Finally! MS retail stores

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Apple was the dominant PC in the early days. Proprietary hardware and software.

Not true. The Apple ][ was open. And it lead to clones all over the place. Anyone remember the Franklin?

After the Apple ][, Apple went proprietary. They f'd up the Lisa, real bad. The Mac was what saved them in 83/84. It was way ahead of its time, using GUI with a mouse. But it was expensive, and the architecture was proprietary. It ended up with limited use at colleges and as a platform for graphical pursuits.

Meanwhile, IBM, and I do mean IBM, owned the corporate market. Yes there were clones, but a lot of big businesses had long term agreements with IBM. When I was with GE, they we're using real IBM machines up until 1993/94 when they went with Dell.

All though the 80's, even though PCs didn't have a GUI, they dominated the business market, and with that, the home market. Also, all of the portables, then laptops (and there were LAP tops, not the notebooks we have today) ran MSDOS.

It was in the late 80's that Apple had a resurgence, and MS started to create its various "Windows" GUI-OS. It wasn't until Windows 3.0 that they had reasonable success, and Win 3.1 where MS finally had something reasonably stable. Windows Millenium was the final version.

And don't forget, what we're running now, OS/2, started as a joint venture between MS and IBM. IBM went one way, and the off shoot died. MS went another, and the legacy is the XP/Vista most of us are running today.

[JavaBrewer]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Here's the inside of a Mac

Now go open your Dell and tell me that the spaghetti vomit inside can compare to it.

When you buy Apple hardware you are buying bar non the absolutely highest level of industrial design in the computer industry.

There is not a lose wire in sight, no tools are required to replace components, everything is engineered to the highest level of detail.

This I agree with 100%. I have a dual CPU G5 PowerMac and it is gorgeous in and out. Sadly, I don't spend much time looking inside the magnificent aluminum case. OS-X is very nice but no "better" or "useful" than XP or Linux...IMO. Thanks to the mac fanatics the G5 still has great resale so it will make it onto Craigs list as soon as Windows finalizes the Vista replacement.