The Total Economic Impact™ Of Apple Mac For Business

Reduced Support And Management Costs

Evidence and data. According to interviewees, Mac devices were more efficient to provision, required less maintenance and fewer manual updates, and experienced fewer security incidents than other devices, which enabled IT teams to manage more devices per employee. The organizations reduced support and management costs in the following areas:

• Deployment. Most of the interviewees said that to deploy PC devices at their organization, IT team members physically had to intercept the devices and conduct the initial setup. The organizations drastically shortened their device deployment processes for Mac devices by implementing a process for automatic, zero-touch deployment.
  
  The director of mobile product and innovation at a financial services organization said that for Mac devices with Apple Business Manager and streamlined enrollment already in place, the devices ship directly to users. They said: “It’s completely operationally hands off so that you can request it through service now. When it is ordered, it goes through our reseller, our reseller then ships it, [and] it’ll either ship to the office or ship to home. So, [there is no] IT support staff that helps handle the devices on the Mac side … because it’s essentially just drop-ship to user, and the user is set up.”
  
  The global head of Apple partnership at a technology services organization described using an open-source tool to create a user interface presentation layer that would run automatically for new users while their devices were being set up on the back end. They told Forrester, “[With the new deployment process], we’re saving seven hours of time per [Mac] device that we roll out here [compared to other devices].”
• Support tickets. Interviewees also reported receiving fewer support tickets from Mac users and that problems on Mac devices were easier to solve. The global head of Apple partnership at a technology organization shared that their Level 1 support team received five times more support calls from PC users than Mac users. The IT superintendent in financial services noted: “[With a PC], you face so many problems regarding memory leaks, processor problems, and application malfunctions. These are things that you don’t face with Mac devices.”
  
  Interviewees said that when issues did arise, they were often easier to identify and resolve than issues on other device types due to device conformity, lower complexity of the Mac ecosystem, and the mobile device management solutions they used to manage the devices and applications remotely. The director of mobile product and innovation in financial services said: “It makes things a little bit simpler when it comes to triage. So, you’re not asking [users] all these 30 different questions like, ‘What’s your image?’ [and] ‘What do you want?’”
• Ongoing IT management. Interviewees said that in addition to saving time during procurement and support, IT teams at their organizations found efficiencies in device management and updates, vulnerability identification and remediation, and compliance and auditing that allowed them to manage more devices with fewer IT employees. The senior MacOS engineer at a healthcare organization told Forrester that just two people at their company managed 2,500 Mac devices. The CTO at a financial services organization shared, “We have a process to identify vulnerabilities or operating system lack of updates, and it was much easier to run those updates and enhance the Mac operating systems than [it is for PCs].”
  
  Interviewees said Apple’s investment in enterprise management capabilities helped streamline the patching process and make it easier for IT teams to apply common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) updates. The director of mobile product and innovation at a separate financial services organization explained that when minor macOS updates were released, there were rarely issues that would impact the core operating system, which made it easier to apply updates without encountering compatibility or stability issues. They said: “It’s less time patch on CVEs for sure. … When we look at minor releases of macOS to address CVEs, we rarely, if ever, see any issue that would impact the core build with the patch. So, say you are going from 13.6.0 to 13.6.1, you don’t need to go and requalify all the applications on the OS to make sure that there’s no downstream impacts to the CVE remediation on the Mac.”
  
  The director of IT infrastructure at the foods manufacturing and distribution organization calculated that image maintenance of PC devices security incident resolution took hundreds of hours per year, which was drastically reduced for Apple devices.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Thirty percent of the 12,500 employees who enter the device choice program in Year 1 (3,750 employees) choose Mac as their new or replacement machine. This percentage increases to 35% in Year 2 and to 40% in Year 3. By the end of Year 3, 13,125 employees use a Mac.
• Each PC user files an average of six support tickets per year. Each ticket costs $20 to resolve on average, including the time spent by support staff and any hardware or software replacements or repairs.
• Mac users create 60% fewer tickets than PC users, and each Mac ticket costs 20% less to resolve than a PC ticket.
• Following Mac deployment best practices, an IT FTE can manage an average of 600 Mac devices compared to 300 PCs.
• The average fully burdened annual compensation for an IT FTE is $102,410.
• Each IT FTE recaptures 80% of their saved time into added productivity.

Risks. The expected financial impact is subject to risks and variation based on factors including the organization’s:

• Employee eligibility for device choice and preference for Mac devices.
• Average cost to resolve a support ticket per PC and per Mac.
• Integration challenges associated with deploying Mac devices into PC environments.
• IT device-management structure and efficiency.
• Compensation amounts and structures for IT employees and recapture rates of productivity on saved time.
• Deployment and management structures of Mac devices in the organization.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a five-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $7.3 million.

Reduced And Avoided Hardware, Software, And Energy Costs

Evidence and data. Interviewees said that by purchasing Mac devices, their organizations avoided the cost of the PC devices they would have provided to employees along with the cost of all associated device software. Because Mac devices do not require the additional purchase of an OS license, some of the interviewees’ organizations took advantage of Apple’s automatic OS updates and built-in security features to forego purchasing and deploying endpoint security licenses for Mac devices that they deployed on all PCs.

• The architect at a retail organization told Forrester that in terms of employee device choice, they equated a MacBook Air to a very premium PC. They said, “A PC that we procure today costs us about $2,300, and the same MacBook Air that would be deployed to the same type of user who’s chosen a Mac costs us about $1,250.”  
• The VP of clinical systems in healthcare highlighted that the simplicity of the software their organization deployed on Apple devices streamlined their provisioning, “[For] the [PC] architecture, our security and device provisioning is pretty clunky because we have a custom soup of stuff that gets put onto each of these devices based on our legacy policies for devices in the [PC] environment.”
• Interviewees whose organizations tested the energy consumption of their devices found that Mac devices consume less energy than equivalent PCs. The VP of clinical systems in healthcare said their organization tested the baseline average draw for all legacy devices that were on the PC architecture and then did the same comparison for iMacs, Mac Minis, and MacBook Airs. They found that a [PC] laptop had a draw of 45 versus a draw of 20 for a MacBook Air, which delivered an energy reduction of more than 50%. Nearly two-thirds of the surveyed decision-makers agreed that their organization reduced its energy consumption after investing in MacBook Air devices.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The average cost of an enterprise PC is $1,100, which represents an average of all PCs that would be provided to employees eligible for the device choice program.

• The composite organization pays $85 per device for a third-party hardware support contract that covers the device for four years.
• The organization pays an average of $132 per device per year (or $11 per month) for a combined MDM and OS license.
• The organization deploys security software on each PC that costs $192 annually per device (or $16 per month).
• The organization pays 17 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, and it pays for the consumption of each laptop for 8 hours a day for 144 in-office working days per year or 60% of 240 standard working days per year.
• Deployed PCs on average draw 45W of power, while deployed Mac devices draw 20W.

Risks. The expected financial impact is subject to risks and variation based on factors including the organization’s:

• Employee eligibility for device choice and level of preference for Mac devices.
• Choice of enterprise PC, third-party hardware support, OS, MDM solution, and security software, and their associated costs.
• Cost of energy and number and frequency of employees using company-supplied electricity to power their devices.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a five-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $21.2 million.

Cost Savings From Reduced Risk Of A Data Breach

Evidence and data. Interviewees cited Apple’s fundamental device architecture, automatic encryption, operating system design and automatic updates, and facilitation of threat detection as contributors to improved overall security of Mac devices. Multiple interviewees pointed to a lower frequency of security incidents on their organization’s Mac devices. Two-thirds of 242 surveyed hardware purchase decision-makers said their organization improved its security management or security posturing by using MacBook Air devices, and they cited an improved ability to detect, respond to, and recover from threats. More than half said their organization reduced the time IT teams spent on compliance and audit activities and decreased the number of security incidents on devices.

• The senior MacOS engineer at a healthcare organization told Forrester they believe the built-in protection from malware and viruses allows their organization to consider each Mac secure out of the box. They said, “Macs come secure in the box. [With PCs], you need to do a lot of stuff [to get the same level of security]. So, for me, it’s a big difference.”
• Interviewees pointed to Apple’s software partitioning and single component sourcing as minimizing third-party threat vectors. With Apple’s declarative device management model, devices can identify actions such as OS updates or security patches that are based on defined criteria and take them independently of a command from a centralized server. The VP of clinical systems at a healthcare organization told Forrester: “We feel that even if something bad happened to a device and it crumpled, there’s no spread across the enterprise’s origin vector into the organization as the source for a cybersecurity event. That’s how [the security benefits are] manifesting on our end. And related to that, [as a] further reason to strip out the extra [security applications], that’s relevant in a [PC] environment but not relevant in a macOS environment because of that single supply for all the components and the firmware and the operating system and the software.”
• The IT superintendent at a financial services organization shared: “[PC devices] have more vulnerabilities than [Mac devices] because you are able to install any kind of application that you can download, and you can click on an email with a phishing [link], and Apple devices are shielded against this kind of software. We are a bank, so we are very concerned about security and data privacy, and we know that the human [part] in this chain is the weakness of the process. So, I think that Apple devices are able to shield [my organization] from the vulnerabilities that [PCs are] exposed [to].”  
• The director of IT infrastructure at the food manufacturing and distribution organization shared that their company analyzed its security incidents and learned it experienced about 37 security incidents in a quarter from PC platforms, but only two from Apple.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and Forrester research, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has an 89% chance of experiencing at least one data breach each year, and its mean cumulative cost of breaches in one year is $5,065,000. ⁴
• More than 71% of breaches originate from external attacks or internal organizational incidents, and another 10.2% of breaches come from a lost or stolen asset. ⁵
• Usage of a Mac rather than a PC decreases the composite’s level of risk exposure to a breach due to an external attack or internal incident by 15%.
• Usage of a Mac rather than a PC decreases the composite’s level of risk exposure to a breach due to a lost or stolen asset by 90%.

Risks. The expected financial impact is subject to risks and variation based on factors including the organization’s:

• Employee eligibility for device choice and level of preference for Mac devices.
• Unique risk profile as it relates to the average risk of different types of data breaches and overall scale, impact, and cost of a potential breach.
• Security posturing and sophistication and speed of threat prevention, response, and remediation.  

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a five-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $530,000.

Improved Employee Productivity

Evidence and data. Interviewees and surveyed end users highlighted faster device startup, saved time, and improved productivity for employees who chose to switch to Mac devices. They said faster processing speeds, better application reliability and performance, a more intuitive user experience, and a longer battery life all contributed to improving overall employee engagement and productivity. Overall, 70% of surveyed Mac end users reported that using a Mac device at work contributed to higher levels of productivity and 55% said it led to higher satisfaction.

• Faster device startup and login. Interviewees lauded the speed of Mac startup and logins and said it saved end users time each time they began to work. The senior MacOS engineer in healthcare described: “If I close my lid, open my lid, [or] put my finger on the touch bar [or] the touch ID, I can do my work. It [takes] seconds.”
  
  Interviewees from organizations with employees whose time or engagement is directly correlated with revenue said this was particularly valuable. The VP of clinical systems at a healthcare organization noted that Mac devices directly improved doctor profitability and experiences. They said: “If I open up a [PC] today, I wait and I wait. I might even have to wait till I can log in, and then I wait. Each cycle that I’m waiting is a doctor’s time wasted. … It takes seven minutes to get all your sessions to load up, log in, [and] authenticate. So, it’s time. Doctor time is doctor money is doctor engagement scores is burnout.” The interviewee also said that with Mac’s biometric login, their organization’s physicians reduced their productivity lag to zero.
  
  End users were also able to get started faster when they first received their laptops. The director of mobile product and innovation told Forrester, “In the last year, I’d say the developer onboarding process for a new developer to get himself set up was two days. And to get them sorted, we’ve got it down to an hour.”
• Faster processing speeds and application performance. Interviewees lauded Mac’s speed and performance for both routine and compute-heavy tasks. The director of mobile product and innovation in financial services noted that their organization’s dedicated AI team leverages Macs for its modeling and development.
  
  The architect at a retail organization said: “In general, software runs in a better way on a Mac. That’s why we have to have more powerful horsepower on the PC side. Even [competitors’] own software runs better. [A competitors’ messaging app] works better on a Mac Air M1 than it does on a [PC]. So, a processor that costs double the amount can’t deal with the software in the same way. And I can say that for a fact because I’ve tested [the messaging app] on both platforms and proved this point internally because people didn’t believe me.”
  
  The same interviewee said the biggest piece of end-user feedback their team has received since moving to the MacBook Air M1 series was that users no longer have to close tabs or applications due to overworked memory and CPU.
• Better battery performance and portability. Interviewees said that Macs have longer battery life, which enabled users to continue to work while on the go or in remote locations without interruption or having to carry around a large power block. The senior MacOS engineer at a healthcare organization said this was especially helpful for doctors who frequently move from room to room. They said: “People are carrying their [PC] AC adapters with them because the battery dies on a [PC]. But on a Mac, you can easily work 10 [or] 11 hours.”
  
  The CTO at the retail organization told Forrester that the battery life remained long throughout the device lifespan, saying: “The battery life changed dramatically since the M series. … It’s amazing. I can work up to 10 hours without charging, even [with] my laptop from 2020.”
• Easier navigation and user experience. According to interviewees, many end users were already comfortable using Mac devices because they used iOS or Mac devices outside of work. The director of mobile product and innovation at a financial services organization described, “Employees know how to navigate far more effectively on a Mac than they do on [PCs], so there are definitely experience improvements in that regard.”
  
  The IT superintendent at another financial services organization said: “The Apple devices are very, very easy to use. You just move your fingers [and] you can use your touchpads, and it’s very easy to access the applications and move through the applications.”
  
  The principal product manager at a food and beverage organization told Forrester their company tracked end-user satisfaction across devices. When describing the results, they said: “The Mac was through the roof on … satisfaction and importance. ‘Importance’ got a 99%, ‘satisfaction’ [got a] 92%, ‘works reliably’ [got a] 91%, ‘makes job easier’ [got a] 96%, ‘easy to use’ [got a] 93%, [and] ‘easy to navigate’ [got a] 92%. … Other devices that were being scored were not even in the ballpark. This is by far the highest-scoring device or application that they use. We’ve also correlated satisfaction to retention and reducing turnover, but this has been one of the most successful products that we’ve had in the retail space.”
• Fewer device issues and faster issue resolution. In addition to IT service teams saving time, end users also benefitted from Mac devices experiencing fewer support tickets. Almost two-thirds of 39 surveyed Mac end users who responded to this question experienced fewer device issues with the Mac device, and more than half reported they spend less time investigating device issues or waiting for issue resolution.
  
  Additionally, interviewees said Apple’s supply chain ensured that replacement devices were shipped quickly. The lead systems analyst at the food and beverage organization noted, “We’ve found that people who need replacement MacBooks are getting them in half the time that it takes to get [a competing OS] today.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Employees who choose Mac devices spend 45 fewer minutes per month waiting for their devices to start up or update and 55 fewer minutes per month on issue investigation and waiting for resolution.  
• The average fully burdened hourly compensation for a Mac end user is $42.
• Employees who switch to Mac from PC experience a 3.5% overall increase in productivity.  
• Each Mac end user recaptures 40% of saved time into added productivity.

Risks. The expected financial impact is subject to risks and variation based on factors including the organization’s:

• Employee eligibility for device choice and level of preference for Mac devices.
• Employee duties and opportunities for improved productivity based on device performance, reliability, portability, and other device features.
• Employee compensation rates and structures, as well as recapture rates of productivity on saved time.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a five-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $46.4 million.

Recovered Device Residual Value

Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations had a variety of approaches to device lifetime and recycling or reutilization. Refresh rates ranged from three to five years, though some interviewees said their organization still supported devices that were up to nine years old. Most organizations that utilized both Mac and PC devices standardized both device types onto the same device lifecycle rate. For organizations that purchased their devices and received a residual value for trading them in at the end of their specified lifecycles, the residual valuation depended on device age, technical specifications, and specific agreements between external partners. Interviewees who knew residual values their organization received for device types reported that they received higher amounts for Mac devices than equivalent PCs to the order of 30% of the device cost. The retail CTO told Forrester, “The value after three years of a Mac is still way higher than any [PC] laptop on the market, so it keeps its value.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization purchases its laptops outright and retires them after four years to an asset recovery program that allows it to recover the residual value of each device.
• The average cost for an enterprise PC is $1,100, and it maintains a 15% residual value after four years.
• The cost of an enterprise MacBook Air is $1,299, and it maintains a 30% residual value after four years.

Risks. The expected financial impact is subject to risks and variation based on factors including the organization’s:

• Employee eligibility for device choice and level of preference for Mac devices.
• Device purchase type (e.g., purchasing or leasing) and life-cycle length.
• Choice of what to do with Mac devices at the end of their life.
• Device use cases and average device wear and tear.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a five-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $498,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Extended device lifetime. Multiple interviewees lauded Mac devices as having a longer usable lifespan than their organization’s PC devices due to build quality, durability, and a slower degree of performance degradation. Interviewees in financial services said their organizations   have hundreds of Macs that they used for more than five years. The lead systems analyst at a food and beverage organization explained: “We’ll hear that when a Mac user is up for a refresh in the non-retail setting, more of the Mac users say: ‘I don’t need a new machine. Mine works fine.’ Whereas a lot of the [PC] users are like, ‘Oh, [thank] goodness.’” Survey respondents reported that their organization extended its device lifetime with Mac devices by more than 13 months over previous device types.
• Improved brand reputation and employee acquisition. Interviewees said that in addition to enhancing employee productivity and engagement, offering Mac devices positively contributed to their organization’s brand reputation and employee acquisition and retention. The retail CTO said to Forrester, “Everybody’s happy with [the Mac devices]. They’re also important during job interviews and talent acquisition.” Interviewees said they believe employees with a choice of device or who were offered Mac devices upon employment felt like the organization was investing in their well-being.
• Synergies with other Apple products. Interviewees whose organization used other Apple products in addition to Mac devices spoke of the seamless transition between devices as a productivity add for employees. The VP of clinical systems at a healthcare organization described: “The interaction between macOS, iPadOS, and iOS is noteworthy — particularly around productivity. Pick up on one device where you left off on the other device, even though it’s a different class of device.” Other interviewees pointed to personal hotspots and iPhones as particularly valuable examples of device connectivity. Additionally, they said because M-series Macs are compatible with iOS and iPadOS applications, it enables their organizations to run iPhone and iPad applications natively on Mac laptops.
• Reduced emissions from lower energy usage. With ESG goals becoming more common, and the SEC setting a future mandate for climate-related investor disclosures, corporate tracking energy usage and carbon footprints will accelerate in importance. According to interviewees and Forrester research, Mac devices consume less electricity and they generally contribute less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than PCs or even older Mac devices. Extrapolated to hundreds or thousands of devices, these savings can lead to significant ESG improvements for an organization.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement the use of Mac devices at their organization and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Enhanced ability to take advantage of technology that requires highly performant devices. With the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other computationally intensive technologies on the rise, having the internal architecture in place to quickly deploy and easily manage highly performant Mac devices may prove beneficial. The IT superintendent from one of the financial services organizations said they’re specifically looking forward to using Mac devices for generative AI use cases in the future: “The M1 and M2 processors have an advantage processing and testing machine learning algorithms. So, in the next years, maybe [my organization] can take advantage of processing these kinds of algorithms in a large way.”
• Improving time to value for mergers or acquisitions of organizations with Mac deployments. One of the interviewees said their organization acquired another organization that mostly used Mac devices, and their company had not been managing any Mac devices and had no visibility into the new devices. Organizations running a choice program that includes multiple device types and operating systems may facilitate more seamless technology integration when they encounter new device types.
• Future synergies with products within the Apple ecosystem. Just like the existing synergies between iPhones, iPads, and Mac devices, future Apple products that businesses use will be more valuable when they can integrate with the primary devices that employees use for work. The CTO at a retail organization told Forrester that Apple Vision Pro will benefit their organization’s scalability, with uses such as helping designers and decision-makers imagine stores in different cities around the world.
• Access to future device upgrades. As Apple continues to invest in software upgrades, Mac users will enjoy device and OS upgrades at no cost throughout the duration of device ownership.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A ).