Written by I will explore all the reasons why a sample company will not switch to Apple by given you the low down on a few factors, which are open to discussion. Lets
Hardware
First Examine the Hardware side of life – a typical company buys in many computers and in today more mobile world, this is normally Laptops. Compaq produce the 6715B laptop, this comes in at £531 Inc Vat – remembering companies do not pay VAT so this brings it down to £451 per Laptop but what do you get for your Money?
Athlon Turion ML60 Dual Core – running at 2Ghz.
2 Gig DDR-2 Ram
160GIG SATA 2.5″ Drive
DVD+/- Writer
Ati 1270 Graphics Card.
15.4″ TFT running at 1680×1050
Windows XP Pro SP2 including DVD writing programs.
Now to compare this to the Apple Hardware, the mac book pro, this comes with Either a 15″ or 17″ Screen, the difference is 1400×900 for 15″ or 1680×1050 for 17″ Screen, as we are trying to compare like for like (to a degree). We are either looking at £1299 or £1799 – quite steep you would agree. Exclude the VAT off these and we get £1105 or £1531. A quick look at those prices and this tells you that you can buy roughly 3 Compaq Laptops for one Apple Laptop. This builds up to quite a saving if your buying in 5 every other week.
Servers
On price alone, the Dell 2950 Series (which uses Quad core – same as Apple) is half the price of the same XServe and as we as a company run Debian, we do not have to worry about the price per seat and all that. Once again then we can see that you can buy twice the hardware from a PC Vendor vs. the Apple solution. I know they are comparing it to Windows Server with its money per seat and all that but the world does not start and end with Microsoft all the time.
Software
If we brush aside the Email / Web apps as these can be done on just about any OS out there, you got to remember that companies have applications such as AutoCad and many other in-house / speciality software which while it can run on a Virtual Machine or Boot Camp, you are loosing the fact you are switching back to windows.
Support
Every Man and his dog can support Windows to death, the tech support people are 10 to a Penny but Apple support is a lot less on the ground. While they might not need to support it as much. Training would need to be given to the end user on working the Mac as well no matter how easy it is.
What Apple are Aiming at
They are happy to sell to the Video / DTP / Graphics Market and home users – there mark-up is so high that they make enough money per machine to stay in business. They have no-one to compete against them (such as Dell vs. Compaq) and steadily grow as people buy them. If they Lowered the price to reflect the real world prices of hardware and offered a competitive upgrade option along with real Dual running OS/X + Windows (the ability to switch at will), then they might break into the Business side of life, sell lots and start gaining market share a lot faster.
