David Pogue provides the real reason Macs can only compete for home and small business users despite having a superior OS:

See, I’m fairly resigned to Windows’s dominance. If Microsoft changed nothing in Vista but the color scheme, Windows would still be the 90 percent market-share gorilla.

Why? Because the market-share figures includes sales of computers to corporations, which buy hundreds of PC’s at a time. And the corporate world long ago standardized on Windows. It makes no difference how superior Mac OS X or Linux may be; the world’s I.T. staffs will switch their entire companies away from Windows the day Rush Limbaugh votes for Hillary Clinton.

After all, the I.T. people know where their bread is buttered. If Macs are indeed less trouble-prone and complex than Windows PC’s, they’re doomed in corporations; the last thing the I.T. guys want to do is obsolete themselves.

However, Pogue is not being cynical:

“But big companies will always buy Windows. In my view, the die was actually cast the day I.B.M., supplier to corporate America, chose Microsoft decades ago.”

There’s way too much money, time and expertise invested on Windows to change the equation significantly. Apple adjusted its strategy and is doing quite well. I wonder how Macs running Windows will change the business equation over time?

Reference:

• Getting Hung Up on the Apple-Microsoft War
• New York Times: Weighing a Switch to a Mac