Also, the Xbox 360 is NOT doing great. Their FPS games are selling well, but the original Xbox was a 5 billion dollar hole in the wallet. The 360 has RRoD (red rings of death) for about 40% of the units out. The PS3 has actually outsold the 360 within the same year time frame and it’s about $100 more than the 360, while the 360 launched worldwide with NO competition for an ENTIRE YEAR. The PS3 suffered M$-FUD for 8 months before it even came out and the FUD still flows.

Anyways, great article. One of my favorite websites.

It does bring up the point that that many devises are more powerful than desktop computers were even ten years ago.

I don’t believe the global PC market share numbers include Win CE, XBox or Zoon. They do of course count cash registers and ATMs and lot’s of other computers that really aren’t personal.

One could argue that Apples OS X share should include Apple TV, iPhone and iPod touch because those actually are OS X computers and all of them are personal. As you point out and most of us understand, not everything branded as Windows is actually running Windows.

Anyway Urban, you’d be more fun to talk to than write to. It’s easy to read things differently than the writer intended. I re-read my “will” opening comment and couldn’t quite figure out what the hell my point was.

By the way Daniel, is that little black dot on the left edge of the print out the cats…. eeew!

“One of the things about the OS after over 20 years of desktop OS development is that the OS is becoming and will become increasingly invisible to many consumers.”

Many devises, because they run on international standards will become invisible–appliances. But, I expect those devices to vastly increase in numbers as their prices come down. This places a huge burden on the OS to control them.

Right now, it is rather expensive and cumbersome to have a dozen cameras scanning your home. They might be wireless and encrypted, but how do you control all that? How do you make it easy? Where do you store the images? I believe I know what Apple has planned to resolve this, but it would take too much time to lay it out now.

“For many, all they need is iTunes and their iPhone/ipod, iPhoto and their camera, iMovie and their DV camera, MS Word, an email program and a Browser. The OS don’t matter to them.”

The easier and cheaper it is to do anything, the more likely we let computers do a task for us. This is part of expanding the market, too.

“Apples’ weakness here is probably the email program - I feel that major development is needed to make Mail as useful as Entourage is - the connection between iCal and Mail needs work.”

Apple has been working on this. It recently included CalDAV group calendaring in Leopard server.

You must understand that finding a work around for Entourage comes quite close to attacking Microsoft on its Enterprise turf. Microsoft will likely retaliate. Apple is closing in on Microsoft’s core markets, but it must be careful. It must look nonchalant.

“Microsoft may survive because of Word, and perhaps rightfully so. It’s getting bloated but does the job.
That’s theirs to lose.”

The question is not about Microsoft Word, but what do the markets want?

The Pages program does a good job of receiving Word files and saving those files in many Word formats. Apple has, most likely, kept Pages and Numbers intentionally modest. Apple pretends that they are good enough for consumers and Small to Medium Sized Business owners, but do not attempt to invade the Enterprise market.

Steve jobs has said that Mac OSX will be upgraded at 12 to 18 month increments. The iLife and iWork software are likely to follow suit. It would be nice if Pages and Numbers has Plug-in’s to expand their feature sets. That way you could have as much compatibility with Word and Excel as you wanted to pay for.

“The OS must be unobtrusive, I believe, and thats where Windows is in trouble - its architecture wont allow it to stay in the background.’

You want an OS to be helpful, but in ways that don’t affect your workflows. Apple does that rather well now. But, it needs to give the consumer more levels and choices.