> "...the more Apple and Linux will continue to eat their lunch."
Apple & Linux have merely started to nibble at their bread crumbs ... maybe if Win7 screws up, then they'll start to eat Microsoft's lunch.
Apple & Linux have merely started to nibble at their bread crumbs ... maybe if Win7 screws up, then they'll start to eat Microsoft's lunch.
And between them, Apple and the swarm of open source operating systems have nibbled away a couple of extremely key markets. Name me a field where intense concentrated utilisation of computing resources happens in a mostly Windows environment. Most of the industrial computing environments run on some form of free unix-like OS for some very good reasons. And industrial computing (whether Google, Amazon, rackspace or what have you) is the growth segment of the technology industry at this time.
Windows may own the desktop still, but the desktop is a relatively saturated segment of the market. And most of the sales are replacements, not new seats.
And please don't just dismiss me as a Microsoft hater, I know some very smart people who work there and I do not underestimate the capability or creativity that can come out of the company when it comes down to the wire. But as one of the people I know there said to me a couple of years back "Inside microsoft there are about a hundred world class software companies, most of which are working against each other."
In front of me were a couple of teenyboppers with no idea what the iPhone even cost (and didn't much care, their parents picked up the tab). Behind me was a DJ who knew every tidbit of iPhone gossip imaginable, definitely a hard-core Apple fan.
That the teenyboppers showed up tells me that it is something more than just a "cult of personality" that attracts Apple fans. It hits consumer culture in just the right spot to be a mass market hit.