Big Blue was supposed to use its business clients and attempt to flog them Apple gear, forgetting that most of its clients were cash strapped and needed their gear for work rather than listening to Coldplay.

Now someone has suggested that Big Blue needs to put its money where its mouth is and use the partnership to buy Apple gear rather than the cheaper and more reliable stuff from Lenovo and Dell it uses.

According to 9 to5 Mac  IBM has started offering employees the use of Apple Mac machines.

Of course the Tame Apple Press suggests that the suits at IBM are falling over themselves to get the expensive Apple gear. However according to one IBM suit it is just as well it is optional.

"Some of us can't be arsed indoctrinating ourselves into a new operating system and lifestyle when we have serious work to do," one moaned to us.

Employees are offered a MacBook Pro, Macbook Air or traditional PC when setting up a new or refreshed workstation.

IBM claims it has 15,000 Apple computers in place across its organisations as part of a bring your own device scheme, and wants to bring in 50,000 by 2015. It has not commented about how many PCs it has.