IBM officially confirms that the Mac is cheaper than the PC: Microsoft is still shaking.
Every time someone sees the illuminated logo of my Mac wherever I go with it, the usual questions arise: Is a Mac worth it? Isn’t it better to buy a PC that will be the same but cheaper?. And the answer I give, and almost all of us who have Macs give, is the same: It’s expensive, but it’s worth it, and in the long run it’s cheap. Today I finally have a link to a post that I will send to those who ask me again about the matter. Perhaps, in fact, you are already one of them.
Switch to Mac
The incredible data that we bring you today (incredible, especially for those who do not use a Mac), has been disclosed by Fletcher Previn (VP of Workplace-as-a-Service at IBM) at the JAMF Nation User Conference. And it is that in July IBM began what promises to be the largest business migration from PC to Mac in history. And she’s doing it at a devilish pace: implanting 1,900 weekly Macs among its employees, which already brings to 130,000 the total number of iOS and OS X devices that the company currently has in use. And it is being a tremendous success, from a productivity point of view and, very remarkably, also from an economic one. Imagine what it must be like to maintain such a fleet of devices in terms of installation, training, license management, maintenance, support… Well, can’t you imagine how many people are necessary to take care of all that work?
Well, even if it seems incredible only 24 people!. For you to be able to visualize what this means, the average support needed by a company that works in Windows environments is one computer technician for every 242 workers. This ratio skyrockets for IBM employees with Apple equipment, and each technician is serving 5,375 employees!. How can that be possible? Well, the secret is that 40% of PC users call technical support of the company, while only a tiny 5% of Mac users need help of some kind. Something that confirms something else I usually say: everything is easier on MacIt’s not until you switch that you realize how absurdly difficult many things were (and are) in Windows. There are many technical reasons for these numbers, which go beyond the speed and simplicity of OS X. The Macs that are issued to IBM employees are part of Apple’s enrollment program and include the Casper suite. What comes to users is a machine completely prepared to work from minute one. They can install Office just by pressing install and license management is done in the background, without the employee having to deal with anything. In a way, the clever approach you have taken is manage laptops in a similar way to mobile devices: let the user himself do things, in a simple way and without the need to overload the company’s IT department.
the way here
It may seem incredible to many that a company that has spent decades closely tied to Windows (take a look at the photo below to see what Jobs had to say about them) is being able to migrate in such a sudden, fast and seamless way. to the rival platform. And it is that a lot has happened since IBM sold computers with Windows until today it buys Macs for hundreds of thousands. The takeoff began in 2005, when IBM sold its computer division to Lenovo for $1.27 billion. And after many years dizzying the partridge, in July of last year the IBM-Apple alliance was announced to develop business services. From there everything accelerated. In December the first joint apps for iPad and iPhone were published.
And in August of this year the bomb dropped: IBM was switching to Mac. And he was going big, buying up to 200,000 Macs a year. The news was so important that my colleague Marcos titled his article as the “Post-PC Era.” A few months later we know that the deployment is being a success and the company could meet its plan to achieve an internal Mac usage rate of 50-75%.
The Mac is cheaper than the PC
Previn did not dodge the issue of higher price and the cost of Macs. First, it explains that a Mac still has residual value after three or four years of use. In other words, it costs you more money to buy it, but the value of the machine remains longer, which could allow you to sell it and recoup the markup you put up. He points out that the productivity of the Mac is fantastic, and that the level of automation and ease of use are such that they need far fewer people to support all those machines. Regarding the cost, Previn is very clear: “Every Mac we buy is saving IBM money and making money”.
Where is the PC and Microsoft?
Microsoft right now is tempting its clothes and squeezing its meninges very seriously. Because Apple has gotten into your own home: the business customer. What is happening is not only Microsoft losing IBM as a customer. It is that now IBM is going to dedicate itself to selling its IBM’s MobileFirst Managed Mobility Services program throughout the world, whose objective is to offer business services to all companies that, guess what…?, is for those companies that want to switch to Mac And he does it by carrying his successful program under his arm
think well One of the most prestigious and giant companies in the world goes to the Mac, it does it at full speed, without adaptation problems and on top of that they say they are saving money. How long do you think it will be until CIOs at Fortune 500 companies are running the numbers to see if they do the same?
And what will Microsoft do? Well, of course, it will continue to be a fundamental player in the world of computers. They may steal part of your snack, but Windows has a snack for a while and it will take many years for it to go hungry. Meanwhile, it seems that it is betting on sticking its head into convertible devices. And it seems that it is finally doing it more or less seriously, with a team that, although still expensive, promises to put up a fight in the coming years: the interesting Surface Book.
In any case, Microsoft’s coffers are very full and its benefits are more than remarkable, so it has a lot of room to react and respond to this bite that Apple is putting into its core business.
What is increasingly clear to me is that in the coming years the Mac is going to grow. And as soon as the big corporations begin to adopt it in a more intense way, it will finally begin to become popular and be known outside the US. I bet in four or five years I’ll stop hearing the question “is it worth it?” and I will begin to listen “well, in the end it was true that the Mac is cheaper, Eladio”.
Still shaking Microsoft…
Via: JAMF
