IBM Switching To Macs!

For a very long time, the Mac was adopted by home users, especially beginners or multimedia professionals, but lately a lot of people started to arrive from other platforms, especially Windows. We call them "switchers," but most of you probably know that already. The interesting part comes with the fact that, lately, enterprises also started to switch to Macs, and we're not talking about small companies, since IBM is one of the largest in the IT industry!


IBM's pilot program at IBM Research, called "Mac @ Watson," outlined in a document that became public, is all about evaluating the MacBook Pros as replacements for the Windows-based ThinkPads currently used by IBM researchers.

This is the list of reasons for looking forward to replace their own ThinkPads with Apple's MacBook Pros:

- Alternative to Microsoft Windows
- Less prone to security issues
- Widely used in the academic world with which Research has close ties
- Many new hires are more comfortable with the Mac and lately asking for it
- Growing Mac community in Research and within IBM that finds the development environment on Mac more convenient
- Growing acceptance of the Mac as a consumer and business oriented client platform
- WPLC strategy includes significant investments in achieving the Mac platform parity

Since October 2007, 24 people at IBM research got MacBook Pros, and after being asked about their experience, only 3 said the Mac provided a worse experience than their Windows-based laptops, while 18 said it was "better or best." In the end, this is all that matters - customer satisfaction, but when we're talking about enterprises, I think that seeing IBM starting to use Macs would be a huge step forward for Apple, don't you agree?