Steve Jobs, save me from your followers...

Honestly, I don't hate Macs.

I don't hate Linux boxes.

I don't hate XP machines.

Yeah, I pretty much hate Vista in any of its incarnations, but that's another story altogether. Ick.

And, honestly, I'm not a flag-waving fan of Bill and/or Melinda Gates because of what their collective empire has wrought on the computing world, but, you know what? I haven't seen a lot of activity from the Steve Jobs Foundation funding educational or research institutions or other such endeavors directed toward the common good. But then, maybe I'm not listening in the right places.

Preamble complete.

So, while I was at a workshop recently, a bunch of the participants sat down to lunch together. A fellow with trendy glasses, a tie-dye t-shirt, and a ponytail scrounged together out of sparse, salt-and-pepper hair started turning any aspect of the conversation into yet another opportunity to sing the praises of the Mac OS.

I swear, I could have mentioned something about the crispiness of the French fries and he would have found a way to claim that the Mac would have done it better.

I have little patience for evangelists of any denomination... they all act as though they're superior without the facts to back up the claim. You're supposed to take it on faith.

Macists are different from Dunkers (or the rest) in one way, though... they think they've got the statistics to "prove" their point.

But they miss the point, or at least I think this one did. Spewing statistics, he was certain that he could convince us all that Macs are impenetrable and he honestly seemed to think that they'd stay that way.

Macs aren't invulnerable to attacks because they're Macs... they don't get infected because malware writers don't care about them. They don't have enough market share to make the effort of screwing with them worthwhile.

If you turned the equation over, and made Windows the underdog, X users would be the ones visited by legions of frogs and plagues of locusts.

Sure, the Win bunch would still be dealing with BSODs and hung starts, but they'd also be laughing up their sleeves at the gnashing of teeth caused by the equivalent of McAfee and Norton "protection" suites.

Apple-eaters should rejoice in their relative anonymity while they still have it. They'll know they've reached market relevance when their equivalent of Chernobyl is visited upon them.

In the meantime, the business world still runs on Windows. I'm not exactly cheering that fact, but it IS a fact for the moment.

Be careful what you wish for.