I think Apple may have been very clever!

Needing to upgrade my computer and having the funds to do so, I have made the decision to buy a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac and I have come to this decision after a number of weeks of assessing my options.

I started out using Macs in the early 90's having purchased a 9" Mac SE and continued using them, my last being a grape 266mhz iMac which I still have, until early in the new millenium when I moved to a Windows based PC. However, for the past 18 months I have become a convert to Linux and have been running Kubuntu! I have continued to run Windows XP on an older desktop using mainly Open Source software and a few other applications that required Windows that Linux will still not deal with!

My original intention was to purchase a powerful Dell desktop or similar with Linux installed and running Windows virtually aiming to spend $3000 in total. Apart from the fact it works so well, I really like Linux because it is Open Source and philosophically I support that notion so going and buying an Apple machine from an organisation that is arguably more proprietorial than Microsoft seems an odd thing to do.

However, I have been seduced back into the Mac fold for a number of reasons:

1. The latest OS is without peer and chock full of excellent features and I really want to be using it.
   
2. The software supplied with a Mac is top quality, highly functional and can only increase my productivity.
3. I can run Windows and Linux virtually and practically seamlessly providing me with an extraordinarily capable machine.
4. With an education discount, I can get the iMac, pay for the 3 year warranty and purchase an additional 2GB of memory for $3000 and I get a 24" screen.
   
5. It is based on Unix and uses Intel processors.
   

This last point is where I think Apple have been very clever in regard to their strategy to combat the threat of Linux as the debacle of Vista provides further opportunity to gather an increased following.
Now that Mac is Intel based it is easier to port Linux software to the Mac and open source pundits can appease our philosophical obligations and run all our favourite applications like Open Office Aqua, GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus etc within MAC OS X so I am thinking I don't actually need to have a Linux virtual machine!
Very clever indeed!