I work at a large government IT organization. We were way ahead of the curve on this trend -- we did a POC deployment in late 2008. There are real issues with

I work at a large government IT organization. We were way ahead of the curve on this trend -- we did a POC deployment in late 2008. There are real issues with Mac vs. Windows in an enterprise for many categories of user. We found that some Executives and some knowledge workers LOVED them. All Unix admins and most web-dev types loved them. Why? They weren't using line of business applications, and either didn't have many meetings, or had an admin who handled scheduling on their behalf. We did not end up deploying Macs more widely, but the POC boxes are still in service. I love my Mac. Real issues: 1. Apple is unpredictable with respect to patching. Known, material security issues may lay dormant for months with no patching. Apple prefers to rollout lots of fixes at once (ie. instead of a security patch, they roll up to 10.x.y) which often break things. This is a problem if you have to rely on ANY non-Apple software. 2. Apple is unpredictable with respect to product lifecycle. Want to roll out 500 iMacs? You had better pray that they don't arbitrarily cancel or (worse) change your order because they are announcing a new product. When Apple releases a new product, the old product ceases to exist. 3. Identity integration is poor. Integration with LDAP/Kerberos or AD is unreliable and undocumented. Unless you can use tools with a different model for authentication (ie. Dropbox), simple things like filesharing are unreliable. 3rd party tools help, but that creates a new problem. (See point 1) 4. This situation improved when the new MS Office, but Exchange support sucks. Even with Outlook for Mac, calendar functions suck. 5. I don't think that Apple takes security seriously. "Viruses" are becoming increasingly rare, even in the PC world. The types of threats that are out there are different in many ways. People in the Mac community have a really bizarre outlook on security. 6. Apple doesn't give a flying leap about enterprise IT. They know that Microsoft jumps through hoops to keep Bank CIOs happy, and that keeping those folks happy comes with a cost (10 year product cycles, IE6, etc). Apple's ability to tell enterprises to screw off is both an advantage and a disadvantage. If you're a proponent of large-scale adoption of Macs in an IT org, you are taking a big professional risk. Overall, I think that it's great that people are looking at alternate platforms. But don't pretend that Apple is a silver bullet -- Apple doesn't love you back, and will make you cry.