Microsoft is the grandfather or cool and trendy?

Apple is cool? I think a lot of people are turned off by the Apple snobbery, tbh. MS did well with their laptop hunters ad series and Windows 7, and if they're just as successful with Windows Phone 7, Apple has a lot to be worried about.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. The IT industry does not really use Apple products at all. I'm guessing you meant something else along the lines of just computers/mobile devices in general. I guess I'm not really so sure Apple is "cool" anymore. They've sold almost 100 million iphones, countless macbooks and ipods, and software like itunes is incredible popular. There's nothing really exclusive or cool about owning an Apple device vs an Android or Windows device anymore, I think. When I got my 1g 4gb iphone a few months after the iphones came out (right as the first price drop took effect and they canceled the 4gb), all of my friends who didn't have them were very jealous, wanted to use it, wanted one for themselves, people would ask me about it in public, etc etc. These days? Every other person seems to be holding an iphone or other touchscreen smartphone in their hands - they simply aren't really a big deal anymore.

They won't be.

They are trying too hard.

MS is in big trouble IMO. They can't produce anything that makes any money, other than the OS and Office suites, whose market is shrinking. They are under attack in the first world by Apple, and under attack in the developing world by the FOSS movement. Sri Lanka using FOSS to set up a disaster relief program on the cheap after the Tsunami, India using it to turn school buses into mobile computer labs educating children who have never even seen a computer before (and inspiring these same children to take other non-computer related classes like science and math), and Spain using it to get computers in classrooms without having to pay for software - enabling them to afford a 2 student per 1 computer ratio, or third world farmers setting up computers running FOSS on the internet to skip intermediaries so they can negotiate directly with their customers, is not only very telling of the future of software, but very moving. IMO their (MS') dominance isn't going to last much longer, but that's just me. There are plenty of programmers in the developing world where labor costs are cheap to take the FOSS movement into the stratosphere. We just recently had our first true casualty in the OS wars, and it was Unix. Linux is on the march and only getting stronger. And once Chrome OS/Android catch on, which I'm sure they/it will, it's going to turn the turbulence the proprietary software industry is going through now into flat out bedlam.

Was the Xbox360 not as profitable as I thought it was? I thought MS made an assload of money off it, and continues to rake in bucks from games.

The OS is how they make most of their money anyways, and it's not as if they haven't sold a ton of Win7 units. You think manufacturers are going to stop buying Windows operating liscences or something?

HP has already started to offer computers without OS installed in the developing world. And when did the Xbox start to turn a profit?????? ( serious question, always thought it was a loss leader)

Just wait, the Apple Gaming Console will be here to ruin Microsoft's Day

people are really quick to forget about xbox live, which is hugely successful, and the market share ms commands in the console market microsoft certainly hasn't, and isn't, losing any considerable amount of marketshare in any market the enterprise market isn't going to stop using their products any time soon, and is only growing, windows 7 has been hugely successful in every market, and the only area apple has any considerable market share is in the area of personal computers, which makes up a very, very small percentage of microsoft's profits, and even then, they only have a strong base in north america people have been predicting the death of ms for years, but their software is so ingrained in the enterprise market, realistically, it will never happen "under attack in the first world by apple" lmao are you fucking serious apple cannot and will not ever support an enterprise base like ms does, and will continue to do for the foreseeable future

woops double post

Oh, no doubt, MS isn't going anywhere. I'm not saying that. I'm saying their days of dominance are numbered. Quite different than saying I think they will be going out of business or something, which, I hope never happens. And corporations operate on margins. You don't have to knock off 50% of their sales to hurt them, it takes far far less, even less than a percentage point can really hurt.

MS is getting a lot better. I'm almost at the point where I'm sick of Apple's products and planning on going back to MS / PC's. I love Windows 7 and there is a new Vaio out that I think is really sexy.

ie9 screenshots:

No, their days of dominance are not numbered in any meaningful sense. There is no significant challenger over the short or medium term. Long term? Obviously anything is possible, but MS's enterprise products are so heavily ingrained in the enterprise market and those products keep getting better and better that I don't see any big changes happening any time soon. Sure, people use linux here and there, but I have supported linux and open source software in a production environment and it's frankly not something I'm super keen on doing again in the near future. It definitely provided lower upfront costs, but when you look at TCO, it becomes less clear if we actually saved money. When a company is looking at operational costs, increased licensing costs are often easily offset by reduced personnel costs. To address one part of the issue, it comes down to basic supply and demand. It's a lot easier to find a good, certified Microsoft guy, than a good linux guy imo. Microsoft just has much greater presence and this feeds on itself. IT people that know microsoft recommend Microsoft based solutions. Cisco has the same advantage in the networking world. Cisco has a large base of qualified (and certified) people to support their equipment. These people have a natural inclination to recommend cisco products because it's what they know best and cisco takes care of them by keeping certification paths relevant so these people can keep their skills and their salaries up.