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they bring up a good point, which is why i have to disagree with you p-man. linux is for those computer users that want complete control and that is a niche market. it's possible that the niche will expand, but probably not to the levels that will allow it to supercede the common computer users of apple or ms. i love linux and luckily i get to work with it every day. there are some things it does well and some that it doesn't. until it can get it's act together and make it more user friendly and acccesible to the common computer user, then it's popularity will only plateau.

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i have no idea what's happening here. but will someone get me a stoli raz and soda with a twist, please?

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holy crap you guys are passionate about this stuff. unfortunately, the wrench in the whole equation is that the bulk of the computer consumer market are guys like me, who know little if anything about this shiat, and who buy whatever is cheap, user-friendly, and will work to check email, look up restaurants on the internet, and play mp3s. the bulk of the business market is also guys like me, who despite the cries of the IT department, want something familiar and easy to run their spreadsheet applications and windows based software. Why? Because after spending 7 years of education on learning how to design poop treatment plants I don't want to spend another 7 years figuring out how and why I should argue about Linux vs. Windows vs. Mac. I just want to design my poop treatment plants....

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"are you trolling for flamewars here or what?" does the iPod make me cream my pants? ok, so i'm seven years late. in seven more years i might win Rachel's hand in marriage. no false dichotomy - where did i say mac will kill windows? windows has to continue on its path of a self-consuming existence. it dies and is reborn all the time and we're all stuck with it. yes - linux may one day kill mac. that part i did say. my point is that apple can not continue the way it does. you can buy a Ford or, rather than comparing to Rolls, let's compare to VW (cooler, but still in the same price range yet costs more to maintain and does essentially the same thing). so why is apple still around? for the reasons you say. it's cool. can coolness keep them alive? coolness isn't what has kept MS around. please tell me MS was once cool. because if it were, it must have lost that coolness and at some point gotten impossibly annoying. i say something has to change at apple. buyers are fickle. what happens when putting up with an overpriced linux box starts to bug people? you need to quit enormoco and send your resume to steve jobs.

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doood - are you trolling for flamewars here or what? first of all (just to get this out of the way) - your post is at least seven years old. 1999 was the dawn (or so) of the "Linux will destroy the computing paradigm"- media smegma. rest of all - you posit a false dichotomy. windows will die either at the hands of the clearly anachronistic/injured mac (?!) or more likely linux will kill the mac because maybe someday it might have more good functions. linux is great. i heart linux. i wish linux had more market share. in 1999 i built the first linux box at the consultancy i worked for. i wiped a wintel machine, installed redhat (along with apache, php, mysql, etc.), later i installed mozilla and most importantly: i installed gnapster. i totally pwnd the kewl factor in my office and had an extra computer at my desk - what did i use it for? downloading mp3s. flashback four years prior: i'm in a lowly tech support job at a tiny (but then seemingly quite large) ISP. they hired me, showed me around and then asked what computer i wanted. apple was being run into the ground by a former pepsi CEO. their stock price was in the toilet. there was loud talk about them going belly-up or being bought-out by SGI (remember them? no. that’s ok, no one else does either). i chose the mac. why? i saw myself in the future telling a story to my great-grandkids about how i used the 90s equivalent of babbage's analytical engine. it crashed 5 times a day. every day. i felt proud to have seen the end of days with this relic. shortly thereafter, i moved on to my next totally awesome career move. apple rehired steve jobs, linux proceeded to kill all other unix and unix-forms. linux was well on its way to killing all operating systems - eventually killing them in the name of vanquishing evil. what happened later? apple grew. big time. linux grew. big time. cheney shot a dude in the face. big time. why didn’t apple and that dude die? apple isn’t a computer company. apple is a great great BRAND. why doesn’t new balance put nike out of business? new balance has better shoes. in more sizes. in more widths. that accommodate more running needs. nike pwns new balance because even if they release a suckass running shoe, it’s still a frucking cool shoe, er, frucking cool brand. why hasn’t ford killed rolls royce? ford makes more functional cars. rolls royce has the more powerful brand. windows has an (arguably) currently more functional (although deeply deeply deeply deeply flawed) OS. apple is the more powerful brand. what happens when: - apple releases a badass super-cool hairdryer tomorrow? they grow, apple fans cream their pants, the hairdryer has a weird dial controller and the hairdryer is featured on the cover of time magazine; - microsoft releases a badass super-cool hairdryer tomorrow? their customers complain that although it has 47 custom settings, it’s impossible to configure (therefore they only use the default setting that actually doesn’t really dry hair that well), it requires compliance with a DRM scheme and if you’ve installed protections from the latest worm you’re lucky if it only infrequently locks up while your hair is still wet; - linux programmers release a badass super-cool hairdryer tomorrow? well, linux doesn’t exist beyond the world of strictly-defined computing devices, but they would release an open-source hairdrying software solution that other programmers would debug the shit out of it in preparation for hairdryer hardware makers to release an open API drying device that consumers would buy, wipe the native hairdryer OS, d/l, compile and install the gHairdryer ISO, along with its attendant patches, use the command line interface to select from the 47 options and get a dry head of hair shortly thereafter (provided you remembered to set the hairdryer to binary prior to setting the blower). who's the winner and why? apple. because they’re cool. because apple is a great brand. is ipod a some sort of gateway to mac ownership? bogus question. ipod is the gateway to apple brand ownership. why? apple is a great and powerful brand. microsoft has an entrenched and damaged brand. linux has no brand. long live linux.

URL: http://www.whiterose.org/michael/blog
Interesting, I was thinking your response wasn't based on judgement and you're suggesting that I'm in the same position. The web is a lousy medium for really understanding emotional context; studies show it's about a 50/50 crapshoot. I'm gonna continue a bit here, but really, it's your blog and I've said my bit and I think we just don't agree and I'm OK with that. I'll still let you buy me a beer sometime when I'm in Texas or you get to the Princeton area... So, I don't think you've addressed my concerns with the disconnect between your conjectures about mac users and the future of the platform and my experience with how and why people use it. I don't think you responded to my criticism of the conjectures on "What if MS did something they're never going to do and what if Linux suddenly did something that it hasn't mattered when Apple did?" Call it an emotional response if you want, but ah, if you don't address my points counselor, it's "to the man", isn't it? The number one reason apple sells iPods is to make money. Apple has had what they call a "halo effect" and the numbers actually back it up. It's not a big enough effect for that to be the point of creating a business unit to design and sell iPods. Apple sells iPods to make money selling iPods and licensing the iPod name for accessories and to sell songs via iTunes (and vice-versa). If they get name recognition and a camel's nose into the tent of some users, that's great. Creating an entirely new product line for the value of a "halo effect" would be business suicide. They're very different products in different markets. Building goodwill in a brand helps everything in that brand, but not like building a compelling product. The mac market is growing, but not as fast as the PC market. Lots of reasons for that, some of which are worrying, some of which are differences in product segment. They're selling 4-5M macs a year at 25-28% profit margins. Do I wish it was more? Only if it let them put more money back into development. Someone has to develop the interface options that MS copies for their leading edge. As to number 4, I'm responding to a hypothetical suggestion you made regarding something that isn't possible for MS without destroying the market dominance they've got. It's been done: they could netscape 6 or Lotus Improv themselves out of the OS market, but they're not going to. Microsoft has tried that before and turned back (OS2 and Pyramid).

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i think your emotion is clouding your judgment. i don't agree with much of what you say, but i certainly welcome your comments. keep them coming. paragraph 1: ok, your life history with computers, that's great. would you like to hear about my life history with programming? well, it all started with pascal in high school... 2: i'm educated enough on the differences. also, i didn't say everyone buys them for the style. reread the post. i remember reading somewhere that part of the plan of selling iPods for cheap was to draw PC users to Mac. my only point is that i don't think that plan has come to fruition. 3: it has to start somewhere. now it's in the browser, then it moves elsewhere. virus writers are a sleazy and cunning bunch. 4: i'm not sure what you're saying here, but i'll venture a response. if anyone knows how to sell something to someone who doesn't need it, it's MS. their OS will sell. it has to. 5: .

URL: http://www.whiterose.org/michael/blog
Wow. This is completely divorced from my Mac experience. I've used Macs since 1985, and I switched to a PC in 1989 because it was what I could get in Jacksonville, TX and I thought there was some value in local purchasing. I had both OSs in my professional life every day since 1990, (sometimes Linux, Solaris, HP/UX, and VMS) and I abandoned that PC in 1992 when I moved to Houston from Austin. When I got a new computer in 1995, I got a Mac. It was my desktop until 1999, when it became the mail server and web server and I got a new Mac. It got retired in 2004 because we had a newer machine to use in it's place., but it lasted for 9 years as a useful tool. Could I have done all that on a Windows box? Or a Linux box? Did I need a Mac? No, but I worked more efficiently and happily on one. The Mac is very successful in letting me work on my data and my projects and my thoughts and not so much on my computer. I don't give a rat's ass if it's trendy, and I don't think most people who use it do either. Frankly, it comes across as pretty dismissive, since it suggests that there's no actual value to mac use. That, to me, basically indicates that you're undereducated on the differences. Trendy may sell iPods. They cost $69 and my nephew got one for graduating from middle school. It's not what sells Macs. I'm sorry to hear that there are now an unpatched vulnerability that can be protected against with an option dialog selection, a proof-of-concept virus, and a pretty lame trojan for MacOS all in the last few weeks. I don't think it's going to change the thousands of windows viruses a year. Frankly, I'd like it if my fellow mac users became more security savvy. I don't think it will happen for the same reasons that I don't think that most Windows users aren't more security savvy. What if Microsoft finally makes a stable operating system? It won't sell because it'll be incompatible with the vast software library of third-party products that is their market lock-in. It would have to be incompatible, and that's what keeps them from doing it. The steps forward to date have been tiny, but people scream and stop updating every time MS breaks 1% of existing products to prevent a huge security hole. They can't drag it forward because they're shackled to the corpse of the OS that they rode in on. If Linux could win the OS wars by providing the same apps that Windows did, then MacOS would have won. MacOS doesn't have clones of Word and PowerPoint and Excel and Photoshop, it has supported versions that are feature-complete. If The Glorious Linux Future is going to depend on having Word, it's doomed.