It doesn't seem like anyone really read beyond the headline for that IBM keynote. He was only referring to the difference in cost for enterprise support across 100,000 machines.
Exactly. The headline of the article[0] Cringely links - IBM says it is 3X more expensive to manage PCs than Macs - doesn't even say anything about Apple computers being "cheaper to own", as Cringely puts it.
Admittedly, I haven't read the entire thing. I stopped when I got to third paragraph because it seemed like an odd statement with no real backup other than the very general quote from IBM -
> There are lots of reasons for this, not least that better OS software means Apple needs to update its systems far less often than Microsoft updates Windows. "We have to go out and manage the Mac environment 104 fewer times a year than PC," Previn said.
I don't doubt IBM's information here by any means, but just as with Cringley's and my own example of consumer MacBook ownership, it's only one example - "IBM finds Apple computers cheaper to manage", not "Apple computers are cheaper to own".
Wasn't one of the main premises of it that it reduced IT support time? "Only 5% of IBM's Mac employees needed help desk support versus 40% of PC users." In that case, it's even less of a relevant comparison now.
