9 ms·

Former Apple rival IBM could become the biggest buyer of MacBooks

107 points by satyajeet23 11y ago

Mithaldu 11y ago
I really wonder why people keep submitting highly editorialized headlines when the guides clearly state not to do it. On the article: If this pans out it could spell the end of Thinkpads as high quality laptops that deliver premium performance while being very robust and sturdy. Who is left in that niche? Are we left with only either apple laptops, or shoddy plastic jobs that need to be kept in bubble wrap at all times?
- listic 11y ago
  Do you suggest that IBM was responsible for the vast majority of Thinkpad sales? My hopes for great new laptops lie with some brand new crowdfunding efforts, fantastic as it may sound. Also, it would be a pity if Thinkpads would dies now, as they have just implemented dual batteries with hot swap in last two generations; IMO this is long overdue, but I haven't heard of a laptop manufacturer that did it.
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    No, i'm saying that this will, directly and indirectly, impact the profits Lenovo sees, which will likely result in cost cutting decisions.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > If this pans out it could spell the end of Thinkpads as high quality laptops that deliver premium performance while being very robust and sturdy. I think that boat sailed a while ago. I'm writing this on one and it's the worst machine I've owned to date quality wise. Keys that spontaneously dis-integrate, wwan card that bricks itself (and replacements are not accepted by the BIOS because they're not 'authorized') and so on. Last laptop of this brand for me. Maybe Asus or Acer has something half decent?
  - ild 11y ago
    The last decent non-Apple laptops were the ones with 16:10 screen; since switching to 16:9 the whole industry refocused itself on making consumer grade products.
  - farresito 11y ago
    Which model do you have? I'm thinking about buying a laptop, and, obviously, one of the first things that come to my head is a Thinkpad, but I'm worried about the quality.
    - josteink 11y ago
      I'm on a carbon x1 and I'm not having any issues. It's super light, but the feel and build quality is still there.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      T 540 P.
      - farresito 11y ago
        I've heard that there are big differences in quality based on the manufacturers they use. For example, I think for the keyboards they have four or five different manufacturers. The T models use two different ones (while the lower budget models use the other three), one of them being LiteOn (which is the best one), and that depending on which manufacturer you get, you might get a higher quality or a lower one, especially with keyboards. Have you taken a look at other laptops? If so, which one will you go with next time? I'm a Linux user, so if Thinkpads are as bad as some people say they are nowadays, I might even get a MBP and install Linux on it.
  - _nedR 11y ago
    Typing this from a cheap Acer Aspire V5-471G (the cheapest make and model for given specs). Remember you get what you pay for. The laptop looks sleek, but build quality is very flimsy with issues like paint-peeling, scratches, and malfunctioning hinges causing display to flicker/black-out. Also Acer support sucks and traveller's warranty is not international warranty. Beware of cheap thinner laptops. They may look nice in the store but poor construction and cheap materials will come to bite you later. IMO Budget laptops have regressed in this matter compared to older bulkier models (including Dell Inspirons and XPSes in my experience). Can't speak for more expensive models though.
- rch 11y ago
  The Serval WS from System76 has nice specs. If the build quality is reasonably solid, and it works well with other distros, then that could be my next laptop. Then of course there's the Eurocom Panther 5SE: Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors and 32GB of DDR3 1600MHz RAM. Weighs 12lbs :) Eventually I think the low-power server movement could end up yielding more high end laptops... hopefully some that are lighter than 5kg!
- lnanek2 11y ago
  Article seems correct to me. Even diehard thinkpad fans say the product line has degraded. Have you actually compared recent ones to older ones or are you just complaining without data points?
- virtualwhys 11y ago
  > Are we left with only either apple laptops, or shoddy plastic jobs that need to be kept in bubble wrap at all times? Dell Precision line is still kicking, beastly machines, there is no better (IMO of course ;-)). They won't win any design awards and are a bit on the hefty side, but performance-wise hard to beat. Have 32GB RAM in mine, can have several VMs running, and do development work (compile to ram disk instead of thrashing SSD) on host OS (Fedora) with memory to spare. Dual fans are also a nice-to-have with heat-generating i7 processor. Maybe not a huge deal for some but the BIOS is pretty ridiculous in terms of configurability/locking down the machine.
  - farresito 11y ago
    Do you like the keyboard? It's probably the thing I'm most concerned with. If so, which model do you have? I'm trying to find business laptops with good keyboards, but so far the only things that I find acceptable seem to be Thinkpads.
    - Bill_Dimm 11y ago
      I (not original poster) have a Dell Latitude E5430 with the upgraded backlit keyboard and I like that keyboard a lot (vastly better than the standard one on my old D620).
      - farresito 11y ago
        That is great to hear. I've been taking a look at the Latitudes as an alternative to the current Thinkpad that I have, and I was concerned about the keyboard. It looked like a good keyboard after looking at some images, but it's always nice to hear from people that do have the laptop. Thank you.
    - virtualwhys 11y ago
      > Do you like the keyboard? Sure, when I use it that is. It lives on a laptop stand alongside connected monitors (which, btw, is another bonus, 5 displays if you like ;-)). Use a compact Cherry mechanical keyboard for day-to-day, only touch laptop keyboard when traveling.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  So the article title is "Former Apple rival IBM could become the biggest buyer of MacBooks" And the submission title is "IBM to Purchase 200000 Macs Annually with 75% of Empl. Switching from Lenovo" That's editing, not editorializing. There's no opinion inserted. Instead vague terms like "big" are replaces with concrete numbers, making the title almost as useful as the entire article. The guidelines are against edits, but they also seem to be against flashy vague terms, and a change like this is useful.
  - mst 11y ago
    Except that the article itself doesn't say either of those things. It says that 50-75% of employees could switch, and that IBM could purchase up to that many Macs. It completely misrepresents the article.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      A 'probably' wouldn't have hurt, but if it's not ibm.com it's not going to be 100% certain, and even then predictions can be wrong.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > Are we left with only either apple laptops, or shoddy plastic jobs that need to be kept in bubble wrap at all times? Anecdotally, and based on a limited sample size, I've had great experiences with HP's corporate laptop (and other) product lines - not the consumer lines. They seem to last forever, much longer than Dells and than users, who like new equipment, would like them to. I have one that's around ten years old that runs fine, except for the pointstick. I can't remember the last one that suffered hardware failure. Their Elite laptop line has excellent support and excellent design. Sitting next to me is an EliteBook; I can pop off the bottom cover and service it as easily as a desktop. It's pretty cool.
davelnewton 11y ago
It wouldn't take very long to re-equip all their employees. Some of the Lenovos are pretty robust, too; I don't know much about the low-end models, but some of the upper-ends are quite nice. If they had first-class Linux support I'd even consider getting one.
- eyce9000 11y ago
  Indeed, the hardware on Lenovo's is reasonably good, but if you are an enterprise trying to move away from Windows, the hit-or-miss Linux support somewhat limits your options. From experience, running Linux ( RHEL / CentOS 6.x) on ThinkPads can be a frustrating experience, not sure if that is a limitation of drivers or of the ancient Gnome 2 desktop interface.
  - slgeorge 11y ago
    The way around that is to get the vendor (IBM, Dell or whomever) to CERTIFY the hardware for the Linux distribution of your choice. That guarantees that the HW vendor will make sure that drivers are available. You can get your hw vendor to do that if you're in the process of doing a hardware refresh and will be buying new systems, e.g "I will be buying these systems from <insert alternative vendor> because they are certified with <insert distribution name and version> and you are not". If a system is not certified then you are relying on Linux developers making it work - they may do so, but are often hindered by drivers or small tweaks to hardware. As importantly, making a whole system work is fully is considerably different to making a specific component work.
pavement 11y ago
...because Windows is intolerably awful now, presumably getting worse every day. Seriously. It's been downhill since Vista. Every upgrade since XP has been disruptive, and destroyed time-saving behaviors.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  While OS X and Linux both have their problems, being defiantly user-hostile aren't among them. I can't imagine the mind of the person at MS who decided that making Solitaire pay-to-play was a good idea. It's fascinating how decisions like this get made, how products like Win 8 and 10 get out the door, and how MS seems to think it can fix the terrible design by downvoting critics on public forums and getting PR companies to write booster posts that are so ham-handed they have no persuasive power. As a company, MS has a lot of really smart individuals doing really dumb things collectively. I'd be incredibly interested if MS could find its own Rodney Brooks to explain the business processes that make that happen. Not a hater, btw. Office 365 and Azure both have their good points. But Windows and mobile seem like industry-changing disasters now, and from the outside it seems like the icebergs shouldn't have been that hard to miss.
  - joshontheweb 11y ago
    Solitaire is pay-to-play now? Thats insane.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-now-wants-you-to-pay-for-solitaire.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-now-wants-you-to-p...
      - mikegioia 11y ago
        Wow. This honestly just shows a completely lack of awareness. It's mind boggling that not only does it cost money, but its recurring. To me, this goes far deeper than the surface of "charging for solitaire". There has to be some systemic dysfunction within the windows team.
r00fus 11y ago
Part and parcel of the new Apple/IBM cooperation deal. I wonder if IBM is pushing iOS as well for their employees?
- INTPenis 11y ago
  I knew there had to be a deal behind this. Personally I couldn't be more happier with my X230 and many co-workers use the X1 Carbon. So technically I can't see a reason to do this. The X1 Carbon is essentially an ultrabook close to the new macbooks in most of its features.
- douche 11y ago
  They are buying large numbers of iPads. It's been fantastic for my company, as IBM is a major customer for one of our products, and now we have to support Safari and mobile Safari as first-class browsers, in addition to the legacy versions of IE still used by many of our other customers. Not to mention that IBM insists that we use DB2 and run on their flavor of server-side Linux, where the IBM products that we integrate with have different long-standing bugs than on the Windows versions all our other customers use.
pinaceae 11y ago
well, the new ms office for osx is really good, so if all you need is web apps for business tools (erp, crm, etc) plus productivity apps a mac is the machine to go with right now. mb, mb air, the small mbp are all excellent office machines. switched personnally to a mba in 2012, wouldn't go back to a wintel notebook if they paid me.
- jebblue 11y ago
  >> well, the new ms office for osx is really good Didn't the Mac version of Office get canceled then restarted then canceled then restarted a number of times over the years?
  - vetinari 11y ago
    No. It lagged about a year behind the windows version (2003->2004, 2007->2008, 2010->2011, no 2013 equivalent), for 2016 they should be both at the same time. Also, regarding the features, it used to lag, but since 2011 it achieved almost feature parity (minus the addons, that are downloadable extras, like PowerQuery, PowerMaps or PowerPivot).
shellbye 11y ago
"A country does not have permanent friends, only permanent interests." Same to companies.
matt4711 11y ago
Most IBM employees in Australia use Toshiba laptops instead of Lenevo.
- Nursie 11y ago
  When did that happen? Wasn't that way in Perth a couple of years back, it was all Lenovo, except management were moving over to Mac as their refresh cycle came through.
nfriedly 11y ago
Speaking as an IBMer, I can say that a big part of this switch is about the hardware. My ThinkPad was so unbalanced it was almost ridiculous: i7, 32gb RAM, paired with a slooooow mechanical hdd and an utterly rubbish TN display. (That and a frusturatingly bad touchpad). I prefer OS X over Windows, but only slightly, the main reason I was so adamant about switching was to get quality hardware.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Since the t60 days people have been screaming complaints about ThinkPads TN panels. Lenovo has been a little more listening to customers recently, I guess now even more.
  - TD-Linux 11y ago
    Most of the Thinkpad models now have fancier IPS screens as an option. For example, my W540 has a 2880x1620 IPS display.
    - dfc 11y ago
      I looked at the W-series and was excited about the HW specs. I decided to stick with T-series when I saw the nvidia graphics card.
      - TD-Linux 11y ago
        Fortunately the Intel graphics are connected to all the display outputs. The nvidia card is always off for me (I unloaded the nouveau kernel module to be sure, but normally it turns off automatically when idle)
    - nfriedly 11y ago
      Yea, my ThinkPad is a W540, but since the "good" display isn't standard, mine didn't come with it.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Sure it was always an option, but the few companies I've seen bought batches of models with TN panels. And even TN, there are differences in quality, my x60 had one of the ugliest, the bit dithering and pixel gap was amazingly bad. Most netbooks weren't that bad. I get the low contrast for long hours of work but this was just cheap. I guess the IBM / Lenovo transition caused it.
ksec 11y ago
Personally I think this is big, and now even bigger then I thought. The largest Enterprise they had was only 25,000 Macbook a year. And IBM is 10 times the size of that order. Most of the Enterprise I know, big or small are still very much Window based. The way Mac are getting in right now are through BYOD. However, most CIO see this as additional burden with Apple devices, and therefore most planning are still based on the Windows world. CRM, ERP etc.. lots of business class things still are not available on Mac. Although there are alternatives, no business wants to try. Hopefully IBM and Apple could use this chance to smooth out the quirks rolling Apple devices in Enterprise. And more company to follow. Dont get me wrong, this isn't about getting rid of Windows. I am sure there are lots of people who enjoy Window 10. But when our company tries to switch over to Mac, we have had very little support and real world cases to based on. P.S - Most of you working in the I.T / Computer Industry would have no problem doing so, but there are lots of industry out there who cant risk to switch even if they wanted to.
- narrowrail 11y ago
  I'm just curious why you wouldn't simply install Windows on Apple hardware.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    In IBM's case it's because they want to reduce their reliance on MS. They have suites of IBM packages that can be installed on top of Redhat, SuSE, Ubuntu or Debian to make IBM-styled linux. But they also have Notes etc for Mac OS now, so no need to shy away from it.
  - brianwawok 11y ago
    Because osx is better than Windows 10?
    - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
      Every version of Windows is better than running an OS that locks you into one brand of crappy, featureless overpriced hardware. Speaking on the software itself though, Windows certainly has got better, more logical window management and better tools built in for multi-display. Windows also has a logical and consistent keyboard acceleration system compared to the ridiculous hidden functionality that plagues OS X. Pretty much the only good thing about OS X is that it's Unix. Otherwise nobody around here would be using it.
arcosdev 11y ago
Just in time to enjoy the now quickly deteriorating quality of Apple's latest MacBooks!
dfc 11y ago
Actual Title:(emphasis mine): "Former Apple rival IBM could become the biggest buyer of MacBooks" Submission Guidelines Refresher: In Submissions Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important....Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
noondip 11y ago
How are they planning to manage so many computers, given that Apple provides no practical enterprise management software for OS X? Oh, http://jobs.utah.gov/jsp/wi/utalmis/oijoborder.do;jsessionid=68FB0CE0EB4B0AE13841726F31E6EE41?ordernum=9650243 http://jobs.utah.gov/jsp/wi/utalmis/oijoborder.do;jsessionid... * CanHazImage * Pupet * Crankd * PlanB * Munki Required * In other words, follow how Google manages their corp Mac fleet of "tens of thousands", https://github.com/google/macops https://github.com/google/macops https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/managing-macs-google-scale https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/managing-macs-googl...
- batbomb 11y ago
  Jamf is the usual solution
- stephenr 11y ago
  How is profile manager + remote desktop (using the 'install package' or 'run script' functionality) not capable?
- jameshart 11y ago
  IBM makes enterprise endpoint management software. That's how IBM currently manages its mixed Windows/Linux/Mac desktop/laptop fleet. Adding more Macs will just be changing the mix. * Disclaimer - I work for IBM, but not in IT or on endpoint management solutions. I am not in a position to confirm or deny the possibility IBM might be buying hundreds of thousands of Macs. My work laptop is a Thinkpad.
- omarforgotpwd 11y ago
  iOS and OS X both support a really great Mobile Device Management protocol (MDM) you can do everything you can imagine and then some, and you can even buy the device paired with the MDM server so that it's forced to use your settings and can never be unpaired. IBM makes a front end to this MDM protocol, so they can probably use that. Or Profile Manager, which Apple includes with OS X server. See Air-watch.com for an example of what the MDM protocol allows.
brudgers 11y ago
"We've got to find a way to make the overall cost the same or lower than PCs to make that happen." That's a tall order given IBM 's existing software infrastructure, Apple's migration tooling and support staff for enterprise, and the constraints that accounting standards place on the way equal cost would have to be figured. Calculating the charge against goodwill associated with getting 200,000 people to give up their ThinkPad keyboards is left as an exercise for the reader.
bane 11y ago
I work for a small enterprise (under 2,000 people) and we get a choice of a couple different Macs (Air, Book, Pro), Dells in various configurations as well as Surface tablets. The tech folks usually get a Mac Pro or a high-spec'd Dell (it has better specs than any Mac Laptop that's available at the moment, but is about the size and weight of a TV tray). The business guys and PMs go for the Airs and Surfaces...I'd say the Surfaces are about 2:1 to the Airs on takeup, and that's mostly because of the form factor and pen. There's been a couple rough spots, but our leadership simply decided it was time to figure it out, and if we did, we'd be years ahead of larger enterprises, thus giving us a competitive advantage.
- walshemj 11y ago
  So what happens when you need to seriously use excel and the Mac version falls over.
  - alexpersian 11y ago
    Run it through a VM.
  - bane 11y ago
    Excel on Mac works fine, and we do some fairly sophisticated numerical modelling work. In terms of Office, the bigger problem has been legacy Access databases. We solve this by setting up some VMs with RDP access for the Mac users. But there's also a couple Mac utilities that let you export Access tables to CSV which can then be loaded up into something sane. A surprising number of people also use Project, Visio and OneNote and there's not really a good portable solution for those cases. I've been pushing people to use yED for portable charting (instead of Visio), OneNote is now available for Office 365, and people are finding Excel a good enough Gantt chart tool for many purposes. Office on Mac is quite good compared to Windows, just not all of the products people expect to use are available. The bigger picture thing is that this is going to happen and enterprises need to figure it out. Non-cross-platform applications and processes need to be abandoned. This also happens in reverse with remote Linux servers being easier to work with on Macs than via Windows (putty and winSCP sort most of the issues out, but they aren't perfect). In my experience people really don't care about the desktop experience too much, IMHO Windows is better than OS X for most of that anyways, but they care about "getting shit done" and that means apps, and these days web-based apps. The OS just isn't that big of a factor so long as the things people need to GSD is available. They're choosing hardware and form-factor over OS and they pick the one they think will work best for them.
jebblue 11y ago
IBM used to have tens of thousands of employees and not just technical people, running Linux on the desktop/laptop.
colindean 11y ago
IBM is wise to do so. The Thinkpad W540 that developers hired in summer 2014-summer 2015 got is terrible for Linux: graphics driver problems, the trackpad is a horrible piece of junk that wholly depresses 1mm into the body and has a texture that wears off after several weeks (most folks who have them, and there's a lot of them, carry mice instead), and they weigh a ton. A coworker just got a Thinkpad W541 and it improves on the trackpad by readding the missing thumb buttons under the spacebar. The W530 and W520 weren't much better: they didn't have the terrible trackpads. IIRC the W520's graphics stack worked better, but that was three years ago. I helped an intern set up a W520 and it still had some issues before we got it stable. I wouldn't call myself a super expert Linux admin, but I do remember a day when I had to manually configure XFree86. I came into IBM through acq. I'm a Mac guy these days, and was before the acq, where I'd used a HP machine with Linux when I first joined the company because there were no Macs to spare. When my pre-acq Mac couldn't run the Linux binaries I needed for work, I switched to a T420 and disliked it. I used R4x series in college and LOVED them. I'm seeing more and more Macs around my office. We were probably 60% Thinkpads with Linux, 30% Mac, 10% Thinkpads with Windows going into 2015. I had been seeing Mac growth for a while, but it was all BYOD. Now that the deal went through, most folks up for a machine refresh are choosing Macs, mostly because that's what they own themselves. Some of the few die-hard Windows folks are even getting Macs and dual booting Windows. Like others, I can't really comment on the purchase quantity, mostly because I'm not privvy to that information!
jbfr 11y ago
I work in the IBM Design Studio and all the employees have MacBook Pros. It's been working out pretty well actually, even with respect to integrating with some of IBM's legacy software that we have to deal with.

107 points by satyajeet23 11y ago

I really wonder why people keep submitting highly editorialized headlines when the guides clearly state not to do it. On the article: If this pans out it could spell the end of Thinkpads as high quality laptops that deliver premium performance while being very robust and sturdy. Who is left in that niche? Are we left with only either apple laptops, or shoddy plastic jobs that need to be kept in bubble wrap at all times?

listic 11y ago
Do you suggest that IBM was responsible for the vast majority of Thinkpad sales? My hopes for great new laptops lie with some brand new crowdfunding efforts, fantastic as it may sound. Also, it would be a pity if Thinkpads would dies now, as they have just implemented dual batteries with hot swap in last two generations; IMO this is long overdue, but I haven't heard of a laptop manufacturer that did it.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  No, i'm saying that this will, directly and indirectly, impact the profits Lenovo sees, which will likely result in cost cutting decisions.
jacquesm 11y ago
> If this pans out it could spell the end of Thinkpads as high quality laptops that deliver premium performance while being very robust and sturdy. I think that boat sailed a while ago. I'm writing this on one and it's the worst machine I've owned to date quality wise. Keys that spontaneously dis-integrate, wwan card that bricks itself (and replacements are not accepted by the BIOS because they're not 'authorized') and so on. Last laptop of this brand for me. Maybe Asus or Acer has something half decent?
- ild 11y ago
  The last decent non-Apple laptops were the ones with 16:10 screen; since switching to 16:9 the whole industry refocused itself on making consumer grade products.
- farresito 11y ago
  Which model do you have? I'm thinking about buying a laptop, and, obviously, one of the first things that come to my head is a Thinkpad, but I'm worried about the quality.
  - josteink 11y ago
    I'm on a carbon x1 and I'm not having any issues. It's super light, but the feel and build quality is still there.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    T 540 P.
    - farresito 11y ago
      I've heard that there are big differences in quality based on the manufacturers they use. For example, I think for the keyboards they have four or five different manufacturers. The T models use two different ones (while the lower budget models use the other three), one of them being LiteOn (which is the best one), and that depending on which manufacturer you get, you might get a higher quality or a lower one, especially with keyboards. Have you taken a look at other laptops? If so, which one will you go with next time? I'm a Linux user, so if Thinkpads are as bad as some people say they are nowadays, I might even get a MBP and install Linux on it.
- _nedR 11y ago
  Typing this from a cheap Acer Aspire V5-471G (the cheapest make and model for given specs). Remember you get what you pay for. The laptop looks sleek, but build quality is very flimsy with issues like paint-peeling, scratches, and malfunctioning hinges causing display to flicker/black-out. Also Acer support sucks and traveller's warranty is not international warranty. Beware of cheap thinner laptops. They may look nice in the store but poor construction and cheap materials will come to bite you later. IMO Budget laptops have regressed in this matter compared to older bulkier models (including Dell Inspirons and XPSes in my experience). Can't speak for more expensive models though.
rch 11y ago
The Serval WS from System76 has nice specs. If the build quality is reasonably solid, and it works well with other distros, then that could be my next laptop. Then of course there's the Eurocom Panther 5SE: Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors and 32GB of DDR3 1600MHz RAM. Weighs 12lbs :) Eventually I think the low-power server movement could end up yielding more high end laptops... hopefully some that are lighter than 5kg!
lnanek2 11y ago
Article seems correct to me. Even diehard thinkpad fans say the product line has degraded. Have you actually compared recent ones to older ones or are you just complaining without data points?
virtualwhys 11y ago
> Are we left with only either apple laptops, or shoddy plastic jobs that need to be kept in bubble wrap at all times? Dell Precision line is still kicking, beastly machines, there is no better (IMO of course ;-)). They won't win any design awards and are a bit on the hefty side, but performance-wise hard to beat. Have 32GB RAM in mine, can have several VMs running, and do development work (compile to ram disk instead of thrashing SSD) on host OS (Fedora) with memory to spare. Dual fans are also a nice-to-have with heat-generating i7 processor. Maybe not a huge deal for some but the BIOS is pretty ridiculous in terms of configurability/locking down the machine.
- farresito 11y ago
  Do you like the keyboard? It's probably the thing I'm most concerned with. If so, which model do you have? I'm trying to find business laptops with good keyboards, but so far the only things that I find acceptable seem to be Thinkpads.
  - Bill_Dimm 11y ago
    I (not original poster) have a Dell Latitude E5430 with the upgraded backlit keyboard and I like that keyboard a lot (vastly better than the standard one on my old D620).
    - farresito 11y ago
      That is great to hear. I've been taking a look at the Latitudes as an alternative to the current Thinkpad that I have, and I was concerned about the keyboard. It looked like a good keyboard after looking at some images, but it's always nice to hear from people that do have the laptop. Thank you.
  - virtualwhys 11y ago
    > Do you like the keyboard? Sure, when I use it that is. It lives on a laptop stand alongside connected monitors (which, btw, is another bonus, 5 displays if you like ;-)). Use a compact Cherry mechanical keyboard for day-to-day, only touch laptop keyboard when traveling.
Dylan16807 11y ago
So the article title is "Former Apple rival IBM could become the biggest buyer of MacBooks" And the submission title is "IBM to Purchase 200000 Macs Annually with 75% of Empl. Switching from Lenovo" That's editing, not editorializing. There's no opinion inserted. Instead vague terms like "big" are replaces with concrete numbers, making the title almost as useful as the entire article. The guidelines are against edits, but they also seem to be against flashy vague terms, and a change like this is useful.
- mst 11y ago
  Except that the article itself doesn't say either of those things. It says that 50-75% of employees could switch, and that IBM could purchase up to that many Macs. It completely misrepresents the article.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    A 'probably' wouldn't have hurt, but if it's not ibm.com it's not going to be 100% certain, and even then predictions can be wrong.
hackuser 11y ago
> Are we left with only either apple laptops, or shoddy plastic jobs that need to be kept in bubble wrap at all times? Anecdotally, and based on a limited sample size, I've had great experiences with HP's corporate laptop (and other) product lines - not the consumer lines. They seem to last forever, much longer than Dells and than users, who like new equipment, would like them to. I have one that's around ten years old that runs fine, except for the pointstick. I can't remember the last one that suffered hardware failure. Their Elite laptop line has excellent support and excellent design. Sitting next to me is an EliteBook; I can pop off the bottom cover and service it as easily as a desktop. It's pretty cool.

davelnewton 11y ago

It wouldn't take very long to re-equip all their employees. Some of the Lenovos are pretty robust, too; I don't know much about the low-end models, but some of the upper-ends are quite nice. If they had first-class Linux support I'd even consider getting one.

eyce9000 11y ago
Indeed, the hardware on Lenovo's is reasonably good, but if you are an enterprise trying to move away from Windows, the hit-or-miss Linux support somewhat limits your options. From experience, running Linux ( RHEL / CentOS 6.x) on ThinkPads can be a frustrating experience, not sure if that is a limitation of drivers or of the ancient Gnome 2 desktop interface.
- slgeorge 11y ago
  The way around that is to get the vendor (IBM, Dell or whomever) to CERTIFY the hardware for the Linux distribution of your choice. That guarantees that the HW vendor will make sure that drivers are available. You can get your hw vendor to do that if you're in the process of doing a hardware refresh and will be buying new systems, e.g "I will be buying these systems from <insert alternative vendor> because they are certified with <insert distribution name and version> and you are not". If a system is not certified then you are relying on Linux developers making it work - they may do so, but are often hindered by drivers or small tweaks to hardware. As importantly, making a whole system work is fully is considerably different to making a specific component work.

pavement 11y ago

...because Windows is intolerably awful now, presumably getting worse every day. Seriously. It's been downhill since Vista. Every upgrade since XP has been disruptive, and destroyed time-saving behaviors.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
While OS X and Linux both have their problems, being defiantly user-hostile aren't among them. I can't imagine the mind of the person at MS who decided that making Solitaire pay-to-play was a good idea. It's fascinating how decisions like this get made, how products like Win 8 and 10 get out the door, and how MS seems to think it can fix the terrible design by downvoting critics on public forums and getting PR companies to write booster posts that are so ham-handed they have no persuasive power. As a company, MS has a lot of really smart individuals doing really dumb things collectively. I'd be incredibly interested if MS could find its own Rodney Brooks to explain the business processes that make that happen. Not a hater, btw. Office 365 and Azure both have their good points. But Windows and mobile seem like industry-changing disasters now, and from the outside it seems like the icebergs shouldn't have been that hard to miss.
- joshontheweb 11y ago
  Solitaire is pay-to-play now? Thats insane.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-now-wants-you-to-pay-for-solitaire.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-now-wants-you-to-p...
    - mikegioia 11y ago
      Wow. This honestly just shows a completely lack of awareness. It's mind boggling that not only does it cost money, but its recurring. To me, this goes far deeper than the surface of "charging for solitaire". There has to be some systemic dysfunction within the windows team.

r00fus 11y ago

Part and parcel of the new Apple/IBM cooperation deal. I wonder if IBM is pushing iOS as well for their employees?

INTPenis 11y ago
I knew there had to be a deal behind this. Personally I couldn't be more happier with my X230 and many co-workers use the X1 Carbon. So technically I can't see a reason to do this. The X1 Carbon is essentially an ultrabook close to the new macbooks in most of its features.
douche 11y ago
They are buying large numbers of iPads. It's been fantastic for my company, as IBM is a major customer for one of our products, and now we have to support Safari and mobile Safari as first-class browsers, in addition to the legacy versions of IE still used by many of our other customers. Not to mention that IBM insists that we use DB2 and run on their flavor of server-side Linux, where the IBM products that we integrate with have different long-standing bugs than on the Windows versions all our other customers use.

pinaceae 11y ago

well, the new ms office for osx is really good, so if all you need is web apps for business tools (erp, crm, etc) plus productivity apps a mac is the machine to go with right now. mb, mb air, the small mbp are all excellent office machines. switched personnally to a mba in 2012, wouldn't go back to a wintel notebook if they paid me.

jebblue 11y ago
>> well, the new ms office for osx is really good Didn't the Mac version of Office get canceled then restarted then canceled then restarted a number of times over the years?
- vetinari 11y ago
  No. It lagged about a year behind the windows version (2003->2004, 2007->2008, 2010->2011, no 2013 equivalent), for 2016 they should be both at the same time. Also, regarding the features, it used to lag, but since 2011 it achieved almost feature parity (minus the addons, that are downloadable extras, like PowerQuery, PowerMaps or PowerPivot).

shellbye 11y ago

"A country does not have permanent friends, only permanent interests." Same to companies.

matt4711 11y ago

Most IBM employees in Australia use Toshiba laptops instead of Lenevo.

Nursie 11y ago
When did that happen? Wasn't that way in Perth a couple of years back, it was all Lenovo, except management were moving over to Mac as their refresh cycle came through.

nfriedly 11y ago

Speaking as an IBMer, I can say that a big part of this switch is about the hardware. My ThinkPad was so unbalanced it was almost ridiculous: i7, 32gb RAM, paired with a slooooow mechanical hdd and an utterly rubbish TN display. (That and a frusturatingly bad touchpad). I prefer OS X over Windows, but only slightly, the main reason I was so adamant about switching was to get quality hardware.

agumonkey 11y ago
Since the t60 days people have been screaming complaints about ThinkPads TN panels. Lenovo has been a little more listening to customers recently, I guess now even more.
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  Most of the Thinkpad models now have fancier IPS screens as an option. For example, my W540 has a 2880x1620 IPS display.
  - dfc 11y ago
    I looked at the W-series and was excited about the HW specs. I decided to stick with T-series when I saw the nvidia graphics card.
    - TD-Linux 11y ago
      Fortunately the Intel graphics are connected to all the display outputs. The nvidia card is always off for me (I unloaded the nouveau kernel module to be sure, but normally it turns off automatically when idle)
  - nfriedly 11y ago
    Yea, my ThinkPad is a W540, but since the "good" display isn't standard, mine didn't come with it.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Sure it was always an option, but the few companies I've seen bought batches of models with TN panels. And even TN, there are differences in quality, my x60 had one of the ugliest, the bit dithering and pixel gap was amazingly bad. Most netbooks weren't that bad. I get the low contrast for long hours of work but this was just cheap. I guess the IBM / Lenovo transition caused it.

ksec 11y ago

Personally I think this is big, and now even bigger then I thought. The largest Enterprise they had was only 25,000 Macbook a year. And IBM is 10 times the size of that order. Most of the Enterprise I know, big or small are still very much Window based. The way Mac are getting in right now are through BYOD. However, most CIO see this as additional burden with Apple devices, and therefore most planning are still based on the Windows world. CRM, ERP etc.. lots of business class things still are not available on Mac. Although there are alternatives, no business wants to try. Hopefully IBM and Apple could use this chance to smooth out the quirks rolling Apple devices in Enterprise. And more company to follow. Dont get me wrong, this isn't about getting rid of Windows. I am sure there are lots of people who enjoy Window 10. But when our company tries to switch over to Mac, we have had very little support and real world cases to based on. P.S - Most of you working in the I.T / Computer Industry would have no problem doing so, but there are lots of industry out there who cant risk to switch even if they wanted to.

narrowrail 11y ago
I'm just curious why you wouldn't simply install Windows on Apple hardware.
- Nursie 11y ago
  In IBM's case it's because they want to reduce their reliance on MS. They have suites of IBM packages that can be installed on top of Redhat, SuSE, Ubuntu or Debian to make IBM-styled linux. But they also have Notes etc for Mac OS now, so no need to shy away from it.
- brianwawok 11y ago
  Because osx is better than Windows 10?
  - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
    Every version of Windows is better than running an OS that locks you into one brand of crappy, featureless overpriced hardware. Speaking on the software itself though, Windows certainly has got better, more logical window management and better tools built in for multi-display. Windows also has a logical and consistent keyboard acceleration system compared to the ridiculous hidden functionality that plagues OS X. Pretty much the only good thing about OS X is that it's Unix. Otherwise nobody around here would be using it.

arcosdev 11y ago

Just in time to enjoy the now quickly deteriorating quality of Apple's latest MacBooks!

dfc 11y ago

Actual Title:(emphasis mine): "Former Apple rival IBM could become the biggest buyer of MacBooks" Submission Guidelines Refresher: In Submissions Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important....Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

noondip 11y ago

How are they planning to manage so many computers, given that Apple provides no practical enterprise management software for OS X? Oh, http://jobs.utah.gov/jsp/wi/utalmis/oijoborder.do;jsessionid=68FB0CE0EB4B0AE13841726F31E6EE41?ordernum=9650243 http://jobs.utah.gov/jsp/wi/utalmis/oijoborder.do;jsessionid... * CanHazImage * Pupet * Crankd * PlanB * Munki Required * In other words, follow how Google manages their corp Mac fleet of "tens of thousands", https://github.com/google/macops https://github.com/google/macops https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/managing-macs-google-scale https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/managing-macs-googl...

batbomb 11y ago
Jamf is the usual solution
stephenr 11y ago
How is profile manager + remote desktop (using the 'install package' or 'run script' functionality) not capable?
jameshart 11y ago
IBM makes enterprise endpoint management software. That's how IBM currently manages its mixed Windows/Linux/Mac desktop/laptop fleet. Adding more Macs will just be changing the mix. * Disclaimer - I work for IBM, but not in IT or on endpoint management solutions. I am not in a position to confirm or deny the possibility IBM might be buying hundreds of thousands of Macs. My work laptop is a Thinkpad.
omarforgotpwd 11y ago
iOS and OS X both support a really great Mobile Device Management protocol (MDM) you can do everything you can imagine and then some, and you can even buy the device paired with the MDM server so that it's forced to use your settings and can never be unpaired. IBM makes a front end to this MDM protocol, so they can probably use that. Or Profile Manager, which Apple includes with OS X server. See Air-watch.com for an example of what the MDM protocol allows.

brudgers 11y ago

"We've got to find a way to make the overall cost the same or lower than PCs to make that happen." That's a tall order given IBM 's existing software infrastructure, Apple's migration tooling and support staff for enterprise, and the constraints that accounting standards place on the way equal cost would have to be figured. Calculating the charge against goodwill associated with getting 200,000 people to give up their ThinkPad keyboards is left as an exercise for the reader.

bane 11y ago

I work for a small enterprise (under 2,000 people) and we get a choice of a couple different Macs (Air, Book, Pro), Dells in various configurations as well as Surface tablets. The tech folks usually get a Mac Pro or a high-spec'd Dell (it has better specs than any Mac Laptop that's available at the moment, but is about the size and weight of a TV tray). The business guys and PMs go for the Airs and Surfaces...I'd say the Surfaces are about 2:1 to the Airs on takeup, and that's mostly because of the form factor and pen. There's been a couple rough spots, but our leadership simply decided it was time to figure it out, and if we did, we'd be years ahead of larger enterprises, thus giving us a competitive advantage.

walshemj 11y ago
So what happens when you need to seriously use excel and the Mac version falls over.
- alexpersian 11y ago
  Run it through a VM.
- bane 11y ago
  Excel on Mac works fine, and we do some fairly sophisticated numerical modelling work. In terms of Office, the bigger problem has been legacy Access databases. We solve this by setting up some VMs with RDP access for the Mac users. But there's also a couple Mac utilities that let you export Access tables to CSV which can then be loaded up into something sane. A surprising number of people also use Project, Visio and OneNote and there's not really a good portable solution for those cases. I've been pushing people to use yED for portable charting (instead of Visio), OneNote is now available for Office 365, and people are finding Excel a good enough Gantt chart tool for many purposes. Office on Mac is quite good compared to Windows, just not all of the products people expect to use are available. The bigger picture thing is that this is going to happen and enterprises need to figure it out. Non-cross-platform applications and processes need to be abandoned. This also happens in reverse with remote Linux servers being easier to work with on Macs than via Windows (putty and winSCP sort most of the issues out, but they aren't perfect). In my experience people really don't care about the desktop experience too much, IMHO Windows is better than OS X for most of that anyways, but they care about "getting shit done" and that means apps, and these days web-based apps. The OS just isn't that big of a factor so long as the things people need to GSD is available. They're choosing hardware and form-factor over OS and they pick the one they think will work best for them.

jebblue 11y ago

IBM used to have tens of thousands of employees and not just technical people, running Linux on the desktop/laptop.

colindean 11y ago

IBM is wise to do so. The Thinkpad W540 that developers hired in summer 2014-summer 2015 got is terrible for Linux: graphics driver problems, the trackpad is a horrible piece of junk that wholly depresses 1mm into the body and has a texture that wears off after several weeks (most folks who have them, and there's a lot of them, carry mice instead), and they weigh a ton. A coworker just got a Thinkpad W541 and it improves on the trackpad by readding the missing thumb buttons under the spacebar. The W530 and W520 weren't much better: they didn't have the terrible trackpads. IIRC the W520's graphics stack worked better, but that was three years ago. I helped an intern set up a W520 and it still had some issues before we got it stable. I wouldn't call myself a super expert Linux admin, but I do remember a day when I had to manually configure XFree86. I came into IBM through acq. I'm a Mac guy these days, and was before the acq, where I'd used a HP machine with Linux when I first joined the company because there were no Macs to spare. When my pre-acq Mac couldn't run the Linux binaries I needed for work, I switched to a T420 and disliked it. I used R4x series in college and LOVED them. I'm seeing more and more Macs around my office. We were probably 60% Thinkpads with Linux, 30% Mac, 10% Thinkpads with Windows going into 2015. I had been seeing Mac growth for a while, but it was all BYOD. Now that the deal went through, most folks up for a machine refresh are choosing Macs, mostly because that's what they own themselves. Some of the few die-hard Windows folks are even getting Macs and dual booting Windows. Like others, I can't really comment on the purchase quantity, mostly because I'm not privvy to that information!

jbfr 11y ago

I work in the IBM Design Studio and all the employees have MacBook Pros. It's been working out pretty well actually, even with respect to integrating with some of IBM's legacy software that we have to deal with.