IT has an easy choice as Microsoft ends Windows 10 support

How hard can it be to abandon a 10-year old operating system in favor of something more modern, more stable, and more secure? That’s the opportunity IT enjoys with the coming expiration of Windows 10 support in October, giving admins the freedom to make a better choice.

Sure, not everyone in IT is shifting to Apple. Many enterprises remain trapped in the Windows ecosystem through reliance on proprietary and/or third-party applications that do not support the Mac.

There’s also the pernicious nature of the Windows lock-in, which means many in IT have a vested interest in sticking with the platform, even when it doesn’t necessarily provide the best tools for the job.

It’s time to break free

Yet for many, and certainly those in regulated industries in which privacy and security are important, Apple’s platforms do deliver the best toys for the task; you can see this in Apple’s accelerating Mac market share. The fact you can run Windows in VM on a Mac is just a chef’s kiss to support the platform advantage.

For many, the problem is the transition itself. They know that migrating from Windows to Mac will generate some problems — employees will need to re-learn the system, certain software and security routines that are taken for granted will have to be revisited, and there will inevitably be some forgotten apps and services that must be replaced. (To be fair, Apple knows this, too, and continues to improve enterprise deployments across its products.)

That means that any migration to the Mac will take a great deal of planning — or, perhaps, support from one of the many enterprise-focused Apple specialists that exist now, from Addigy to Jamf, Fleet to Hexnode, Kandji to JumpCloud, Mosyle, ScaleFusion, and more.

Each of these firms can help you figure out some of the challenges to Mac deployments at your company, and you’ll find that at least one of these service suppliers can help build up the IT infrastructure you need to manage your new kit.

Be sure before you walk out the door

The big strategic picture is that if you want to make a move Mac-ward, you’re not alone — and if you live near an Apple retail store, you can avail yourself of help and resources provided by the company’s own small army of enterprise tech specialists.

While help is available, the extent of this learning curve might put off some IT decision makers who now need to upgrade their systems from Windows 10. But decision makers should also balance the risks and challenges of upgrading to Windows 11.

What about the impact on operational devices, third-party hardware such as printers or scanners, on-prem apps or even widely used shadow apps that might not have been disclosed? You can rest assured that the larger the scope of the Windows 11 deployment, the higher the associated costs.

Then there are the end users. I’ll be honest, I’ve heard nothing but frustration from users who’ve been forced to move to Windows 11 from 10. Anecdotally, they’ve found that pretty basic tasks (like PDF annotation) are much more challenging on the newer OS.

When you’re managing hundreds of users, small annoyances are consequential time stealers. Each one of those slices of ill-thought-through friction is another support ticket, and while it keeps tech admins employed, these trivial annoyances are budget line items on their own account. We already know that when given the choice, employees will usually opt for a Mac — and forcing them to use Windows software that doesn’t work like it should is not how to make your teams more productive. 

Life goes on

Accepting then that moving to Apple poses problems, and that migrating to Windows 11 also poses problems, IT should take a look at the Total Cost of Ownership between Mac and Windows. If they do, they’ll find that while Mac might seem slightly more expensive to purchase (but even then, not for long), the products last longer, require less tech intervention, are easier to manage, use, and run, hold value far longer, and have longer usable lives.

The modern Mac is also hugely performant, offering amazing computational power in every available machine. The current MacBook Air, for example, delivers far more computing power than the first M-series MacBook Pros. In other words, when you add it up, the Mac is likely to be more affordable than Windows. 

With so much to drive the argument and so little against it, it is of no surprise at all that the Windows 11 upgrade mania is translating into major Mac market share increases, according to IDC, Gartner, and Canalys.

Quite simply, Apple now seems to offer the best choice.

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