MacGlee's Profile

Your premise left me cold until I paraphrased this line. ...maybe the urge to copy Apple will be so ingrained by then that (Microsoft) won't know how to do anything else. History repeats itself?

Doubt it, though Longhorn was a lot of bull, so that was accurate.

Microsoft should be thanking Apple, in the ads PC comes across as affable yet ineffectual boob, as opposed to the real Microsoft - nasty convicted monopolists who thwart their competition and have cost the world untold billions in lost productivity. Warm fuzzies :)

I don't care about hardware specs or price, the fact is I use Windows at work and for that reason alone I will never have it in my home. Apple is thriving and has diversified its portfolio to the point that talking about whether it will "survive" or not is moot. It's pretty obvious that Apple has deliberately avoided certain areas of the market, it disappoints some that there is no mid-range headless Mac, but that is the commodity market and not desirable.

Well sirch, your argument is much the same as the one that Chris presents in the airplane analogy. It depends on your "measuring stick". For the majority of buyers the lure of the $500 PC is stronger than the arguments over TCO, battling viruses and spam, etc. These are "intangibles" whereas the price tag in front of their faces is not, and usually, because they have not tried a Mac they don't know that they can live without these intangible yet "pricey" items. For diehard Mac users the so called "intangibles" matter and are factored in at time of purchase, making the Mac, in their minds the better deal. Apple, of course, does not cater to those who put price above all else. As long as sales growth continues to outstrip the PC they likely never will.

"When I started this website over 6 years ago Apple was coming out of a dark period." So to question whether Apple "Matters" or not was relevant. Six years on the question is moot. Playboy re-issued 1984 interview with Steve Jobs gives an insight into his thought processes and his prescience for the future of the industry is remarkable. Of course at the time he saw IBM (Big Blue) as the threat that would put the tech sector in the Dark Ages for twenty years, ultimately Microsoft supplanted IBM in that role.

Finally, someone takes the "high road". That is certainly refreshing. Thanks, James, you are one class act.

So, Steve is on an extended leave, away from the "day-to-day" operation of running Apple, he has the opportunity to take the long view and focus on the future. Excellent! Where is the puck going to be, Steve?