Well, ClearCase_Guy, IBM is a corporation and they are currently replying 1,900 Macs per week. . . I'd say they understand exactly what they are doing and why. They found that Mac users in their offices are using their IT department for trouble calls only 5% compared to 40% of their Windows PC users making trouble calls in in the same time period. . . that is a HUGE difference in support cost. In other words it costs EIGHT times less to support the same number of Mac users than it does to support Windows users. That means ONE-EIGHTH the staff in IT to support the same number of computers and users than before.
This is not news to us Mac IT supporters. We've known this for years. . . but the data have been suppressed. The Total Cost of Ownership of Macs is far lower than the TCO of Windows machines. That's been shown multiple times before. It is especially true when you include cost recovery at end of useful life of the machines. Apple products hold their value far better than do other products and the resale values of used Apple products are much higher than are the products of other manufacturers, most of which are only suitable for recycling or landfill.
For example, my office is retiring several Apple Intel Core2Duo iMacs from 2008 and MacBook Airs, and a similar vintage Mac Mini that turned out to be no longer suitable for our purposes.
They are perfectly good Macs for home use, but will no longer run our vertical solution software reliably with the latest OS X (they will run that OS), so we bought some referred replacements. The replacement iMacs with 8GB of RAM and Intel i5s cost us $1059 and we will sell these seven year old iMacs they are replacing for approximately $400 each. . . making the cost of our replacements only $659. If we get the same use out of these new iMacs as we got out of the previous, they will cost us less than $100 a year. That's a bargain, as far as I am concerned. In the meantime, I will not have to buy any business subscription to any anti-virus or anti-malware at all. More savings.
The MacBook Air's, also refurbed cost us $749 and we will sell the two four year old ones also for about $400, which means the new ones will cost us a total of $349. . . giving us a four year potential cost of under $90 per year. Great bargains as far as we are concerned.
Too bad there are so many existing business applications that cannot be properly accessed via Mac.