IBM considering Macs for employees?

Is Big Blue about to go Mac?

Well, not really. Roughly Drafted Magazine has obtained a document which describes a pilot program at IBM that has employees using Macs for their day-to-day work. Now, they aren't looking to ditch Windows in favor of Mac OS entirely. Instead, IBM wants to have diverse operating systems available to employees. From the document:

"Research is focusing on providing an IBM application stack on multiple Operating Systems, rather than be confined to one or the other."

At the end of the program's first phase, a full 86% of participants asked to keep their Macs, leaving comments like "It has been easier learning the Mac than learning Vista" and "Getting wireless running was a piece of cake on the Mac, much simpler than the PC" (amen to that, brother). Of course, this is probably an easier sell now that IBM doesn't make PCs any more.

Someone cue the chick with the sledgehammer.

[Via Infinite Loop]

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Source: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/16/ibm-launches-pilot-…

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Is Big Blue about to go Mac?Well, not really. Roughly Drafted Magazine has obtained a document which describes a pilot program at IBM that...

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MOAT

Macs are faster and more efficient. We use them for our work operations and communication has never been easier.

April 21 2008 at 2:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bill Grant

Another IBM Mac user here... With Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion it has become even easier to use a Mac at IBM. For a 300K+ employee company, employees are pretty well empowered to use the OS and applications they need to get their job done. Whenever I go to other companies and see it take weeks to get software they need to do their job installed I scratch my head. The money spent on productivity lost could have been spent securing the networks.

April 17 2008 at 8:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

We Shall Prevail!

April 17 2008 at 7:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

An OS-independent stack?

Perhaps they should start building apps on CommonPoint again :)

April 17 2008 at 3:48 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joshua Ochs

I also work at IBM - you can use pretty much whatever you want as long as you get your work done. XP, Vista, Linux, Macs - heck, if you can get Lotus Notes running on an Amiga, more power to you. It's really quite enlightened that way. We've been doing stuff like this unofficially for a long time; looks like someone just got the go-ahead to create an official build.

There are three critical things every IBM employee needs - VPN client (which has actually been one of the most difficult parts of using a Mac), Lotus Notes (which now integrates Sametime instant messaging and OpenOffice), and Java (we have lots of internal apps written in it). After that, it's just whatever you need to do your job.

I've run my Thinkpad in a VM on my Mac whenever I travel, and I know many others use Macs that way (especially if your laptop hasn't been refreshed in a while and you have a nice MacBook Pro or Mac Pro sitting nearby).

April 17 2008 at 1:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Joshua Ochs's comment

James Ransdall

I start work for IBM in 13 short days and am trying to find out if my Macophilia will provoke any sort of allergic reaction. Obviously, I'd buy my own, install the Notes client, run Windows as needed in Fusion, etc., but is there any "authority" I can point to assure that it's OK?

April 29 2008 at 5:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Luigi193

Wow... macs for employees? What's wrong with the humans? Has AI come that far?!

April 17 2008 at 12:30 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Virtuous

Over the years I've switched back and forth. My next computer will be a Macbook. With VMWare or Parallels I can easily install and run any OS that I would have an interest in. There's no driver issues.

April 17 2008 at 12:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Josh Bancroft

Feh. Intel's been running a pilot program of a few hundred Macs for about a year now. I've been using them for longer than that - my MBP is my main and only machine, with a Parallels VM for the times I really need to live in Microsoft world. Its been awesome, and I hope to see the program grow.

I'm surprised no one has talked about it to the press - like, done a press release or something. I'll talk to the folks in charge of it, and/or PR and see if we can start tooting our own horn a little.

Macs rule! :-)

April 17 2008 at 12:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joe

My cousin works for IBM, and has been using Macs for 6 or 7 years.

April 16 2008 at 11:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply