Apple is taking over.

[BrianG]

Yeah, the Apple stores do always seem to be packed. But at least 75% of those are tweens just playing around with the stuff. Another ~10% are older people just wanting something that will browse the web and send email without having to worry about antivirus software. The last ~15% seem to be people "kicking the tires" before a possible purchase.

I personally make an effort to boycott Apple products. The only Apple product I have is a 5th gen iPod (my wife's Mac doesn't count - that's hers), but only because after-market support existed to attach it to my car deck at the time.

The problem I have with Apple is:

- Steve Jobs is sooo completely full of himself. He has the attitude that if he says it is the Holy Grail, then it is. Period. And that attitude carries over to the Apple store employees; all with their holier-than-thou, apple-is-god attitudes.

- Apple hardware is no big deal, especially given the cost. The iMac is simply a glorified tablet without a touchscreen, but with a hefty price. And the hardware in the mobile segment is nothing special either; there are other makers out there with similar specs. When you get to the hi-end stuff, the hardware is really no different than any other hi-end brand. An 8+ core CPU with 20GB of RAM and RAID0 HDDs on SATA3 is gonna be fast from any brand.

- Cost. My wife's iMac needed a new PS unit. It was a 150w module and costed $275. They covered labor free of charge (how magnanimous of them after dry raping me for the part), but it took a week to get the part in and installed. I told the tech that if this was my personal PC, I could have went out and gotten an 800w+ supply and have it installed within the hour, and it would have costed a fraction of that. He countered that their product quality was superior. Wanting to see what "superior quality" looks like, I took the PS apart and be assured, there is nothing magical in there; no futuristic glowing sphere of pulsing power or alien technology. Besides, if their stuff was so superior, why did it break in the first place?

- Apple OS on Apple hardware. This is a double-edged sword in my opinion. On one hand, it allows Apple to have an OS that is less cluttered with backward compatibility, having to support a huge range of hardware configurations, and support for legacy hardware/apps. On the other hand, it limits what people can do with it unless they want to spend all kinds of time tinkering/hacking it if they aren't using apple OS on apple hardware. Personally, I think Apple would have much better market share if they released the OS with their hardware like they do now, but offer an add-in or internet updater (similar to how Linux updater works) to support other hardware. That would keep the OS leaner when running on their products, but opens doors for other people.

I am not a Windows fan-boy either (M$ does have their heavy handed business approach), but I do like the lower price and vast hardware configurations possible. Take pretty much any PC hardware and you can put Windows or one of a multitudes of Linux distros on it - and it works (with Linux, you may have to tinker a bit). The Mac OS itself is ok (customized version of Linux), I might even be tempted to use it under different circumstances.

I too was shocked when I heard about HP stopping PC sales. But I can understand how hard it must be to be competitive on the middle to low end product segment where this is little profit. I guess that leaves Dell and Gateway for the main-stream desktop and laptop market.

I know many people use laptops instead of desktops at home now, but I just have a hard time figuring out how I could run what I do at home on dual hi-res monitors on relatively mediocre mobile hardware? The desktop platform IS shrinking, but won't be gone for a while IMO. Besides, I like the idea of separate components; when one part breaks, I just replace that instead of the whole computer.

[JERRY2KONE]

Trust me BG I agree with you on every account, and the only Apple stuff we own are our various Ipod/Itouch products. But now the boys had to have their Mac-book Pro laptops in order to go to this school, which is not only a very good school, but it is also litterally 100 yards from our front door. If they did go to any other school here they would have to use public transportation to and from school and we just want to avoid that if possible.

Not that it was a big deal but HP bought out Palm last year for something like $10B as well, so they will also be going away once HP drops out of the market. THeir plan is to stop selling home PC gear next Oct, and I would bet that the product support will dwindle within a few years after that. We are kind of bummed, because we have HP all over our house. 3 HP cameras, 4 HP printers, and 3 HP laptops. Oh well.

I have been pretty much against Apple for quite some time now for the very reasons you also stated. Still with HP departing that leaves some pretty awful companies for us to deal with. I do not like Dell simply because their customer service is apauling from my experience. Gateway, Lannova, Toshiba, Samsung, Asus, Alienware, and all the rest are operating pretty skimpy in comparison and frankly do not offer much to desire compared to Mac in todays envronment. Mac is taking over whether we like it or not. I am on a Toshiba now and it is OK, but in time all of this will be history. With our kids now using Mac's it is hard not to want to give it a try. Plus it is easier to help them out if we have the same platform. The new I-Pad now has over 50,000 applications avialable and that number is growing quickly. You can use I-pads to do just about anything now-a-days. They really are phenominal in comparison to anything else on the market today.