When the "real" machines are out, Vista will be out as well. Unless Leopard has revolutionary improvements, the difference between Windows and OSX+iLife would be much less than that it is today. I would still appreciate the UNIX under the hood, but I doubt most consumers care. If Mac sales or market share starts to come down a bit due to fewer switchers, the share price could easily crash.
You are probably nursing those MS shares you bought at $90, hoping for a better day. It is not coming anytime soon sorry to say. Buying is about momentum. Apple has it and MS does not. Vista already has a great deal of bad press and it has not even hit the street. eWeek and other journals are already writing about Vista security vulnerabilities. That is not a good sign. Vista features and functionality has been scaled back numerous times. That too is not a good sign.
Who would have imagined that the common view. amongst the informed computer community, was MS was trying desperately to draw close to even-up with Apple? About the time MS established Windows 2000, they were at the top of the computer world in just about every SW market there was.
They finally had a very stable desktop, server platform, mail server, yellow pages, browser, office suite, SQL engine, and so on. But once they reached this pinnacle, two things happened (or at least two I want to talk about). One, they became way too greedy with their predatory licensing. It just went through the roof. If you have never purchased SW at the enterprise level, you do not understand how expensive this has become. SW can cost (at least) as much HW at the enterprise level.
The second thing that happened at MS is best described in a quote "When Alexander looked at his empire, he wept for there was nothing more to conquer." Instead of continuing on the path of R&D, they tried to find "new worlds to conquer", secure in the knowledge they had indeed subdued all competitors who could challenge them. Sun had tried to mount a charge in the early-mid 90's. Fortunately for MS, Sun's CEO lacked the wherewithal to do more than file lawsuits. Linux suffers from the exact problems that have plagued the Unix community; they cannot unify because they have no leadership.
Apple has been the sleeping giant. They have made their mistakes, taken their lumps and paid their dues. After 20 years, I finally bought a Mac. That was mainly because my boss gave me ~ $15K to buy any personal technology I wanted (bonus type of deal). I was learning video production/editing and using the cheap PC stuff. To make a long story short, I can now boast the purchase of:
You are probably nursing those MS shares you bought at $90, hoping for a better day. It is not coming anytime soon sorry to say. Buying is about momentum. Apple has it and MS does not. Vista already has a great deal of bad press and it has not even hit the street. eWeek and other journals are already writing about Vista security vulnerabilities. That is not a good sign. Vista features and functionality has been scaled back numerous times. That too is not a good sign.
Who would have imagined that the common view. amongst the informed computer community, was MS was trying desperately to draw close to even-up with Apple? About the time MS established Windows 2000, they were at the top of the computer world in just about every SW market there was.
They finally had a very stable desktop, server platform, mail server, yellow pages, browser, office suite, SQL engine, and so on. But once they reached this pinnacle, two things happened (or at least two I want to talk about). One, they became way too greedy with their predatory licensing. It just went through the roof. If you have never purchased SW at the enterprise level, you do not understand how expensive this has become. SW can cost (at least) as much HW at the enterprise level.
The second thing that happened at MS is best described in a quote "When Alexander looked at his empire, he wept for there was nothing more to conquer." Instead of continuing on the path of R&D, they tried to find "new worlds to conquer", secure in the knowledge they had indeed subdued all competitors who could challenge them. Sun had tried to mount a charge in the early-mid 90's. Fortunately for MS, Sun's CEO lacked the wherewithal to do more than file lawsuits. Linux suffers from the exact problems that have plagued the Unix community; they cannot unify because they have no leadership.
Apple has been the sleeping giant. They have made their mistakes, taken their lumps and paid their dues. After 20 years, I finally bought a Mac. That was mainly because my boss gave me ~ $15K to buy any personal technology I wanted (bonus type of deal). I was learning video production/editing and using the cheap PC stuff. To make a long story short, I can now boast the purchase of: