What's driving the trend? Could it be iPhone owners dabbling in full-fledged Macs? Perhaps. But what about the business audience; could swaths of PC-only outfits finally be moving to mixed-platform environments? With so many business tools running as platform-agnostic web services, Macs are nearly fully compatible out-of-the box.

Sure, there are some misses. 's OS X mail program, the complete Exchange Server support and abilities of Outlook. And Exchange support is weak in Apple's Mail application. But the transition is in progress; the next version of . And most features from the other Microsoft Office apps are included or less critical.

Apple's hardware design usually impresses, from laptop and desktop cases to multi-core, Intel processors. If you absolutely have to run a Windows-only app for work, you could into a Microsoft OS and not tell the difference from a "real" PC. Or just run it in a within OS X.

Companies will keep moving to web services, and with that transition, Mac OS X's business market share could continue to grow. I doubt it'll reach substantially further into this Windows-dominated world. But as businesses are using cross-platform tools, companies are also letting employees pick their favorite OS. And each individual switch gradually boosts Apple's market share.

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