From: "Geo" 

"/m"  wrote in message
news:ttql82hklsult40v0ot0u9h7rr3c08h6dd{at}4ax.com...


> I wish that I could find something in your comment to disagree with, but
> I cannot. (though I don't think Apple's loss of the desktop was quite as
> simplistic as you paint it to be.)

I'm glad we see the same thing coming, but the above comment requires
further explanation on my part.

Were you an Apple ][ user or were you on one of the also ran platforms? I
find that when you get ][ users who remember when 90% of the software was
][ software together today, the bulk of them will agree the mac attitude at
apple was what caused the shift to the PC. Granted things like IBM backing
it, and 7 companies making PC's did help but those were after the fact, it
never would have gotten started without apple's help. That was the move
that began a long chain of events for which IBM and Microsoft were
perfectly positioned to take advantage.

I was a ][ user, I was involved with 2 different user groups, one was an
underground group with 70 members and the other a user group that grew to
over 700. To both these groups I was the same as the Geo you know here in
this group. Just as involved, just as concerned when copy protection reared
it's ugly head, and after I switched to the PC and claimed that Windows
1.whatever was going to be the future because of it's driver model I got
the same response as when I claimed that NT 3.1 was going to be the future.

All the software vendors were coding for the ][, it was apple that forced
them to choose other platforms. That was the beginning of the end for
Apple. There were enough apps on the PC that it had a user base, as a few
developers moved from the ][ to the PC the snowball started rolling. More
users moved, more developers moved, poof everything changed.

Today it's Microsoft coming from the other end, forcing the users to move
or be owned. It really is deja vu all over again. First they pushed 
corporate users with CAL's and added pricing tricks, then they pushed home
users with copy protection, now all users with WGA. Add to that the way MS
is forcing developers to deal with their incomprehensible security model
(you remember how developers would rather require you login as admin?) and
how linux and linux devices and OSX/apple gadgets are perfectly positioned
today to take advantage of all this and .. oh yeah, you already agree with
this part . sorry for the ramble.

Geo.

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