Although I fully agree with your comment, i think you missed the point of the submission's title: in big corps, management did get convinced that linux servers aren't too risky, and they are now happily going for it (where I work management is loudly bragging about the millions they are saving with linux). Hence the question is valid: what is the reason why it isn't the case yet with say application servers ? Will it just come in due time ? Or is there a more fundamental reason, like lack of consensus about support availablility/substainability ?

Or else you'd think people still are social animals when they hit 30, feeling good about belonging to a group, being gratified by their group's members having a good opinion of them.

Exactly ! That's why there isn't much point in trying to squeeze Macs in an objective comparison : you buy a Mac to get pleasure from purchasing a nice item, whereas you buy the winner of an objective comparison to get pleasure from being a smart customer.