[black ballon]

My friend says he believes the Mac will overtake the PC in 5 to 10 years.

Does anyone agree or disagree and why?

I'm undecided, and do not know enough to make a decision.

[Paquadez]

Originally Posted by black ballon

My friend says he believes the Mac will overtake the PC in 5 to 10 years.

Does anyone agree or disagree and why?

I'm undecided, and do not know enough to make a decision.

Is your mate by any chance Steve Jobs on ectasy?

Paq

[Chicon]

Nothing new, here !
I've heard the same story five years ago.
Hope makes life !

[TooBad]

Originally Posted by Chicon

Nothing new, here !
I've heard the same story five years ago.
Hope makes life !

And five years before that, and five years before that, etc.

[Chicon]

Originally Posted by TooBad

And five years before that, and five years before that, etc.

... idem for Linux !

[lotuseclat79]

Originally Posted by black ballon

My friend says he believes the Mac will overtake the PC in 5 to 10 years. Does anyone agree or disagree and why? I'm undecided, and do not know enough to make a decision.

Hmmm, by what standard do you mean "overtake"?

For example, the Mac has a far more elegant internal design of its OS, so by that standard, it had long ago overtaken the PC, i.e. Windows OSes which are horribly designed pieces of crap that get infected all the time because most of its users are dolts that know very little about securing their PCs - and, not to mention the fact, that you just can't design security as an afterthought into an OS, any OS!

If by number of sales - never, the Mac will never be that cheap.

If by support, I have only ever bought 1 Mac, and that was a Xmax present for my Mom and Sister, so, it hasn't been infected yet and very little support needed.

My choice is Linux. Bill Gates and MS do not even know the meaning of "great" software - an expression used by Gates recently when he was on a Charlie Rose segment or PBS. He may use it, but he doesn't understand it, otherwise, why hoist the world's most crappy software to make a buck from everyone.

In the MS research labs, they have crafted an OS entirely independent from Windows (BTW, the idea of a Registry is the worst idea ever for integrating an OS).
The name of the research OS is Singularity and you can review an article about it at: * Microsoft OS Singularity - microkernel-based OS (no Windows roots)

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/artic...1882174,00.asp

* PDF 44-page technical research report about Singularity: Note: to download it right-click select Save as to Desktop

ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-135.pdf

Ashame it will never supplant the current crap produced by MS in the name of the almighty dollar.

-- Tom

[Couriant]

Originally Posted by black ballon

My friend says he believes the Mac will overtake the PC in 5 to 10 years.

Does anyone agree or disagree and why?

I'm undecided, and do not know enough to make a decision.

Until the Mac starts to get games supported on their machines, they won't.


But then the Mac was not built for playing games... it has more use in video/graphic editing than in gaming.

[LANMaster]

Dream on.

The PC is a superior platform.

[Gibble]

Here we go again...

...if you're talking Mac vs PC...you're talking hardware.

Mac's now use mainly PC hardware...so it's impossible to overtake PCs when you are one.

Thread solved.

[sy2]

And don't forget the business side of things. Most offices, I'm assuming/guessing here, use PC's and everyone's become comfortable with/reliant upon MS Office.

Even if the MAC somehow - and this would never happen - replaced EVERY in-home PC, I bet that Window's would still have a greater market share just based on the business-side of their sales.

Again, I'm guessing here based on my experience in offices, so don't ask me for numbers

[WarC]

If the Mac is going to take over its going to do it software wise, 'cuz the internals of the newest Macs are now practically indistinguishable from their PC brethren. A desktop computer is a desktop computer these days.

As far as the ability of the software goes...I've used every flavor of Windows, several Mac OSes including the latest one, a flavor of unix, and a handful of Linux distros...Caldera, SuSe, Redhat, and a few different live distros that boot off a CD. Nothing yet tops Windows XP in terms of functionality and stability, barring maybe the last two Mac OSes.

There is a lot of elitism among computer users concerning this kind of stuff, a lot of people think Microsoft makes inferior software and that isn't really true with XP or 2000. They are the most stable OSes Microsoft has ever released if the end-user keeps the system clean. It is the market standard software so it gets bugs written against it the most - The issue is establishing proper security on the computer. Macs are not hack or spyware proof, they just operate on a much different OS than windows, so the vast majority of malicious code that someone is likely to come across on the net will not effect it. The same could be said of Linux.

The serious challenger to Windows in the market is Linux, because it is a much cheaper alternative and there are so many companies and individuals making their own flavors of it. Someone will get the formula right and put to market a strong Linux OS eventually. Most of the linux distrobutions still lack the user friendliness, not to mention the software and hardware support that is basically a given on a Windows OS. Although most Linux distros come with more software options by default than Windows.

Microsoft has and will hold such a strong position in the OS market simply because of its proliferation - Almost everyone learns or does business on a Microsoft OS powered computer at some point or another. Their OSes are being used in something like 90% of businesses that use computers or some crazy number like that.

[ChrisJones]

Will the Mac overtake PC's in terms of sales? No, no way. There's not a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. Not now, not in ten years, and unless something truely horrible happens at Microsoft not in the next fifty years either!

Will the Mac overtake PC's in terms of security, reliability, performance and quality of software? Yes. It happened about five years ago.

I'm about to buy a new computer and despite the fact I really like modern Mac's it's gonna be a PC again.... Why?? Good question!

[Gibble]

Microsoft doesn't make PCs...ARGH!

[black ballon]

My friend laughed at me when I said it's possible the Mac will die out.

I guess he believes the Mac wont. Like some of you will probably agree, it's just easier with a PC. We're already comfterable with the set up, how it feels and looks.

[Couriant]

Originally Posted by Gibble

Microsoft doesn't make PCs...ARGH!

Gibbsie, don't fret my friend. we know he means windows vs. mac

mac won't die out. It will still be used in the digitial world, whether it's video or imaging.