More pointless gibberish

More pointless gibberish

As long as desktop computing "matters", the breakdown of the market is not going to change dramatically from what you see today. Apple has a better product but still can't move their marketshare much. The desktop market is over. Its what is next that you should be concerned about. Game consoles, cell phones, home media appliances.

Any of these devices will provide internet application support (web, mail, IM, chat) in a few years as well as their primary function (games, movies, etc) and that is all users really want. And no Aunt Tilly doesn't spend most of her time on the computer entering recipes in a word processor followed by occasional spreadsheet use. That is the 1992 vision of computing. Do you even see Microsoft making strong efforts to sell Office to home users? There's no market there.

I'm all for improving the linux desktops - but to be certain it is simply a matter of improving what the existing target audience wants. Anyone who wants dead-simple, it-just-works computing already uses a Mac. Anyone who wants to be part-of-the-majority already runs Windows.

Note: you can avoid this step in the future by logging into your LWN account.