>> Yes, but would that have been an issue if Apple had been using Intel chips and Unix- with the concurrent ability to run Windows? It seems to me that in such case you wouldn’t have felt compelled to switch.
Maybe. But it’s not merely a case of chosen platform; it’s also a case of strategy, support and market savvy on the part of the platform vendor. It was just never there from Apple for industrial applications.
Side comment: many PC advocates, including some on this thread, speak of the advantages of “open architecture” — you can roll your own hardware, customize as you like. No one yet has spoken of the parallel advantage of “open market strategy”, so I’ll mention it here. When the Apple platform was closed, and Apple controlled the game, you were at their mercy as far as what markets they deemed strategically important. Whereas anyone could adopt the Wintel architecture, “roll their own” strategy, and attack any market they chose to attack without foot-dragging or resistance from the hardware platform maker.
Apple made feeble attempts to embrace the industrial market, even as far back as the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I still have an old Apple-logoed tradeshow sweatshirt from the ‘80s for “Autofact”, a factory automation show. I was in the Apple booth with another vendor. We were fish out of water — very “ronery” during that show.
In spite of Apple’s meager support, in various companies I have pushed Macs into industrial applications with success. The hardware and software are up to the job.
But, Apple saw profitability in K-12, desktop publishing, and the corporate desktop — not in industrial applications. Still the case.