I can see it now - some employee in Apple's marketing dept. suggests to Steve Jobs that the company could boost their market share by incorporating ActiveX and VBScript into Mac OS X. The guy would be frog-marched into the parking lot and told to pick up his box of belongings next week.
It's unfortunate for Microsoft's customers that they decided to discontinue VBScript support in their Mac products, but it's their proprietary technology and their decision to make. Apple has provided an adequate solution for most Mac users by enabling Windows to run on their systems.
For those of us who work with Apple's products at a technical level, we view things like ActiveX as an unwarranted security risk with little benefit for most users. The fact that Mac OS X is not contaminated with crap like ActiveX is a good thing.
Apple has a different strategy for getting into the enterprise. It is a long-term, cautious strategy that is unfolding over time. It certainly involve some factors you mentioned - education, marketing, support and technology - and it is driven by acceptance in the consumer space. But instead of adopting ActiveX, Apple will promote interoperability based on open standards.
You simply refuse to understand the main point.
Macs are incompatible with industry standards and if you need to use these standards to do your job you will have pains with Mac. And nobody at AAPL gives a crap.
Now we can disagree whose fault that is but it is a fact of life.
Do you disagree? Are you saying that Macs gracefully comport with all industry de facto standards? Or are you saying people should not care that they cannot do their job?
I think you have no practical business experience. Typical, answer from an IT guy.
I agree Windows is crappy technology. But MSFT is worlds ahead of AAPL and IBM in setting industry standards for real world business applications. I was at the recent giant HIMSS conference and about 95% of the vendors were building applications that would only work in a 100% MSFT environment.
Even IBM is being left in the dust.
MSFT has gotten a huge partner eco-system and they are building vertical and horizontal business apps. They are NOT using open standards, they are using de facto industry standards as defined by MSFT.
Now is this good. No. Hell no. In fact I think it is amazingly stupid. But it is a fact.