Lots of people seem to be switching to Mac but a couple well-read geek bloggers threatened in the last week to unswitch. Cute. But the question is what can you switch to that would be close to as good?
Many of us have our differences with Apple. We don't like the suing of our favorite rumor sites and we don't like Apple's usual arrogance and secrecy. Transparency is in but Apple has 0%. They should look at OS X for a clue.
I enjoyed these two unswitcher posts: Drunkenblog, Tim Bray and Paul Graham's recent Return to the Mac and Radsoft's long but enjoyable and very well-argued rant about why Windows users should buy an iBook from last October.
It is unfortunate, but at the moment the two main options for unswitching aren't that good. Windows XP and 2000 are ultra long in the tooth. Besides that, the spyware/virus/trojan horse issues make it incredibly painful to use. Other Unix-based options still suffer greatly in the usability department even though they offer tons of power. OS X offers power, beauty, decent Windows compatibility and lots of Apps. OS X wins without breaking a sweat and if Windows didn't have complete and utter dominance in marketshare, there would be tons more Mac users out there right now.
I would like to see all three options continue to improve and aggressively compete with each other. Windows can only get better when Longhorn's feature list finally ships. And Unix will probably come up with some good UI and more apps over time. Apparently China is big on Linux and they might get serious and do something.
I would love to see 10 - 15 - 20% marketshare for the Mac but would hate to see Apple rest on its laurels as it succeeds. What I would hope for is that all this iPod money would fund Apple's continuing innovation with computers. I also expect Apple to play seriously in the cell phone, mini notebook and home/auto entertainment arenas.
Apple is still the little guy in personal computing, so I'm glad they've got some bucks in their pockets to try new things and make beautiful, useable computers and software. I'm hoping that competition and Steve's perfectionism will out weigh the downsides of his imperial ego.