MacStadium

CIOs across industries are making a quiet but decisive shift. Macs are no longer treated as exceptions or one-off requests from developers. They are becoming central to enterprise infrastructure strategy, especially as organizations accelerate cloud adoption and AI initiatives. The newest MacStadium CIO Survey shows how far this movement has already progressed and why many IT leaders are re-evaluating their Apple footprint to make sure they are not falling behind their peers.

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Mac has become an enterprise standard

CIOs report a significant rise in Apple usage and investment.

Key findings:

Apple represents an average of 63% of enterprise endpoints

93% have increased Apple usage over the past two years

96% expect Mac investments to grow in the next one to two years

99% consider Apple important to their IT strategy

22% say Apple is mission critical

This shift reflects a new reality. Mac is no longer a niche device choice. It is becoming a foundation of enterprise IT strategy.

AI has become the top Mac workload

One of the most striking developments from the survey is how Mac is being used in a business context.

73% use them for AI processing

68% for iOS and macOS development

61% for build, test and deploy

51% for remote desktop access

AI is now the leading Mac use case, surpassing traditional developer workloads. Apple silicon, strong isolation models and macOS security are making Mac a preferred environment for high trust or private AI processing.

Cloud hosted Macs are the new norm

97% of CIOs say they use cloud-hosted Mac infrastructure, and 77% of them use it extensively.

Cloud hosted Macs support globally distributed engineering teams, elastic macOS build and test pipelines, and secure remote access. This is a signal of maturity. Mac is becoming part of the broader enterprise cloud architecture.

Measurable ROI for your business

Macs are seen as delivering clear operational and workforce benefits.

CIOs cite meaningful business impacts, such as:

Better performance for dev and test workflows (64%)

Higher employee satisfaction (63%)

Stronger integration with iOS and iPadOS environments (58%)

Enhanced security posture (53%)

Security and privacy are the top drivers of Apple adoption, tied with employee preference. Hardware performance and unique technical capabilities also play major roles.

The systems gap risk

Rapid Mac adoption (which is expected to boom with a new low-cost MacBook) has exposed a significant operational challenge for IT organizations.

CIOs’ top 5 challenges with Mac are:

Security & compliance gaps (36%)

Integration with existing software (34%)

User adoption / support (25%)

Cost justification (24%)

Limited enterprise support (23%)

Despite all those, 97% of CIOs surveyed would expand Mac adoption further with better enterprise ready management.

What this means for CIOs

Macs have made the jump from a device decision to an infrastructure decision for most enterprises. And leading CIOs are not asking whether they should grow their organization’s Mac environments. They’re asking how fast they realistically can.