from his post:

“I don’t know whether the IBM Research pilot was any great conspiracy to move towards Macs or not, and I honestly don’t care.

How do I feel now a month in with the MacBook Pro?

Liberated. Free. Productive.

In fact, upon retrospect, I wonder what the heck took me so long. “

I’m a software developer and I’ve mostly used PCs with Windows because that was the only OS a lot of the software I require for developing my applications will run on. This is not so much the case today becuase a lot of software is targeting a wider variety of platforms.

From a consumer point of view I’d rather have the choice to use which ever OS I prefer for the job in hand. My main gripe against Windows is that it is so resource intensive. I write a lot of my code, such as Java, .NET, HTML, etc., with simple text editors on whatever computer is handy because, lets face it, it’s just text until you need to compile/interpret and run it.

In fact, all my distributed applications using C++, Java and CORBA that I wrote at University (grad. in 2000) was written in the MS-DOS editor at home and complied on the Uni’s machines because Windows slowed my cheap PC up too much and there was no way I could afford to duplicate all the UNIX and server environments the software was actually running on.

Keep us up to date on any more research IBM or other companies do. It’s hard enough getting anything other than a ThinkPad out of the company I work for let alone a non-Windows OS.

@Kyle – You will need to ask IBM for those stats, they conducted the internal study. Again, not me. IBM. I will say that given the numbers it is only possible that a maximum of 3 of those 7 preferred a PC – considering only 3 in the entire study preferred the PC.

You are taking my words out of context to say that I said “86 percent of the employees of “one of the largest corporations in the world” prefer Mac” – what I actually said was: “If one of the largest corporations in the world is experimenting with using Apple computers, and its employees are preferring it at an 86 percent rate…” That is clearly referring to the experiment I mention in that very sentence.

As for the line that I “threw in” – again that is from the study. I did not make those people or their roles up. If you are going to comment, please try to read the story, not just skim it.

And I can’t speak to your last line, no janitors were involved in IBM’s study.

I say it’s biased toward Mac for several reasons. First, to say that 86 percent of the employees of “one of the largest corporations in the world” prefer Mac is so blatantly wrong. The fact is that 18 of 22 of the employees in THIS ONE STUDY prefer Mac. Also, Siegler throws in that little line saying, “These test subjects included research scientists, software engineers and a couple higher-level employees.” Oh, so really smart people choose Macs… right. I’m sure the janitors still prefer PC’s.

The problem with macs, in my opinion is the users. I would be ashamed to be called a mac user, because it implies that I am better than you somehow?

You ignorant reporter, don’t you know that IBM make z/OS the best mainframe OS. That they build multimillions dollars servers. They created IFL to allow linux on the bigiron.

“IBM = International Boat & Marine – They make the best anchors in the marine business!”
No wonder they fire you. The z/10 can virtualise 1500 windows box emulating a local network running at 10GBYTEs no bit.

And with a dividend of more than 8,50 $ a share, I say the maritime industry is flourishing !

IBM = International Boat & Marine – They make the best anchors in the marine business!

Who thinks this? Did you read the article? Also, should we buy things based on what everyone else is buying? Does the platform with the most software become the best platform? How many of those apps do you actually use? With that logic we should all be using PalmOS based phones and playing video games on Atari 2600. The only joke around here is you!

Perhaps IBM employees do not need source code for the apps they are running. Perhaps they don’t need the choice of window manager. I suspect they want to take the computers out of the box, turn them on, and start using them. Sorry, but Linux is not for most desktop users. If it was then it would not keep seeing articles claiming each year, for the past 5+ years, is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.

- IBM itself did not launch the Mac@IBM website, but rather it was launched by a European employee in Research but the website is hosted on IBM servers. The website has a small but active forum community and links to more information and Mac downloads (such as Mac versions of Lotus Notes (v. 7), Office for Mac, and Lotus Sametime for example) for which IBM provides licenses.

- IBM employees still receive an employee discount from Apple. One can purchase it from Apple’s online store via a link found at the Mac@IBM website or they can show their IBM employee badge at any Apple retail store and receive the discount. The discounts vary depending on whether the item being purchased is software, consumer hardware or pro hardware.

- Aside from the pilot program, a limited number of employees have received approval from their managers to get an Apple laptop as their primary work laptop. This is not widespread at all but shows there is willingness to allow the employees to have the equipment that will make them (the individual) most productive.

As stated in the Roughly Drafted story, I see this as evidence of IBM’s desire to offer choices to both its employees and also allow it to offer solutions to its customers who desire to use Macs in their companies.

Secondly, just because a trial size is small does not mean it is not worth writing about – especially considering this was just phase 1 of the trial and the subsequent ones will be larger.

Third, the mentality that “99%” of people do something so nothing new should ever be tried is a dangerous one. There is clearly an expanding number of people out there underwhelmed or upset with what Microsoft has been putting out for its operating systems in recent years. Should they be forced to keep using it simply because it’s the norm? I don’t think so.

Lastly, that statement you cite is not from me, but from IBM’s study. Please try to read the article next time – it may just help your argument.