This morning I stumbled across an article on CNN Money discussing why Macs aren’t right for the small business and it got me thinking about the use of Macs in the corporate and enterprise environments. I know I may get flamed for this and I’m sure the author of the above article is going to get smacked hard with the Apple fanboy bat as well, but the truth is Macs and other Apple products are a bad idea for any company. I know I am a self-proclaimed Microsoft fanboy but my opinion on this matter is based solely on my information technology experience in corporate America with multiple fortune 100 companies and not for my love on everything One Microsoft Way. I’ve purchased and support both PC and Macs for nearly a decade and my opinion in this article is based solely from that perspective.
Corporate America is the crown jewel of the technology world and everyone is vying for a piece of the huge pie. Nearly every employee of every company in corporate America uses a computer of some sort… and most companies upgrade and roll out new equipment every 3-5 years so getting a foot in the door of a company can keep you fed for a decade or more if you play your cards right. In this post I’ll go into great detail about how Apple is all wrong for the corporate world and the business world in general. Some of arguments will be quite obvious while others will be about aspects of the business world people tend to forget about or ignore. I won’t touch on all the errors of Apple’s way as I don’t have all day and I’m sure you don’t either.
Flat PC vs. Mac cost is the big elephant in the room when you talk about Apple products. Sure Apple has some amazing designs but you pay a pretty penny for that trendy looking laptop. For every Mac a company buys they could buy at least two PCs of equal or higher technical specifications. For every one of your Macbooks I can buy two Dell Vostros or HP Pavilions. For every one of your iMacs I could buy two or three Dell or HP desktops. For every one of your high end PowerMacs I could buy two high powered Dell or HP desktops… and it goes on and on, the cost increases two fold when you throw Apple servers into the mix versus Windows based servers. The bottom line is Apple views their products as premium devices and you’ll pay premium prices for them too… they also don’t deal with the volume of sales that PC makers do so they can’t give you as big discounts when ordering large numbers. Dell and HP are known to give discounts of up to 60% for their most loyal of customers.
Hardware support costs are another big difference in a corporate environment. Many if not most of Apple’s products use proprietary hardware or at least hardware that only Apple will support… another words if a hard drive goes out you better replace it with a supported hard drive that has Apple’s seal of approval or you’ll risk voiding your warranty. Apple took a step in the right direction when they finally started going with Intel as their chip maker of choice but there problems don’t stop there. With most PC vendors they buy and use whichever parts are available at a decent price at the time of the order, so their hardware is mix and match-able. If you have bad RAM just replace it with the same specification of RAM, the manufacturer does not matter… the same goes with hard drives, video cards, sound cards and just about everything except the system board. There are also more PC based hardware vendors available across the globe because PC is the big kid on the block, which helps improve upon support response time.
Support personnel costs are yet another huge area of concern for companies hoping to switch to Apple products. Software and hardware support for Macs are through the roof when compared to Windows based platforms. There are hundreds of Windows trained desktop and help desk technicians for every Apple trained technician. Don’t believe me? Check out the job listings on all of the major job boards, there are countless listings for Windows trained technicians but the ones asking for Mac trained technicians are few and far between. Mac support technicians make more money because there are fewer of them so the companies that use Mac are paying a premium for their support because people going into the IT support industry will go with learning Windows the vast majority of the time… its called job security. Since there are so few Apple trained technicians floating around you have to learn to keep those employees happy, there is no room for high turnover in an Apple supported environment.
Microsoft product support and cost kick backs are another huge aspect of not going with Apple. You see, Microsoft is a software company that makes a huge amount of money off of selling business multiple applications across their entire environment and in doing so they have the ability to cut costs and give companies huge discounts. Basically a company that runs Windows PCs and Windows servers is going to save on licensing fees and support across all of their Microsoft products. In a brilliant move by Microsoft they happily give huge cost incentives to businesses that choose to go with more of their products, which is something Apple simply can’t do on such a large scale because they don’t have a large software catalogue. A company that uses all Microsoft products will save millions annually… which means more money for investors and more money to expand.
Vendor costs come into play when you start talking about support for Macs. Most large corporations and especially enterprises have countless third party and in house software vendors to deal with. An enterprise can have thousands of third party applications that run on client machines and servers and most of those applications support only the Windows based environment. Again these vendors know that nearly their entire customer base is running Windows so they focus their designs in that environment… supporting both Windows and Mac would generally increase their development costs and time which would raise the costs to the end customer, which would be you. Many third party applications are web based now so they work from most current browsers even on Mac but I know from personal experience that a vendor will always point to an error in their product on a machine running Mac as the fault of it being a Mac, not their software.
Training costs are another pain of switching from Windows to Mac. Many corporate users have a hissy fit when you change their version of Internet Explorer much less their entire operating system… and contrary to the slogans the learning curve on Mac isn’t as easy as they say. For someone that has spent their entire career on a Windows based PC most users will be completely lost when you put Mac OSX in front of them. For a company to switch to Mac they would have to put a large amount of time and money into retraining their users to use the new OS, and I’m sure most of them would have a problem with the silly mighty mouse. I can just picture the sixty five year old accountant flipping out over just having one button on the mouse and a technician spending all morning with them showing them that just because there isn’t a physical button doesn’t mean you can’t right click…
Now some Apple lovers may argue that Apple may cost more but it will just save you that much money more in the long run do to productivity increase, ease of use and setup, machine uptime the lack of viruses and spyware and so on and so forth. Well, I can tell you now that is all B.S. A worker who has used Windows for the majority of their career will be able to work faster and more efficient with what they are familiar with. Macs are more difficult to setup in a business environment because again most other aspects of a business environment are geared towards the use of Windows. You will face the same driver issues and peripheral issues with a Mac that you do with a PC, see the horrendous Blackberry support on a Mac for what I mean. Also, if an infrastructure team does their job right viruses on a network shouldn’t be an issue regardless of the platform, so that argument is moot.
I could really go on for hours about how Macs are just wrong for a business but I don’t have to, it can be summed up on a few sentences. The bottom line is Macs cost more in nearly every aspect of a business infrastructure and not just a little more but the difference in cost is quite substantial. Apple’s products are a niche and should be purchased and used on a case by case basis in a business but should never be rolled out across the board. Now, if a company wants to go Mac then more power to them but there is no way I could ever give my blessing to rolling out Mac because I know I could put those thousands and thousands of dollars to better use in improving upon our company as a whole. For every 100 Macs I don’t buy I could get another technical support person on board so my end users will be happier and more productive… and to me that is easily money better spent.
I know my points made here are done so in the aspect of a large corporate or enterprise but I believe using Macs in a small business or startup is even more destructive. Generally startups and small business have less room for error and blowing money away on Macs is a waste in my opinion. I’ve never worked for a small business other than my own entrepreneurial endeavors but I do know that every penny counts when trying to make something out of nothing so I don’t see how any company large or small could look in their shareholders eyes and say that spending a premium on Apple products over those of PCs is better for the company. Again please don’t think all of this is coming from my love of all things Microsoft because honestly if I was starting up a company I would look into using open source products to save money initially and get the company off the ground.
Thoughts? Opinions? Tell me I’m right. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about… tell me something!
Disclaimer: It should be noted that Brad currently owns a 17" MacBook Pro, an iPhone and multiple iPods and has purchased Apple products many times in the past, including the business environment. Brad is also an Infrastructure Manager for a Fortune 500 company.
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