Forrester relents: Recommends Macs for business because your boss wants one

9to5 Staff | Oct 27 2011 - 8:11 am PT

IT managers’ thinking is influenced by a myriad of business factors, including research studies advising them not to adopt Apple’s computers. But their attitude is changing as Forrester Research, one of the most outspoken proponents of the Mac-free business environment, now backpedals on their 2008 report which called for a total banishment of Macs in the workplace – even for the most mundane tasks such as handling email.

According to the Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, a new Forrester survey (available for sale on the corporate card here) of 590 IT managers, Mac users comprise “the 17 percent of information workers who use new technologies and find innovative ways to be more productive and serve customers more effectively”. Wow, talk about change in stance. But wait, there’s more. “Mac users are your HEROes and you should enable them not hinder them”, the report concludes, HEROes being a Forrester acronym for Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives.

Just like with iPhone, “Macs are being freewheeled into the office” by corporate higher-ups – typically executives, sales reps and other workaholics – who rely on MacBook Pro machines rather than Windows notebooks which “are slowing them down”:

Employees want their PCs to boot in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes, and they don’t want to have to get a cup of coffee while opening a 20 MB spreadsheet in Excel. They’re drawn to uncluttered Macs — especially those with solid-state drives, which are more responsive and boot in seconds.

That, and the looks…

As you could imagine, this is also a question of pride and ego for those well-paid suits who spare no cost shying away from cheapo Windows PCs in favor of Apple’s aluminum-clad machines that look business and ooze class:

These power brokers don’t want to show up to a meeting with a plastic laptop that sends the subliminal message that they aren’t prosperous enough to afford something nicer.

Steve Jobs vividly explained his annoyance with corporate IT managers who make purchasing decisions in a fireside chat with the Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg at the D8 conference:

What I love about the consumer market and I always hated about the enterprise market is we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it and every person votes for it themselves. They vote yes or no,” Jobs said. The enterprise market, it’s not so simple – the people that use the product don’t decide for themselves. The people that make those decisions sometimes are confused.

The last line earned Apple’s then CEO a loud belly-rumbling laughter of approval from the audience.

Image credit: Asa Mathat | AllThingsDigital