Windows.. it's like coming home! 3398

They didn't at the time. I suspect many of them do now. My impression is that there were very few actually defections from the platform as a result of OS X. This means a good number of the OS X partisans now cheering on Aqua used to be OS 9 partisans cheering the old UI.

It may have been obsolete, but it was better than what Windows had.

You misspelled "NeXT".

Actually, it might, depending on how technologies like this work out:

I suspect if you count digital still photography (and I can't think of a good reason why you shouldn't), it already has. Practically every household has a camera, and digital cameras have almost entirely replaced film cameras in the consumer market.

These are the folks who tend to get asked for product recommendations by their less tech-savvy relatives. Get one of them on board, and you could easily get another half-dozen sales for free.

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Well, my question would be, who's doing education better than Apple? Nobody, as far as I can see.

And you say education is an afterthought for Apple, but the education-model iMac is an almost perfect lab machine. The exact same thing with maybe a bit less performance for $300 less would be nice, but I don't think it's really possible (you probably have to use pricey laptop chips to get that form factor, and the form factor is really important for this application), and in any event nobody makes it.

Plus, there's all of that client management stuff in OS X Server -- networked home directories, managed preferences, software update serving, etc. We've already established that Apple doesn't seriously target the enterprise market, so one can only conclude that stuff is primarily there for the education market. Seems like a lot of effort for an "afterthought".

I think you're concluding Apple considers the education market and afterthought because Apple isn't making the products that you think the education market wants. What's really going on, though, is merely that you and Apple disagree about what the education market wants.

Illegally monopolized markets create those kinds of results, yes.

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Yes, VBA apparently can't be ported anywhere, even to 64-bit Windows, as we've discussed. This is likely to hurt a lot more for Microsoft's enterprise customers on their own platform than for its Mac user base. I've literally *never* come into contact with anyone using VBA on the Mac.

Not many, I'd guess. And Excel shouldn't really be used that way in any case.

-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005