Slashdot Mirror
Macs End Up Costing 3 Times Less Than Windows PCs Because of Fewer Tech Support Expense, Says IBM's IT Guy (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on Yahoo (edited): Last year, Fletcher Previn became a cult figure of sorts in the world of enterprise IT. As IBM's VP of Workplace as a Service, Previn is the guy responsible for turning IBM (the company that invented the PC) into an Apple Mac house. Previn gave a great presentation at last year's Jamf tech conference where he said Macs were less expensive to support than Windows. Only 5% of IBM's Mac employees needed help desk support versus 40% of PC users. At that time, some 30,000 IBM employees were using Macs. Today 90,000 of them are, he said. And IBM ultimately plans to distribute 150,000 to 200,000 Macs to workers, meaning about half of IBM's approximately 370,000 employees will have Macs. Previn's team is responsible for all the company's PCs, not just the Macs. All told IBM's IT department supports about 604,000 laptops between employees and its 100,000+ contractors. Most of them are Windows machines -- 442,000 -- while 90,000 are Macs and 72,000 are Linux PCs. IBM is adding about 1,300 Macs a week, Previn said.
The problem is that not everyone is you. At a former job I supported PCs and then the director of marketing decided that he liked Macs so he unilaterally switched his group to Macs. Anecdotally I'd say the users had just as many problems that needed my help as they did when they were on PCs, and in addition had additional problems they needed sorting out in the first couple of weeks following the switchover due to their lack of familiarity with OSX. Most of their day to day problems were software related, so the underlying OS didn't factor into that one way or the other, and these peoples' self troubleshooting skills were practically nonexistent so it meant just as much work for me, and in some cases more as I was also then tasked to find them alternate software to do a given task.
For the average users, once you get past the enthusiasts skewing the numbers the IT savings will probably not be as significant as this article makes them out to be. People are still going to be having trouble mapping a drive, sharing a folder, logging into an SFTP site on Windows or OSX.
Hardware wise, the Macs generally use decent hardware that lasts, but also charge a premium for that. If offices used PCs that weren't the cheapest thing that fell off the turnip truck they'd see as good or better failure rates than the Macs. And Apple hasn't been 100% immune to shitty hardware slipping out the door so spending more on the Mac isn't a bulletproof guarantee either.
We have both in our household. I've bought two laptops ($450 HP, used for ~4 years; $750 lenovo), replaced my desktop monitor ($200), upgraded the desktop CPU ($150), upgraded the desktop GPU ($150), replaced the desktop motherboard ($100), added more harddrives ($225)...Totalling $2025.
Yep still cost less than the wife's 2007-2008 macBook Pro ~$2300.
Within 2 years, the MacPro's headphone line went out. According to Apple, fixing that requires... wait for it... a new motherboard: $500. Anectdotal of course, but three different members of the family have taken Macs in for inspection|repair, and every damned time are told "motherboard" $500+ to fix. In one case all that was *actually* required was a new power supply.
This isn't really news. OS X is a good working unix, it is built and controlled by the same people who build the hardware. It's basically fully integrated into the hardware. It has always had a very clear separation of user and system space and Macs aren't plagued by bloat and shovelware.
You get a mac unpack it, start it and it works. That hasn't changed in decades and holds true to this very day. Not so with a PC. Just watching my colleague hassling with Windows 10 and Office365 at my shop has me stand in amazement over the eternal shittyness of the MS provided solutions that apparently holds to this very day as it did in the Windows ME days. Even today you can't get a basic Groupware from them up and running without a total messy frustration ensuing.
I remember thinking about the brand-new first ever iMac and noticing that you could get one, start it, and didn't even need to adjust the CRT monitor or resolution. A godsend for ordinary users and maintenance personnel. That type of integration and result oriented setup was lightyears ahead of any ugly clunky Windows box. And it still is.
That they are cheaper in maintenance is blatantly obvious IMHO.
A windows PC that doesn't suck is still a rare thing. Probably these surface books from MS themselves are what comes closest to a MacBook.
I've said it in the 90ies and it holds true to this very day: In terms of basic system integrity Windows combines all the disadvantages of Linux with all the disadvantages of a Mac. The only reason ever to get Windows was and still is to run programms on it that wouldn't run anywhere else. And those are pirated software, Games or some obscure CAD program for engineers that don't know anything other than Windows.
That's why Google is moving into their Groupware and productivity space and Chromebooks, as the poor mans mac, are taking over.
Not that I like the prospect of Big Google watching everything, but anything that removes MSes abysmal model from the body public is a good deed. It's not that MS would be any better. Only with Google at least it works and you don't have to pay for it.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Of course numbers will hold up, facepalm.
Why the funk should a Mac need tech support in the first place?
I never had a Mac that magically forgot where the printer is, lost its IP adress, forgot how to connect to the DSL modem, refused to boot and waited 45 minutrs until it gave up to find its 'domain controller' (what is that actually?)
Sorry, unless a user needs to configure something, and does not know how to do it: a Mac does not need tech support.
I owned over the years like 15 Macs, the only tech support they got was replacements of harddrives, and in one case a motherboard (to a newer/faster one).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
if things ever get too hairy for a dell, your restore process is entirely automated in windows or linux. restoring a mac is nothing short of corporate witchcraft.
To backup: buy a Synology NAS. Enable the Time Machine service. Configure your Macs to back up to it. Voila, done.
To restore from scratch: hold down Command-R when booting a Mac. Tell it to restore from Time Machine. Wait an hour. Voila, done.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I am sure the same is true at my company. The IT department locks down and otherwise messes with the Windows PCs ... because they can. This impulse to control leads directly to IT support tickets. They don't lock down the Macs because they are not tied into the domain like the PCs are. Most Windows users in my company have to put in a help desk ticket to get new software, update existing software or even add the new printer that IT just installed down the hallway. This is not true for the Mac users. The difference in the way the IT department treats Macs and PCs is the source of the difference in the number of tickets per device-type not the device-types themselves.