He’s wrong. Mac’s can run a bunch of *nix applications and you can re-compile them for his system.
Heck, I’ve just read a report that Parallels for the Mac runs windows faster than a PC.
I first ran into the phenomena when I had to deal with people who had a mainframe background, and I was an early PC guy. Whenever I tried to work with our technical support guys, they'd just tell me whatever I wanted to do wasn't possible. They loved the guru-wizard status they had, and avoided a lot of work by just dismissing us with "it's not possible."
These were the same guys who decried the gui, wisiyg, and mice. What they hated was that these were what let the gypsies in the palace, killing their status as the all knowing, all seeing masters of computing.