Hey, does anyone else out there experience a rising core temperature, cold sweats, and a throbbing sensation just behind the left ear every time someone raises the issue of the Mac's feasibility in an enterprise environment? Maybe it's just us; we're perfectly willing to admit that it's not hard to wind up jaded on a subject that just never seems to go anywhere. And this is one dead horse that's been beaten so long, it's got an "I LIKE IKE" button pinned to its mummified carcass.

Still, we're resigned to the fact that people are going to argue this point until either 1) Apple really does become a viable and accepted option in the Big Business workplace, or 2) a killer mutant space virus ravages the entire human race and brings us all the sweet release that only death can offer. Since we're still deliriously optimistic enough to consider scenario 2) far-fetched enough not to concern us much (but not nearly optimistic enough to think that scenario 1) is likely to occur before we're qualifying for the senior citizen discount at the local cineplex), we're pretty much resigned to a life of body temperature fluctuations and head-throbbing.

The latest in this aeons-old saga: Charles Haddad of BusinessWeek notes that Apple has quietly amassed a cadre of programmers in India who are going to focus solely on porting existing UNIX- and Windows-based enterprise software to Mac OS X so that Apple can "break into the serious business applications segment." He takes the historically accurate stance that no matter how much software Apple ports over, the business world at large will never buy Macs as long as they feature "stunning graphics, stylish design, and ease of use," because corporate IT managers physically start to dissolve when they come into contact with such stuff. (It's true. We've seen it happen. It's pretty gross.) About the only thing Mac OS X has over Windows from a hardcore IT perspective is that its kernel panics are basic black, whereas Windows's fatal error screen is a much-too-flashy blue. If Steve really wants to sell Macs to Big Business, making the kernel panics beige (and a lot more frequent) would be a terrific first step.

Meanwhile, Stewart Alsop over at Fortune is offering the other perspective: namely, that the Mac is more likely to attract business buyers now more than ever before. Mac OS X is out, stable, UNIX-based, and geeky enough for the enterprise types to respect at a purely technical level. Internet standards have made a lot of issues surrounding platform choice moot. And while both of those are very good points (especially when combined with Apple's reported push to port business software to the platform), Alsop appears to miss the point: he says that "Macintosh computers have always been and are still fun to use," while he "[doesn't] have fun using Windows-based computers." Mr. Alsop: you have just named the single biggest reason why Macs are never likely to make it into the cube-farms of big business. Fun is Bad. Always remember that.

Don't get us wrong-- we think that Macs are terrific computers for business use. We just also happen to think that the business world at large is never going to admit that fact until every last existing IT manager is rounded up and used as food for Steve's Giant Tiger Pit™. Once that happens, though, look out world!