The current case is only the second best looking PM case ever (after the Quick silver) and it still looks about a 100 times better than that horrible kludge of horizontal lines and boxy tin. It's crap.
<strong>Apple needs to widen its spectrum of products and services. How about a professional edition of .Mac? That would work extremely well.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Seeing as nobody has any new information and we're reduced to arguing hypothetical matters of taste <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
I might as well Chime-In ...
I like it, a lot.
It's very Xserve, clean, elegant, simple ... yet powerful, precisely because of it's understatement, not in spite of it.
Lovely simple horizontal lines and two strong verticals on the side which frame the inner details and enhance the outer vertical edges to the eye.
The slightly curved edges soften any sharpness, without going overboard with any cheesy yet tiresomely fashionable Anime style anthropomorphism, in either color or form ... I think it's beautiful ... not perfect, but I'll take beauty when perfection isn't available any day.
If Mies Van Der Roh where designing a computer in 2003, it might look a lot like that.
But then, he wouldn't dare put his name on anything that didn't have an 970 under the hood, the man was NOT about form and so-so function ... tsh tsh.
For those who really want the Ultimate Maya Challenge Designer Wank-Off, here's IT IS!
Design the Quintessential Frank Gehry PowerMac G5!
I won't fight the devolution of this thread either.
When it comes to matters of case design, I'd prefer the end product to look like a "thing" rather than a bland box. Things that have this thingish quality are the original iMac, JBL Creature speakers, and that hoax next-gen gamecube.
First of all, to Kidred: Sorry, I didn't get your point on the PS3. My mistake.
Now to the really important stuff:
What will the next case look like?
I hope Apple changes the color scheme to a deep purple, business-like and not fruity the way the G3 was.
It would be reminiscent of SGI's workstations to drive home the point that the 970 puts the mac in another league.
My other wish is the perennial hope that Jobs will see the need for a front-mounted firewire port (or one on the keyboard) and I also hope they break the piggybank and put an eject button on the DVD drive. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
I cant imagine tat they will drop the optical drives to the case will need at least two drawers, it also need a third thing for frontmounted USB and FW ports . A slender tower is good sa it bring the optical drives at a resonable height and fit computer furniture
It's not Xserve at all except in the most superficial way, and the Xserve is purely functional, it isn't meant to be ogled. They cleaned it up a bit (a lot) better than most rack-mounts, but basically it's a simple (boring) slab with a metal face.
That case takes the same boredom (which was at least clean and functional) and makes it messy. Now all the horzontal cut lines meet two abrupt ends that somehow seek to unify the vertical orientation of the case with details clearly meant for a thin/wide machine. Nothing about the machine is pleasing to the eye, it's like so many of those aluminium PC cases, when you take away the material, what is it? Just a box with exposed bays, just as boring as beige plastic.
TOTAL CRAP. Easily one of the worst PM mock-ups ever for it's ability to take a good design and make it many many times worse.
This is true in general. However, if someone was to tap them on the shoulder and point to some machine that kick's their machine's butt, don't you think they'd take notice?
<hr></blockquote>
<bitterness>
It would be nice, but I keep running into the same phenomena. Wow, the Mac really is better [for something or other...]! Well, I guess we'll just have to [do without/wait until MS steals it].
The idea of actually *switching* to the Mac just isn't conceivable to them. Do I grind my teeth in frustration? Well, yes.
I still remember a conversation with a tech guy at a company that was junking their Macs for PCs. I asked about tech support and the he replied that the management knew that (1) they had to double the number of workers in their IT budget and (2) they would have to repurchase all their software.
They anticipated no real benefits, except slightly better ease of contact with their clients and most importantly "that their company would now be taken more seriously by the companies that were hiring them"...
This was their business case - and it was real to them. The president of a mid-size company perceived being a Mac shop was costing him clients!
I don't know how many projects I've seen where they switched from Mac's or Linux or Unix to a Microsoft solution only to have it cost twice as much and do half as little - AND IT DIDN'T MATTER... Essentially, it was accepted as the cost of doing the project. It wasn't as if there was an alternative, was there? I've even seen a failure that killed the company. It didn't matter. Nobody could even conceive that (realistically) they could have chosen an alternate path.
Am I embittered. Well, yes. I just don't know how to market to companies that would literally bankrupt themselves away rather than choose a non-MS solution... (Okay, that's perhaps hyperbole, but it's damn close.)
</bitterness>
So, we're left with the consumer market, which is incredibly price sensitive (which is bad for Apple) and wants the latest games (which is bad for Apple).
The only thing left is the current Mac market. It is to them that Apple must sell.
The 970 will certainly help things along (a lot!) But I worry about people expecting the 970 to make uberMacs. I develop on a PC at work (the only PC in the company), and I will tell you that switching from a 300 MHZ PII machine to a 2.4 GHz P4 machine created a perceived speed difference of about 50%. In other words, if the 970 CPU is really four times as fast as the G4 CPU (especially considering the vastly better memory bandwidth), I'd expect it to feel about 25-50% faster. Memory, disk (especially disk) is almost as important than naked CPU speed.
I will say that the one thing the 970 will do is give certain Mac owners (yes, you Lemon Bon Bon :-)) the chance to answer back at x86-olites who sneer at us.
Personally, I'm way out of university (which is where, I know recall, I spent vast quantities of time debating the merits of Macs vs. PC's). Nobody on either side is going to get convinced, but it *will* make Mac owners feel better, which can't hurt.
However, until the inevitability shield around MS is busted (and nothing I've witnessed has personally led me to believe that Linux or Mac are even *close* to doing so, despite the press), I don't see how Macintosh could do better than moving their market share up to 5%. And that, frankly depends on a near miracle.
Don't let your bitterness get the best of you. Human psychology is setup to put a lot more credence in anecdotal evidence than in other forms of evidence. You are suffering from what you see with your own eyes, and what a select few others are telling they've seen. This is not necessarily representative of the overall situation. Years ago the same thing happened to me -- all the Macs around me dried up and went away. In the last two years the reverse has been happening.
There are people, businesses, and schools out there that will buy Macs. Some of them currently are, some of them will buy if an appropriate machines comes out in their price range, some will buy if the performance takes a 2-4x jump, and some will buy if a real processor roadmap becomes apparent (rather than the current bleak "G4 forever" outlook). To some users the processor speed is critically important for specific reasons -- i.e. they are purely compute-bound. Some will be interested by the possibilities of 64-bit software (and some will be swayed by the marketing potential of 64-bit hardware ). Many are very interested by the Unix underpinnings of MacOS X.
Apple's market has a whole lot of room to grow -- they've sustained 15-20% market share before even though the PC has always been "the right choice" for the conservative businessman. That means Apple's market could potentially increase in size by a factor of 5-7 to get back to levels they've had in the past. And they held those levels when they did not have price/performance parity, it was when the economy was stronger, so Apple will benefit more from a stronger economy and they have potential in the low end of the market with low cost machines (when/if they decide to take advantage of that).
Things for Apple have looked much worse in the past and there was no roadmap, their leadership was clearly hopeless, and their software was stumbling badly. Now we know that Jobs' says they'll soon have hardware "options" (and we have a pretty good idea what that means), their existing leadership has direction and a good track record over the last couple of years (and is generally well thought of), and their software has never been stronger. And the most likely direction for the economy in general is up.
<strong>The current case is only the second best looking PM case ever (after the Quick silver) and it still looks about a 100 times better than that horrible kludge of horizontal lines and boxy tin. It's crap.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I prefer the muted looks of my "mystic" (silver & blue/grey) tower as far as the excellent El Capitan case design.
El Cap is so advanced that there is no need to change it other than cosmetically. I'd like to see glossy black plastic side panels with a MDD like front panel.
Sort of like the image offered, but wrapped in a gloss black external enclosure with a chrome apple logo with a "G5" hologram in it.
Actually I don't care if they ship it in a milk crate, as long as it has dual 970's in it.
[quote]I will say that the one thing the 970 will do is give certain Mac owners (yes, you Lemon Bon Bon :-)) the chance to answer back at x86-olites who sneer at us.
<hr></blockquote>
I'm prepping a 'My 970 is bigger than yer x86 mhz sneer baseball bat.' That's extra wide. With splinters to go. (Minus lubricant!)
I can hardly wait, Tom!
Lemon Bon Bon
PS. Yes. What Programmer said. Apple are well placed for the rebounding economy. And Fred Anderson says there's more software to come. Hmmm. Intriguing. Apple go on Offense. I'm stil waiting for the advertising blitz for 'X'.
PPS. Was show my 'Uncle Dennis' my wife's iBook tonight. He was amazed by how 'Well in advance' it was in front of his Windows.
S'funny how people like him never hear of Apple, eh?
60% of workstation buyers are going Mac this year. That covers alot of markets. Alot of them hardball x86 heads over the last few years. The Mac was virtually dead in these markets a few years back...y'know...the Mac in the corner that does the Photoshop work?
I wonder what they've been told?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Huh, eh, what? What's he going on about?
Have you got some decent stats from somewhere to be able to claim MacOS is going to have 60% of the workstation market (whatever that is!?).
And what could people be "told" that convinces them to buy Macs that we wouldn't have heard too?
As for new cases - what are you people on? The El Capitan is an almost perfect case. Do you need new frilly bits every year to justify your decisions to buy new kit (it's getting like cars - hey, but the 03 models have like that "plum crazy" metalic purple finish - I gotta get me one of doze).
Tom West is right to a certain extent. There is herd culture in most businesses that carries a tremendous inertia and is extremely hard to turn around. There is also the whole culture of covering your ass, i.e. not raising your head above the parapet and going against the general consensus.
I have dealt with major multinationals where the middle managment will reject a project in favour of another even though they know, and will tell you to your face, that its the wrong decision for the company. Their perspective is that it is the right decision for them at that particular time and in their particular political postion.
Over the years you learn to circumvent situations like that by getting to the very top people in the company and selling them a 'idea' (not a project or product.) People at the top always feel they have to have a 'vision' and once they have one they will take it all the way. The trick is to make sure they have your vision.
Now Mr. Jobs is the Uberlord of selling visions to people; if the new Macs provide a leap in performance (which I believe they will) and if they are demonstrably faster than the Intel offerings then all the ducks are lined up and Apple just needs to shoot'em down one by one.
Just as the collective stupidity of some companies can be amazing, so can the speed at which the corporate culture can flip 180. Macs can be cool again in corporate land.
22nd Century computing...Unix, 64 bit, Superior speed, plus the boring bits like TCO.
Personally I wouldn't wanr to see Aplle marketshare above 15%
[quote]Many are very interested by the Unix underpinnings of MacOS X.<hr></blockquote>
Actually, the one place that Apple really has room to grow is in the University market. The idea of a "usable" Unix does appeal to a lot of people. However, I'd be really suprised if that segment is more than .2% of total sales.
[quote]PPS. Was show my 'Uncle Dennis' my wife's iBook tonight. He was amazed by how 'Well in advance' it was in front of his Windows.<hr></blockquote>
Actually, it's the comments like that one that end up driving me nuts because so often the follow up is to buy a PC, whilst pining for a Mac. Why not buy the Mac? "Well, it just wasn't on." *sigh*.
It's like the schools. There's a *huge* gun pointed at the head of any school that buys Windows in the form of Microsoft doing an audit. Basically, at this point in time, Microsoft can extract several hundred thousand dollars from any school that cannot produce the purchase receipts and proof of Windows ownership for every PC, which realistically, no school can. (Don't believe it? read your license agreement. You've already agreed that MS can consider you guilty unless you can prove otherwise...)
The only way around this is do what businesses do and spend tens of thousands of dollars on license compliance. Big suprise, I haven't heard of any schools hiring software compliance managers.
So, as a school purchaser, do you (1) buy the cheap Windows machine, ignore the legal liability and hope the the threat of bad publicity for shaking down a school board outweighs Microsoft's greed, or (2) buy a Macintosh.
Well, one guess what every board of education I've dealt with is choosing. They seem to treat the threat in the same way as hoping you don't get hit by a tornado. Certainly there's no acknowledgement that there is something you can do about it...
The only analog I can think of is when you hear about some amazing gadget available in Japan. You think, "I guess I'll have to liove without it" or "gee, I wonder when it will make it over here". But outside of a few diehards, nobody is actually going to *order* the Japanese version.
And yes, it is anecdotal evidence.
<optimism>
However, as long as Apple share doesn't decline, Apple is still viable (first priority). The second priority is to expand marketshare. To do that, there have to be some markets that Apple can dominate.
With a fast 970, the AV market (because of Apple's software purchases), is a real possibility. Another .2% market share. Keep finding niches that Apple can occupy and I think 5% is doable. However, it will take care and precision marketing.
</optimism>
And yes, it would certainly be fun if, every time a PC magazine or web site, was talking about the fastest desktop machine, they had to add the "except for the Macintosh" caveat while nattering on about the latest Intel chipset...
But, realistically, a lot of the PC magazines were doing the equivalent for years. I don't know how many hundred times a software review would have something along the lines of "well, of course, if you want to see it done right, just look at the Macintosh", and then back to the regular article about how it was done on Windows. If I was a PC fanatic, I'd have choked. As it was, once again no-one seemed to notice or, God Forbid!, buy a Macintosh... And this was 10 years ago.
Comments
It's not an J. Ives masterpiece.
I think we'll see something a little bit special...something classy.
Lemon Bon Bon :cool:
<strong>Apple needs to widen its spectrum of products and services. How about a professional edition of .Mac? That would work extremely well.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, and it does. Its called .mac.
iTools was the non-pro edition.
<strong>I don't like that case. Boxy. Lacking elegance or finesse.
It's not an J. Ives masterpiece.
Lemon Bon Bon :cool: </strong><hr></blockquote>
You tell that to the Xserve, which looks quite a lot like that!
<strong>
If there are new powermac cases for the PPC 970, I hope they look like this...
NO!!!!!!!!!! This looks to much like the Sony Media Center.
I might as well Chime-In ...
I like it, a lot.
It's very Xserve, clean, elegant, simple ... yet powerful, precisely because of it's understatement, not in spite of it.
Lovely simple horizontal lines and two strong verticals on the side which frame the inner details and enhance the outer vertical edges to the eye.
The slightly curved edges soften any sharpness, without going overboard with any cheesy yet tiresomely fashionable Anime style anthropomorphism, in either color or form ... I think it's beautiful ... not perfect, but I'll take beauty when perfection isn't available any day.
If Mies Van Der Roh where designing a computer in 2003, it might look a lot like that.
But then, he wouldn't dare put his name on anything that didn't have an 970 under the hood, the man was NOT about form and so-so function ... tsh tsh.
For those who really want the Ultimate Maya Challenge Designer Wank-Off, here's IT IS!
Design the Quintessential Frank Gehry PowerMac G5!
Hah Hah Hah
You'll Never Make It!
Hah Hah Hah
Give Up Now!
When it comes to matters of case design, I'd prefer the end product to look like a "thing" rather than a bland box. Things that have this thingish quality are the original iMac, JBL Creature speakers, and that hoax next-gen gamecube.
Now to the really important stuff:
What will the next case look like?
I hope Apple changes the color scheme to a deep purple, business-like and not fruity the way the G3 was.
It would be reminiscent of SGI's workstations to drive home the point that the 970 puts the mac in another league.
My other wish is the perennial hope that Jobs will see the need for a front-mounted firewire port (or one on the keyboard) and I also hope they break the piggybank and put an eject button on the DVD drive. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
I cant imagine tat they will drop the optical drives to the case will need at least two drawers, it also need a third thing for frontmounted USB and FW ports . A slender tower is good sa it bring the optical drives at a resonable height and fit computer furniture
That case takes the same boredom (which was at least clean and functional) and makes it messy. Now all the horzontal cut lines meet two abrupt ends that somehow seek to unify the vertical orientation of the case with details clearly meant for a thin/wide machine. Nothing about the machine is pleasing to the eye, it's like so many of those aluminium PC cases, when you take away the material, what is it? Just a box with exposed bays, just as boring as beige plastic.
TOTAL CRAP. Easily one of the worst PM mock-ups ever for it's ability to take a good design and make it many many times worse.
GARBAGE.
Totally impractical for fitting a motherboard in (especially with the hinge door), but quite appealing aesthetically.
After four years with basically the same case...I'm expecting another revolution and nothing less.
As long as its expandable!
Lemon Bon Bon
This is true in general. However, if someone was to tap them on the shoulder and point to some machine that kick's their machine's butt, don't you think they'd take notice?
<hr></blockquote>
<bitterness>
It would be nice, but I keep running into the same phenomena. Wow, the Mac really is better [for something or other...]! Well, I guess we'll just have to [do without/wait until MS steals it].
The idea of actually *switching* to the Mac just isn't conceivable to them. Do I grind my teeth in frustration? Well, yes.
I still remember a conversation with a tech guy at a company that was junking their Macs for PCs. I asked about tech support and the he replied that the management knew that (1) they had to double the number of workers in their IT budget and (2) they would have to repurchase all their software.
They anticipated no real benefits, except slightly better ease of contact with their clients and most importantly "that their company would now be taken more seriously by the companies that were hiring them"...
This was their business case - and it was real to them. The president of a mid-size company perceived being a Mac shop was costing him clients!
I don't know how many projects I've seen where they switched from Mac's or Linux or Unix to a Microsoft solution only to have it cost twice as much and do half as little - AND IT DIDN'T MATTER... Essentially, it was accepted as the cost of doing the project. It wasn't as if there was an alternative, was there? I've even seen a failure that killed the company. It didn't matter. Nobody could even conceive that (realistically) they could have chosen an alternate path.
Am I embittered. Well, yes. I just don't know how to market to companies that would literally bankrupt themselves away rather than choose a non-MS solution... (Okay, that's perhaps hyperbole, but it's damn close.)
</bitterness>
So, we're left with the consumer market, which is incredibly price sensitive (which is bad for Apple) and wants the latest games (which is bad for Apple).
The only thing left is the current Mac market. It is to them that Apple must sell.
The 970 will certainly help things along (a lot!) But I worry about people expecting the 970 to make uberMacs. I develop on a PC at work (the only PC in the company), and I will tell you that switching from a 300 MHZ PII machine to a 2.4 GHz P4 machine created a perceived speed difference of about 50%. In other words, if the 970 CPU is really four times as fast as the G4 CPU (especially considering the vastly better memory bandwidth), I'd expect it to feel about 25-50% faster. Memory, disk (especially disk) is almost as important than naked CPU speed.
I will say that the one thing the 970 will do is give certain Mac owners (yes, you Lemon Bon Bon :-)) the chance to answer back at x86-olites who sneer at us.
Personally, I'm way out of university (which is where, I know recall, I spent vast quantities of time debating the merits of Macs vs. PC's). Nobody on either side is going to get convinced, but it *will* make Mac owners feel better, which can't hurt.
However, until the inevitability shield around MS is busted (and nothing I've witnessed has personally led me to believe that Linux or Mac are even *close* to doing so, despite the press), I don't see how Macintosh could do better than moving their market share up to 5%. And that, frankly depends on a near miracle.
There are people, businesses, and schools out there that will buy Macs. Some of them currently are, some of them will buy if an appropriate machines comes out in their price range, some will buy if the performance takes a 2-4x jump, and some will buy if a real processor roadmap becomes apparent (rather than the current bleak "G4 forever" outlook). To some users the processor speed is critically important for specific reasons -- i.e. they are purely compute-bound. Some will be interested by the possibilities of 64-bit software (and some will be swayed by the marketing potential of 64-bit hardware
Apple's market has a whole lot of room to grow -- they've sustained 15-20% market share before even though the PC has always been "the right choice" for the conservative businessman. That means Apple's market could potentially increase in size by a factor of 5-7 to get back to levels they've had in the past. And they held those levels when they did not have price/performance parity, it was when the economy was stronger, so Apple will benefit more from a stronger economy and they have potential in the low end of the market with low cost machines (when/if they decide to take advantage of that).
Things for Apple have looked much worse in the past and there was no roadmap, their leadership was clearly hopeless, and their software was stumbling badly. Now we know that Jobs' says they'll soon have hardware "options" (and we have a pretty good idea what that means), their existing leadership has direction and a good track record over the last couple of years (and is generally well thought of), and their software has never been stronger. And the most likely direction for the economy in general is up.
<strong>The current case is only the second best looking PM case ever (after the Quick silver) and it still looks about a 100 times better than that horrible kludge of horizontal lines and boxy tin. It's crap.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I prefer the muted looks of my "mystic" (silver & blue/grey) tower as far as the excellent El Capitan case design.
El Cap is so advanced that there is no need to change it other than cosmetically. I'd like to see glossy black plastic side panels with a MDD like front panel.
Sort of like the image offered, but wrapped in a gloss black external enclosure with a chrome apple logo with a "G5" hologram in it.
Actually I don't care if they ship it in a milk crate, as long as it has dual 970's in it.
...
[ 03-09-2003: Message edited by: Aphelion ]</p>
<hr></blockquote>
I'm prepping a 'My 970 is bigger than yer x86 mhz sneer baseball bat.' That's extra wide. With splinters to go. (Minus lubricant!)
I can hardly wait, Tom!
Lemon Bon Bon
PS. Yes. What Programmer said. Apple are well placed for the rebounding economy. And Fred Anderson says there's more software to come. Hmmm. Intriguing. Apple go on Offense. I'm stil waiting for the advertising blitz for 'X'.
PPS. Was show my 'Uncle Dennis' my wife's iBook tonight. He was amazed by how 'Well in advance' it was in front of his Windows.
S'funny how people like him never hear of Apple, eh?
[ 03-09-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
<strong>
60% of workstation buyers are going Mac this year. That covers alot of markets. Alot of them hardball x86 heads over the last few years. The Mac was virtually dead in these markets a few years back...y'know...the Mac in the corner that does the Photoshop work?
I wonder what they've been told?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Huh, eh, what? What's he going on about?
Have you got some decent stats from somewhere to be able to claim MacOS is going to have 60% of the workstation market (whatever that is!?).
And what could people be "told" that convinces them to buy Macs that we wouldn't have heard too?
As for new cases - what are you people on? The El Capitan is an almost perfect case. Do you need new frilly bits every year to justify your decisions to buy new kit (it's getting like cars - hey, but the 03 models have like that "plum crazy" metalic purple finish - I gotta get me one of doze).
<strong>
NO!!!!!!!!!! This looks to much like the Sony Media Center.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And it's got no handle to carry the bastard things about with.
I have dealt with major multinationals where the middle managment will reject a project in favour of another even though they know, and will tell you to your face, that its the wrong decision for the company. Their perspective is that it is the right decision for them at that particular time and in their particular political postion.
Over the years you learn to circumvent situations like that by getting to the very top people in the company and selling them a 'idea' (not a project or product.) People at the top always feel they have to have a 'vision' and once they have one they will take it all the way. The trick is to make sure they have your vision.
Now Mr. Jobs is the Uberlord of selling visions to people; if the new Macs provide a leap in performance (which I believe they will) and if they are demonstrably faster than the Intel offerings then all the ducks are lined up and Apple just needs to shoot'em down one by one.
Just as the collective stupidity of some companies can be amazing, so can the speed at which the corporate culture can flip 180. Macs can be cool again in corporate land.
22nd Century computing...Unix, 64 bit, Superior speed, plus the boring bits like TCO.
Personally I wouldn't wanr to see Aplle marketshare above 15%
(Bit of a ramble sorry)
Actually, the one place that Apple really has room to grow is in the University market. The idea of a "usable" Unix does appeal to a lot of people. However, I'd be really suprised if that segment is more than .2% of total sales.
[quote]PPS. Was show my 'Uncle Dennis' my wife's iBook tonight. He was amazed by how 'Well in advance' it was in front of his Windows.<hr></blockquote>
Actually, it's the comments like that one that end up driving me nuts because so often the follow up is to buy a PC, whilst pining for a Mac. Why not buy the Mac? "Well, it just wasn't on." *sigh*.
It's like the schools. There's a *huge* gun pointed at the head of any school that buys Windows in the form of Microsoft doing an audit. Basically, at this point in time, Microsoft can extract several hundred thousand dollars from any school that cannot produce the purchase receipts and proof of Windows ownership for every PC, which realistically, no school can. (Don't believe it? read your license agreement. You've already agreed that MS can consider you guilty unless you can prove otherwise...)
The only way around this is do what businesses do and spend tens of thousands of dollars on license compliance. Big suprise, I haven't heard of any schools hiring software compliance managers.
So, as a school purchaser, do you (1) buy the cheap Windows machine, ignore the legal liability and hope the the threat of bad publicity for shaking down a school board outweighs Microsoft's greed, or (2) buy a Macintosh.
Well, one guess what every board of education I've dealt with is choosing. They seem to treat the threat in the same way as hoping you don't get hit by a tornado. Certainly there's no acknowledgement that there is something you can do about it...
The only analog I can think of is when you hear about some amazing gadget available in Japan. You think, "I guess I'll have to liove without it" or "gee, I wonder when it will make it over here". But outside of a few diehards, nobody is actually going to *order* the Japanese version.
And yes, it is anecdotal evidence.
<optimism>
However, as long as Apple share doesn't decline, Apple is still viable (first priority). The second priority is to expand marketshare. To do that, there have to be some markets that Apple can dominate.
With a fast 970, the AV market (because of Apple's software purchases), is a real possibility. Another .2% market share. Keep finding niches that Apple can occupy and I think 5% is doable. However, it will take care and precision marketing.
</optimism>
And yes, it would certainly be fun if, every time a PC magazine or web site, was talking about the fastest desktop machine, they had to add the "except for the Macintosh" caveat while nattering on about the latest Intel chipset...
But, realistically, a lot of the PC magazines were doing the equivalent for years. I don't know how many hundred times a software review would have something along the lines of "well, of course, if you want to see it done right, just look at the Macintosh", and then back to the regular article about how it was done on Windows. If I was a PC fanatic, I'd have choked. As it was, once again no-one seemed to notice or, God Forbid!, buy a Macintosh... And this was 10 years ago.