MacStadium, the industry leader in Mac cloud solutions, today announced findings from its inaugural CIO Survey on the evolving role of Apple in the enterprise. A new survey, conducted by Censuswide, of U.S. CIOs shows that Apple Macs, long favored by developers and executives, are now being adopted at scale for enterprise AI workloads. With 73% of CIOs citing AI processing as the top use case, Macs are moving beyond creative and app development to serve as secure, energy-efficient infrastructure for the next wave of enterprise computing.
“The findings confirm what we’re seeing with our customers every day: Apple is no longer just for developers. Macs are powering AI workloads, executive teams, creative functions and enterprise-wide workflows,” said Ken Tacelli, CEO of MacStadium. “As organizations accelerate their cloud strategies, Apple infrastructure has become an essential, enterprise-ready component of IT environments. MacStadium is proud to be at the center of this shift.” The survey of 300 U.S. CIOs found that Apple accounts for an average of 63% of enterprise endpoints, with an overwhelming 96% of CIOs expecting Mac investments to grow in the next 12–24 months. Nearly all respondents (99%) consider Apple technologies important to their IT strategies, with more than one in five (22%) describing them as mission-critical.
AI applications are driving unprecedented Mac adoption in enterprise environments. Among organizations using Macs, 73% rely on them for AI processing, making it the top-reported use case and surpassing traditional workloads like iOS/macOS development (68%) and build/test/deploy workflows (61%). Supporting this upward trend, this survey underscores the security advantages of running AI workloads on Mac hardware: its architecture and operating system, including hardware security features and strong isolation models, offer a high-trust environment for sensitive processing, combining performance with energy efficiency and privacy. This makes Macs especially compelling for organizations seeking to deploy private, cloud-based AI that can scale across teams without compromising on trust. CIOs report significant benefits from Apple investments, including better performance for dev/test workflows (64%), improved employee satisfaction (63%), and enhanced integration with iOS/iPadOS workflows (58%).
Cloud-based solutions are driving this momentum. An overwhelming 97% of CIOs report using Mac infrastructure in the cloud (e.g., MacStadium, AWS EC2 Mac), with nearly four in five (77%) leveraging it extensively. As hybrid-cloud adoption surges and enterprises explore new frontiers in AI, Macs are uniquely positioned to serve as the backbone of secure and scalable infrastructure. Macs are no longer relegated to niche developer tasks; they are emerging as a robust, secure foundation for enterprise workloads.
Additional highlights from the survey include: * 93% of CIOs report increased Apple device usage over the past two years. * 45% of CIOs describe their leadership’s view of Macs as a strategic investment, reflecting growing executive-level buy-in. * The top drivers for Apple adoption are security and privacy (59%), employee preference (59%), and hardware performance (54%). * 65% of CIOs say macOS is easier to manage than Windows/Linux, underscoring Apple’s growing IT appeal. * 97% of CIOs would expand Mac adoption further if more enterprise-ready management solutions were introduced.
The survey findings underscore a fundamental shift: Macs have moved beyond developer-centric use cases to become a foundational platform for enterprise IT strategies, especially in cloud and AI-enabled environments.
MacStadium provides enterprise cloud solutions specifically designed for macOS, simplifying Mac for business through orchestration, automation, virtualization, and customization. With a focus on performance, security, and reliability, MacStadium empowers organizations worldwide to develop, test, and deploy their business-critical applications on Apple hardware everywhere.
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