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.

Comments

Re:What?

[gweilo8888]

This. And frankly, if he's doing that poor of a job configuring his machines, he should probably be looking for another career.

"Times Less" Makes No Sense

[danaris]

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like I've seen this construction a lot more in recent weeks, and it really bugs me.

"X Times Less" is mathematical nonsense. "1/X As Much" is usually what is meant by it, and is both mathematically and linguistically correct.

So while I presume this headline means that Macs cost a third as much as Windows machines, that's not what it actually says.

Dan Aris

Re:Why?

[wisnoskij]

I call Bullshit Because I have owned half a dozen windows PCs, and so far have zero tech support cost. I call bullshit because I have worked in tech support and people do not have problems with windows. You get a hard drive failure every so often, they need to be restarted sometimes, but most of the time you just need to teach the user about how to use some program like word or how to insert a % sign in a html document. A big problem with Macs is teaching people how to use them and do basic things that they already know how to do for windows. Try to install a printer driver on a MAC, and suddenly you have your entire IT department crowding around the one computer trying to figure out how to do anything at all. I have worked in two companies where we got a shipment of Macs while I was working there. And each time not everything just worked. And when this happens you had a room full of tech support people staring at a Mac with no idea of how to fix it.

Re:How much of that is entirely Microsoft's fault

[higuita]

it is not just support...

windows need antivirus, malware prevetion, monitoring, Active directory, MS office (because stupid people can only use outlook for email), backups, configuration management, update management, HW inventory, remove management, chat, Visual studio (because again, stupid people can only use this), etc, etc

on mac, people will not need most of this software, they accept other emails clients, IDEs, use open source tools, have ssh and a unix behind the GUI... so in the end, it all cost a lot less.

Now imagine the TCO of linux, the cheap hardware, with the cheap software and even more flexibility. Setup puppet or salt on those desktop, used ssh and the included software... after the initial setup cost, everything else would be very low cost.

Re: What?

[macs4all]

I think one of the main reasons is lower apple market share means less virus writers. Also windows has to support a lot of legacy crap which creates vulnerabilities.

That is big talk from someone (ostensibly) using an OS (Linux) with many times more malware than OS X/macOS has had (there isn't even a Wikipedia Article for OS X Malware!) in its sixteen-year history, but with far less marketshare.

Kinda blows the "Security through Obsurity" meme out of the water, doesn't it?

Re: How much of that is entirely Microsoft's fault

[macs4all]

Selection bias.

The sort of person who is going to demand a Mac will be the sort of person who doesn't need as much support.

Same as people who use alternative web browsers -- if you know enough to care, you are probably the sort of person who doesn't need help.

The data is only relevant if the people getting Mac and the people who get PC are chosen at random.

IBM's HUGE sample size swamps out all that bullshit.

But thanks for playing!