IBM is wise to do so. The Thinkpad W540 that developers hired in summer 2014-summer 2015 got is terrible for Linux: graphics driver problems, the trackpad is a horrible piece of junk that wholly depresses 1mm into the body and has a texture that wears off after several <i>weeks</i> (most folks who have them, and there's a lot of them, carry mice instead), and they weigh a ton. A coworker just got a Thinkpad W541 and it improves on the trackpad by readding the missing thumb buttons under the spacebar.<p>The W530 and W520 weren't much better: they didn't have the terrible trackpads. IIRC the W520's graphics stack worked better, but that was three years ago. I helped an intern set up a W520 and it still had some issues before we got it stable. I wouldn't call myself a super expert Linux admin, but I do remember a day when I had to manually configure XFree86.<p>I came into IBM through acq. I'm a Mac guy these days, and was before the acq, where I'd used a HP machine with Linux when I first joined the company because there were no Macs to spare. When my pre-acq Mac couldn't run the Linux binaries I needed for work, I switched to a T420 and disliked it. I used R4x series in college and LOVED them.<p>I'm seeing more and more Macs around my office. We were probably 60% Thinkpads with Linux, 30% Mac, 10% Thinkpads with Windows going into 2015. I had been seeing Mac growth for a while, but it was all BYOD. Now that the deal went through, most folks up for a machine refresh are choosing Macs, mostly because that's what they own themselves. Some of the few die-hard Windows folks are even getting Macs and dual booting Windows.<p>Like others, I can't really comment on the purchase quantity, mostly because I'm not privvy to that information!