Somewhat on topic, I used a Vista machine for the first time the other day. What a mess. It was unbelievably slow, just positively painful to use. I tried to set up separate configurations for home and office use, and could barely accomplish the task despite my 30+ years of computing experience. I am so glad we ditched all Microsoft products four years ago.
I think Apple will soon be in a position to mount a real challenge to Microsoft, not just in the niche markets, but for general purpose computing too.
Why would Apple want to do that?
Seriously, Apple has exactly what they want -- a steadily growing market of around 10%. They aren't set up to deal with more than perhaps 20%, tops. If Apple gets above 20% you'll start to see changes you don't like in how they operate, because they'd have to adapt to the needs of the majority market.
The majority market wants Win7, and they'll get it. Win7 is pretty solid. And it runs on the inexpensive PC hardware that the majority of the market want. The majority do not want cool, they want cheap.
Nope, Apple's challenge to Microsoft is that they have a better operating system (in most, but not all, respects), and better hardware than most PC hardware (in most, but not all, respects). If they try to mount a serious market challenge (say, above 20%), they'll have to stop being Apple, and they'll fail.
Every time an Apple press release comes out someone writes this.