Once upon a time, I did really cool things at Apple Computer…
It was during the reign of Jobs the First, and all was well with the world. Except for the installed base of Macs, and trying to sell businesses on buying Macs. Shareholder were incensed, board members impatient.
Even after the coup, and various poorly executed attempts to rectify the situation by the imposters Scully and Gassee could not change, and the kingdom was greatly endangered. Many of us who bled in five colors left the kingdom for greener pastures where we could make our livings under the Pax Microsoft. I feared that someday from my new vantage, I would see the final end of the great dream.
But Jobs was brought back from exile, and in due course has returned the kingdom, not only to its former glory, but stong enough to challenge the Microsoft empire.
Diehard Windows users have seen the Vista, and rejected it for the Mac Way.
Look at the slow pace of innovation in the important areas of developer tools (how many years between releases?), and software rollouts in general. Combine this with the pointless MS-centricness. Why did Visual Studio 2005 have to reinvent well respected open source tools like NUnit and NAnt, with just different for difference’s sake tools MSTest and MSBuild?
With so many troubles within the diehard loyalists, mercs, and vassals, the Microsoft Empire in clearly in decline. I have seen the future, and MS is really in grave trouble. Call me opportunist, but I for one, am switching back to Mac the first chance I get! I will run Windows XP SP2 under Parallels, and have the best of both worlds.
