The Mac versus PC debate is one that has rumbled on for years, with proponents of both sides claiming their technology is superior in one respect or another.

What is undeniable is that the Mac has historically had far less success than the PC in penetrating the enterprise market. Recently, however, this has been changing, and could point the way to a much more diverse workplace environment in future.

Apple’s OS X operating system has been generating interest for some time among the wider IT community, but it was the company’s decision to move its hardware to an Intel-based platform that seemed to somehow legitimise the Mac in the eyes of many business users. It’s not that there was anything wrong with previous Macs, but having an Intel chip perhaps made PC-oriented buyers more comfortable with them, plus it held out the possibility of running Windows software if necessary.

The release of Mac OS X version 10.5 ­ - better known as Leopard ­ - brings with it the realisation that Macs are starting to be more common in business environments. Many may be coming in through the back door perhaps, brought in by executives who were sold on the new user interface and functionality, but this is pretty much the same route that Windows PCs first took to infiltrate the workplace in the past.

At the same time, Windows Vista has been looking increasingly lacklustre, even to the majority of people still using XP, and business adoption seems to have been slower than Microsoft had hoped. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Macs are going to replace PCs, but it possibly means that more firms are going to have a mixture of the two, with some workgroups perhaps making the switch.

Is the Mac ready for greater enterprise take-up? Most PC-only shops will want to know if they can integrate Macs with their Windows-based infrastructure, and the answer seems to be a qualified yes, although some Apple user forums have re ported a few problems with Leopard upgrades on machines connected to an Active Directory domain.

Then there is the question of messaging. Leopard boasts a new Mail application, and IT departments will first want to see how well this integrates with Microsoft Exchange servers, and if it can offer the same functionality as Outlook does for Windows users.

On the applications front, the “killer app” is Microsoft Office, and a new version of Office for Mac due early next year will bring support for the same Open XML file formats used in the Windows version of the suite.

The Mac is starting to look tempting.