I’ve been in the industry for a long time, professionally since Win95 was in Beta, hobby and school for plenty of time before then. One of the constants of the industry is there’s always something out there which people are predicting is going to eat Microsoft’s lunch, frequently that something is Apple. And yet MS keeps having their lunch. The last web traffic stats I saw showed Vista having a larger install base than Mac, while everybody keeps talking about how poorly Vista is doing in the market and how great Mac is doing Vista is apparently actually selling pretty well.
Now I’m not saying that MS’s lunch will never be eaten by somebody else, all giants can be toppled. I’m just saying it’s going to take a lot more than what are basically the same stories I’ve been reading for 20 years for me to believe that their lunch is going to be eaten SOON. If you’re an old fart like me you’ve read probably thousands of “Mac is so much better than Windows, MS is doomed” stories, almost as many as you read about how solar power is about to really take off.
Um, until OS X, the main story was “Apple is doomed, MS will crush them” in the press.
So... now that even the notoriously clueless press is forced to admit that this isn’t even remotely the truth.
Also, many of those web traffic stats rely on browser plugins that DO NOT INFECT a Mac or a properly locked down PC and are therefore suspicious.
There is a lot of economic inertia that has to be overcome with Microsoft before it really becomes vulnerable. An 1200 foot long oil tanker cannot stop on a dime. However, there are a lot of factors slowing the S.S. Microsoft... many internal and some external.