Mad enough to switch

There's a very interesting thread over at the Security Awareness Blog (linked from title). Will Schwartau decided to switch his company from Wintel to Macs, and in a series of postings, entitled "Mad As Hell", he details why and how the switch is going. A good part of his reason for switching is hardware (and hardware support): hardware vendors are notorious for blaming the software (funny that this seems especially common when the software is written by someone else). A choice quote:

The cost - the unacceptably immense financial premium that the WinTel world demands of its users - is going to be the straw that breaks the WinTel back! I could no longer afford WinTel.

I know that there are a lot of rumors about Apple and Intel going around, including the licensing of the Mac OS to third party computer makers. Mr. Schwartau's comments argue very clearly that the Mac experience is not just about software -- the hardware and support are as important. I don't see why any end user would care if their Mac's CPU was Intel, but cheap architecture, buggy BIOSes, even generic PC cases will destroy the Mac's image (and it's reality) as a vehicle for a high-quality, even emotionally compelling, experience.

Want more of an argument against Mac cloning? Consider recent comments by Paul Otellini, Intel's new CEO, when asked by Walter Mossberg, "Why are Intel's demo products always cooler than the actual products its customers make?"

Part of the problem is today the desktop [computer] business is a zero margin business for many of our customers.

Apple's computer business is not zero margin, and all the market share in the world is not worth trading for that.

In that same Wall Street Journal article, Mr. Otellini recommends Macintoshes for people who want a computer that just works, at least as far as security is concerned.