Linux Dealt a rest BLOW by Apple !!!!!!! 2448

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Mike wrote on Fri, 1 Sep 2006 09:54:21 -0400

And it won't.

Marketing is the key. Do you remember the Amiga? I do. It did well for a time but Commodore didn't have a clue, and ultimately croaked. The Amiga chipset is now in a weird limbo, and considering most cards now support GL (or DirectX in lieu thereof), is probably now more or less useless.

Apple has done well enough thus far because they've been truly innovative in at least the packaging of their computer hardware (the computer-in-a-round base idea of the iMac G4 was an interesting visual variant, although I don't know how well it actually sold and is no longer available; the iMac G3 was very popular and iPods are the de facto "gotta have" music player standard nowadays).

Microsoft understands marketing, too. I don't know if they understand anything else at this point.

That said...the best marketing is by word of mouth. Since Microsoft seems to make a very good show of shooting itself in the foot every chance it gets (of course it helps that everyone's watching -- America loves to see leaders hobble, apparently!), and the virus writer types have their own agendas, from purely commercial to just being nasty, Linux might very well do well as the Internet gets more spam, more virus probes, more malware.

I don't know how well IBM will be able to market Linux. They spun off Lenovo and are targetting the mainframe-server market with the zx90 line. Other manufacturers are probably either taking a "wait and see" or just going with what they think the market's future is.

We'll see when Vista actually launches, and how impressive Microsoft's videos are. Should be interesting either way.

-- Windows Vista. Because it's time to refresh your hardware. Trust us.