This interesting article appears in Computerworld NZ.
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/security/school-shuns-popular-apple-mac-for-windows
The article talks about setting up a network of iMacs on a Windows server cluster. Everything the Mac needs on a network to be centrally managed is provided for in third party software running on Windows Server.
The important lesson here is that Apple’s hardware lockin to the Mac OS is a bad policy that should be dropped. As the Mac OS can be virtualised on any platform, Apple should remove the hardware lockin required by Mac OS licensing, or allow selected third parties to license rights to manufacture hardware they themselves can’t be bothered producing.
One for the Mac snobs: the hardware is virtually identical to the PC hardware platform and can run the same operating systems and have the same physical upgrades applied to it. The only real difference is the operating system itself.
Maybe in the post-Jobs era we might see Apple get out of PC hardware altogether or at least allow their OS to be licensed on third party industrial grade hardware or get their act together on enterprise computing for their platform.
