[Swordmaker]

The other issue involved is that using Macs locks you into a sole source hardware vendor.

And that is different from a sole source "operating system" vendor how?

[tacticalogic]

And that is different from a sole source "operating system" vendor how?

One is harware and the other is software. Running Windows may lock you down to a single OS vendor, but gives you the widest possible choice of hardware vendors. Running generic Linux gives you mostly the same choice of hardware, and some range of choices of OS vendor. Mac gives you no choice of either. Any of them involve some compromise. There is no perfect answer.