CNN Money writer Jonathan Blum weighs in on "the switch to Mac" and how it can be quite beneficial for some companies, but also costly and unnecessary for others. Blum speaks from the point of view of a small business and highlights a few aspects that should be taken into consideration, should you, as the big boss, be considering the switch.

Blum offers Washington DC's Jaffe Associates as an example. The firm recently considered upgrading its Windows servers architecture. When they saw that collaborative software costs were reaching a staggering $100,000, the company was shocked and started looking somewhere else. They turned to Apple. Apple's solution, according to COO Shani Magosky, came at almost half the price, the report indicates. "We are a virtual company, meaning we all work from home offices in different parts of the country," Magosky said. "[Apple] is wonderful for a company like ours."

What I can't understand is how did they even think of turning to Apple when Microsoft is expensive enough? Did they think "what the heck, let's just check these guys' solution out"? Everyone knows Apple is far more expensive than anything. They must have been tipped off that a more costly investment is also longer lasting.

Blum goes to offer examples of when Mac is a good choice and when it isn't. He admits having used Apple's "gear steadily since the Reagan era." His "college tools" were the early Apple II and the "computer-as-Cuisinart lookalike that was the original Mac." His overall impression of what Apple had to offer was, in his own words, "lovely as they are for certain applications, just not worth the hassle for most small businesses."

This pretty much sums it all up, but here's Blum's argument to this: "Using Apple's Safari browser to access the Web via my superfast Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) FiOS optical Web connection was rippin' quick - faster, in fact, than on my Sony (SNE) PC," he claims. "If your business is into heavy desktop research or drives weighty applications for graphics or video, Macs are definitely worth considering."

On the downside, Blum noticed, during his experience with Macs, that some particular features are clearly not aimed at the average small business. "The desktop is divided into quadrants that extend beyond the screen's edge. Only with some complex keyboard commands can I slide from one to another. All the goofy Apple-centric commands leave PC-trained users constantly fighting to parse out what the control, option and command keys do. And there is the very odd mouse," Blum writes.

Jonathan Blum concluded by saying that, this time around, Macs make sense for "maybe 20 companies out of 100," compared to just 5 a few years ago. "Those that need basic computing and basic features" should think twice before making the switch to Mac, the writer asserts. His argument? Macs are "still more expensive and simply not worth the integration headaches for the average small shop."