In practice, the same operating system does not always work the same on different hardware platforms. Often there is a great variance in the quality of the implementation across different hardware and sometimes different feature sets are available. Also, software written for a particular operating system is not always available on every hardware platform that OS runs on. Most potential customers feel better about running their Windows applications on 100 percent Wintel-compatible machines, even if it means running them slower than they might run on an Alpha, MIPS, or some other platform. By promoting cross-platform support, Microsoft was competing with the very concept that led to its widespread success.
Some organizations thrive on a mixed operating system environment.
A classic example is that many Windows-only organizations make an exception for content creation machines, which are usually Macintoshes . In a mixed operating system environment, connectivity becomes extremely important. It does not matter if an operating system runs on processors you never intend to use. And these Intel-based versions of Unix have a remarkable amount of free and commercial software support. Please be patient.