IT Folks: Which Macs are you currently buying for your users?

[Yebubbleman]

I'm participating in another thread on this site that asks the question of who is still buying 13-inch MacBook Pros, given that, even with the M2, it's using the prior design generation, while every other current-generation portable Mac model in the Apple lineup uses the newer design generation. A couple of us concluded that it's likely to be IT departments that prefer the stability of more mature design generations rather than ones that are still fairly new. Shortly thereafter, I got a text from a friend of mine who started a new job and was given one of the new M2 13-inch MacBook Pros at his job. Our previous place would deploy a custom-to-order version of the 2021 14-inch MacBook Pros (M1 Pro with 10 CPU Cores, 14 GPU Cores, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD), but that was mainly because such a configuration would work across the entire workforce and that we'd therefore only need to buy one model of Mac for anyone on a Mac.

It got me wondering, for my fellow IT nerds out there, which models of Mac is your IT department buying for your users in 2023?

 

[leman]

Mostly 14" Pros and Airs.

 

[kasakka]

I received a fully loaded M2 Max MBP 16" recently. But our company is basically full of software developers so our needs are very different from one where most people are not going to do that demanding things. The cheaper cost of the 13" MBP or even Air would be preferable in that type of company.

 

[MrGunny94]

Base model 14" is what most of us are running around. 32GB would have been great but at this point we just host the VMs on the cloud as we can't run the x86 VMs quite well enough on these new Macs.

With everything open I'm using around 60% of the memory.

 

[satcomer]

Depends their age and what they do with devices for work/play and what apps do they use!

 

[senttoschool]

All software engineers get a 16" MBP. Non tech people are getting the 13" Air which will likely switch to 15" Air when it comes out.

 

[spiderman0616]

When I started my current job last year, I was asked if I was more comfortable on Mac or PC. I said Mac, and she said, "Macs are in short supply right now, so we might have to send you a PC for now and then swap it out." I was surprised to find a 16" M1 Pro MBP on my doorstep the following week, and fell in love with it so hard that I bought a 14" for personal use.

I think it's telling that probably 10 years ago, this was not even a question in the tech industry. Every new job I ever started, you got some clunky old beat up Dell laptop and weren't asked what you preferred. It seems these days companies have given in and realized that a lot of their incoming employees have abandoned Windows in their personal lives and are not only more comfortable on Mac, but will probably balk at being forced to use Windows just because the company won't spend a few extra dollars on a Mac.

 

[leman]

When I started my current job last year, I was asked if I was more comfortable on Mac or PC. I said Mac, and she said, "Macs are in short supply right now, so we might have to send you a PC for now and then swap it out." I was surprised to find a 16" M1 Pro MBP on my doorstep the following week, and fell in love with it so hard that I bought a 14" for personal use.

I think it's telling that probably 10 years ago, this was not even a question in the tech industry. Every new job I ever started, you got some clunky old beat up Dell laptop and weren't asked what you preferred. It seems these days companies have given in and realized that a lot of their incoming employees have abandoned Windows in their personal lives and are not only more comfortable on Mac, but will probably balk at being forced to use Windows just because the company won't spend a few extra dollars on a Mac.

You know, if I would be offered a job where I’d be forced to work with Windows, I probably won’t take it, unless the pay were ridiculous and the job itself easy. My own sanity is much more important to me than corporate BS.

 

[spiderman0616]

You know, if I would be offered a job where I’d be forced to work with Windows, I probably won’t take it, unless the pay were ridiculous and the job itself easy. My own sanity is much more important to me than corporate BS.

I think in this day and age, I'd be very wary of a company that won't give you that choice. More and more people are ditching PC for Mac all the time.

 

[leman]

I think in this day and age, I'd be very wary of a company that won't give you that choice. More and more people are ditching PC for Mac all the time.

Exactly. It’s definitely a red flag when it comes to the company culture, unless of course they have a good reason.

 

[bobmans]

Mainly 14" MBP's (32GB models)

 

[Sterkenburg]

People in the tech job families (engineers and scientists) now get to choose between a 14" and a 16" MBP, usually a stock config. Well, they are also offered the choice of a Windows laptop but almost no one gets that

 

[dmccloud]

Exactly. It’s definitely a red flag when it comes to the company culture, unless of course they have a good reason.

Some companies are locked into long-term contracts which roll in hardware support and repair into their purchasing agreements. Both Dell and HP are known for that on the enterprise side, and for some agreements, exclusivity is required (meaning the company can not use any other vendor even if their product is better suited for the intended purpose). I've seen this firsthand at a prior employer (who was beholden to Dell).

 

[bobcomer]

Some companies are locked into long-term contracts which roll in hardware support and repair into their purchasing agreements. Both Dell and HP are known for that on the enterprise side, and for some agreements, exclusivity is required (meaning the company can not use any other vendor even if their product is better suited for the intended purpose). I've seen this firsthand at a prior employer (who was beholden to Dell).

I've seen it too, but I've only worked for one company that did that, and it was a long time ago. The companies that make contracts like that get all sorts of benefits from making a contract, cheaper price, special orders, training, account rep that does the ordering, things like that. It does make sense if the company is big enough to get better pricing.

 

[ZircoBen]

Company I work for deploys Dell Latitude 7430s to nearly everyone; Dell Precision 5570s to developers, and to the few people who insist, base model M2 Pro 14".

 

[satcomer]

Man this thread reminds me as old retired Network Administrator understand the huge OS X moment of Mac and Linux machines not in businesses was because until Microsoft 2008s2 couldn't put those machines on their Microsoft servers! Then official resale was with Server 2010 then linux and OS X machines could natively connect to the domain! It was because of the case against Bill Gate's anti-trust trial!

 

[MayaUser]

All of my people i moved them to the mac for Maya, even the office light women users are on M1 Air, hopefully the M1 Air will resist in their hands until at least M3 air comes out

 

[spiderman0616]

Some companies are locked into long-term contracts which roll in hardware support and repair into their purchasing agreements. Both Dell and HP are known for that on the enterprise side, and for some agreements, exclusivity is required (meaning the company can not use any other vendor even if their product is better suited for the intended purpose). I've seen this firsthand at a prior employer (who was beholden to Dell).

I don’t want to say where I work or what I do, but it’s a large company and their way around this seems to have been to get big enough to have deals with all of them. My old company was more like what another commenter said—if you were bottom of the ladder, you got either a Dell laptop or a terminal running virtual software. If you were higher up or worked with the higher ups and were willing to wait and wait and wait for IT to “get to it”, you could request a Mac, but you had to nag to finally get one and it was a crapshoot how old it would be.

 

[Tagbert]

Our 6K+ employee company gives users a choice of windows laptop in two sizes (I don’t recall which) or a Mac Laptop. They used to offer 15” Intel MBP or 13” MBP but now it is all M1 Pro 16” MBP. They had some 14” MBPs but have not restocked those when they ran out. not sure what the reason is for not offering smaller models right now. They may be just waiting for another big purchase. I’m trying to get rid of my 2019 15” hover-heater MBP but don’t want the 16” so I’ve got a friend in IT who is making suggestions to start including Airs as an option or at least the 14” pro.

Overall, from just looking across the floors it looks like its about a 50:50 split of windows and Mac.

 

[spiderman0616]

Overall, from just looking across the floors it looks like it’s about a 50:50 split of windows and Mac.

Unthinkable just a few years ago. I still can’t believe it. When I left my last job, a large software company, it was about 75% Mac users. My current company, an even larger IT company, seems to be about 50/50.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Mostly 14" Pros and Airs.

This seems sensible for the average users.

Base model 14" is what most of us are running around. 32GB would have been great but at this point we just host the VMs on the cloud as we can't run the x86 VMs quite well enough on these new Macs.

With everything open I'm using around 60% of the memory.

That makes a ton of sense too. That machine took over from the 4-port 13-inch MacBook Pro in the lineup, and I think that was and still is a good spot in the line-up for what you get (and it definitely serves more users as the 14-inch MacBook Pro than it ever did with Intel inside).

You know, if I would be offered a job where I’d be forced to work with Windows, I probably won’t take it, unless the pay were ridiculous and the job itself easy. My own sanity is much more important to me than corporate BS.

Maybe it's because I work in IT and am just as comfortable on both platforms, but I definitely wouldn't mind either platform so long as the IT department wasn't incompetent at making stable machine configurations (in terms of both the hardware and software choices being made). I've found that IT departments that don't keep up with and/or accomodate Apple's best practices for IT deployment often make for really crappy Mac end user experiences. You can kind of get away with this more in a Microsoft shop where there's inherently way more flexibility.

I think in this day and age, I'd be very wary of a company that won't give you that choice. More and more people are ditching PC for Mac all the time.

There are a lot of factors that influence this, though. Some companies can do it without issue. Others need to use services or apps that require Windows and make this kind of choice for users a moot point. I think the M1 and M2 MacBook Airs provide good value for the rank and file employees that didn't exist before the switch. In May of 2020, it would've been hard to justify spending the cost of a 2020 Intel 2 port 13-inch MacBook Pro when, for $500 less, you got two generations newer hardware and for $300 less you would've gotten double the RAM and SSD (and you'd have never in a billion years want to use those last generations of Intel MacBook Air). But, personally, I'd rather the extra money that would've been required to give me a Mac at my job go to my paycheck or to buying me free lunch every day. If I got to keep the machine at the end of the day, that'd be an entirely different story.

Exactly. It’s definitely a red flag when it comes to the company culture, unless of course they have a good reason.

Not sure why. I'd far rather a technology ecosystem that works functionally than to have a preferred UI.

Unthinkable just a few years ago. I still can’t believe it. When I left my last job, a large software company, it was about 75% Mac users. My current company, an even larger IT company, seems to be about 50/50.

During cursory job searches, I find that out of 10 jobs, 7 will be Windows only, 2 will be mixed platform, 1 will be Mac only.

 

[bobcomer]

None, Windows here. (manufacturing plant)

 

[unrigestered]

we're now getting iPad Pros, but it's a horrible experience, since our infrastructure is heavily relying on the Microsoft ecosystem (Azure, Office, Teams, etc) plus our poorly written in-house software which is laggy AF and constantly nagging us with something. no keyboard for basically "desktop applications" doesn't make it a great experience either.
in fact, in our use case, a Windows laptop would have been the better choice, even over a MacBook, as it's highly unlikely that we're ever going to leave the MS software suite anyway.

 

[spiderman0616]

During cursory job searches, I find that out of 10 jobs, 7 will be Windows only, 2 will be mixed platform, 1 will be Mac only.

Might have to do with what circles we’re running in and what kind of teams we’re part of. My company has a huge Apple hardware partnership too, so I’m assuming we get deep discounts on MacBooks.

 

[Scarboose]

14” pros w/ 32 GB RAM for engineers and base 14” pros for everyone else. We were doing 13” pros with 16 GB RAM but got tired of finding alternative ways to support multiple displays. So we decided to just ditch the 13s and do 14s across the board