Sooner or later, almost every growing business in Canada has the same conversation. A designer, a developer, or a new executive hire asks for a Mac instead of the Windows laptop everyone else in the company uses. It seems like a small request. The reality is that it changes how your IT team has to work every single day afterward, especially once Microsoft Intune enters the picture. This guide breaks down what actually changes when you introduce macOS into a Windows and Microsoft 365 environment, what it costs in real hours, and how to make the call with your eyes open instead of guessing.
We put this together as a practical guide for decision makers here in Vancouver and across Canada who are about to buy a batch of new devices and want to know, honestly, what supporting both platforms actually involves before they commit to it.
Why this decision keeps coming up
Ten years ago, most small and mid sized businesses simply bought Windows PCs for everyone and never thought twice about it. That has changed. Creative teams grew up on Macs. Developers often prefer macOS for its Unix based terminal. Executives who came from larger tech companies sometimes just expect a MacBook on day one. None of those reasons are unreasonable on their own. The problem is that each one gets evaluated in isolation, as a single device request, without anyone stepping back to ask what it costs the business to support two operating systems instead of one going forward.
What Windows already does better inside a Microsoft 365 environment
Windows and Microsoft 365 were built by the same company, and that shows up in ways that are easy to overlook until you are troubleshooting a problem at nine at night. Windows Hello for Business gives you passwordless sign in tied directly to Entra ID with no extra configuration layer. BitLocker encryption keys escrow natively into Intune and Entra with full reporting. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint reaches its deepest feature set on Windows first, with macOS support following later and often with a smaller subset of controls. Group Policy still works alongside Intune for organizations mid way through a cloud transition, which gives IT teams a fallback that simply does not exist on macOS. Even something as basic as connecting to a shared network printer or a mapped drive tends to be a five minute task on Windows and a genuinely awkward one on a Mac in a Windows dominated office network.
None of this means Macs are badly built machines. It means the tooling built around Windows and Microsoft 365 has had decades of the exact same vendor optimizing both ends of that relationship, and Apple's ecosystem, however good it is on its own terms, was never designed with that same tight integration in mind.
What changes the day you add one Mac, even without Intune
Before device management enters the conversation at all, a single Mac in an otherwise Windows office already creates friction. The OneDrive sync client behaves slightly differently on macOS, particularly around file locking and long file paths inherited from older Windows file structures. Some line of business applications, especially older accounting, industry specific, or custom built tools common in Canadian small businesses, simply do not have a Mac version and never will. VPN clients, printer drivers, and USB docking stations frequently ship with a smaller feature set, or no support at all, for macOS. None of this is expensive by itself. It is a slow accumulation of small support tickets that would not exist on a Windows only fleet.
Bringing macOS into Intune: what the setup actually involves
This is where the real workload shows up. Deploying a new Windows device through Autopilot is, at its core, a short and repeatable process once your tenant is configured: register the device's hardware ID, assign a deployment profile, and let the employee sign in on first boot. Everything else happens automatically inside Intune, with no third party involved.
Bringing a Mac fleet up to the same standard requires an entirely separate set of steps, most of which have no Windows equivalent at all.
Getting a Mac fleet to that same zero touch standard means creating an Apple Business Manager account and verifying your organization with Apple, requesting an Apple MDM push certificate through Apple's own portal using a specific Apple ID, uploading that certificate into Intune, generating a matching server token inside Apple Business Manager, syncing purchased devices from Apple into Intune, building and assigning an Automated Device Enrollment profile, and separately configuring FileVault encryption, compliance policies, and local account settings that do not carry over from your Windows configuration at all. On top of that, the Intune Company Portal app for macOS is not distributed through the Mac App Store, which means your team needs an actual communication plan so new Mac users know how to find and install it themselves.
None of these steps are difficult individually. Taken together, they are a genuinely separate deployment project layered on top of the one you already built for Windows, not a small add on to it.
That Apple MDM push certificate is not a set it and forget it item. It expires every 365 days, Apple gives you a 30 day grace period to renew it, and it stays permanently tied to whichever Apple ID created it. If that person leaves the company and nobody renews it in time, every enrolled Mac and iOS device loses its Intune connection at once and has to be wiped and re-enrolled. We have seen this catch more than one growing business off guard.
What the extra platform actually costs in hours
Industry support benchmarks consistently put the added overhead of running two device platforms instead of one at roughly 30 percent higher ongoing support cost, and the reasons line up with what we see in the field. Every software rollout has to be tested twice instead of once. Every new security policy needs a Windows version and a macOS version written, reviewed, and validated separately. Your help desk team needs two parallel sets of troubleshooting knowledge in their heads instead of one, and the person covering the phones on a Friday afternoon might be confident on Windows and much less confident walking a Mac user through the same kind of problem.
For a company already spending, say, twenty hours a month on device support and Modern Work maintenance, that thirty percent figure is the difference between twenty hours and twenty six hours a month, every month, for as long as both platforms are in use. It rarely shows up as one big invoice. It shows up as a slightly longer wait time on every ticket and a slightly bigger recurring managed services bill.
What devices actually cost right now
Hardware pricing is the number most people ask about first, and it is also the smallest part of the real cost difference. Here is where things stand for business grade devices as of mid 2026.
| Device | Starting price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MacBook Air, M4 chip | $1,399 CAD | Base configuration. Most business buyers add memory, which pushes real world pricing closer to $1,700 to $1,900 CAD. |
| Dell Latitude 5450 | ~$2,099 CAD | Business configured, current generation Intel Core Ultra processor. |
| Microsoft Surface Laptop, 13 inch | $1,649.99 CAD | Up from $1,349.99 CAD after Microsoft's April 2026 Canadian price increase. |
| Lenovo or HP business laptops | $1,800 to $2,400 CAD | Typical range for a comparably configured ThinkPad or EliteBook style device. |
On sticker price alone, a base MacBook Air can actually undercut a comparably specced Windows business laptop. That is a genuinely useful thing to know before you assume Windows is automatically the cheaper purchase, and it is exactly why we said earlier that hardware price is the smallest part of this decision. The real cost gap opens up after the device ships, in setup time, support time, and how many different tools your IT team has to keep current.
You may have seen the frequently cited IBM study claiming Macs actually save money at scale, and it is worth addressing directly rather than pretending it does not exist. That study covered over a hundred thousand devices managed with Jamf, Apple's own purpose built management platform, not Microsoft Intune. A large enterprise running dedicated Apple specific tooling is a different situation from a Microsoft 365 centric small or mid sized business running everything through Intune. The conclusion does not transfer cleanly, and for most of the businesses we work with, it does not apply at all.
When adding a Mac genuinely makes sense
None of this is an argument that Macs are the wrong choice everywhere. Creative teams working in Adobe's Apple first tools, developers who rely on a Unix based terminal, and organizations that already run a mature Apple specific management platform like Jamf alongside Intune can make a mixed fleet work well. The point is not to avoid Macs out of habit. It is to make the decision with the full cost in front of you, including the setup work and the ongoing support load, rather than approving one request at a time and discovering the total cost a year later.
A simple way to decide
If your company is under about twenty devices and nobody has a specific, work related reason for macOS, standardizing on Windows keeps your support model simple and your Intune tenant genuinely zero touch. If you already have five or more Macs in active use, it is usually worth doing the Apple Business Manager and Intune setup properly rather than letting them sit half managed, since half managed devices tend to be the least secure ones in the building. And if Macs make up a meaningful share of your fleet, twenty percent or more, it is worth having a real conversation about whether a dedicated Apple management tool alongside Intune would actually save your team more time than forcing Intune to do a job it was not originally built around.
Our Intune deployment and consulting team in Vancouver builds this decision into every Modern Work project from the start, and our hardware procurement service can put real, current pricing in front of you for whichever platform, or mix of platforms, you end up choosing.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to buy Macs or Windows laptops for a Microsoft 365 business?
The hardware itself is closer than most people expect. A MacBook Air with the M4 chip starts around $1,399 CAD, and a business grade Windows laptop like a Dell Latitude 5450 or Lenovo ThinkPad typically starts between $1,800 and $2,400 CAD once you configure it for business use. The real cost difference is not the sticker price. It shows up later in setup time, ongoing support, and the extra hours your IT team spends running two management systems instead of one.
Do Mac users need a different Microsoft 365 license?
No. Microsoft 365 licensing is per user, not per operating system, so a Mac user and a Windows user on the same plan cost exactly the same to license. Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, and OneDrive are all available for macOS. The cost difference between the two platforms comes entirely from device management and support, not from Microsoft 365 itself.
Can Microsoft Intune fully manage macOS the same way it manages Windows?
Mostly, but not completely. Intune can enroll, configure, and secure Mac devices, and Microsoft has genuinely improved that experience over the last couple of years, including newer features like Platform SSO. That said, macOS management in Intune still depends on a separate Apple Business Manager account, an Apple issued certificate that needs renewing every year, and scripting tools that are more limited than what is available natively on Windows. It works well once it is set up correctly, but it takes more steps to get there than Windows does.
What is Apple Business Manager and do we actually need it?
Apple Business Manager is Apple's own portal for registering your organization, buying apps in volume, and linking your Mac purchases to Intune so devices can enroll automatically the moment an employee opens the box. You do not strictly need it if you only have one or two Macs, since those can be enrolled manually. Once you are managing more than a handful of Mac devices, Apple Business Manager becomes the only realistic way to onboard them without physically touching every machine.
How long does it take to add macOS support to a Windows only Intune deployment?
For a business that already has Windows Autopilot running smoothly, adding proper macOS support usually adds one to two additional weeks to a Modern Work deployment project. That time covers setting up Apple Business Manager, requesting the Apple MDM push certificate, building separate compliance and configuration profiles for macOS, and testing the enrollment experience end to end, since almost none of the Windows configuration work carries over directly.
What happens if the Apple MDM push certificate expires?
Every Mac and iOS device enrolled through that certificate loses its connection to Intune, and each one has to be wiped and re-enrolled to bring it back under management. The certificate is valid for 365 days, Apple gives a 30 day grace period after it expires, and it is tied to whichever Apple ID created it in the first place, which becomes a real problem if that person has since left the company. This is one of the more common ways businesses accidentally lose control of their Mac fleet.
If you are about to buy a batch of new devices and want an honest answer on what supporting Windows, macOS, or both will actually cost your team, get in touch and we will walk through your specific environment before you spend a dollar.
Author: Elian Figueiredo