indeed. Can you say "Sour Grapes!"?
somehow i expected MS to do *something* like this, i just didnt think they'd be so outright stupid and childish. There's a large number of various models of mobile digital music "jukebox" players on the market, by a number of different companies. That IS NOT a MONOPOLY in any sense of the word.

This is just latest in FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) from M$, don't forget they have called the GNU open source licence a cancer which will destroy the entire software industry. This, of course is the license behind Linux and much of the open source software which operates most of the internet. Also, some evidence exists that using Windows interferes with your cognition (but allows you to have two contradictory ideas at the same time). Or that it is much easier for most people to just bitch about their situation, rather than do something about it.

Jeff Syrop, a die-hard PC user, brought his 10-year-old son George to Macworld to get an education.

"I thought it would be more educational than his crappy American public school," he explained. While George checked out the new iPod Mini, his dad ranted about his PC, while blowing hot on cold on the Mac.

He said he admires the Mac but will never get one because it's not mainstream.

"I'm a full-on PC user," Syrop said. "I pretty much hate using the Mac at work. I don't like the interface. Too childish. They sell this wonderful hardware, with this one-button mouse."

But a few minutes later, he said, "I wish they (Apple) would get their act together and blow Microsoft out of the water. But Apple's got, what, 7 percent market share? And it's used by artists and designers? It will never happen."

He continued, "I'll admit the PC is screwed up. It took me a whole year to sort out (hooking a camcorder to the PC). Last year I came here and did it in a second in iMovie.... There's a lot of things screwed up about the Mac world, but the usability is amazing."

I think Jeff is the norm, Jim. It is not that people really believe Macintoshes are inferior, they can't bring themselves to doing something other people (or they think, the wrong kind of people) do. So, they will not use a computer that the masses of PC users won't use. His one-button mouse complaint is hogwash, of course. One can get a multiple button regular or optical, even cordless, mouse that works great with an Apple or a Wintel computer for under $50. He could probably take his mouse home from work and use it with a Mac if he is a tightward.

I know people who are the same way about public transit. They will gripe endlessly about the costs of driving and parking a single-user car in a city. But, they believe public transit is for losers -- even in a city like Portland where we have light rail and a trolley system, as well as buses. That is coming less common as public transit gains cachet. Maybe some folks with get hip to Apple in the same way.

Another one is that people think they can't do anything on Mac's. My mac is the only mac in my department, and I actually do everything they can do and more. I've zipped up files to them (in .zip) and some of them couldn't open them or had no clue about what winzip was.

I also use my .mac account to share files with them, but of course they have no concept of that sort of thing because they are using the "red headed stepchild" of operating systems.

Microsoft is about choice? That has to be the funniest thing I've read all day. If it were up to Microsoft, you'd have no coice in anything, and be forced to use whatever crap they come up with. I'm just glad Apple is there to give me the choice I actually want.

the only place microsoft is not behind the 8-ball in the area of innovation is in the use of the word 'innovation'. it's their mantra. i'd love to see the memo passed around that declared the word obligatory in every single public communication.

Tom,

I just did a google.com search and found myself quoted in your post. I just want to say that I was talking about OS 9 when I was interviewed, and OS 9 WAS stupid in terms of file management--you were forced (in stupid Sherlock) to search a whole drive and couldn't search individual folders; file names were limited to 31 characters; powerful computers came standard with one-button mouses; you couldn't copy and paste files in Finder; and MUCH MUCH more. OS X, however, has fixed a lot of those problems, and it is so beautiful and thoughtful that it has made me hate Windows even more.

What finally pushed me over the edge was the Sasser virus. It took me two weeks to help a friend of mine completely rid his Windows system of that virus. Windows doesn't teach you that you have to periodically remove *.tmp files, dump everything in your startup box, run AdAware or Spybot, run a firewall, update virus definitions religiously, etc. You HAVE to be a computer geek to enjoy using Windows. If you ARE a computer geek, Windows is great--XP is fast and solid and still better than OS X for file management.

Yet with only 4% of the market, Apple has managed to make a beautiful, thoughtful interface that, with a little bit of work, will be better than the Windows XP interface (I'll send you my list of 25 serious problems Windows users have with OS X Panther if you like).

I realize now that we're all being screwed over by Windows, but I would still be very hesitant to buy a Mac. A friend of mine who loves Macs finds that he uses his new Titanium whatever Mac notebook less and less because his HP Windows notebook is twice as fast even though it cost half as much. I feel that Windows is like Hitler's dream--it succeeded in taking over our desktops like Hitler wanted to take over all of Europe and the world--and if 95 percent of the world was speaking German, I guess I'm one of those weak people who would just go along and speak German too . . . because my main goal is to simply communicate, not to fight some idealistic war over which interface is better.

I love what happened in Munich Germany recently--the town bought 14,000 PC's and cut Microsoft out of the deal completely, even though Microsoft was begging on its hands and knees. Because Microsoft has been such an unfair player, it has no real allies, and IBM and Oracle offered free services to Munich, which helped cement the deal, and Munich instead went with 14,000 Unix PC's, with NO Microsfot software on them.

I don't care which OS "wins," but I do care that computers become usable for regular non-geek people, and in that sense, Apple is going more in the right direction than Windows. But I kind of resented the comparison you made of people like me to people who won't ride public transportation because they think it's for losers. I WOULD ride public transportation based on its merits, period. I'm not a sheep that follows the herd. For example, I never believed George Bush for a moment, about anything. I would chose to ride or not ride public transportation based on what it could do for my life. And I do the same thing with computers.

Right now Windows works best in my life. The software and hardware is cheap--for example, the games and foreign-language-study programs I buy for my children are plentiful and cheap.

Please E-mail me if you respond to this post.

Thank you,

__Jeff Syrop

I'm sorry... In my previous post, I addressed my comments to Tom, when it was really Jim Carruthers' post I was responding to.

__Jeff Syrop