Freshman year: nothing
Sophomore year: Hypercard (yeah, yeah read on) first half of year - into to C second half of the year
Junior Year: Continued C first half of the year - C++ second half of the year
Senior Year: Continued C++ first half of the year - Visual C++ second half of the year

When I entered college they had me skip the 100 level classes based on my HS education. Which was nice because I ended up taking more 400 level classes later. What I found interesting was that until I got to college I thought this was the standard CS curriculum everywhere. For that matter I thought the curriculum for all subjects were the same across districts. I will say that I am grateful for the education I was provided and that it is amazing that in 2012 the town I live in now (not in PA) does not even have a CS curriculum.

The "voice of reason" compels me to post. It is apparent to me that the vast majority of you have never worked with a Mac in an enterprise environment before. That or you are basing your comments on outdated, inaccurate and or completely made up information. Now that is all well and good but at least you should admit it.

Now I will give you that the article (if you even took the time to read it) was very much one sided and dismissing Linux in one line not "fair and balanced". I don't believe the intention of the article was to provide a balanced commentary. It was my take that the article was trying to express how far Macs have come in the enterprise without Apple really trying that hard.

That said let me qualify myself a bit. I currently manage 18 servers, 13 of which are running OS X Server as well as ~900 mainly OS X clients (there are a few PC clients less than 10) in addition to running the network. This over four physically separated locations.

Now a large percentage of the tasks my users work 100% on the Mac. The typical office apps, creative apps etc. There are two fairly large and important tasks that are Windows only. One of our main record tracking systems and our purchase order system. These are hosted on Windows servers and are accessed with Citrix and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection respectively. My users have not had any difficulty with this.

I use Apples Open Directory to manage users, groups, "group policies", 10.4 Server has an included software update server that will enable you to push out locally hosted Apple software updates. This combined with Apple Remote Desktop to remotely manage, run reports, push out software or run commands on any number of systems.

My users all have network home directories or portable home directories for the laptops. This enables me to have a more reasonable backup strategy as well as gives the ability to users to login to ANY computer and have the environment that they are familiar with appear. I know you can do this with any platform.

One of the advantages that Mac OS X has over Linux is the commercial development of software for the platform. Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office are just not available for Linux. While I am sure people are going to say what about Open Office and GIMP?! Yes they work and I like them a lot. I don't know if I would deploy them in a enterprise environment... yet. Well maybe Open Office (I'm actually testing this out for my environment). So I get professional software AND open source software in one system. Wait... with Crossover for the Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/) I can run Windows apps native as well. This isn't mentioning Parallels and VMware where I can run pretty much any other OS I need to all on the same system. So now I can replace my Linux box, my Windows box, my Solaris box and my OS X box with... ONE BOX! Talk about ROI.

Speaking of ROI. I replace my systems every 5 years. I have had them go for as long as 8 years. My mission critical systems hardly ever go down.

Onto support. Apple does have enterprise support (http://www.apple.com/support/products/macosxserve r_sw_supt.html) in addition to the typical AppleCare

Choose from three levels of AppleCare technical support:
Select covers up to 10 incidents with four-hour response for priority 1 (server down) issues,(2) 12/7. Additional incidents can be purchased as needed.
Preferred covers an unlimited number of incidents with two-hour response for priority 1 (server down) issues,(2) 12/7, and assigns a technical account manager to your organization.
Alliance covers an unlimited number of incidents at multiple locations with one-hour response for priority 1 (server down) issues, 24/7. This plan includes an onsite review by an Apple technical support engineer.

So stop complaining that you can get support for mission critical systems already! You obviously didn't even look at their website. If you want it you can get ONE HOUR response time! You can even pre-order parts for your servers if you like. There are even self-servicing options available.

With all of this goodness there are some downsides. My organization has had some experiences with hardware failures. Mainly with acknowledged failures. (http://www.apple.com/support/exchange_repair/) The repairs needed were performed on-site and next day. But this is similar to any other vendor.

If you are worried about vendor lock-in if you are a MS shop you are locked into MS products. Honestly how many people have more than one hardware vendor? With Apple you at least get the reliability of a solid HW/SW system.

I have worked with large MS deployments before and honestly the Mac platform is a dream to manage. Not to mention cheaper with the licensing fees. Yes I know Linux! But at the end of the day I would much rather manage a large deployment of OS X systems than any other currently available system. Call me a "fan boy" if you want to. I am sure this post will qualify. But I am more a satisfied system admin then anything else. At the end of the day OS X and OS X Server enables one person to manage and maintain 900 client systems, 18 servers and associated network. I would like to see any person truthfully tell me any comparable Windows or Linux deployment. The Mac OS is not perfect, no OS is. With every release the Mac OS gets better, wait until 10.5 ships. If we can compare that to Vista... well this post is long enough already. Ubuntu is progressing nicely. I just don't see it being a completely viable option for the time being. The enterprise OS landscape can certainly change in the future. But for the time being I would agree that Mac OS X is a viable option for the enterprise desktop and servers for that matter.