[antiRepublicrat]

There's just no possible way I could have any experience with a software arrangement that locks you into a hardware vendor and that turning out to have been a bad decision.

Then so much for those mainframes.

Researchers create a PlayStation 2-based supercomputer

Did you bother to read the article? You earlier, "some university research project that built one of the ten largest supercomputers in the world out of a bunch of PS2's..." You're article, "they aren't powerful enough to be among the world's 500 fastest supercomputers."

You're at least 490 positions off.

The thread's not about them

You turned it into a hardware lock-in issue, you have to explain your lack of disdain for Sun, IBM, and let's throw in Hitachi and HP while we're at it.

[tacticalogic]

The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple is writing "open standard" software, and making the hardware platform it has to run on proprietary.

Microsoft is making the hardware platform as standard as possible and using proprietary protocols and data formats.

You want to make the case that Apple's approach is superior to Microsoft's by declaring proprietary software standards evil, and proprietary hardware standards inconsequential. You like the OS, and are prepared to accept the hardware restrictions as justified in order to be able to use it, and think everyone else should have those same priorities. You're free to set your priorities however you want, but don't expect you can demand that everyone else adopt them in order to see things your way.