Windows.. it's like coming home! 3392

I don't think that follows at all. It mainly excludes the larger enterprise market, which is typically dependent on bespoke applications that must continue to run no matter what. And also businesses and more conservative users who need a very clear and economically-justifiable reason to upgrade to any kind of new software.

That leaves the Mac userbase comprising of the prosumer-types who like to stay cutting-edge, regular joes who are happy with the software that comes with their system, and professionals in markets where it is necessary to stay current with software developments (for example, video production).

I think this fits the profile of the Mac userbase pretty well, without needing to dismiss us all as either Zealots or MS-haters. Oxford and GreyCloud are more than enough to cover those categories :-D

No, so Apple didn't. The current userbase is obviously concerned with new stuff, rather than stability* or extensive backward-compatibility.

*I obviously mean don't mean this in the sense of OS-crashing stability, I mean overall platform stability.

I agree, but only if, having completely abandoned both the old Mac hardware and software, and brought in an entirely new system in its place, they now continue to behave like this.

Look at it this way - it's not like Apple, in, say, 1999, had any enterpise credibility to lose. OS 9 was terrible, and totally uninteresting to any large business customer. Apple have no great wealth of enterprise customers from that era that are now peeed off with them, and slowly transitioning while maintaining compatibility would not have impressed them, because it didn't affect them.

Doing so would only be delaying the arrival of the point where Apple actually had a platform worthy of serious consideration. I believe they now have that platform, and that this is, in effect, ground zero for Apple in the enterprise. If they really want a slice of that market, then from this point forward they will need to take backward compatibility as seriously as Microsoft does.

You're misunderstanding me, I was referring to navigation as well. I was using the Finder's sidebar as a subsbreastute for the *folder* shortcuts in the Start menu.