From the perspective of a steely eyed IT buyer, how is a Mac not like a garden-variety PC? For one thing, Macs have virtually unlimited life spans, as reflected in their resale value. Macs are fast, their chasses are indestructible, and OS X is solid as a rock. And of course, if you buy the usability argument, Macs are the only computers that run OS X.

“It’s a proprietary platform.”

If that objection is a showstopper for you, where do you propose to go? HP, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and Apple are all in the business of selling proprietary solutions.

Contrary to popular belief, the Mac platform is more open than many. Macs will run software written for UNIX- and POSIX-compliant operating systems -- although code written in native languages must be recompiled for the Mac from source code. The Mac runs Java client and server applications directly using a Java virtual machine that Apple developed, validated, and maintained. Two Java application servers, JBoss and WebObjects, are bundled with OS X Server. OS X includes stable editions of dynamic languages, including Perl, Ruby, PHP, Python, and JavaScript. PDF, HTML, XML, and OpenGL are among standards implemented as OS X platform intrinsics, again, using designs developed in-house.

Moreover, Apple publishes most of the source code for OS X -- primarily the system software, commands, and utilities that reside below the presentation layer -- as the Darwin open source project. After a long delay, Apple recently made the source code for Darwin x86 available online. Apple took over stewardship of Darwin and a sister project called DarwinPorts, which is a repository of ready-to-compile open source applications validated for the Mac.

Intel-based Mac hardware is proprietary only insofar as its design makes it possible for OS X to tell the difference between a Mac and a non-Mac PC. Salient details of the Mac’s design are public and thoroughly documented so that developers working in OS X or another x86 operating system can fully exploit the Mac’s features. The Mac boots with the standards-based Extensible Firmware Interface instead of a closed, proprietary BIOS, but Apple includes EFI extensions that transparently support operating systems that don’t yet work with EFI.

“Why invest in OS X when Vista is going to wipe it off the map?”

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Steve Jobs is blushing. Apple Vice President Bertrand Serlet held the keynote audience at Apple’s 2006 Worldwide Developer Conference in a state of disbelief with a presentation showing that Vista’s design is rooted in OS X Tiger to a degree that even a die-hard Mac zealot would find incredible.

When Vista ships, Apple will be delivering all of its new Macs with OS X Leopard (see “Leopard Leaps IN,” page 22). And if you’re hung up on Vista, the third-party Parallels Desktop will run it at blistering speed as a guest OS under OS X. There will be no vice versa in Vista’s favor.

“I can’t manage a network of mixed platforms.”

Nobody wants to learn yet another set of proprietary management tools. But administrators don’t have to resort to the proprietary to keep a mix of systems running.