Is Mac really cheaper as Windows overall?

[Captainamerica]

I know the advertisement saying that Mac is overall cheaper then windows. But I really have difficulties to see that

For normal enterprise business that typically has SCCM for windows that is an additional cost that Mac does not have and also the windows license. But else on a mac there also i license cost as office package etc

I don´t know exact the price on SCCM for each device (it is propably more a total package you buy and not only specific for each device)

But that the Cost of a Mac that is close to 3 times more as a standard windows computer and the only difference is SCCM and windows license cannot be really that much money.
I know than there is the support part that I know they propably is setting much lower on mac as on windows where they say money can be saved, but that is not something that can be set generally.

Have any out there really calculated on their business which one is cheaper?

[dsavageED]

IBM seem to think they are, see: https://www.businessinsider.com/an-ibm-it-guy-macs-are-300-cheaper-to-own-than-windows-2016-10?r=US&IR=T

Actually though the drive is device choice, the initial purchase price of a computer isn't really significant in terms of the total cost of ownership and given device should last 4-5 years. Happier employees are more productive employees so if someone wants to use macOS or Windows and can perform their job on that OS there is very little downside in letting them choose. The biggest growth area is in laptops and we have seen employees being given the choice of a Surface or MacBook with a dock and display for when they are on premise but they can also easily work from home, saving on building space is also a plus...

[kfjamf]

While the value is there regardless, cost savings is possible at scale. A significant part of that is the fewer # of IT staff required to manage and support the devices.

[larry_barrett]

We have about 10-1 Mac to PC and I spend my time about 20/80. I remind people of this when they talk about the cost of JAMF.

[boberito]

One can make the argument either way but a lot would agree the Mac doesn't need antivirus. That's a cost savings as I'd never deploy Windows PCs without antivirus.

[PaulHazelden]

Purchase cost wise the Mac is about 3 times that of our windows machines, however, as we lease them all the residual value of the Mac is higher at the end of the lease period. Which means we dont pay for as much of the Mac over time, which brings the cost down lower.

Other savings are also possible on the Mac side. We are about 10% Mac to 90% Windows, but support tickets are about 2% Mac ones, which is why we have 1.5 Mac support technicians (probably really only 1, as I spend half my time on development), and 7 on the other side. We also have fewer Macs requiring physical repairs, at most 1 a year, whilst the Dell tech support guys are all on first name terms with the support techs here, as they are here every couple of weeks.

Another telling statistic is, all but one of the development team here have a Mac as a primary machine on their desk. That includes the guys who manage all of our in house servers and network.

[powderspecial60]

We have found that residual value makes a huge difference for us in terms of cost. After a 3 to 4 year lifecycle the Macs are generally worth around 700-800 more than the equivalent Dell machine, pending type of machine. When we factored cost, this almost made up for the higher purchase price right there.

[ferrispd]

The summary of our basic ROI investigation was that comparable windows machines are less expensive. This persists across manufactures. Lenovo, HP, Dell, Microsoft, and even Alienware. This is due to less initial cost, lower price for extended warranty including on-site warranty service. While Mac devices are more valuable at the end of a normal lifecycle of 3 years, our Apple users have come to demand new devices sooner than our Windows/Linux users. The mentality of our Windows/Linux users is that they become used to their devices and like the familiarity of already having all their customizations, accessories and other device specific items (adapters, power supplies, etc.). The Apple users frequently want the newest stuff. We even had a user update their own machine to Mojave Beta just to get dark mode, and bricked their machine during the update process. The familiarity issue might be less of a problem with Mac users since most of their laptop generations are pretty similar to each other.

I hope this helps. I'm curious if you also see these difference between Mac and Windows/Linux users.

-Pat

[tnielsen]

Asking a bunch of guys who are probably Apple fan boys might not be the best people to ask.

I disagree with the notion happy users are more productive.
I disagree with the idea that Windows machines need antivirus and Macs don't. (This is complete nonsense)
I disagree with the notion that Windows machines are more "problem-prone" than Macs.

In my opinion, the price differences are about a wash. It really comes down to what the employee and their team are comfortable with. Also depends on the job. Apple computers also retain their value after 3-4 years and you could get some ROI. Lenovo's and Dell retain some value but it's probably half of what an Apple equivalent would go for. Apple's value here has been steadily decreasing, however. Mostly due to the high cost to repair an Apple computer after the warranty has expired. For example, you could buy a brand new computer for the price of a screen repair.

A well managed Windows machine can be very very cheap to deploy. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit + Group Policies/Active Directory. It's baseline management, but fairly cheap to deploy and scales well. If you have a bunch of users who require only email, office and web browsing... you could be some cheap i5's from Lenovo for $600 each and deploy them for next to nothing. The same apple machines would run about $400 more per unit.

Most new hires would pick a Mac because it's deemed "cool" and a status symbol. Makes them feel special. In reality, though, you can do everything you could do on a Mac on a cheaper PC laptop and in many cases, faster for less.

You got me ranting like I'm on 9to5 mac on Mac vs PC.

[hjcao]

I disagree with the notion happy users are more productive.

This has been proven to be true. Happy employees are by far more productive than unhappy ones. They also produce better quality work. I can go into specifics but a quick google search will give you tons of data by people much smarter than me regarding this.

[tnielsen]

@hjcao The implication is that having an Apple computer over a PC somehow creates this level of happiness, which I disagree with.

[boberito]

@tnielsen the Mac itself inherently doesn't make people happy. But if you're given a choice, generally you pick the one you know and like more and that will make people happy. If I force someone to use and fight a Windows PC everyday when they're a Mac user mainly, it'll create unhappy workers potentially. And vice versa.

[tnielsen]

@boberito I disagree because that choice is not enough to make any real difference. Eventually the user in question will learn to use whatever the company gives him or her.

[hjcao]

@tnielsen I disagree because if the user grew up using Apple, and have not had much exposure to Windows, they will be happier. They will be more productive with a machine they know, versus having issues figuring out a different filing system, OS and all around experience. These are hugely important because a user will get frustrated using a machine they don't know while trying to do their job. It will lower their quality of work. We offer choice at my company, and by far users are much happier, and more productive than at companies Ive worked for that didn't offer choice.

This cuts both ways, obviously. I've had windows users forced onto Macs that gave me headaches because they didn't understand the OS and made mistakes that they wouldn't make on a PC. In the long run, as an IT dept, as a company, you give your users the correct tools to do their job.

[slatert]

Some people might consider training cost in the picture.
We see a lot of people showing up that have a Mac and/or iPad at home so it eliminates most training cost. Normally, if a Windows user is hired they know a mac user to learn from or have an iPhone and already know iOS basics.

[tnielsen]

We'll have to agree to disagree. It is always "nice" to have a choice when you start a job at a new company, and in many cases productivity could be lost (depending on what the user's job is) if they get a computer they are unfamiliar with. However, if they are simply using office, email and internet... it's hard to believe that this fictitious employee is unable to figure out how to use those applications on an OS they are not used to. These operating systems have been so simplified that you'd have to be a complete moron to not get it within a day. I stated in my first post, with regards to employee happiness, that the job's complexity determines what the user should use.

If we were talking a developer position, I would surely give that employee whatever he/she is used to using. An email junkie is going to care less if they get a PC or mac for functional purposes. The only reason, in my 20 years of IT experience, that employees get upset when they are not given a system of their choosing, is when they don't get an Apple because of it's "status symbol" and "beauty". I'm not in the business of making people happy by satiating their desires in either of those categories.

[hjcao]

Office for Mac vs Office for Windows have very nuanced differences. The windows version has options the Macs don't. You can't say you can put a windows user on a Mac and they'll just figure it out because there's some things that just aren't there. It will take them a while to figure that out, and they will be frustrated by the time they come to you, and who knows how many hours of lost production. Maybe that's okay for you and your company, but not for everyone.

These operating systems have been so simplified that you'd have to be a complete moron to not get it within a day

That's pretty offensive. My dad uses a Mac exclusively, and if he's forced to get on Windows for some reason, he can't "figure it out". Are you saying he's a moron? Well, he's not, he just hasn't had much exposure to windows. I think you take for granted your own level of experience and competency with tech and forget that not everyone is super comfortable with it. Changing OS's is much more stressful for some people than it is for you. You might be able to flip between windows, macOS, RHEL, centOS, etc with no issues, congrats. Not everyone can.

[jimderlatka]

if you also look at the new MacBook Air, 16gb ram, 500gb hd its about a $2000 UNIT CAD. we pay about $1900 for our del 7490 ... so closer to the cost.

In my experience, supporting is far less, all the management garbage for windows, like driver updates, patching, is so much of a pain on windows, which is where you can save a lot more with Macs.

[sdagley]

@tnielsen It sounds like you're from the "You'll get the computer we want to give you and you'll like it" school of IT. As others have pointed out in this thread today's mantra, which is backed by research as companies like IBM certainly didn't adopt it out of the goodness of their heart, is "Choice." Job complexity has nothing to do with what platform should be used, but obviously if a position requires a specialized application that only exists on one platform that will dictate the decision.

[tnielsen]

@sdagley I didn't say that. This topic is more complicated than that. I also disagree with this statement. "Job complexity has nothing to do with what platform should be used, but obviously if a position requires a specialized application that only exists on one platform that will dictate the decision. "

@hjcao You were the one to bring your dad into this, not me. Again, agree to disagree.

[tnielsen]

@jimderlatka The driver updating is surely something to be taken into consideration. For Lenovo it's fairly easy to do and they have enterprise level management tools to make it easy.

The downside of picking Apple is you are limited to what can be run on Apple software and their locked down ecosystem. That's a whole other debate.

[larry_barrett]

I guess this thread proves you don't have to be professional to be an IT professional.

[hjcao]

You were the one to bring your dad into this, not me. Again, agree to disagree.

Reading comprehension is obviously not one of your skillsets. Sad to see.

[sdagley]

@tnielsen You absolutely did say that:

The only reason, in my 20 years of IT experience, that employees get upset when they are not given a system of their choosing, is when they don't get an Apple because of it's "status symbol" and "beauty". I'm not in the business of making people happy by satiating their desires in either of those categories.

Your idea of what's appropriate for a role appears to be your definition of complexity based on your statement

I stated in my first post, with regards to employee happiness, that the job's complexity determines what the user should use.

so perhaps you and I define "complexity" differently. As has been pointed out in this thread that is not supported by the data used by very large organizations which see value in allowing their employees to choose what platform they want to use at work.

[tnielsen]

@larry_barrett @hjcao

I guess this thread proves you don't have to be professional to be an IT professional.

Sure does.

[hjcao]

@sdagley @larry_barrett He's obviously looking to stir the pot, as evidenced by his above post and a few before that. What's the old saying..."Don't feed the trolls"? Yeah, I think that's it.

[tnielsen]

@sdagley Oh you know what I'm saying, got it. No need to converse further.

Take care gentlemen, it's unfortunate you had to take it personal.

[gachowski]

A couple of things that didn't come up...

1. You can't put a cost on not getting the best hire because you don't off macOS/Apple hardware as a choice. Almost every Silicon Valley company will tell you they have lost hires because at one time mac wasn't a choice...

2. There is a new "Microsoft tax", while you can think about not using MS O365 services, in the end, everyone using Windows will be. That leads to why are you not securing Windows with ATP. As it has access to OS level data that no other 3rd party security product has... If you not using ATP you don't care about windows endpoint security period. And ATP is real money per machine.

C

PS

[tlarkin]

Here go my opinions, and these opinions are mine and mine only. This year marks my 20th year working in tech. I have held a few jobs across a few industries, I have been a consultant, and I have worked with a wide range of customers. There are so many factors to this, that you have to break it down to the essentials.

Here go some topics I think are noteworthy in regards to platforms outside of Windows:

Platform Choice
Platform choice has many merits, and a few minor drawbacks. To the point where I think that the drawbacks to a platform choice system are pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things. From a business perspective (or an Org if you don't work for a business), you want to retain good talent. You want to avoid having turn over. Allowing your employees to choose their preferred platform, means they will like their job more, in return that means they are more likely to stay. This isn't a Mac vs Windows vs Linux discussion, this is a human discussion. Typically users who are more comfortable with a specific platform are less of a support cost. They file less tickets, they are more self sufficient, and they are happier with their work computer. This actually can be seen as a cost savings for several reasons. Training a new employee from scratch costs more time and money than promoting and growing your existing employees.

Overall Cost of Ownership
You need to look at this topic, at the highest of levels and break things down. Software cost, hardware cost, licensing, the cost of your tools and infrastructure, total number of employees required to run a tight shop to get results done, down time (yes a broken computer is costing you time and money, the less a computer breaks the more money you save), life cycle, and things like resell value. The Mac scores pretty high in a lot of these categories, unless your users just don't like the Mac platform. Then it is counter productive. Take the licensing cost of CALs, OS licenses, server OS licenses, and so forth. Add them all up. Then look at macOS, it is free. You pay for the hardware, but you aren't paying $300 per an OS license (or whatever it is Windows costs). This, at large scale, can save a ton of money.

How many help desk people do you need for a 24/7 help desk? 10, 25, 50, 200? A lot of data shows, that Macs have a smaller support foot print, but there is a catch to this. You obviously need to hire engineers that are both passionate and talented at managing and supporting Apple devices. You can do less with more, if you do it right, and macOS has a ton of automation options. Two very easy options (which are my favorite two) are of course the shell and Python, that come stock. Sure, Linux can do that, and sure Windows has PowerShell, but Apple has a lot of that built in with no shipping dependencies. Apple also has plenty of tools that plug right into those automation paradigms, making it easy.

In House Apps
This is the trickiest one. If your Org went all in on say .NET and VB client apps, well now you must port all of those to the Mac. This is actually pretty costly, and might be one of the points where Apple is not a cheaper or cost savings up front. If you have gone a more modern route and migrated a lot of your in house apps to SaaS and web applications, then well it should just work, and it is not a cost center for you. If your apps are cross platform, say written in Java, then that also makes it super easy for a Mac to fit into your current Org. This one is very subjective, and it either is costly, or has really no cost to it depending on the state of your in house app catalog.

Ticket Drivers
Are you tracking your help tickets? What are the biggest drives outside of password resets and email/calendar issues? Since macOS is pretty simple and intuitive a lot of times users can just figure it out. I have seen plenty of users just need to learn how to use Spotlight, and bam, now they can just search for anything they need. Since Apple controls the hardware, the OS, the ecosystem, and their base apps on their platform, the general quality is a bit higher. This is not a dis on Linux nor on Windows. Linux is just a kernel, that some distributions use to roll out an OS, with their own package managers and concepts. Windows is just an OS, and they do not design hardware (sans the Microsoft surfaces and such) and so they are relying on third parties to design systems and QA their product/platform from a third party perspective. This means that Microsoft loses some quality control when a vendor decides to ship OEM Windows on their hardware design. This doesn't mean that macOS won't have all the same help desk tickets a Windows or Linux system would, it just means that percentage wise it should be lower.

Leadership
The biggest advantage you can have to make it happen, is having your leadership fully buy into this. If your leadership is not about it, then you are probably going to fail at some level and that will cost you more. All of your leadership need to buy into this to make it happen, it is really a must. Then your leadership will have to enable you do be successful with the Mac platform. Right now, in my current stack, I am using open source software to integrate with jamf to automate a lot of things. I am able to do the work of several people, just from an automation standpoint. With Windows there is so much manual labor of GUI button clicking, wizards, going through dozens of steps to get one task done. Back in the day this was the meta, the new meta is agile, automation, use code, etc. Microsoft is catching up in that realm, but they are playing catch up. So, if your leadership encourages this and enables you to do this, you can definitely massively manage a lot of Macs with a small team and a small group of tools.

Actual Dollar Dollar Bills Y'all
Money matters. With the Mac platform you have so many hybrid approaches of using the "Jamf And _" model that jamf has talked about for years. The integration is there and the ability to streamline open source or community tools into your Mac designs/workflows is a HUGE cost saver. I have probably 5-6 open source tools I am using right now with my jamf stack, which not only saves money, but some of them don't even have a commercial alternative. You get free OS upgrades every OS. The hardware easily maintains a much higher resell value. If you can get a 60% return on investment at the 4 year mark that is HUGE compared to a PC. Now that $2000 Mac cost you just under $1000. You 100% cannot beat that type of ROI on a used laptop with anything but a Mac. I don't know how Linux and Windows teams do it all around the world, but in my limited, anecdotal experience, the Mac and Linux teams were always half the size or smaller than the Windows teams. This means half the payroll. An employee is exponentially more expensive than a laptop or a piece of software. At my current job during our orientation, there was a session where someone explained that the most expensive asset in the room was each employee, and the second most was the Mac laptop, which was a fraction of the cost of the employee. If you can get 50% return on a 3 year old used Mac laptop, change your hardware refresh rates to 3 years. Find that sweet spot. It makes them absolutely the cheapest laptops to buy because you can get some return on selling them.

My Personal Take

I don't even really think about it as Mac vs PC vs Linux anymore. I just think of it as platform choice and enabling your employees to have the platform they are most efficient and happy with. This alone should drive down tickets, which saves money on payroll, and we already know employees are more expensive than any tech we purchase, because Orgs need the employee's time. Technology can not give us that yet. You can make a lot of adjustments to make one platform cheaper or more expensive. If you are going to deploy Macs, then do it. Have your leadership buy in and support you. If you aren't going to go all in, then really rethink your decisions. For me, I am 100% most efficient on my Mac. I get tons of more work done, and I can a lot more, and it is my platform of choice, so I can so much more with it than any other platform. Not everyone is like me, but anyone who has a Mac at my Org, is going to have a streamlined experience, with very little they have to actually do, due to my automation. So, in the end it is all subjective. Theoretically Macs should definitely cost you less just because of the resell value alone. However, if you do it poorly, hire the wrong people, or have the wrong leadership who don't believe in it, then Macs might be the most expensive thing you decided to deploy.

[tlarkin]

Also, if you want to compare the actual dollar cost to a MacBook Pro to say a Lenovo, they have to be the same spec. Same high quality screen, SSD, weight/size, processor, and so forth. High end Lenovos that are the same spec of a MacBook Pro are not really that far off the cost. Unfortunately, Apple does not make cheap or barebones model laptops.

[alv2015591]

Well as the only person on this thread who has more PC's then Macs I guess I will chime in. I have 13 staff members supporting 4000 PC's and I have 1 person dedicated to my just under 1000 Mac devices and 500 iPads. Our support costs are lower, our engineering time is less and our amount of trouble tickets is 40 % less and I have the data to back that up. The sad part is I have a true appreciation for Windows and SCCM. Powershell is an extremely powerfull tool. In the hands of my best people they have been able to do some really awesome stuff in our Windows Environment. The part that makes it even more lopsided is the 1 person who does our Mac OS Support is our Customer Care Director and he only spends about 20 hours a week doing it. Software Load Windows 300 Pieces of Software , Mac OS 189
Faculty & Staff Windows Machines 1000, Mac OS Faculty & Staff Machines 486
Trouble Tickets Windows Faculty & Staff 11 Average tickets per day, Trouble Tickets Mac OS Faculty & Staff 2 Average tickets per day ( not including password resets only trouble tickets specific to machines)
The KEY PIECE to all of this and the part that makes the real difference is how many hours do my Windows techs spend researching a problem.... My mac tech calls Jamf Support after looking on Jamf Nation. Even if he is stumped he is getting help when my Windows techs are stuck trying to figure it out. BTW Antivirus is a waste of Money if you dont have a real IDS. For home and road users it pays for enterprise users it does not pay. Your IDS / IPS is where your protection is. Bottom Line... My Windows techs work harder, longer and spend significantly more time playing catch up. My mac tech is almost always prepared for whats coming because time is available for that to happen.One last thing... When you don't by cheap hardware... the upfront cost of PCs is not as glaring as your think. Our Entry Level Desktop computer Costs
PC 900 Mac 1300
Mid Level
PC 1100 Mac 1700
High Level
PC 1800 Mac 2200
IBM's 2016 & 2018 JNUC data is pretty Damning . You can't argue with analytics especially coming from a company that dumped PC's ( after being a pc manufacturer for 20 + years) for Macs and reduced their IT Staffing afterwards...

[tnielsen]

@alv2015591 I completely agree. The only difference now is time. Microsoft has made some huge leaps in the last 2 years to improve Windows. We'll see what happens!