Seeing you on an Apple thread is about as pleasant as seeing a pile of dog poo in the middle of the street.
Ouch careful, I am sure somewhere there is a M$ conspiracy there.
According to the latest Apple commercial I will soon be asked if its ok to post this, not by Freerepublic but by Vista.
On the article content, I think Balmer is making an accurate statement. The market is relatively mature, and there's no real reason to rush out and change over, except for guys like you, who enjoy getting under the hood and having some fun with the innards of the system. I think Vista will come in at roughly the replacement rate for PCs, although I think they will continue to lose some market share to Apple and other niche manufacturers.
The fact that he's talking about Apple means that the ads have had the desired effect. I don't know how old you are, but I remember back during the soft porn magazine wars, Penthouse ran a series of ads mocking Playboy. At that time, Playboy was selling nearly 100 times the amount Penthouse was. By portraying themselves as equals in the ads, Penthouse positioned itself and for a while, actually passed Playboy in sales. Also, the percentage of operating systems in place is only one measure of success. Apple also gets the computer profit, and controls 70% of the market in portable music players and online music sales. This is a market MS desperately wants. In terms of total sales, Apple had 21 billion to MS' 44 billion last year. Microsoft is certainly bigger, but Apple's growth over the last few years is pretty phenomenal.
One thing about MS, is, IMHO, they operate out of fear as a matter of corporate policy. In his book, Business at the Speed of Thought, Bill Gates came across as a guy who believed there was really only room for one company at the top, and when that company fell, it went all the way down and was crushed by another company. When MS took on Netscape, for example, it was never about profits. MS simply didn't want a competitor. So, does MS fear Apple? Yeah, but they feared Netscape, Hotmail, Wordperfect, Lotus, Google, etc.
Yes, growth. According to that, Apple's worldwide marketshare grew about 25% in two years. That's far more than the industry average. Take that down to the US only and the numbers are far higher, since Apple has been growing in the US much faster than in the rest of the world.
Even the most expensive Macs look downright cheap compared to some of the offerings out there.
This guy really hates Macs, and needs to do more research.
How many copies of MacOS X do you think Apple could sell to the PC world?
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. This guy needs to look at OS/2 and BeOS.