Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Tex]

Times are a-changin'

This article is interesting, not so much for how it tries to foresee Google's victory online, but that it bases the 'inevitability' of this outcome on the perception that the public loathes Microsoft. The final paragraphs sum it up:

Everybody knows Microsoft's tricks. Everybody knows it wants to make the same mess of the internet that it made of the personal computer, with all money channeling back to it as it puts up barriers to innovation in all directions. Everybody's sick of Microsoft.

Microsoft should well be terrified of the day a free online alternative to Windows hits the internet. Starting on that day, the countdown to Microsoft's irrelevance could be measured in quarters, not years.

You know how long it would take me to switch? Only as long as the download. When the installation prompt asked me if I wanted to save a backup copy of my former operating environment, I'd click "hell no" as fast as my fingers could move.

And -- poof! -- just like that Microsoft would be gone.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/62881-microsoft-finally-convinces-the-future-belongs-to-google?source=side_bar_editors_picks

I've held this view for a while -- anything other than MSFT, please -- but this article suggests a view that this attitude is increasingly becoming mainstream. If this article is right, the switcher pressure toward non-MSFT operating systems could be a real boon for Apple. Didn't an analyst suggest this as a reason to expect growing Mac volumes? Is disgust with Microsoft becoming mainstream? Or is it just that Apple's lowered the bar to migration with compatible hardware?

Interesting times.

Take care,
--Tex.