardware these days takes the piss, especially for the prices. None of the lines have moved past 2013 where PC laptops are configurable with 1070s and 1080s.

As a result we are having to actually move everyone to Windows 10 machines as the Apple 'Pro' ( I mean literally they could be sued under false advertising) machines can't keep up.

Inert GPUs cant drive retina / 4k screens running apps using GBs of memory. Even the Mac Pro is using a card so out dated a £200 card can beat the machine in every test.
[doublepost=1477093979][/doublepost]Same with companies forcing everyone to use Windows phone or a Blackberry.

If someone choose a computer running the same OS and Apps they are used to and use at home or previous employment things will work out better in the long run, rather than forcing people to adopt one standard that not everyone can comfortably use.

This story doesn't tell you Apple machines / OSs are better. It tells you IBM ( a supposedly computer company ) couldn't figure out different people adopt different working practices which suit them and might be divvied from different experiences.

This is what company do and have done for years, let their staff decided on what works best for them.

 

[cylack]

Never understand billion dollar businesses saying they can’t use Macs becaue of lack of software. It would seem that if you’re a major business you can easily hire someone to write the software you need. It’s a well known fact among long time Mac users that they are cheaper in the long run and have far less headaches than Windows machines.

 

[Blackstick]

Lot of Macrumor readers are geeks running a few systems, possibly a small office. When you have 800 Macs, 2700 Dell PCs and about 100 Surfaces in use by employees in 46 states and 8 countries managed by Casper and SCCM respectively... well, you really start to see what the real costs are in terms of unit price, amount of support hours needed, software licensing etc. Indeed, the majority of readers here are Apple enthusiasts but not necessarily IT infrastructure maangers for large corporations. We have about 4,000 people in the organization, admittedly tiny compared to IBM, but their numbers exactly mirror the ones we see, just on a larger scale.

 

[aloshka]

IBM have many thousands of users, many thousands of machines, have budgets that they can measure against etc... Their statement will absolutely be true for users in a corporate environment because the numbers they are talking about will even out any issues across the whole group.

They are also officially supported and endorsed by apple. Which has nothing to do with them saying that apple is great and saves them money.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

It's true. Lots of companies pass off crappy computers at outrageous prices (like HP). The higher-end HPs (which somewhat resemble a MacBook Pro) start surpassing $1000. I've also seen rip-off Vaios and even rip-off Gateways.

 

[E.Lizardo]

That sucks, the only reason my Mac Is utterly amazing, like most Apple users I have never touched a woman so I make sweet sweaty love to it on a nightly basis and it has neve failed.

On a related note,I've been thinking of getting a PC because I've hear they REALLY suck.

 

[Tech198]

Mac's may last long.

It's true. Lots of companies pass off crappy computers at outrageous prices (like HP). The higher-end HPs (which somewhat resemble a MacBook Pro) start surpassing $1000. I've also seen rip-off Vaios and even rip-off Gateways.

How are u basing that exactly ?

tech specs alone ? then its not even comparison. as there is more to Mac than just tech specs.

 

[Hrududu]

Wonder if any of them keep a G5 around just for giggles.

 

[Tech198]

I agree with the support calls. Boy, do I agree with that

 

[alphaod]

Over last couple years I've had a Mac Pro on 24/7, often working 100% for weeks at a time. Only at the end of three years I had one complete failure of hardware. With AppleCare, they replaced everything, but the data was all good! That's the most important.

My Windows computers? Yeah, they're getting better all the time, but sometimes you get the catastrophic OS corruption from god knows where. Granted with Windows 8 and 10, this has greatly improved, but my newly built gaming PC with the latest i7 processor, SSD, and GTX 1080 ran okay for the first few weeks, but for some reason it's starting to crap out on my now. Sometimes my games start lagging for no reason and I have reinstall drivers.

My biggest issue was in college and I was all the rage for Thinkpad T series machines; top of the line workstation graphics, powerful CPUs, IPS displays when nobody else cared. But that one time I had a failure, I had to wait three weeks for IBM to fix it I went and got myself a Powerbook. Then when I had problems with the Powerbook, I had experience for my first time what Apple service was all about (at the time anyways it was quite customer oriented; I think it's getting more strict now). I remember the community being much smaller and all the people in the store knew me and I knew who they were. The worst with IBM was when they sold their Think line to Lenovo and one repair on an X60 Tablet took three months and eight repairs before they agreed to perhaps replace it, only to give me some random Lenovo consumer laptop. Apple? Three repairs was a new computer, not asking needed.


Hardware issues of course affect both environments, but I have found Mac to be more dependable. In terms of my current computers, I've had no failures in the past couple years, just some minor stuff like a fan crapping out. I've had a Surface Book since they released it; screen died when it new (Best Buy replaced it); and now the power button has broken and the volume button is going out. So still the same old.

 

[tooltalk]

we needed IBM after 30 years to tell us Mac are cheaper over the long term then PC ?

and they are saying this just when it's no longer true and when Apple hasn't released a new mac in 4 years

an Intel Skull Canyon is 100 times better then a mac mini of the same price

Apple will be bankrupt and sold very soon

Well, it didn't make much sense 30 years ago. Today everything runs on web and all you need is a thin client with basic web browsing capability to perform non-technical work, so it probably makes sense for IBM. IBM today is certainly not the same IBM it was 30 years ago -- it's a consulting company with hundreds of thousands of road warriors whose main job is to push papers all day long.

This IBM report or Apple products in general isn't for real enterprises, however, IMO -- and I've worked in many different mission critical environments at large banks (ST) in NYC and they won't be looking at Macs (and it doesn't look like Apple is interested in competing in that market, either) anytime soon, despite IBM's somewhat misguided PR campaign. I've also worked in large multimedia environment with huge amount data where Mac's played a crucial role, but, even there, Apple products struggled to perform basic things like file sharing in large distributed network. I do also see a lot of Macs at colleges that are just running web browsers and office suits -- and if that's what suits them, that's fine. Most colleges seem to have very decentralized computing environment and lately they have been moving towards clouds for most critical services (eg, gmail, blackboard to name a few). That's fine for thin clients like Chromebooks, or if you prefer, Apple laptops. But, again, the type of workload these Macs perform aren't comparable to what real large enterprises require -- of course, unless your enterprise looks like IBM's consulting division, IBM Global Services.

 

[Wowereit]

With PC users, it's always some kind of random unexplainable anomaly or some kind of driver clash.

Exactly my experience, although it has become way better compared to 10 years ago.


To be fair, it's a huge advantage for Apple that their administration tools aren't that old.
In the Windows-world there are dozens of ways to administrate PCs and most of them have been around for a long time. Lots of admins are not doing it the easiest and most efficient way, they are doing it how they've always done it.

That's a common mistake outside of the Apple-universe. There are options with varying quality.
There is a small percentage of ways to do something better than you would ever find inside the Apple-universe, but there is a overwhelming majority of ways to do it worse.

That's true for software as well as hardware.
Wonder how many office PCs would double their lifespan by ordering the 15-20% more expensive model. Increase RAM, use small SSD instead of HDD, done. Data is on network storage anyway, there is no need for tons of slow local storage.

 

[0098386]

I am using a 2010 27" iMac for video and audio editing with Adobe and the only thing I've done is add external hard drives. I'm nearly to the point that I want to double the RAM, because you still can on this machine very easily, but I have contemplated a new iMac after buying my daughter one in May. That 4K display on her 21.5" iMac was really sweet, but I don't like the new keyboard and mouse. I've had the wired keyboard from day 1 to use the USB ports on the keyboard and it's been a godsend as opposed to reaching in back all the time.

Oh I added 16gb of memory, upgraded the internal HDD to 3tb, and added in an SSD for storing both Windows and OSX on, way back in 2012! It was only a year old but prices for all of them were down. Adding that SSD put it in a whole new league and even now it boots up into my apps in maybe 15-20 seconds. It's still so good that I'm going to use it for a home server when I get a new one! (Depending on how good the next iMac is!)

 

[flyinmac]

Lenevo's lawyers should check their contract again.

Usually the noncompete clause includes a section banning a person / entity from promoting, building or selling competing products, including endorsements, etc. that might pull customers or sales away from using the business you sold.

 

[vpro]

When I buy a new iMac, I always get good money for my old one. So true... In the long run Apple isn't that expensive.


Except when it comes to phones... iPhone is crazy over priced. Still by the thing though

PEOPLE who can afford to buy over priced gadgets should never complain about the price, it's just not in good taste, why is it that always the rich complain the most about how expensive everything is, but turn around and buy up everything anyways? Perplexing. Right?