It Just Works: The irresistible, quantifiable power of the Mac value proposition
Ever since the Apple Macintosh introduced itself to the world, with a smile and a lower-case “hello”, the Mac has been the favoured tool of artists, writers, makers, and creators, drawn to its ease of use, high performance, and eye-catching design.
But the Mac means business too, as shown by its increasing adoption in corporate environments.
More than 84 per cent of the world’s top innovators deploy Mac at scale, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
And a global survey of more than 1,000 IT professionals found Mac to be the dominant platform across a diverse range of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, healthcare, and civil engineering.
In South Africa, iStore Business reports a similar trend, with more than half of the Top 100 Companies moving to Mac.
Why? Well, let’s start with the bottom line.
The Apple Business Manager at iStore Business explains, “a Mac-centric organisation can get by with just one support person, supporting up to 1,000 users. That cuts down a lot of your operational costs.”
An iStore Business survey of 1,200 corporate Mac users revealed an average of just 1.3 support tickets per user per year.
That’s a lot of time saved, not only for the user, but for your IT department, less tickets means less cost.
Hardware accounts for just a third of the total cost of PC ownership in an organisation, with the rest being spent largely on maintenance.
But the lower support costs are just the start of the Mac’s value proposition.
In the long-term, over three to four years, a Mac will retain as much as 40% of its value, a factor that can significantly reduce costs in the IT ecosystem.
This also shines a light of perspective on the familiar notion that Mac are costlier to deploy than their PC counterparts.
The truth: under iStore’s Flexi Rental plan, a MacBook Air can cost as little as R499 a month for 36 months.
That’s with no upfront cash outlay, zero asset depreciation, and Tax deductible VAT payable over the full 5-year rental term.
Speaking of shining lights, there’s an additional benefit to using Mac in the South African context, where electrical power is unstable and unpredictable.
The new generation of M1 and M2 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, which feature Apple’s revolutionary system on a chip (SoC) processor, are capable of lasting for up to 22 hours on a single charge, making them ideal for portable use when the lights go out.
“The everyday reality of doing business in South Africa, whether as an SMME or a large organisation, is that you need a strategy to manage risk and uncertainty,” says the Apple Business Manager.
That means coping with a lot more than load shedding. Workforces are shrinking, costs are rising, and more and more workers are choosing the hybrid route.
As proof that choosing Mac is a sound business strategy, iStore Business’s Buy & Try programme, which allows a company to rent a Mac for 90 days, with free technical support, and a full refund if unsatisfied.
To date, in thousands of deployments in more than 100 South African companies, only 4 units have been returned.
That’s testimony not just to the proven efficiencies of the Mac — as the Apple Business Manager puts it, “Your microphone works great, your keyboard works great, your screen works great, so you just don’t experience problems that you need to report” — but also to the emotional connection that tends to bond users to their Macs.
The Mac look after themselves, with iStore Business finding less than a single percent of warranty failures being reported per 36-month cycle.
The new generation of MacBook and iMac are adept at settling into business environments, being able to run Microsoft Office apps with ease.
The net result? According to the survey, a gain of 236 hours in productivity per user per year.
No wonder, in an uncertain and unstable world, that more and more businesses are saying “hello” to Mac.
For one of our business consultants to contact you please fill out our business form.