6 reasons your business should deploy Apple Silicon Macs

Apple’s M-series processors mean Macs now sit at the top of all the benchmarks, but if raw performance isn’t enough to convince you here are six more reasons why every business should invest in Apple Silicon Macs.

Employees like Macs

All the employee choice surveys agree that when given the choice most employees will select a Mac. That’s why Mac adoption at SAP continues to increase at a rapid rate. That’s why IBM CIO, Fletcher Previn in 2019 said, “I don’t know if better employees want Macs, or giving Macs to employees makes them better. You got to be careful about cause and effect — but there seems to be a lot of corroborating evidence that says you want to have a choice program.”

It works like this: Employees want the tech they use at work to be at least as good as what they use at home. Apple’s customer satisfaction ratings (c.95+) means its products gain really high Net Promoter Scores. A PwC survey claims 78% of millennials believe having access to the tech they like at work makes them more effective. A Gensler Workplace study claims giving employees platform choice boosts innovation, performance, and satisfaction at work.

People are passionate about this stuff: almost 90% of employees would take a pay cut to use the platform they prefer, while 62% choose Apple when they can, Jamf has said.

In the context of the Great Resignation, platform choice has become a human resources issue. If you want to attract and retain the best staff, you give them a choice. And, as we all know, the only way to improve productivity is to get staff positively motivated and equipped with the very best tools.

Autocratic hierarchical management doesn’t work today.

They make you more money

We all know the maxim that “Time is money”, but the new M-series Macs deliver performance that significantly speeds up high-end tasks.

Apple has promoted how much faster these machines are at video rendering, Adobe has told us Photoshop performance is significantly improved, and Corel confirms these Macs can handle painting tasks twice as fast as their Intel predecessors.

If your work involves doing lots of high-end computational tasks you will see significant time benefits. That’s especially true for developers, as these Macs can build and compile code at a much faster rate. That’s true when building software for any platform.

The result?

We recently found that the new 2021 M1 MacBooks cut our Android build times in half.

So for a team of 9, $32k of laptops will actually save $100k in productivity over 2022. The break-even point happens at 3 months.

TL;DR Engineering hours are much more expensive than laptops!

— Jameson (@softwarejameson) November 3, 2021

The above Tweet from Jameson makes this simple. In case you can’t see it, he writes:

“We recently found that the new 2021 M1 MacBooks cut our Android build times in half. So for a team of 9, $32k of laptops will actually save $100k in productivity over 2022. The break-even point happens at 3 months. TL;DR Engineering hours are much more expensive than laptops!”

They reduce your energy bills

Apple’s new MacBook Pros deliver significantly better battery life on a single charge, but it doesn’t stop there. You see, Apple Silicon Macs also deliver significantly improved energy efficiency, which basically means you’ll generate more computational performance per watt of power spent.

So what? It means you save money on your fuel bills. That’s nice if you are working remotely in your own home, but a massive deal for businesses running fleets of PCs. Take the Mac mini – this time last year I estimated that replacing a 2018 Mac mini with a new M1-powered version would save approximately $140 per year.

I admit this is a highly theoretical calculation – the estimate reflected maximum power draw 24-hours a day, which isn’t a realistic usage case – but even if you are saving just 10 percent of that ($14), that’s still going to turn into $1,400 saved in fuel efficiency for every 100 PCs you replace with Apple’s lower wattage, energy-sipping machines.

Now imagine what that means if you run 10,000 PCs. Wouldn’t you rather spend that money financing business innovation than feeding greedy energy firms?

(And reducing energy consumption will also help your company meet whatever environmental targets are agreed at the Blah-blah-blah COP26 conference.

They cost less to run

Now, people say that Macs are more expensive to purchase than PCs. Apple Silicon means that the company’s machines now compete with the highest-end PCs, where price is less of a difference. They also deliver oodles of additional benefits, all of which lead in one direction:

Apple is cheaper to run.

That means lower tech support costs, lower maintenance costs and once the products make it through your company’s tech refresh cycle, they retain trade-in value and are products your employees will also be keen to keep.

“Every Mac we buy is making and saving IBM money,” said IBM in 2015. More recently, a Forrester report said using M1 Macs save enterprises $843 over three years when compared to a PC.

They hold their value

Apple’s devices hold up remarkably well on the second user markets. Even a five-year old product will still generate a nice bit of cash if sold. You can pour that money back into your IT budget if you want, though many employers choose to offer them as perks to employees.

Why?

Because employees love their Apple kit – and not just a little.

Apple recently told us about France’s national railway company, SNCF, which equips all train drivers with iPads. What happens when these hit EOL? Drivers like their iPads so much that 90% purchase them for personal use.

Result? Happier staff and a little more fat in the budget for the next tech investments.

The privacy and security thing

Yes, Apple is facing some incredibly wrong-headed decision making by regulators who want to turn iPhones into SpyPhones by fatally undermining device security.

The damage this will do to individual users in a networked and connected world is immense, but the damage to business will be even larger in magnitude.

Of course, we know which companies are lobbying for this to happen, the surveillance capitalists, their lackeys, and their chums in authoritarian governments are salivating at the money and power they’ll make once privacy is broken.

All the same, where we are today, Apple’s Macs, iPhones and iPads remain the most secure devices around. That means a lot when the average cost for a data breach in the U.S. in 2021 is $9.05 million, according to IBM Security’s 2021 Cost of a Data Breach report. You can’t underestimate the cost in terms of business continuity.

Security and privacy are becoming more important as the globe becomes more connected.

The economy, and your privacy, depend on protecting it.

So, there you have it, six reasons why your business should invest in Apple.

The rest is up to you.

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