[George W. Bush]

Now Microsoft is talking about their next big version of Windows scheduled for release in 2009 - or 2011 or 2012, who knows when they'll actually ship the thing? Maybe they'll finally get some of the stuff they originally promised would be in Vista years ago, like WinFS and NGSCB. Or maybe they'll just recommend that Windows users migrate to XBox.

So it's the 'most secure OS in history' according to Gates on launch day. The same day, they released six Vista security updates.

A few days later, they announce Vista SP1 later this year to fix its half-baked code. The DirectX 10 gaming they promised us was broken on the driver for the only real DX10 card, Nvidia's 8800. Both ATI and Nvidia are complaining that the new hardware and driver requirements will make drivers harder to write (more expensive) and board design more expensive too. And all the DRM and hardware design changes were required to protect HD-DVD/BlueRay content which was already broken (in 6 weeks) before Vista even came out. Both ATI and Nvida and game companies are telling the industry that the first DX10 games won't even arrive until mid-2008 which isn't that long before Vienna.

Beyond that, the Xbox 360 poses a threat to Microsoft's justification for all the DX10 stuff in Vista. There won't be many people buying Xbox games who will turn around and buy the fancy DX10 versions again for Vista in 2008. I think Xbox 360 and PS3 and HDDVD/Blueray stunt the potential for massive growth in marketshare or mindshare for Vista.

[daviddennis]

George, I don't understand why people buy gaming PCs when they could get the same or better performance from game consoles costing 1/10th the price. Well, maybe 20% with the Sony PlayStation 3.

Ah, Duke, i suppose Mercedes-Benz and Porsche are bad cars because they have about the same market share as Apple does.

Consumer acceptance means consumers are willing to buy something. It doesn't mean that something even meets minimal quality standards - take Britney Spears' "music" et al. An interesting example because price has nothing to do with it.

I seem to remember this discussion before, but really, you shouldn't be able to get away with those tired points, should you?

I think that realistically, the Apple world is always going to be a little elitist. People who want the best and to reject mediocrity tend to gravitate towards the company. Steve Jobs is just a wonderful symbol to this type of person, the obsessed perfectionist who really cares about building wonderful products.

Because Steve Jobs is dedicated to making great products, they're always going to cost a bit more. An Apple computer is never going to be as cheap as a similar Dell. And what this means is that it's unlikely to ever have more than about 10% market share, just as luxury car makers share a relatively small, but very profitable, percentage of the market.

Now, personally I would not mind the scenerio where a lot of elite computer makers sprung up to make better and more innovative products. But because most people need third-party software for their computers, and because this requires a critical mass of sales to be viable, I'm afraid that for the foreseeable future, we're going to be stuck with nothing more than the current three of Windows, MacOS and Linux. And of those in terms of third party software only the first two are really competitive.

Because the average consumer focuses single-mindedly on price instead of quality, the sum of cheaper Windows and Linux sales will always be able to win a majority over Apple. So Apple fans will be able to continue being snobbish about their computers no matter what

Hope that was an interesting perspective.

D