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...Let's not confuse idealism for reality. We get enough of that crap from liberals... but delusions only are appreciated on the other side.

Indeed. You sweep a large brush, based on your perusal of the "LA Times" Adv. dept? It is obviously your reality, that is a little warped. As a Mac owner, and user since 1984, I may know a little more about the subject matter, and will gladly reply to your apparent ignorance.

I am not a techie. I have used my computers, with few problems, since the beginning, without needing to be one. All of my problems were caused by poorly written code, in third party software. I never needed a programmer, or a technician, except to spin a crashed hard drive for recovery. I still have some of my 15-20 yr old, fully functioning, Macs. I can use much of the early software, using Mac Classic (OS9), running underneath OSX.

The only crap we Mac folk get are from the MS IT Dept types, and others that make their living trying to revive crashed Wintel computers. WE Mac users RARELY have to miss a beat!

The Mac mini is already a hit, but I own a g5. I will take on any Photoshop Process, and beat you to the redraw, most times, on your Wintel. Have you ever had a chance to use Final Cut Pro. If you've been to many movies, you have seen its' "product" displayed repeatedly. I have used it as an upgrade to iMovie (a very easy to use, Apple-supplied, part of the iLife suite). It is not much more difficult to use, but the output is fabulous, for my home movies. The ease of use, is because of the standardization, of the many facets of Mac programs, required by Apple, from itself and third-party folk.

I still use the same keyboard shortcuts that I learned in 1984, while you were probably still in diapers, or using a little flashing c> as a guide. (I still don't know how to get it to stop flashing, and don't care!)

Microsoft does not own desktops. They market an operating system, filled with foibles, and loaded with drudgery. That is why IT Departments came into being. Without an aggressive IT Dept, commerce would cease, if it relies on Microsoft.

In Burgaw, NC, circa 1986-87, the Pender Post Newspaper began using Macintosh Plus, teamed with Apple Laserwriters, for type-setting the paper, and creating ads. They still use Mac. Most papers do, these days. They have no IT guys. Never did.

Most any creative department, of any major Corp, has a Mac or two, or three. More are adding them. With advanced engineering programs, and lots of spreadsheet calcs, there is good use for the Mac GUI environment. Gamers made MS wealthy, when they took their bizness machines home, and needed something to do. Apple has been primarily marketed to working people, and creators, not gamers. We don't need an alternate reality, where we can kill and pillage.

It is not difficult to believe the article. It is, however, extremely difficult to continually listen to jerks, that don't know enough about the subject, to make a reasonable post. Instead, these jerks think it is still necessary to bash Mac users, or make cutesy remarks about delusions... because they have no argument.

Get over it. The only delusions are in the minds of those who don't see the headlights!

"Dave, what are you doing?"

Indeed. You sweep a large brush, based on your perusal of the "LA Times" Adv. dept?

Well, yes, I suppose that is hilariously stupid of me, considering Los Angeles is one of the largest tech markets in the world, far exceeding the job base of many countries.

Let me first explain my experience. My first Mac was a Mac Lisa. While you were learning shortcuts in 1984, I was piggybacking processors, stacking ram, and programming Macs. Over the next ten years, I help build the industry. I know the pleasures of dealing with Apple's non-disclosure documents. I was quite pleased with helping with the design on the Mac II, and of the nine Macs I've owned, every single one still operates wonderfully (though the Lisa lives on only as a wall clock at an observatory.

But of course, you bring up the news industry. I helped write the manual for Knight Ridder to use to convert their paste up departments to pagination, using the III systems that became the cornerstone for the large publishing industry. (Very happy with buying their stock at the time, too, though Tron was a bit silly.)

I enjoyed setting up IT departments up till the change of the century for corporations across the United States. My biggest challenge was re-working the Hughes IT support section into something that could actually handle their needs.

I've likely shed close to 20 pints of blood onto the circuit boards of Mac computers, and lit myself up more than a few times off of those flybacks.

Do you know more? No. You don't. I've likely exceeded your knowledge with what I've forgotten, mostly because I've not used a Mac for the last five years. It would probably take me forty minutes to strip down and rebuild a LaserWriter today, and likely three hours to rebuild an ImageWriter printhead, horrible times compared to years ago. I knew most of the folks who signed the inside of the Apple IIgs.

The article comes from MacUser. If Apple had captured just 10% of the corporate desktops, they would be issuing a massive press release to boost their stock. They would not be talking about their iPod sales, or iTunes. Had they captured 10% of the corporate desktops, you'd see Microsoft announcing a storm of new products to capture part of that market back again.

As for overall install base, if you totaled every 68000 derived processor, as well as every PowerPC derived processor, you still would not equal 10% of the corporate computer market. Just in computerized registers alone, you might come close..maybe.

One of the things I've learned on FreeRepublic is never assume that someone is ignorant until they've proved it. Take the lesson to heart.

Hey, I liked that flashing C:\> prompt! I think, and I'm really just speculating here, that Windows or any other PC operating system is going to have a hard time when being compared to the Mac OS and OSX, simply because there is so much more PC hardware avaliable (different bios, sound cards, video cards, ide/sata/scsi adapters, etc...) that has to be supported by the OS, and that makes it pretty hard to make a solid system. With the Mac, I believe that most of the hardware is either Apple made or approved (right?), and there isn't nearly the mountains of hardware avaliable for a Mac as there is for the PC.