But some idiot executives in Microsoft appeared to have decided to remove the “tweakableness”. Now decisions are made for us, options are removed, features eliminated. This is starting to add up and my annoyance is steadily growing. I’ve already ditched IE7 in favour of Firefox almost purely because of my outrage over the Image Toolbar being canned.

Having played with Vista a bit and seen how many things are missing, or more difficult, my blood pressure is steadily rising. If I go anywhere, I’ll go to Linux. When Windows loses its geek community, like someone else already said, it dies. The ecosystem which sustains it is lost. It will no longer have software written for it, it will no longer be recommended to parents and girlfriends. There won’t be people who know how to fix it. The worst thing of all is the sense that Microsoft is no longer listening. To anyone.

Just in case nobody’s worked it out yet this is nothing more than a game. Before the release of any major Microsoft product (win 98,2000,XP, .net framework, Xbox, tablet, media center, UMPC, Zune) the web explodes with hundreds of articles and blog posts all trying to convince us that this product is going to suck and be a huge flop and could bring M$ down because everyones going to switch to apples/googles/linux/netscapes/sonys/mozillas latest vastly superior product. The Slashdotters and Diggers all have their fun, and the blogger gets the traffic he craves. Microsoft ship the product, it becomes successful, the bloggers predictions are proven wrong but it doesn’t matter because by then they have moved onto spreading FUD on the next MS product.

http://www.coffeenewsco.com

What is the driver of Mac’s market share increase? If it hasn’t done it already as stated by Joe (excellent rebuttal), then I don’t know what Vista can miss.

At minimum, the improved security features will already convince many Windows users to stay.

Surely, the User Interface is superior (?) with the Mac, but I’m not so sure. Windows versus Mac is like Right Handed versus Left Handed. I tested Mac at the Apple Computer Store and found the UI very left handed with the minimize/maximize/close buttons on the left side. The software programs, pre-installed on the Mac, are not as intuitive as I had remembered with the Mac (I owned a Mac in 1995).It was difficult for me to figure out the features.

Surely, a Apple employee showed me some features, yet I wondered how he done it. I wasn’t able to learn it on my own. I realized that Mac isn’t any better in terms of ease of use.

Therefore, Mac’s main advantage of security and possibly operating system stability may only be marginally better than the pending Vista.

Many comments he cited on potential switchers is all well and good, but what the heck is the future? The “Phantom Menace” example is an good jab. Actually, it stings, but you’re talking about XP SP2 for all we know. Windows is not fancy, but it does it’s job.

I have to disagree with you about the stability side of things and the security has come a long way, the one greatest thing that Microsft did to imprive security in Xp was to limit the administrator rights after Sp2, there are still securuity issues that come along but that’s the price you pay when your the biggest player in the market.

OSX has it’s issues too but Apple was smart not have users automaticly
be assigned Admin rights, and Apple does release serious security updates for OSX their just not so vocal about it, and I find that when it comes to stability ,it’s a coin toss and it depends on the day.

I like OSX, Apple at the very least was the first out the door to offer more ease of use on the UI front, and I agree some things have changed.
Apple’s have become faster thanks to the adoption of the Intel cpu’s,
and they are making an honest attempt to sell a lower prices, but Apple can’t match the breath and scope of a Dell or hp, and the sometimes razor thin profit margins that they work with to sell at the sub one thousand dollar price point.

I would live to see Apple lift itself up to around 10 percent market share, even though this would take many years to do, it would give Apple a nice
stable and profitable position to work from, right now the ipod contributes way to much to Apples bottom line compared to the computer side of the company, It would allow Apple to lower the prices of some of it’s notebooks and desktops without the need to have a such high gross profit margins that limit sales, then Apple could match Dell and include monitors and keyboards in some of it’s packages.

I’ll be in the market for a new notebook early next year and the Macbook pro is at the top of my list, it will be the best of both worlds for me, I’ll have Mac OSX and Windows Vista on the same machine, I love Aero Glass
and Aqua, and now I’m not forced to choose between one or the other.

Apple know’s that there are a lot of people like me, we want to work in Windows most of the time, but would love have have a sleek Mac to run it on, while this may seem sacriligious to some, Cupertino can’t ignore the fact that there is a growing market for this kind of thing.

If doing this keeps the computer Biz side of Apple alive and I think It will,
all the better.