
Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy - clifanatic
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/macs-cost-one-third-much-223047938.html
======
patwolf
I'd like to know what percentage of help desk calls are related to hardware vs
OS vs software.

I can believe that the Mac hardware is more reliable. However, a lot of help
desk calls I remember making were because some legacy software wasn't working
which wasn't directly related to Windows, e.g. I can't read my lotus notes
mail because there's a problem with my remote mailbox configuration. I'd like
to know if those calls get marked as a PC problem.

I'm sure much less of the legacy software runs on Mac and therefore they get
fewer help desk calls related to it.

~~~
jgforbes
There could be other biases too. For instance, if the Mac users at IBM were in
largely technical roles (e.g. working on their MacOS integration service) vs
large non-technical departments working on Windows machines (e.g. HR and
accounting).

It wouldn't be very surprising that technical departments had less help-desk
complaints than non technical departments.

~~~
WayneBro
There are definitely other biases. Macs simply can't do as much as Windows can
in a business setting.

That's why companies like Disney and Google have to build their own systems
management tools. I could not imagine running a financial services house, an
insurance company or a warehouse without Windows.

Even simple software like remote desktop does not exist on the Mac. Yes the
Mac has screen sharing but it is nowhere as good as remote desktop.

~~~
Delmania
> Macs simply can't do as much as Windows can in a business setting

[https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Office-...](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Office-
for-Mac/categoryID.69404500)

> Even simple software like remote desktop does not exist on the Mac.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote-
desktop/id7...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote-
desktop/id715768417?mt=12)

[https://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/](https://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/)

Where on earth did you come up with this belief?

~~~
WayneBro
It only works from Mac to Mac though. You cannot do remote desktop from
Windows to Mac. That's typical Apple bullshit that will not fly in the
enterprise. RDP also comes built into Windows where is you have to buy this
from Apple.

Also for anybody suggesting team viewer… Come on that's a ridiculously
expensive package that does not even work as well and it's not ubiquitous.

~~~
Terretta
_> "It only works from Mac to Mac though. You cannot do remote desktop from
Windows to Mac. That's typical Apple bullshit"_

What are you talking about? Here are five ways:

[https://www.raymond.cc/blog/remote-access-apple-mac-os-x-
via...](https://www.raymond.cc/blog/remote-access-apple-mac-os-x-via-windows/)

TL;DR: Turn on the built-in open standard VNC server on the Mac, use a VNC
client on Windows:

 _Mac OS X actually comes with a built-in remote management feature that
allows other computers on the local network to access the Apple computer using
the Apple Remote Desktop which we mentioned earlier. However, there is a
setting where you can allow third party VNC viewers to connect and control the
Apple computer. First click on the System Preferences icon at the Dock and
click on Sharing. Click on the checkbox for the Remote Management to turn on
the service._

 _Click on Computer Settings button. Tick on the “VNC viewers may control
screen with password” and type in a password. Click OK to save the changes..._

~~~
Mithaldu
VNC is pretty laggy to use when you could have RDP instead.

------
greedo
I use a Mac at work, and we've started giving managers the discretion to
choose a Mac for their employees. I've been using Macs since OSX, so fairly
familiar with their flaws in a corporate environment.

I have to laugh at anyone who thinks Windows would be comparable or cheaper in
cost to a Mac. Everyday, I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our
helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum.

Fortunately for me, my only interaction with the "Windows" environment is via
SMB to our fileservers. This works reasonably well. The rest of our
applications are either Java based, have a web interface, or use a console. My
immediate coworkers are all sysadmins with years of experience, and even they
still have to cope with BSODs, crashing applications, and all the usual crap
that Windows users continue to put up with.

It's sad; they actually think it's normal. I run into the same issue when they
talk about Windows server issues (I admin the *nix systems). They don't
believe me when I say I don't run into issue xyz...

~~~
talmand
>> I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about
drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum

Sounds like human error to me. My two young children seem to handle Windows
just fine without me having to constantly monitor their machines.

Edit: what? my anecdotal evidence isn't as good as everybody else?

~~~
jakobegger
You should know that anecdotal evidence is frowned upon on Hacker News when it
doesn't support conventional wisdom.

~~~
sqeaky
I thought his anecdote was the conventional wisdom?

It lines up pretty perfectly with my experience swapping in Ubuntu for Mac OS.
When I have a problem I can troubleshoot it down to a specific line of code or
piece of hardware, on windows.... well, I would rather not troubleshoot
anything on windows.

------
StillBored
Well, if IBM's PC image is anything like it was in the early 2000's probably >
50% of their PC issues are self inflicted by the IT people who built the
image.

From buggy unsigned drivers, to crapware for security/etc, I stabilized my
machine by uninstalling a bunch of things that should never have been in the
standard image. If you compare the PC vs MAC images at the last couple
companies I worked at, you will find that the PC's are far more heavily
modified with crapware/bloatware than the macs were. Usually because having
checkpoint/norton/whatever was an absolute requirement from a security
perspective on the PC's but apparently the MAC's didn't even need disk
encryption enabled much less virus scanners...

~~~
treve
> Well, if IBM's PC image is anything like it was in the early 2000's probably
> > 50% of their PC issues are self inflicted by the IT people who built the
> image.

I'd argue that most issues people have with Windows PC fall in the category of
'self inflicted', but the point is, is that this is much harder to do on a Mac
(apparently). I never heard someone building an image for a mac for example.

~~~
washadjeffmad
Not in the Windows way, but we maintain (read: throw together, once) separate
images for fusion drives, on/off domain, and some other minor use and test
cases.

But no one here is patching kernels or blacklisting modules to fix hardware
issues on Macs, or working around some Intel security technology that disables
xhci controllers on Skylake if you aren't on Win10 because the last LCR didn't
cull enough of the incompatible hardware to upgrade from Win7. Things like
that are why our Mac group can support as many systems as the PC team with 1/5
the staff.

And that's not including Service, who deal almost exclusively with PC issues
by volume.

------
rvanmil
It's only anecdotal, ofcourse, but I used to own Windows machines and as a
result so did all my relatives with me being the "tech guy" in the family. Not
a week would pass without me fixing a relative's PC. Now, about 7 years later,
everyone in my family including myself has switched to Macs and I can't even
remember the last time I was called to fix a machine.

~~~
knz
Chromebooks have a similar experience is you want an even cheaper alternative.
Applications beyond the browser are more limited (photo management is awful on
Chromebooks) but it's hard to beat the price and functionality for most users.

~~~
digi_owl
Was trying to sell my dad on getting a Chromebook, but he insisted on getting
something with a numpad...

~~~
sqeaky
Tape on of these to it: [https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Da...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=usb+numpad)

~~~
digi_owl
He already had one of those on an earlier laptop. He didn't want to have to
fiddle with such a thing again.

------
jmknoll
"Previn says that while a Mac initially costs anywhere from $117 to $454 more
than a similarly configured Windows PC, over four years IBM saves between $273
to $543 per Mac compared to a similarly configured Windows PC."

Its late over here, and I could be misinterpreting this, but this feels like
meaningless clickbait. 3 times cheaper to own is based on 117 * 3 ~= 543?
Taking the extreme low end of one value and the extreme high end of the other
feels dishonest.

Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been "In the long run, you'll
probably save about $25/year by buying a Mac."

~~~
greedo
No.

The minimum savings was $273/4 years = 68.25/year The maximum savings was
$543/4 years = 135.75/year

~~~
jmknoll
Are those savings already including the fact that "a Mac initially costs
anywhere from $117 to $454 more than a similarly configured Windows PC"?
Looking at it again, its not entirely clear from the way that its worded.

~~~
greedo
Lifecycle TCO would naturally take into consideration the initial purchase
price. Just preface think of it like this:

"Despite a Mac costing anywhere from $117 to $454 more, it's cheaper than
Windows."

------
linkmotif
Don't know about the stats, but this has definitely been the case for me. My
late 2010 MBA worked for 5 years then broke one day. Apple fixed it in under
24 hours for $304.80 (that's with 8.75% NY tax) and I'm typing on it as we
speak. PS the thing is basically indestructible... I have no excuse not to buy
another some time in the future. Can't wait to try the 12" MB.

~~~
freehunter
I agree but I would strongly hesitate to say "basically indestructible". Macs
are incredibly destructible. They have a very thin glass screen, you could
bend the chassis with your hands if you wanted to, and they're not even a
little waterproof.

How I would describe a MacBook is "quality". It's not especially durable, it
just doesn't break down over time. Other laptops break in stupid ways. The
hinges snap because it's metal screwed into plastic. The cheap plastic casings
wear down, discolor, and crack as you touch it. The trackpad wears down
because it's plastic. The logic boards stress with the constant heat flux and
end up breaking. Macs don't often suffer from that.

MacBooks aren't indestructible in any way. They're just built to a higher
standard so they can withstand _daily use_. It's kind of sad that our bar is
set so low, but many other laptops can't withstand daily use for years on end.
Even Thinkpads, I've had the hinge areas crack because it's metal hinges
screwed into a plastic chassis.

~~~
rpazyaquian
> How I would describe a MacBook is "quality". It's not especially durable, it
> just doesn't break down over time.

I've definitely noticed the same thing. Almost every laptop (and computer, for
that matter) has broken down within a year to a year and a half for some
random dumb reason. Two of my laptops died due to messed up power supply
connections on the motherboard, two others died due to the hinges completely
snapping off, and another died because the hard drive failed - and that one
was an aluminum iMac that I pawned off to my friend, who replaced the HDD and
it works just fine still.

I've had my current MBP since 2012, and it's chugging along just fine - except
for the hard drive, which I replaced with an SSD and have no problems with,
and ironically enough the hinges, which totally cracked. I had to buy some
replacement hinges off of iFixit, which I'm waiting on delivery for today.

Apple computers have by far been the longest lasting and least likely to crap
out on me that I've ever had. I'm very happy with my old MBP, and the only
reason I'm considering upgrading to a newer model is because I can tell this
one might be on its way out in general.

The one thing stopping me is the price point... $1600+, yikes.

~~~
kogepathic
> Almost every laptop (and computer, for that matter) has broken down within a
> year to a year and a half for some random dumb reason.

Consumer hardware is crap because the market doesn't want to pay for anything
above crap. The laptops break after a year because that's how long the
warranty is, and the manufacturer is counting on you to come back and buy next
year's cheapest model when your laptop breaks.

Go look at enterprise quality PC laptops, they cost as much as a Mac does, but
they last just as long.

I can tell you stories of ThinkPads which I have personally seen run over by
cars, and while the LCD is broken and the body is a bit scuffed, they still
work with an external monitor.

> The one thing stopping me is the price point... $1600+, yikes.

Yup, and if you buy mobile workstations, you're going to pay that much. The
great thing about PCs though is that they don't retain their value like a Mac
does.

This is why whenever someone asks me for a laptop recommendation, my first
pick would be a 2-3 year old enterprise laptop. You can pick them up
refurbished for around $300, and they'll easily last you another 3.

The only disadvantage is that companies are afraid to innovate their business
laptop line, so in a lot of cases you're stuck with laptops that have a
1366x768 screen while everyone else is running around with a $2000+ extremely
fragile ultrabook, which has a 3K display.

~~~
forgettableuser
Some time ago, a coworker of mine was in a terrible car rollover accident. He
escaped without long lasting injuries, but the car was totaled. His Macbook
Pro was loose in the car and it got bent in the middle.

Amazingly, only the DVD drive was destroyed. Everything else continued to
work.

------
FollowSteph3
It's because most PCs people use are bottom of the barrel cheap. If you
compare similarly priced PCs to Macs with similar business class builds
(keyboards for laptops, etc) I highly suspect everything will balance out, at
the very least be minimal.

~~~
greedo
If you look at the full reports, it's readily apparent that IBM isn't
comparing an expensive Mac to an el-cheapo PC.

~~~
raesene6
But they could well be comparing a new BYOD MacOS environment to a old
corporate legacy windows setup, which isn't really comparing the performance
of the OS so much as comparing BYOD with old-school centrally managed windows
domains.

------
ben_jones
/r/sysadmin had a good discussion on it [1].

TLDR; the study is hardly conclusive and knowing IBM is aligned with business
goals.

[1]:[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/58j88j/ibm_claims...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/58j88j/ibm_claims_macs_less_expensive_than_pcs_for_their/)

~~~
Mithaldu
Wow, this is a nice quote:

"Yeah I was wondering about the Linux base. I was denied a Mac when they
introduced this policy as I was what they call a privileged user (most
sysadmins will be)."

------
fnordsensei
The company I work at is small, at 32 employees. We standardized on macs in
the mid 00s for the exact same reason: maintenance costs. Being a consultancy,
the ROI calculation also included hours lost due to malfunctioning hardware or
software problems, and it became very easy in the end to justify the initially
higher expense of giving someone a mac instead of a PC.

~~~
joshmanders
I came to the same conclusion after 15 years as a Windows user, 2 years as
Linux and now going on 4 as Mac.

------
roryisok
my first reaction is to not accept this and share anecdotes of my experiences,
but maybe he's right. I don't run an IT dept. I've not done any cost benefit
analysis. I just know my second hand thinkpad was cheap, works well and I
won't trade it for a mac any time soon.

Maybe if I was loaded I'd buy my folks and siblings macbooks, but I'm not, and
I'm happy enough to fix the odd issue on their cheap windows laptops. one or
two reinstalls a year while I watch some TV in the background beats convincing
them to spend money they don't really have on top of the line hardware

but like I said, different story if you're making financial decisions for a
big Corp

~~~
narutouzumaki
... that's because of the cheap second hand thinkpad, which is a marvelous
piece of engineering, and probably the best the Windows/Non-Mac world has to
offer in competition to Macbooks.

Even though there have been some questionable redesign approaches and a slight
(perceived) slump in QC in recent years, Thinkpads IMO are still THE best
machinery out there to just get stuff DONE.

They are reliable, full Linux compatibility, easy to service and have the best
non mechanical / Notebook keyboard out there.

Tbh the only thing I envy the Macs for are their brilliant screens. But we
have red nipples on our keyboards, so yeah...

------
UnoriginalGuy
Worth saying that IBM has a large financial interest here as they're selling
enterprise Mac integration.

~~~
nmstoker
You're absolutely right to highlight this. I didn't wish to sound cynical but
their motive is pretty clear.

------
wtfishackernews
So they allow people to choose their platform since 2015 and then compare the
support costs for brand new macs to all existing windows PCs?

Not to mention the possible selection bias since people chose a mac themselves
and were not randomly sampled.

------
KirinDave
I wish I could talk more about this but I'm not sure I can go into detail
today. But I can say:

\- Part of the reasons macs are cheaper is that they're massively less
instrumented than PCs. \- Most orgs have not migrated to Win10 because they're
totally convinced they need that instrumentation on windows. \- But they don't
need that instrumentation on OSX, so it calls the entire premise into
question.

It's also the case that people negotiate cheap block sales of SKUs from
"trusted" partners to help pre-bundle all that instrumentation. But as this
data shows, it turns out that buying less customized devices with better
overall specs is actually a cost savings and per-unit cost.

Finally, I'd argue that employee satisfaction is almost directly a result of
not having a heavy-handed and almost entirely arbitrary series of mandates
forced onto their computer.

I won't talk about my employers efforts, but I know OTHER people (friends in
IT) who are experimenting with mass deploys of Win10 and Surface books with a
"let's throw EVERYTHING out and pretend these are a new platform" approach,
and they tell me that they see benefits. As the conversations are casual, I
cannot go further.

It's sort of amazing what happens to overall cost if you accept the premise
that the vast majority of IT tooling and monitoring is in fact bad,
wrongheaded, and not fulfilling real security and auditing requirements.

~~~
raesene6
This very much chimes with my experiences of enterprise IT. The change is in
throwing out the new platform and putting in a new one, not in what they old
and new one actually are.

I'll be interested to see if the waves of BYOD and lightly managed systems
give way to a return to centralisation again, when people realise what they
don't have any more, or if it turns out, as you say, to be that they never
really needed it in the first place.

------
pythonistic
Ex-IBMer here: until 2015, Macs weren't an option for people upgrading their
PCs. They're deploying new Apples as laptops age out, and employees will then
have a choice of a MacBook/MacBook Pro (depending on job role), a Lenovo
laptop (configured for job role), or for the special snowflakes with
sufficient budget, some custom configuration. BYOD is alive, well, and
encouraged at IBM.

Most IBMers with Macs were using their personally owned hardware (as was the
rare IBMer using a Microsoft Surface). Early adopters (before the end of 2014)
were supported internally through the community, and starting in 2015 we were
required to install a configuration program that would add an IBM app store
and configure the machine so it complied with the internal security rules.
Many of the day-to-day headaches on the Windows machines (e.g., printing) were
eliminated with the IBM development Mac tools, but other things were
impossible or required a VM to do, like using an IBM internal SOCKS proxy
application to connect to customer sites.

IBM has a very active and dedicated Linux community as well. I can't speak to
support numbers, but the tooling was more mature and more tools were available
on the RHEL distribution.

------
infodroid
I wonder whether this is a premature conclusion due to sampling bias. I
suspect that the early Mac adopters at IBM were mostly developers and expert
users, people that didn't need a lot of support anyway. This makes it look
like IBM's Mac users are cheaper to support, when in reality the true support
costs won't be known until the user base is more representative of the company
as a whole.

------
lostlogin
Institutional computer usage seemes designed to cost the institution money. I
have to log jobs for basic installs, have 2-3 follow up calls and emails to
clarify what I want. Then I wait for the team who install that category of
software to be free (usually the person I need is on leave). It's easier to
find a workaround, even if it makes the job take hours rather than minutes.
Random machines can't access the internet for updates even if the admin
password was available - internet access is an attack vector to be minimised.
Maybe other large institutions are better. I see the odd Mac user and I'm sure
it's cheaper for the department as Mac users get an admin password and a
"dunno how to help you, youre on your own". I want this too.

------
gramstrong
*for a corporation. For a single user who knows their way around a Windows machine, they are not.

~~~
zeveb
I can't compare Windows and macOS, but I can compare Windows and Linux.

About a year ago my employer forced me to use a Windows machine. Fortunately,
I have complete control of it (it's not managed by my employer);
unfortunately, that doesn't matter. It's a complete cesspit: updates are
horrible; the pre-installed crapware from the manufacturer is horrible; the
pre-installed crapware from Microsoft is horrible; the interface is horrible
(just trying to navigate around prompts and windows is … miserable). There is
literally only one good thing I can say about Windows: the background and lock
screen images are really, really nice (awesome, really; just beautiful).

In every other way using it has made my life measurably worse.

Meanwhile, I continue to use Linux on my personal machines. It Just Works™,
and really well. It's reliable, fast, easy to use, _pleasant_ to use: every
time I log onto my personal Linux machine I breathe a sigh of relief.

Yes, some of that delta is due to greater familiarity with Linux, but a huge
amount is due to this simple truth: the Linux interface is _better_ than the
modern Windows interface (which is, itself, worse than Windows 7 was). Linux
feels like it was built by developers who use what they develop; Windows feels
like it was built by a marketing department who use Macs.

~~~
lake99
> There is literally only one good thing I can say about Windows: the
> background and lock screen images are really, really nice

You can have that in Linux too[1]. You can configure it to pull fresh images
from your favourite sources, including Bing.

[1] [https://vrty.org/](https://vrty.org/) seems to be down at the moment

------
tjpaudio
Am I the only one here getting a warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling from reading
this, a lengthy "mac vs. pc" discussion?

------
rdtsc
OS licensing is probably cheaper as well come upgrade time. I understand macOS
license is tied to the hardware so for a new version don't have to pay? With
hundreds of thousands of machine that can add up.

~~~
eosrei
Windows 10 is effectively now the same as MacOS, but with rolling updates:
[http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-10-last-version-
windows-...](http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-10-last-version-windows-not-
end)

~~~
slantyyz
>> Windows 10 is effectively now the same as MacOS

MacOS has one big thing going for it that Windows doesn't - there is only one
desktop edition. None of that "Home" and "Pro" crap.

------
usingpond
To contribute some anecdotal findings to the larger IT discussion in the
thread, a lot of it comes down to this IMHO...

There are three levels of understanding of personal computers and how to
manage them:

A) Basic understanding, the vast majority of users/clients B) Intermediate
understanding, you often find yourself walking your relatives through setting
up their mail client C) Expert understanding, you have deep knowledge of
networking and user permissions for each computer on this network. You don't
use apps to figure this out, you have set it up, tried it, and are proud of a
system you have designed to make it all work.

I've found that many issues arise from folks working in IT whom are B that
think they are C, and the frustration from not having Macs work identically as
their Windows networking wizards causes friction. I think as people are
getting better trained in BYOD, and the fact that there's no way around better
IT training to accommodate it, is causing a sea change in adopting Macs.

------
makecheck
I’ll take “headlines you would never see in 1990 for 800, Alex”. :)

Sadly, even today, using a PC laptop, the process is something like this:

1\. Open lid and start work. Actually no, the battery managed to drain itself
again due to the power-inefficiency of the system; better go find a cord and
plug it in first.

2\. Open lid again and start work. Actually no, the fancy “resuming Windows”
animation has appeared. Check back after several minutes.

3\. Try to start work. Actually no, Windows has required updates and needs to
install and reboot.

4\. Try to start work. Actually no, the previous update was apparently just
the first; Windows has to reboot again and install something else.

5\. Repeat step 4 about 3 more times.

6\. Try to start work. Actually no, “something” in the background isn’t done
screwing with the machine yet so everything I click on is unresponsive.

7\. Try to click on something. Damn it, I forgot the built-in track pad is
garbage and half the time I accidentally click on things I don’t want. Let me
go find a mouse and plug it in.

8\. Try to start work. Oh right, even the simplest applications take
inexplicably 30 seconds to launch on a “modern” computer.

9\. Begin work, probably an hour later.

This happens literally every couple of weeks but usually more often.
Fortunately I only have the machine because I occasionally have to sync my
development to compile with Visual Studio and so the entire system is mostly a
distraction.

Meanwhile, on my main Mac machine, it’s virtually instantaneous to start
working in all respects. Open the lid, the OS is READY and the apps are either
already open or they restore nearly instantly. While the Mac can certainly
have restart-worthy updates, it’s _way_ smarter about this and I always retain
FULL CONTROL over the process (including the “let the message sit there
forever until my work is done” option). And that’s before I even start listing
the Unix tools, the awesomeness of "brew", reasonable terminal emulation, etc.

------
Shivetya
Sorry, but Apple still needs a dedicated docking station solution provided by
them. It can simply connect through a single port (USB3/Etc/Etc). I use my
current work laptop for home and work and have full setups at each and its a
simple one step to activate it all.

Now what I am curious about is being able to do pushes that are corporate team
just loves to do and ease of connection to to z, i, and p, systems. IBM
recently moved 5250 emulation to a pure JAVA solution that works on Mac/Linux
and I am sure z 3270 has its solution too. A lot of IBM system admin tools
have been moved to JAVA just so it would be platform independent

~~~
wmf
The Thunderbolt Display acts as a dock; it currently requires two cables but
there may be a new USB-C version next week that uses one cable. Third-party
docks also exist:
[https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TCDOCK11PSG/](https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TCDOCK11PSG/)
Just don't expect IBM to buy one for you.

------
wineisfine
And some day, it might take a few years, some smart guy will quote me that
Android is like Windows, back in the day, and that Apple is still Apple.

------
rajanikanthr
purchased my Thinkpad T520 in 2011.. still running strong :)

------
gjolund
Linux is even cheaper.

I am constantly dumbfounded when I see "lean" startups shelling out for
macbooks.

If you really want to save money and run a lean operation go linux.

------
cloudjacker
> "The challenge is, all the people that still have Blackberries can fire me,
> so it's hard to force it from them," he joked.

in tears

------
sickbeard
IBM reduces IT staff by 30% next quarter

