I've found in my experiences that Macs are much easier to maintain than Windows PCs. Mac Pros and older G4s and G5s are much easier to perform most common hardware changes than any Windows PCs I've ever used. iMacs could be used but unlike the typical Windows PCs, it would be harder to cannabalize them for parts, but in general iMacs have a lot fewer problems than typical PCs.

I have long been saying that Mac will replace Windows in the next, (well now about 5-6) years. Those that are whining about the lack of software for it, should be doing something about it instead of whining. Sure it doesn't have Word, who cares there are a lot better applications out there then Word for word processing, even on Windows! They have problems that a 4 year old doesn't when it comes to setting one up, come on people quit thinking like idiots and start realizing you're not working with garbage anymore. Start thinking in terms of standards and not in proprietary software, and then you'll finally get it! Windows has had it's run on the desktop and people are tired of it not working and full of crap proprietary code that only causes them to have to redo it, over and over and over again.

Sure the Mac isn't perfect and they do still have some problems, but if they had the resources that Microsoft has, (and the billions of people coding for it outside of Microsoft,) then they would probably have a much better operating system. Instead those people would rather bash it, even though it's a much better all around operating system and the vast majority of important programs already come with it, such as it's developer package which gives you the same tools to totally rebuild the operating system that they used when they built it in the first place. Sure some of the tools such as iPhoto, iTunes and Quicktime are aimed more at the home user than the business user, they do have software for it, such as Adobe's award winning multimedia/photo applications which were originally designed for the Mac to begin with and then ported over to the PC, (I hear it's this way again too.) Office isn't the killer app that people think they need to do a total switch to Mac, they can do without it if they really wanted to. Sure they may not be interested in using NeoOffice, so what, Numbers isn't that bad and there has been Quicken for decades, Apple does PDF's naturally, and Keystone always has been better at presentations then Microsoft's version, so now were back to Word again, I don't know, I find Abiword works just fine for all my uses and needs and what's wrong with Thunderbird? They already use it on the PC anyways. At least most IT people I know do, along with Firebird, both of which are already available for the Mac and run quite nicely I might add.

When Apple releases a patch, you can pretty much assure that it's not going to crash the system if you install it, Microsoft is well known for those problems. In my last 5+ years of owning a Mac, the only times I have had a problem with it crashing, once due to a overheated processor in a powerbook and the other due to a faulty hard drive that went bonkers after the powerbook got knocked off the table and hit the floor while closed. (I blame that on the cheap toshiba hard drives they are using in them. As far as the overheated processor, that was due to smoke getting in the powerbook and caking itself up inside it along with the utter lack of any real fans in it.)

Sure earlier versions of Mac OS X had problems talking to Windows computers, but then again, so what, just get rid of the Windows systems and replace them with 100% Apple systems and you don't have that problem, or get rid of them and replace them with Linux machines, neither of which had any problems talking to each other since both use standards based technology and their both at their core, Unix, unlike Windows, which has multiple layers on top of that core.

Sure Apple is not without faults and has problems with security, but then again, none of Apple's servers have ever crashed due to a virus either. Contrary to popular belief, there are viruses in the wild for Apple's systems, outdated as they may be, it's just that Apple fixed the ones that were of any real threat before people took advantage of them, all without screwing up the rest of the system in the process. The vulnerabilities that are still there are being worked on and can be patched if Apple thinks it's going to pose much of threat for it's operating systems. I think it odd that the only way a hacker could do anything to a Mac was for the person to turn off the firewall on the Mac first in the latest Hacker convention. A properly configured firewall on a Mac isn't all that hard to set up, unlike what it says in this article, (although I will mention that I'm not privy to how it works on their server operating systems,) but on the mainstream version of the operating system, it's a matter of a few clicks in the System control panel to secure the Mac as well as a properly set up keychain and user account, settings that you have to do on the PC as well, only that there isn't a keychain on the PC to worry about, but when you set a person as a user on the Mac you don't have to worry about not being able to run software that has been given permission by an administrator, unlike in XP which never worked.

I can go on and on and on about the pluses over Windows in Apple's favor, but I can't think of but one for them, that is that they have a larger installed gaming base, based on crap technology called DirectX aimed at morons that can't figure out how to code in OpenGL. Also Apple has made some stupid design choices in it's latest round of Mac's but it wouldn't be the first time and if they would ever release their operating system to work on other computers, that's where they can ultimately kill off Windows. Everyones hardware will have to conform to Apple's standards for drivers before they can work with it, thus we end up with a lot more stable equipment. (Another of Microsoft's short comings.)

With Apple embracing IPTV and that being the future of audio/video communications, I look for more and more people to eventually sway over to it, if for no other reason than to get rid of the ever increasing cable bills they have. (I don't know about you but $200+ a month for a lackluster service is just absurd! Especially when you can get 3x+ the bandwidth and at least 2x the channels with the latest optical technology that the cable companies are lying about you actually getting in the first place when it's not.) By using standardized components it means more competition in the market place as companies are starting to fight to see who can give the most features for the same $ or cheaper. It may also mean fewer companies producing the products, but that only weeds out the garbage out there. The ones that produce the better equipment at the better price are the ones which will win out in the long run, as will ultimately the consumer since they will actually be getting something worth their hard earned dollar that is ever increasingly harder to come by these days.

Well I've rambled on enough about the reasons I see there is no reason not to switch to Mac's even in the corporate marketplace, outside of initial costs, there really isn't any reason not to do the switch and now is the best time of all, with the release of the spyware Windows released and called Vista. I don't know about your company, but if I were running it, that's not something I would want on my systems for another company or foreign power to be able to get access to a "secret key" that will allow them to spy on my top secret projects my company is working on. (Which is the reason even the U.S. Government has dropped Windows on it's mission critical machines and has refused to install Vista on any of them.)