It might well be but why confine this to hardware? As you've said time is money and ignoring that additional cost to the business of not having a resource available, just looking at the cost of ownership itself IBM found that Macs were cheaper. Note though that if you are concerned about support tickets etc.. then they had far fewer issues than the windows machines.
non-techie people expecting a "good" computer/laptop for £100-200
- Thread starter terley
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It might well be but why confine this to hardware? As you've said time is money and ignoring that additional cost to the business of not having a resource available, just looking at the cost of ownership itself IBM found that Macs were cheaper. Note though that if you are concerned about support tickets etc.. then they had far fewer issues than the windows machines.
But that report doesn't go into any detail. We don't know if the usage is the same. The age of the machines almost certainly isn't.
But his figures don't make sense. Over four year they make a saving of $273 -$543 per Mac. And this somehow makes PCs 3 times more expensive.
One of those statements must be wrong or out of context.
Did you again just ignore the multiple times I said I was talking about MacBooks and expensive windows laptops?
Mission critical has nothing to do with it. Having a reasonably powerful laptop that an last 5-10 + hours is a useful tool, saves you having to be chained to a plug (so you can use it anywhere, including library tables that aren’t near a plug) and saves you having to carry one at all. One less thing to worry about and have to carry around, especially if you carry your laptop around most days. It doesn’t matter if you have a MacBook or a Windows laptop, for that kind of convenience you’re going to be paying $$$. That said, because of the optimization of the OS for the hardware MacBooks tend to have industry leading battery lives.
Again, Video Editing isn’t exclusively Apple, but if you want a laptop with similar power, a similar quality screen and durability then a windows laptop is going to cost you a similar amount. (Note, this is discussing laptops, not desktops so your Q6600 is useless). It’s certainly not going to be in the <£500 range, especially if you’re doing it professionally or semi professionally. That’s one f the reasons people buy MacBooks for the task.
Did you actually read the quoted posts? Asim said that any like-for-like hardware Windows laptop will be £500 cheaper than the MacBook version. Hence my post, which went unanswered.
The cheapest coffee lake MacBook as far as I can see costs £1750, so £400 - £500 off that is a price range of £1250 - £1350. Not £500 - £600.
I think you have a fair chance of getting something comparable in that price range.
Your kidding yourself if you genuinely think a MacBook pro or any other MacBook contains "server grade" anything. It's consumer grade and some of the boards bearly make that standard. Also some of their so called "unibodies" are nothing of the sort. Really go watch some Louis rossman on YouTube to get a real view of some of the issues, I'll agree he is fairly anti Mac in some of his views but overall given his business is all about repairing the things at board level it is fairly eye opening.
I do also have multiple Windows and Mac laptops and at the same price level the hardware is broadly similar in my opinion.
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How do you know the age of the machines isn't, he's comparing their usage over time. As for usage being the same, their might be some bias in the samples in so far as people who need specific software might need windows machines or perhaps some of the more competent/technical users might be more likely to initially express a preference for Macs etc.. but this is a large sample size where users have seemingly been given the choice and the results are pretty significant. Certainly from the IBM guy's position he's got no reason to favour either other than to cut costs and support time and seems to be rather happy with the increasing adoption of Macs.
Soldato
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Large, self-selected or otherwise biased doesn't mean a good sample; it's large and better than pure speculation - that's it.
I made my claims based on two points of reference in my mind:
1) Due to the distribution and market share, as in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Market_share_by_category
purity and lack of complexity are unlikely in any credible enterprise.
2) Costs will balance out within accepted variances of most budgets - variances are context dependent. If they are significant either way, action will be taken.
With your leading example, I look to the source - JAMF - people who pushed the story and got it picked up elsewhere:
https://www.jamf.com/blog/debate-over-ibm-confirms-that-macs-are-535-less-expensive-than-pcs/
- Tagline claim: Mac $535 less expensive than PCs.
- Actual article: "...saving anywhere from $273 - $543."
Both came from the talk at their event.
The scheme at IBM started in 2015, the article popped up in 2016: the numbers for the article, four year accrual and future growth are estimates. The keyword here was that IBM 'expected' to hit 100K Macs deployed, whilst maintaining the adoption rate healthy and management costs more or less fixed. The adoption rate trend looks like it was based on their employee survey and install base.
If you could get IBM's finance team to release the actual figures at the end of 2019/2020 for the guy's budget, then you could look at something concrete to compare the estimates against.
Regardless, JAMF followed up:
https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus-pc-in-the-enterprise/
Here's their summary graphic, exaggerated by them for effect - you don't have all the information in the article to actually properly scale that stack, or work out the savings' range proper:
Points to note:
- AV - which AV? Is this the market average for all AV software? Leading titles for both platforms?
- Windows 10 Pro licence - they themselves mention it's at nominal cost to OEMs; IBM would not pay the full retail price for it in their wildest fugue state
- Same issue with the Deployment solution factored in as in AV part
- Help and support part you already know my issues with
Finally, we get to the bulk of the direct software cost of managing these systems in the enterprise: JAMF vs Intune/SCCM. This is their core argument: you don't need the latter for Apple stuff; you need it for all Windows clients. That is, you save via the pure JAMF/Apple route and can keep that sufficiently isolated from your Windows environment to avoid further licencing costs/problems. How likely is that given IBM's own device and software distribution? Will JAMF and Microsoft keep their prices constant?
Further, these costs will be transferred to the Mac clients, on top of JAMF and the costlier base proposition, in two scenarios:
*Apple kit must be integrated into the wider Windows infrastructure
*Remote access, virtualisation and dual-booting; all common workarounds for any application specific Apple requirements
Depending on how and where the boundary is broken, you pay a price which must be fairly apportioned, or at least acknowledged by Apple advocates. The complexity in time and support needed only grows as the number of your devices and interactions between them grows. This is worse in mixed environments, where you can have incidents spanning two or three platforms (all involving one user or multiple users on multiple devices).
Given the rather vague data titbits and the strong hint that significant contributions were factored in from mobile workers and those few pure Apple locations - after deployment; I remain convinced it's even but slanted to plug the PM's approach, JAMF and Apple showing a pulse in the workplace outside its traditional footholds. Which was the whole point of the talk.
It's a cost and time spent issue. If your more expensive device on average is not expected to last to realise its full cost benefit, then you aren't really getting the full benefit.
You can play the insurance market vs both PC and Apple manufacturers' offer. But it's still time and money spent to get a supposedly 'free' cost benefit on the Apple side, for which you've already incurred higher upfront costs.
What's next? We can look to the future of cloud infrastructure where there's easier centralised management and any client can access the standardised work environment to do whatever. There the underlying cost of the client becomes the biggest potential saving per worker.
Context is king, dowie.
Didn't IBM and Apple jump into bed in some sort of partnership recently?
Bit of marketing back scratching maybe?
Just saying...
And so far all you've offered is speculation and an attempt to nit pick the example I've given. I'm sure you can present another wall of text with other questions/nit picking which I'm not able to answer as I don't have the specifics. While some of your points are valid we're still talking about a large sample showing an apparently rather large difference and a manager who doesn't seem to have a vested interest to be swayed one way or the other on the topic. However you've still provided absolutely nothing yourself to back up your claim but rather invested a bit of time writing a large post attempting to nit pick something I cited in reference to mine.
Why isn't it expected to last? You made some claim about a one year warranty window but didn't provide anything to substantiate it. It seems so far that they are having fewer issues with their Mac computers/fewer support calls etc..
And the context here is a senior manager at IBM with a large sample size deployment of Macs. Do you have a counter example showing that another company found their thousands of Mac laptops to be more expensive overall and requiring more support time?
Soldato
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You were compelled to draw on that example. I looked at it. We now find it lacks the particulars necessary to verify the forecast savings either from JAMF or IBM.
I am sure we both know how warranties work. The systems are expected to fail because there is a risk of failure associated with each unit shipped. It is non-zero at manufacture and increases hence. This risk is priced in warranty cover, giving you an indicator of recommended useful lifespan.
Apple's standard terms are: 1 year limited warranty; 2 years or 3 years on top of the initial year. There is excess under certain damage conditions. Costs can vary from $100 to circa $370+ per unit depending on the device. Excess for damage: $99-$299. AppleCare for Enterprise is offered in partnership with IBM. How the internal IBM support team interacts with IBM's AppleCare Enterprise teams is unclear; likewise for calls, time and costs absorbed.
Further, the talk was given 1 year after the scheme got running. How many issues and support calls do you expect brand new equipment to generate?
The context here is IBM's deployment for which costing data is limited. Arguing your counterfactual would be nonsensical: a large company is required such that it had already sunk money into Apple kit; ran it for a length of time; and reported on its error. Apple's failure in and settlement with the LA school system comes closest. Yet why would I cherry-pick something like that to indulge you, when I said that things were 'even stevens', not that they were a disaster for one side or the other?
Well that is a rather different way to frame it your previous quote was:
"If your more expensive device on average is not expected to last to realise its full cost benefit, then you aren't really getting the full benefit."
highlighting that some devices might fail is rather different to claim that the more expensive device is not expected to last
I didn't claim it was perfect, at least I'm backing up my view with some evidence... you've still provided nothing at all, you've made an assertion with no basis to it while trying to nit pick what I've provided.
So far we've got a manager from IBM with seemingly no inherent bias either way finding that he's getting better value from his employees choosing to use Macs where possible and he's found that over a large sample size.
You've made a claim that actually it is "even stevens" and you've got nothing to back up that claim. I'm inclined to believe the IBM guy with the real world experience of spending millions of dollars and deploying thousands of devices over someone who hasn't provided anything to justify his assertion.
Unless you're going to provide anything new then I think we'd better agree to disagree otherwise this will go around in circles with you pointing out that we have incomplete information from the IBM claim and attempting to nit pick further and me pointing out that you've still not provided anything at all to back up your assertion.