Why Aren’t Macs More Common in IT?

This Cringely column (by way of GeeksRus) asks why Macs aren’t more common in IT, and provides some provocative answers.

I think Cringely has a good point; that Macs may mean fewer jobs. Certainly I’ve had to spend less time on the care and feeding of Macs than on Linux and Windows OS boxes, and the Macs were much easier for me to train others to administer. I think that there’s also truth in the “nobody ever got fired buying Microsoft” aphorism. And Lord knows, at one IT shop I worked at in particular the CIO can’t make a decision to save his life because he’s always terrified that it’s the “wrong” decision. In the end, when a decision is forced on him, he always decides on the basis of expediency and personal ambition, rather than in terms of what is best for users, the institution and the long term health of the network. Microsoft is “safe.”