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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lee Harper who wrote (54923)	7/22/2006 4:35:47 PM
From: shlurker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

actually - the man did raise some points. No need to bash if he's a sensitive type. I was educated by what he said .. sorta gave us a peek at the PC mindset, which is MOST important to understand because we want them to 'switch'. For one, I Didn't realize the fully obvious: that you can use Parallels virtualization to back up ANY windows version(s) or, linux etc. just as you do on MBP. Question: Is it REALLY just as easy on a PC? For another, People CAN fixup a PC to be secure. I guess it MUST be true, because many intelligent people DO use PC's( a FACT). They evidently manage it(without TOO much trouble) by on-going word-of-mouth, internet hints, blogs,etc. They just want to do what they want to do. 3.Not EVERYONE is a 'purist' when it comes to software or elegance, or even ease-of-use.. It reminds me of the old 'Algol vs FORTRAN' arguments. FORTRAN 'won' the 'market share' easily. As far as I can tell a 'messy' approach works quite well if there's enough of a base to keep adding fixes and strings to the many loose ends. MSFT software is a classic tech example. English vs Spanish is another. (actually, the history of mankind is another example!) So.o.o what does that mean to an AAPL investor? Someone here said that the PC market size is 8 times the iPod market. And others say that the latter market is 'mature', levelling off. Hence a little off-the-cuff calculation indicates that , in order to continue to GROW, AAPL must rise from 2% to 10% in PC sales. Can AAPL attract that many switchers with it's OS??? My guesses: (1)Individuals interested in software and graphics are already there. But the 'market share' of all humans becoming interested in graphics(cameras, fancy cellphones, next generation kids) is increasing, so that will help. (2)Is VISTA is another 'string' added onto the PC landscape or is it something new, and must be learned? If it's the former, it will not be much of a factor in the age-old PC-Mac war - just more of the same. If it's the latter, that will help AAPL tremendously (barring a design miracle from MSFT), because that will only tend to hurt the huge PC community base. (3)Home entertainment. I always figured figure this to be the determining factor. At one time I thought AAPL was a shoo-in in this area, now not so sure. Why are they not masterminding movies like music? It's getting late, even tho they seem to have all the cards(iTunes, iPods, eyeTV, Disney_connection, an AppleScript remote, hideable OS, macmini, sound, etc.?) A mac-controlled Tivo-like flat-TV with iTunes delivering movies, all as a UNIFIED packaged product(NOT as a 'computer') at Best-Buy would explode like the iPods did! I read where flat TV sales are down, i bet because of a lot of 'systems-integration' confusion. Disclosure: I'm a retired early software developer, and 'dabbler' in (mostly hi-tech) stocks; an AAPL user since the first iMac (1998) and investor(since june 2002) . Never used a PC or invested in that area.