According to this article, Apple's hardware quotes for government bids allow contractors to make the same money or more as on bids based on Microsoft's platform. Apple's price is apparently not more than Microsoft's, after all -- quite a change from the accepted wisdom of the past. If the hypothesis is right, and the military's adoption of Apple products in certain recent sales isn't a statistical fluke, Apple could see more enterprise use than it's used to getting.
Although the U.S. military has used Apple products for some applications in the past (e.g., the 1999 migration from NT/IIS to MacOS and WebStar for serving army.mil to the world), this use has been fairly minimal. Now that Apple is one of a mere handful of vendors (now up to 5) shipping certified Unix, Apple's ability to reach broad markets with standards-conformant software is vastly different than it was a decade ago. Given the relative security of Microsoft's products and Unix-like alternatives and the confidence Microsoft has inspired in customers with its software and services, the prospects for migration to Unix seem rosy.
Anyone else got recent Mac migration stories?
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