Is that code for Ballmer's regime vs Nadella's regime?
To give a concrete example of the changes (heard from a former Microsoft employee): Under Ballmer they were not allowed to touch anything open-source. Pretty soon after he left that was changed to a policy that a BSD/MIT open-source solution must be used if it is available unless there's a damned good reason.
Still, Steve Jobs was not an easy guy either. I don't know if he would mock an employee for having an Android phone? Not unlikely given how anti-Android he was.
As far as cost of macs I think it's still worth it even if you want to run Ubuntu as your OS b/c they hold their value better than any other laptop I've seen on the market. They also resell FAST which is very nice.
I also found it to be a huge pain to install Linux on it, which is why all my Linux computers are Thinkpads (with the exception of the old HP workstation I'm typing this from).