Re: Question about the number of Apple users vs Mac users

["Ernest" <ernestls@home.com>]

>  OTOH estimates of the number of Mac users seems
> > to be generally dropping (in favour of Linux from the way things look).

Yes, I agree with this but it's still to soon to tell how long term this
effect will be. There are a lot of people dipping their feet into the latest
Linux craze but a good number of these folks will go running back to Windows
or their old reliable Macs. However, there are quite a few schools,
universities, and young people in general who have no real history with
either Macs or Windows systems, and for those groups Linux is great -cheap,
reliable, and hip.
>
> Linux, as terrific as it is, is still too geeky for the general
population.

It's to geeky for my Mother, or my boss but not for kids (the future) or
college students, or large corporations, or biotech firms, etc..

> It's not a matter of how powerful Linux is, it's how productive can you be
> with it (at this point) because of the learning curve and few apps yet
> (mainstream apps). It has a way to go yet. But it is cool to dink with.
> Very stable. *Very* fast.

I don't know if you've been keeping up on the latest developments in Linux
software but there's very little that you can't do on the Linux platform.
There's a long way to go before some of the more common Linux apps become as
stable and robust as MS Office, or Adobe Photoshop, etc. but that will come
with time.

> >         I'm thinking of the possibility of the number of Apple// users
> eventually
> > exceeding the number of Mac users at some point. It might be an
> > interesting scenario... ;-)
>
> Not in your wildest imagination. The installed Mac base is in the
millions,
> and still growing, and there are *at least as many* legacy Macs still
> around as there are Apple file://s.

Yeah, I agree with you on that one. The real question is, will the current
Mac users feel as nostalgic about their old Macs as we do about our old
Apple II's? Not likely. Macs have no soul compared to the Apple II. They're
useful in a utilitarian kind of way but nowhere near as interesting or
hackable. Macs were designed for rich newbie morons with work to do, not
hackers or "geeks." Besides, Steve Jobs had evolved into a dictatorial
megalomaniac by the time the later models of the original Macs were
released, and that was about when I lost interest in them.

E.