I’m not convinced people do want MSFTs software. Most people have it thrust upon them and you go with what you know.
It is very rare to find an average user without lots of tech knowledge who, when they’ve tried OS X for a short period doesn’t say words to the effect that they couldn’t believe how easy and nice it is to use

I don’t see it happening in two short years but within ten years I could see it happening. Recently when I’m at the store and want to kill time I’ve been playing around with Windows 7 on various display machines. I was surprised but even I had to admit that MS’s new OS has closed the gap between Apple and MS. Unfortunately its going be short lived for the simple reason I’m already starting to see tons of bloatware on products from Toshiba Dell HP etc. Until MS finally puts its foot down and sets some third party limitations on the liberties some hardware manufacturers take with their OS MS will never catch up.

With all the fanfare behind Windows 7 touch technology I’ve yet to encounter any kind of touch pad that even comes close to giving the user a pleasant experience. The so called cutting edge hardware setups out there right now are atrocious to say the least. If MS was smart they would start their own hardware branch which is OS bloatware free and do what Apple has been doing for years. I’m not saying don’t give out the OS to other companies but at least have a specific line of MS manufactured hardware that would give the users a choice. Until I see this happening I doubt MS will ever get the Windows Millennium and Vista monkey off their back. To many users have been left with a bad taste in their mouths after those two OS debacles.

I’m not trying to be a Apple fanboy when I make these statements. I still think that MS can put out a good product when it really sets its mind to it. One example that comes to mind is their Xbox. When the Xbox first came out I was one of the many who thought the console wouldn’t last more then 5 years for the simple reason that it was going head to head with Playstation. Years later I’ve been proven wrong and the Xbox system has an excellent library of games backed up by a good solid console which brings in good graphics and good controls for a good playing experience. If they would just put more of their energies into their OS and maybe try and think outside of the box more they could finally maybe win back some of their users.

Anyways that’s just my two cents.

Apple and Microsoft, not sure why people think they are in competition because in reality they both make their money from two different markets and have only slight overlap. I work as a systems admin for a large business, do I see us scraping thousands of PC’s in two years and moving to Mac, hardly. Frankly if Apple over takes Microsoft in value it will mostly be from the the market share MS is losing to Linux. The only real problem I have with Apple are it’s ridiculous supporters, as a middle aged geek I remember the J school at the University of Missouri was all Mac and most journalist (everywhere) use Macs, I therefore am unsurprised that most articles favor the Mac. The differences in how Apple, MS, and Linux license their products, and the openness for development is going to have far more impact on the future of these companies than thousands of fan-boys spouting unsupported nonsense. And just like Microsoft I really don’t think the largest threat to Apple is MS but one of the many other companies beginning to compete with Apple in the cell phone/media player market.

I did not find Mac so easier to use. I have honestly tried to use a Mac computer and after some difficults and not intuitive commands and behaviors, I will never more buy a Mac again. Too expensive for me. No easy interface for me – intuitive but not for everyone. For me it was not.
So, I do not believe they will be market leader in computer case. Maybe in another equipment, but at microcomputer no.

I do not see Apple taking the market from Microsoft anytime soon. We are comparing “apples” to oranges here. Apples success is due to the iPhone and iPod. This is a market that Microsoft has not really tried very hard to get into. OS X is in no position to unseat the MS Windows dynasty anytime soon either. Apple is more closely in competition with Google and their Android products. I wouldn’t consider the iPod an item to be worried about. Who uses one anymore if they have a phone that does all the same stuff and more? Google is not likely to give MS a run anytime soon with their Chrome OS, I don’t think. All of these companies are in so many markets dealing with such a wide array or technology to compare them in the way that this article does just doesn’t make sense in this case. There are a lot of iPhones out there but how many Windows enabled devices are there? Just showing $ that any given company is worth does not speak to where those dollars came from or show fare comparison between actual competing products. Due to the increasing popularity of the Google Android, I suspect that the growth that we have seen from Apple will slow down at as much a surprising rate as it has been growing across the next few years. Plus much of the computing market is going to cloud computing. Who has taken a look at what Oracle is planning to do with their recently acquired Sun Microsystems product line and its function coupled with the massive datacenter infrastructure that they can flex in the coming years? I predict Oracle coming out of nowhere and surprising this market. We will see.