To break the cycle, you need to not purchase their products.But wait a little while, I know several industry insiders from some large companies (like EA) and others that do indeed have plans for Mac games.Unfortunately Apple's next OS, Leopard was delayed til Oct release, but stay tuned as you will be able to run FSX from within Leopard without framerate sucking emulation.ATI will have a DX10 card for Mac if the current ATI X1900XT isn't good enough for ya.8 Core 3Ghz Intel CPUs are now available for the MacPro line.Rob.

Or a "minority" who recently pushed Dell to continue to offer XP on a number of machines. (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9017339&intsrc=news_ts_head)A minority who perhaps now chooses to shut up here.

I've never heard of this mythical company that doesn't seek its own monopolies and restrictions on the innovation of others.The only "Apple" I ever heard of was the one seeking domination of online music sales and tying that to its own hardware exclusively. :-) I'm not big on MS these days, but I'm also one of those who just does not believe you'd have the software or hardware in front of you if there had been 10zillion types of PC's in the 80's. Sometimes restriction -- creating a mass market instead of fragmented niche markets -- *propels* a new industry forward, and brings the re$ources necessary for the very innovation you seem to claim did not happen.Also not sure calling someone "naive" and having "little understanding of business" is nice, as you claim this on the logic that the *best* thing businesses can do for themselves is "control...their environment" to "kill innovation." I know a few top level executives that'd find that pretty funny. Most MBA's tend to think the best thing a business can do is *respond* to its environment, and the overwhelming majority of successful companies are at the forefront of innovation, not the stifling of it. It isn't logical to claim the biggest kid in the school yard is thus the paradigm for all kids.But don't take me too seriously ... all I know is that my new TV costs about the same as my last one, but my last PC cost less than just my first 80*meg* harddrive.Cheers.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18230178/

Aaah, but kids turn into adults and adults slowly become very SET in their ways...Not sure I'd suggest Microsoft are responsible for reducing the cost of hardware? I mean Apple and Linux variants (within the past few years) run on the same hardware also, so I'm not sure where that is going?With 20 million+ units (remember this is hardware AND OS), not sure I'd consider Apple Mac's a niche market. They're still the tool of choice for digital video and audio processing -- they successfully saved this market share with the intro of Intel MacPro. Apple's desktop future was definitely looking at very hard times IF they hadn't worked out the Intel deal. Now the 8 core Intel in current MacPro's have seriously brought the creative folks back to OSX.You really see innovation in Vista?? I see a different interface that is slower and doesn't really make my life any easier? I'd love to hear what you consider innovation in Vista. DRM implementation in Vista makes the iTunes policy seem timid. And speaking of iTunes, my iPod has 700 songs on it, only 53 of those were purchased from iTunes. So where was Microsoft when iTunes came into the scene...no where, they're rushed around like mad to come up with Zune VERY late in the game. So who where is the innovation there?iPhone will be out in June and where do you think Microsoft are? You bet, rushing around trying to figure out how to duplicate -- that is NOT innovation.But let the Vista sales numbers to existing user install base speak for themselves, with <12% upgrading and surveys indicate no plans to upgrade for 12-18 months -- whatever is "innovative" in Vista clearly is NOT causing folks to mass migration from XP.Very little is innovative about Microsoft, they operate on leverage.Rob.

No, I don't really see innovation in Vista. I think your points are relevant and strong regarding MS OS's now. I just felt a fair temperance was due to your posts here as they were drifting toward that idea that Apple would say "no" for ethical reasons to the same level of market domination had they had the chance.Thanks for not taking it wrong, btw, as it seems to have more tone in text than I intended. I appreciate that. I maintain that full on competition circa early 80's would not have led to nearly as fast adoption. Companies wouldn't have had the unit sales to drive them if what they produced was only relevant to a tiny % of PC's sold. Thus in some ways, stifling companies can drive a market at the beginning better than more open markets would have. Too bad the goliaths can't be killed when such a purpose passes!No disrespect intended, Rob; I value your ideas, and thanks for the discussion. -mv

Oh no, never intended to suggest Apple are the good guys either -- they all want our money. I don't know, it's a pretty big market with plenty of market share and $$$ to go around. Sure, in the 80's it was different but having a choice was nice. I worked on some of the early Macs as well as IBM desktop PC (PS2) and the Mac was the tool I prefered to use, but the IBM was able to connect to our mainframes, the Mac wasn't.I respectfully disagree, I think if the competition had remained more even, we'd be much further ahead than where we are today. I know for sure DX10 would be available on WinXP rather than it being a Vista Only option.Also, that very competition would probably have prevented many of the smaller companies from being consumed -- these companies are also more avenues for innovation.Competition between AMD and Intel and nVidia and ATI have produced impressive performance gains every 6 months (especially on the GPU side). Intel was very much in the same type of position as Microsoft -- is Intel better off from the competition, probably not. Is the consumer better off - absolutely!Can Apple return, do they even want to dominate the computer market any more? I'm guessing they have other plans beyond their MacPro lines -- I know the iPhone is deemed higher priority than their next OS (Leopard - hence the delay) so clearly Apple aren't after the computer market or OS dominance. And toss in the ability of an iPhone working seamlessly (wireless) with my MacPro it'll truely become an extension of all things electronic in my household.It'll be an interesting next few years.Rob.

I like one of the linked articles "Mac user switches to Vista" and then after reading the article it ends with the him switching once again back to the Mac -- too funny.Rob.

Hi Dave,"Check out this article http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/431which seems to suggest that there is still a considerable amount of life left in our XP's"No doubt about it. What's the betting that deep in some 'mountain' somewhere, MS are quietly covering their backs right now by developing DirectX 10 for XP. Indeed maybe they have done so already in tandem with Vista, but have chosen to first try the technical smokescreen in the hope that the world at large will be persuaded into believing that they really must have their new operating system.It's a bit like FS9 and FSX. FSX is nice, but it still has a very worthy competitor that will not be easily swept aside.Mike

Oh God please don't resurrect this canard...DX10 is not coming out for XP, and Microsoft doesn't have it running on XP in a cave or and office, or in Dr. Evil's volcano hideout.There are valid technical reasons why DX10 is really tough to do on XP. Number one is that the XP kernel would have to be modified. Microsoft is not going to do that for an OS that will be sunsetted soon.If you want the details, go to Phil's blog.

Actually Microsoft have admitted that DX10 could be made available for WinXP. And most of the work has been done, it's no big secret they are using DX10 to leverage people into Vista -- that's business.WinXP sunset is not any time soon, again this is Microsoft's own information.I'd suggest that DX10 will become available for WinXP. Probably about the time Leopard is released for the Mac.Rob.

I've been using Vista for everything except gaming (have that on a tweaked out XP partition) since the release day:My impressions are that the gaming issues with Vista are almost completely the fault of companies like Nvidia and Creative Labs who unbelievably have failed to release good optimized Vista drivers for their cards even as we sit here 4+ months after release. It's as if they just started developing them the day the public release happened. I know for a fact betas and alphas were available to hardware makers far in advance. AMD/ATI appears to be the only major gaming hardware company that had their act together - I've heard the driver situation for Radeon owners in Vista is a lot better than the Nvidia situation.I think it's a really good OS aside from these driver issues though. They made a lot of improvements that seem subtle at first but you really appreciate after using it day-to-day and discovering new things.

"There are valid technical reasons why DX10 is really tough to do on XP"Precisely, tough but not impossible in the same way coding for dual core is also tough but proving to be not impossible.The impossible just takes that bit longer to accomplish. If the incentive is there, and I'm predicting it soon will be, XP will have DX10 within the next couple of years.When all is said and done, XP has proven itself to be a relatively stable environment in which the full spectrum of currently available software runs very well.I would have thought that the sensible way forward would be for MS to offer XP with DX10 as an ongoing alternative o/s alongside big brother Vista for the forseeable future. In time, as software and hardware technologies evolve it is likely we will see a natural migration of the world community over to Vista, but to try to persuade all end users to change now just isn't necessary or, indeed, desirable. In the end, such measures as we are seeing currently could prove counter productive as the customer base grows weary of it all. We are witnessing it already in microcosm with FSX imposing yet more expensive hardware upgrades on the flightsim community. Many of us, including myself, are now saying enough is enough. ACES have recognized the problem, have taken our feelings on board and are producing solutions to keep us all happy. This we should be and are applauding.In XP we have a good operating system with all its hard won bug fixes and security holes in place. No matter what the technical hurdles may be, they can and should be overcome to provide the existing user base with DX10 capability. If Vista proves over the next few years to be as good as MS says it will be then let it succeed on its own merits and not just because MS prefer the tidier alternative of ditching one good o/s in favour of another. One would imagine that the vast majority of the support issues for XP have now been overcome, so the provision of ongoing technical support to the existing user base is unlikely to be unrealistically expensive. In any case this could be offset by continuing sales of XP which should be priced much more competitively alongside the flagship Vista.And what about the software developers? Without them, Vista would be just millions of lines of code with nothing to do. I can't imagine the pressures they must be feeling right now to produce Vista compatible software alongside XP when the latter product is already being taken of the shelves. Right now the bulk of their market will be XP and they should be encouraged to continue releasing for XP. We should be given the right of choice. In time I will probably choose Vista, but, for now, this particular end user will be sticking with his trusty and faithful friend: Windows XP.Mike

Really tough does not mean what you think it means. You're describing it as a matter of coding. You give no thought to how hard it is to make any change, even a minor change in XP that has to run on hundreds of millions of computers in dozens of languages in a myriad of configurations with thousands of different types of hardware.Microsoft is not going to make major changes to the kernel and device driver subsystem (which is necessary for DX10) for an OS that has been superceded, and that is running on hundreds of millions of computers. The risks are enormous. XP SP2 was hard enough. As Paul Thurrot describes..."The sudden change meant delays in Windows XP SP2, which was originally slated for a fall 2003 release. It meant delays for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1), originally due in late 2004. And it also meant delays for Longhorn, with Microsoft officials finally admitting in early 2004 that the company would delay its Longhorn Beta 1 release from late 2004 to February 2005, and the final release of the product to 2006 at the earliest. Internally at Microsoft, the changes were jarring: XP SP2 was placed back in the main build lab as Microsoft engineers struggled to adapt Longhorn security features to the XP code base."http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_sp2.aspI submit that Microsoft is not going to go through this for their older OS.

"I submit that Microsoft is not going to go through this for their older OS"Of course it is very possible history will prove you were correct and that I was living in cloud cuckoo land. However, nothing is set in stone and the experience within our relatively small community does suggest that there is no rush to change this time around and, I suspect, that this is also being mirrored out there across the world. Assuming this is true and the bulk of 'upgrading' from XP to Vista is occurring at the moment simply because purchasers of new PCs are given no choice then there are likely to be vast numbers of disgruntled XP users who will soon be feeling very let down.You see, in XP, unlike its predecessors, we still have an o/s that continues to serve its users well. Why would this contented user base want to switch just to get DX10? Fair enough, if you have a PC dedicated to a single application then changing to Vista is relatively straightforward. The same is not true if you have invested a great deal of time, effort and cash grooming your current complex setup to perform and produce just the way you like it. In these circumstances the thought of starting all over again holds no appeal whatsoever, unless of course you enjoy beating yourself with a stick unnecessarily.Time will tell, but my gut feeling tells me that the XP user base will remain strong for some time to come and developers will wish to exploit it for as long as it remains profitable. Do we really need DX10 at this point in time? I really do wonder. Currently I am exploring the world of Oblivion and this very impressive experience strongly suggests DX9 still has a lot to offer.The one thing that would have persuaded me to change to Vista is the operating system's ability to simplify the upgrading of motherboards without all the potential attendant headaches. This, for me, has been a missed opportunity and should have been addressed by now. Mike