Sounds like an opinion piece with no data.
What exactly is opinion about:
*Apple ensures that Mac systems are optimized to work together
*PCs are made of parts from various manufacturers?
More over anadotal statements to the same effect abound;
Which has longer term reliabilty, Mac or PC? and my personal favorites
IBM says Macs save up to $543 per user and
Switch to Macs from PCs reportedly saves IBM $270 per user. Back when Gartner did TCO studies of Mac vs PC every time the Mac beat the PC and had a longer retention rate and a good number of those studies were back in the 68k/Power PC days when CPU crossover was nil.
"The message should be clear:
anyone whose primary focus is on the initial price will be making a BIG financial mistake.
If you are in the unfortunate situation where your school (or business) is seriously considering switching from Macs to Windows/PCs, then ask the MIS people (or whoever is promoting this change) to:
1 - Please provide a written detailed calculation as to the Total Cost of Ownership of Macs
vs PC computers, which should (as a
minimum) include:
a) initial hardware cost,
b) annual maintenance expenditures,
c) usable lifetime of the computer,
d) software costs (license, support, upgrades),
e) networking expenses (hardware, software, licenses, maintenance, etc.),
f) operating costs (e.g. electricity),
g) teacher training costs,
h) teacher preferences, satisfaction and efficiency,
i) ability to provide student with an enjoyable and productive learning environment.
2 - Please provide a written detailed explanation as to how using Windows/PC computers will guarantee a discernible benefit over using Macintosh computers:
a) for the students
b) for the teachers
c) for the technical support staff
d) for the taxpayers.
Their
written answers will provide you with information as to how to proceed. [And, if they say something like they don’t know how to do a Total Cost of Ownership Calculation, then suggest they check out
Taking TCO To The Classroom written by the independent Consortium for School Networking.]
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Essentially every survey that has taken these factors into account {e.g.
one by IDC (PDF)} has shown that Macs are
less expensive to own than comparably equipped PCs — typically by something like
$400 per year per computer." - “PCs are Cheaper Than Macs...”
With the M1 Macs out and their kin in the pipeline the only reason to stick with x86 is legacy software.
