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Posted on 02/16/2006 11:09:46 AM PST by Panerai
A professor at Rutgers University thinks Apple may be setting up to switch to the Windows OS. John Dvorak of PC Magazine writes that professor of psychology Yakov Epstein has noticed a few "coincidences" that point to Apple moving towards the Windows OS. Epstein's observations include the fact that the Apple Switch campaign is over, and "nobody switched;" the lack of FireWire connectors for new iPods as the PC world is the new "target audience;" very few consumers have switched to Macs after being more exposed to Apple products via the iPod; and the switch to the Intel-based microprocessor. Dvorak points to the fact that Apple has reacted strongly to Macintosh gossip sites, saying it is Apple's way of attempting to stem future rumors about product development.
The list of coincidences continues, with Dvorak noting an onscreen appearance by Bill Gates "during Apple's turnaround when Jobs was taking a pot of money from Microsoft," a comment by a Microsoft spokesperson at the Macworld Expo indicating that Microsoft Office would conitnue to be developed for the Mac for "five years" ("What happens after that?" asks Dvorak.)
"This switch to Windows may have originally been planned for this year and may partly explain why Adobe and other high-end apps were not ported to the Apple x86 platform when it was announced in January. At Macworld, most observers said that these new Macs could indeed run Windows now."
Dvorak says that a switch to Windows would make more financial sense for Apple, as it could allow Microsoft to do most of the work, put Apple in the mainstream to compete directly with Dell and HP, and with a little tweaking Apple could retain its GUI and perhaps even improve the OS. "Now with the cash cow iPod line, it can afford to drop expensive OS development and just make jazzy, high-margin Windows computers to finally get beyond that five-percent market share."
The main problem, according to Dvorak, would be appeasing the angry Mac lovers, whom he suspects Steve Jobs would be able to sooth with reminders that any program at all could run on a Windows-Mac, giving users the "best of both worlds."
spiraling down...
I heard Dvorak bloviating about this on the This Week In Tech podcast. I'm a Dvorak fan, but I gotta say, the idea that Jobs would throw off the elegant unix-based OSX in favor of the underdeveloped, indelicate, kludgy MS Vista is to me absurd.
Sheesh, even recent demos of Novell Desktop (a linux flavor) are more impressive than Vista.
I highly recommend, by the way, the weekly "twitcasts" available on thisweekintech.com. Patrick Norton, Leo Laporte, John Dvorak and others gather for an hour or so roundtable review of the week's tech news. Even the episodes with Wozniak are good.
What idiocy.
Get a load of this.
And Cheney gets a sex change. Just as likely, says I.
Dual boot machines by the end of summer...
Must be a slow Apple news day...
The first thing everybody should realize is that Steve Jobs is a micromanaging, control freak. He'd never give up control of the operating system that ties in with Apple's hardware, and makes the whole shebang work.
(And any software publisher that pisses of Jobs is liable to find themselves bought out and their products incorporated into Apple's software, or buried.)
Ping
FOFLMAO ... not bloody likely.
So you hope. LOL
My first thought at the 5 years comment was, Microsoft doesn't want to keep supporting it if Apple comes out with a full office suite. See IE for reference.
No ... I don't just "hope," I KNOW.
It's nonsense.
Total and complete.
I can't get drunk enough to understand Dvorak's mindset, much less dissect it properly. Doesn't Apple have so many other much less crazy options to try out before unleashing such an idiotic nightmare? Options like releasing a shrink-wrapped Mac OS X for x86 or licensing Mac OS X to HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony, Gateway, etc. or making Darwine (running Windows apps without Windows) a working feature of Mac OS X Leopard or giving a free iPod away with every Mac purchase or vice versa or, God forbid, actually attempting to advertise and explain the Mac properly to the world first?
In short, Dvorak is loony-toons, and we all know it. And he managed to dupe a poor professor of psychology into making some uninformed and unsubstantiated OUTLANDISH guesses to thereby support his idiotic article. Must be a slow news day for Dvorak.
LOL!
Dvorak on Crack again
I'll give up my OSX when they pry it out of my cold, dead Lampshade I-mac.
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