IBM to Purchase Up to 200,000 Macs, With 50-75% of Employees Ultimately Switching From Lenovo

[RobQuads]

Goes to show how having the right people at the top can make such a difference. So many old school people in IBM that won't allow change (well unless it's their initative!)

It's a slow transition as it will take 4-5 years for all the laptops to cycle round for replacement

Thinkpads were awesome. They went downhill when Lenovo took over and keeps getting worse

 

[mertyz]

 

[gramtrax]

Proof that if you live long enough, everything old is new again!

 

[0x100]

Goes to show how having the right people at the top can make such a difference. So many old school people in IBM that won't allow change (well unless it's their initative!)

It's a slow transition as it will take 4-5 years for all the laptops to cycle round for replacement

Thinkpads were awesome. They went downhill when Lenovo took over and keeps getting worse

Yeah. Remember this disaster? http://www.lenovo.com/images/gallery/1060x596/lenovo-laptop-thinkpad-t440s-keyboard-zoom-3.jpg

 

[Mactendo]

That's interesting...

 

[tomnavratil]

I never thought I'd be reading news like this but a really good deal for both sides.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I don't quite get what the article is implying. It sounds like IBM wants a Macbook that is the same or cheaper than a PC notebook. Well, what type of notebook are we talking about? Apple might compete on the high-end, but if they want a $600 Macbook, that would be pretty shifty of Apple to make them for IBM and no one else (because remember, after all, Apple doesn't make "junk".) OTOH, do their employees really need Macbooks? If they work in an office, they could get by with a Mac Mini and there's your competitive price point at the bottom end...pure junk. Oh wait... I own one (although mine was $1100 and has a quad i7 and two 1TB drives with RAID0).

 

[bladerunner2000]

My have things have changed.....

 

[Plutonius]

Big mistake. When they realize what a CPU-clogging clusterfrack OS X has become they'll go running back to Windows.

Who said that they are not running Windows ?

 

[Traverse]

I'm glad. The Mac is my favorite Apple product, even if it isn't the most poplar to general consumers. Anything to boost sales and keep Apple's attention is great news to me.

 

[Diode]

I could easily see some old school PC fanboys going harakiri over this news.

Didn't IBM develop the PowerPC alongside apple? Old school IBM employees should be rejoicing!

 

[Quu]

If their relationship keeps like this maybe we'll get IBM rackmount servers with OS X Server as an offering. That would be nice.

 

[kingtj]

I know you're trolling, but I'll bite.

No.... IBM already sells expensive applications with native OS X versions, such as the SPSS statistics software used for marketing research and medical studies. So they're already pretty familiar using it and should know what it's all about.

Frankly, those of us who remember the days of IBM's OS/2 operating system know it was never really as fast as Windows, but that was sort of irrelevant. People who ran OS/2 appreciated having the choice to use a commercial OS besides Windows, with some unique features and capabilities.

That's essentially the situation you've got with Macs today, too. Their video drivers aren't as optimized as Windows counterparts so gaming performance isn't as good, and in other ways, they don't have the performance under heavy load with multiple tasks that you'd get from other versions of Unix. But most users can live without that stuff, if it means having the alternative UI they find easier to get around, and the overall reliability. (Much less hassle with malware/spyware than in Windows, for example.)

Big mistake. When they realize what a CPU-clogging clusterfrack OS X has become they'll go running back to Windows.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Didn't IBM develop the PowerPC alongside apple? Old school IBM employees should be rejoicing!

Old school is 80s and 90s.

 

[minisuds7]

I could easily see some old school PC fanboys going harakiri over this news.

Couldn't remember "harakiri" at first... But then I was just a 3-finger Mac gesture away from getting the joke.

 

[Steve J0bs]

I wonder if the people working in Finance are switching to the macs. I work mainly in excel, and absolutely loathe using my thinkpad everyday. Hell, i think that is the worst part about my job. Has the worst trackpad, keyboard, layout, size, weight, and so on.

 

[JonneyGee]

An I the only one having trouble comprehending IBM abandoning ThinkPads - a longtime flagship IBM product - for Macs? It's a cool story, but it's also blowing my mind.

 

[mk_in_mke]

Are they getting the reach around discount? I seriously doubt that IBM is willing to pony up the roughly $300 premium over a Windows laptop -- makes no sense.

Then I doubt I will ever hire you because you are missing some key items in your thought process... All related to the TCO or Total Cost of Ownership... Cost of maintenance? Cost of deployment/ cost of technical support?...

At the end of the day the $300 more on purchase (i cite your number) become little when all is put together... If you add to this that the Mac is kept two to three years by the user, Macs most likely leased...

See?

http://www.macworld.com/article/1059565/costanalysis.html

http://www.zdnet.com/article/tco-ne...se-easier-cheaper-to-manage-than-windows-pcs/

 

[MikhailT]

I hope this means Apple would be more motivated to add more engineers to work on OS X. El Cap is a great start, it definitely feels lighter than the last 3-4 OS X versions but not as light as Windows 10. There are a lot of issues with OS X in general and Apple's just focusing on iOS more and more each year while doing less and less with OS X.

 

[jbachandouris]

An I the only one having trouble comprehending IBM abandoning ThinkPads - a longtime flagship IBM product - for Macs? It's a cool story, but it's also blowing my mind.

ThinkPads are no longer an IBM product. Lenovo is a Chinese company.

 

[kemal]

This is all about bad news for Microsoft. Unless IBM plans on installing Windows 10 on their shiny new Apple hardware. Would they???

 

[SoAnyway]

And one day, Apple will just purchase IBM.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Lenvo quality has been horrible. We no longer purchase them at our company and we are a multi billion dollar pure software company. Mac laptops are by far the best since the serviceable life of them is better than anything else out there.

We noticed the decline in the robustness of IBM laptops in the mid 2000's and by the time the division was sold to Lenovo, we jumped ship for HP and had both a cost save and robustness improvement.

Regardless of how good either of these brands devices were, I think my personal MacBook has been a more solid design than either ever were.

 

[jm001]

Or some old school Mac fanboys xD

Old school Mac Fanboys would be grinning as it harkens back to the old PowerPC days. It's great to see these two giants working collaboratively again.

 

[2984839]

They should never have let Lenovo get their claws on the ThinkPad line. I'm typing this on a T42 with a T420 right next to it. The difference in quality is stark, and I even really like the T420--I consider it last real T series. It's just that the T42 is significantly better.

Neither one is perfect, but the T420 feels like it was built to be a bit better than the competition. The T42 feels like it was built to be as good as they could build it.