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The State of the Mac

Originally published by "dbarker" on 2007-10-23 13:38:00Z

Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse: Some great commentary on the state of the Mac. Even though I’m generally a Mac hater, I don’t disgaree with anything written here.

The Mac has never experienced sustained growth at this sort of pace. Breaking this quarterly sales record isn’t a fluke – it’s part of a trend. What we’re seeing now is what Mac enthusiasts have been hoping to see for 20 years: more people deciding to buy a Mac. The question now is how big can this trend get.

I think Microsoft is boned in a big way, I really do. Vista has been a flop, and I don’t just say that off-handedly to try and be like everyone else. We have Vista on one machine here in the office – our conference room – so I use it off and on. I can say without reservation that I see zero reason to upgrade.

What’s sad about Vista is that it isn’t a spectacular flop for me – that might be commendable. My experience is worse: there’s just nothing to get excited about. You can’t even say Microsoft failed trying to do something amazing. To me, Vista is a XP with a different theme that makes me go looking for stuff that I used to be able to find.

So, anyway, hats off to Mac enthusiasts. You held out, kept the faith, and I think the next five years will reward you. And someday the Raiders will win the Superbowl again, and perhaps I’ll know what you feel like right now.

Comment by "John Hall" on 2007-10-23 14:55:00Z
I think you are right. I've always used Windows, but now I'm sad to say that my next computer will probably be a Mac. Even Lockergnome has gone Mac!
Comment by "Dave" on 2007-10-24 16:14:00Z
Wow; all that from Deane and not a word about Steve Jobs kicking puppies! Perhaps we really have turned a corner. I've been watching this trend for a while and still wonder what is behind it; is it Apple's switch to Intel processors, making it possible to run any OS on the same hardware, or that Apple finally got things right with 10.3 & 10.4, or Vista's flop? Or a combination of all three? Whatever. Hurray for my team!
Comment by "Todd" on 2007-10-25 06:29:00Z
After 25 years on PCs, my next machine will likely be a mac. I feel uncomfortable saying this because I hate single-vendor lock-in, enjoy the monkey-wrench way that PC's architecture gets advanced, and distrust Jobs immensely. BTAIM, the three main factors for me are: the BSD kernel on the mac gives me a comfy feeling, more and more of my life is out there in netland (so the desktop is becoming less relevant,) and then the straw that breaks the back would of course be Vista.
Comment by "Ian Argent" on 2007-10-25 11:25:00Z
The problem with vista is that the gee-whiz stuff is mainly under the hood; and sadly, made the mistake of thinking that Moore's Law will make up for poor performance. That having been said, I do want to upgrade to Vista, mainly because of the 2 things that people hate it for -- UAC and the new start menu.
Comment by "Thud" on 2007-10-26 13:38:00Z
I had an excellent reason to upgrade to Vista: I was running XP x64, and Vista seemed my only path back to a 32 bit system. It is much more irritating than any other operating system I use, since many actions fire not one but two or sometimes three confirmation dialog boxes depending on the activity. Oh, and there's the regular BSOD that kicks in presumably because I'm using a custom build that is outside the tolerances for Vista's built-in anti-custo^H^H^H^H^H piracy hair-trigger.