Case Study: Long-Term Mac Experience Proves Reliability and Performance

Author: Jim Lundy Date: February 15, 2012

Topic: Workplace Research Note Number: 2012-1

Issues: What are the technologies and architectures that enterprises should leverage in the workplace?

What are the best practices for enabling a high productivity work environment?

Summary: Aragon Research reviewed usage and experience with Apple iMacs and MacBooks over a five-year timeframe. The results may surprise those who are not familiar with the overall reliability of Apple’s operating system and hardware.

Enterprises are deploying an increasingly large number of Apple Macintoshes. While numerous studies have been done to determine how the Mac benefits users, little has been said about how the systems have performed over the long term. This research note highlights results and findings from Mac use over a period of five years across 7 different models and environments.

Windows’ dominance is being challenged by the rise of Apple. Much of the focus has been on the iPhone and iPad, but Apple started to get serious about desktop and laptop computers ten years ago when it introduced OS X, its Unix-based operating system (see Note 1).

To date, many enterprises have reluctantly agreed to support Apple devices, in part because executives and users demanded it. Little has been said about how these systems perform in different environments until now.

How well these systems performed may be surprising. They combine well-designed hardware with an operating system that has been finely tuned to automate most of the routine tasks that users still have to do manually on a Windows PC.

Note, this is an archived Research Note. Please see our all our research on the Aragon Insight Network (login required).

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