Any Apple Owners?

[Tavish]

My motivation for posting in this thread is not to bash Macs, but rather stick up for PCs. All the negativity that's constantly aimed at Bill Gates and PCs and Microsoft just isn't fair in my opinion. It's as if people can't be unbiased and truthful about PCs because they're the big guy. I think that's BS. What's fair is fair and PCs have standardized both personal and business computing on a worldwide scale. That standardization has greatly contributed towards mankind's unprecedented technological evolvement these last 25 years. I'm sorry, but I think a litte credit is due.

There are some very important things that Microsoft has done for the computing industry but the standardization is certainly not something that I would put on the positive side. What they basically did was have a good eye for the future of computing (at least up until XP) and were able to buy out the leading edge companies and projects that went in that direction and proprietize them. As far as international standards of coding and design they have an awful track record. They have willfully broken standards to make things work within Windows and simply leave it up to programmers and manufacturers to make their projects work inside that environment if they want to have access to the large customer base.

What Microsoft should get credit for is always looking for ways to make the learning curve for users as low as possible. It's allowed highly computer illiterate people to sit down and become at least somewhat productive with a PC. There are certainly some negative aspects to that, but the positives (explosion in demand) far outweigh them.