Computers have, in the past decade, evolved quite a bit. Yes, we still use them as primary tools - designers use Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXPress; Web creators use Macromedia's tools; everybody uses Office. We also surf, IM, listen to iTunes, create videos, plan days (Calendar/Outlook), Skype, and on and on. And we do it in a constructive, user-tuned interface. Typewriters died to make way for word processors, which gave way to PCs that could do more than just word process, which ought to have made way for the Macintosh (grin), whose OS7 (thank heavens) made way for OSX. Yes a multi-task machine will generally be outperformed by a single-task machine (with reference to comments made to this article only), at least in the short term, however there is no substitute for cubic inches... I found the old MacOS interface to be quite unfriendly, on the whole, whereas Apple has created a truly user-centred experience with OSX. Is it all that it could/should be? I haven't used an OS that is. OSX, however, is my interface of choice for the moment.
Just my 2 cents.
I would just like to add comments that my $.02 might not cover: I switched to Mac in 2002, shortly after they released Jaguar. I used Adobe's products extensively on Windows and had been humming and hawing about the added software costs of switching. Then a colleague of mine pointed out a little tidbit of quite valuable information: Adobe will exchange your software to run on different hardware for a minimal fee. At the time I think it was around $10. I have no idea whether other companies do this, or even if Adobe still does, however I'm surprised that this does not feature more heavily in discussions. It certainly helped make my choice easier. Does that help anyone else?
So the concern being voiced is this: Apple = exclusive. If Apple not= exclusive then Apple = Chapter 11. Yet, should one code a little deeper one would find the line: iPod = nonexclusive yet Apple = ROI * N. The concern for Apple is not pushing their hardware but how to market themselves. Should they decide that it was in their greatest interest to expand marketshare in order to improve their non-PC business then allowing non-Apple machines to run OSX86 would not be detrimental. Why on earth would they support non-Apple hardware? Why is that a concern? Would it not make more sense for them to limit their liability by ALLOWING their software to be used on non-Apple hardware but limiting their support specifically to Apple branded hardware? No techie would be intimidated by that stance. And if Dell and HP and others decided to sell OSX on their machines, whose tech support is called? Surely not Apple's... and once people start using OSX on a system not specifically designed for it and then compare that to an actual Apple 'all-in-one', how many would choose Apple completely for their next machine?... Just my two cent's worth...
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