Debate over: IBM confirms that Macs are $535 less expensive than PCs

That article is using the same speech by the IBM VP at the James conference as source material:

An update on IBM’s partnership with Apple, which sees it deploying 1,300 Macs every week, was provided at the annual JAMF Nation User Conference on Wednesday. Not only has IBM been pushing Macs, but also over 48,000 iPads and over 81,000 iPhones.

I listened to the entire speech and the dedicated help for Macs at IBM is indeed just 5 IT people for the 90,000 Macs. The rest of the Apple support staff that fills out the additional 45 are for the 127,000 iPads and iPhones deployed throughout IBM's 2800 offices. That brings the total up to the 50 IT staff for the 217,000 Apple devices at IBM reported in the Cult of Mac article of October 19, 2016 you linked.

In the early 80s my sister insisted MAC was the best platform on which to place a small IMS hierarchical database and teach IMS to mainframe programmers.

Smart sister.

At the time, both platforms were primitive, but the Mac was already ahead of the PC. If you needed to draw pictures for a training program, the Mac was your obvious choice.

Interestingly, around that time, Microsoft Excel for the Mac was light-years ahead of Lotus for the PC. That was true up until about 1993. Microsoft's reign over the desktop didn't really start until Windows for Workgroups.

I am not in this forum to answer an overtly stupid shill-for-Mac question. There are roughly 1.5 billion users of Windows worldwide. There is as much justification to hack a Mac as there is to answer your question: Mac is so zero as to reach singularity.

Now they want to go low end attempting to get their special sauce software on as many unsuspecting numbnut's computers as possible.

And you just demonstrated your total ignorance of the Mac platform. Apple has zero interest in the low end.

The OS X is a fully POSIX compliant UNIX™ Operating System with a shell on top of it. My primary business Mac ran NINE simultaneously running operating systems, Lagemeister, including three different versions of Windows, and two of Linux. I am not the only Mac user on FR to do that! Macs are hardly "boat anchors."

IBM, #31 on the Fortune 500 largest companies in the world is going to almost all Mac within three years, yet you denigrate the platform as a vampire, after that company tells the world that using them is saving them $270 a year per computer in IT costs! IBM adds that 73% of their employees who are seeing the productivity INCREASES their Mac using coworkers are experiencing after switching are asking for an upgrade to a Mac at their next opportunity for a new computer. Yet you imply IBM is an unsuspecting numbnut? I propose that the ignorant numbnut in this equation given the set of facts at hand is not IBM --who is now saving somewhere between $24 million and $48 million on the TCO of the current Macs they have, and will save a lot more when they give those 73% what they want--but rather that numbnut is you!

This is not just a decision by IBM to convert to Mac. This is a partnership and in that The IT for a Mac then is primarily ‘Cloud based’ which brings up all sorts of questions. Sure, you can cut staff, just like asking people to press ‘one’ for English.

There is no plan for IBM or any "joint venture IBM will take over the sales of Mac." Lagemeister is making up that facturd by pulling it out of his posterior. IBM is and has agreed to create iOS applications for the Enterprise level business sector and so far created some 250 high quality Enterprise grade apps for the iPhone and iPad. They are NOT going to become Apple's partner to sell Macs or even iOS devices. SHEESH!

Something is wrong with your picture. Why would they need 9 times the staff to take care of a similar number of IOS devices?

I could see 5 people in a repair depot somewhere, but one way or another there is more than 5 FTE's directly or indirectly supporting 90K Macs. I would include the people supporting the JAMF deployment suite, regular help desk folks and outsourcing at smaller field offices.

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