[Last Visible Dog]

Here's a link to a photo of Bill Gates c.1983 (Corbis Photos, can't post it). If you look behind Gates, on his desk, you can clearly see a Macintosh computer. If he can do it...

That would be rather amazing being that the Mac was released in 1984.

[IncPen]

Yes, you're right on the year of the photo; I happened to see a prototype of the Mac in 1983 and had that in my mind as the year for the photo. I also got to hold an 'original' Pixar motherboard in my hands the same day I saw the Mac prototype- as at that time Pixar was aiming at medical imaging applications and showing off their hardware tricks (ie animation) to pseudogeeks like me

As for the software point, you are probably right about external vendors, but Apple undoubtedly provides more software for the platform (iLife, iWorld, Logic, Motion, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, iTunes, etc. - software outside the OS, in other words) than MS...