this article has been posted for a while now and still no comments? maybe the admins need to make some sort of sms-to-slashdot-comments-section bridge to lure in the next generation of visitors...

No, dude! That's what they want you to think!!! Quick, forget all your passwords and go stand next to somebody that's thinking about windows xp...

who didn't see this coming? :)

maybe, maybe not. you also pulled those number out of the air and only apple know if the real-world figures would yield them more profit

is that really a goal? i'm not so sure. higher market share means less exclusivity and therefore lower profit margins. also the platform becomes more tempting for hackers to target

let's wait and see how their current strategy of largely ignoring the hackingtosh market plays out. i have a feeling there aren't that many people building hackingtoshes - the people that do are (i think) a disproportionately vocal minority of computer geeks. and that's not even a bad thing - when geeks go out of their way to install apples OS on their own hardware, it sends out a subtle message to the market that 'the people in the know' choose osx because 'it's better'. sure it's all very unoffical, but it's marketing nontheless

i really don't get this point. why? netbooks are barely profitable for most netbook manufacturers. why should any company rush to compete in a profitless market with lots of risk and huge potential for brand damage (by way of selling an inferior product)?

possibly, but apple doesn't really profit from itunes sales, and iphone/ipod sales are already so high that any netbook->iPod/iPhone halo effect would be almost negligible. instead, the iphone/ipod->macbook halo effect is much more profitable for apple and i think that's what they're focusing on.

having said all that, there is clearly plenty of space in apples product line for cheaper hardware, as long as they can deliver a good end user experience. perhaps a relatively cheap tablet will fill this gap nicely. perhaps not. time will tell. or not :P

I've not had any problems either. My machine is a Dell box over a year old, and I upgraded from 9.04 which had some nasty problems (black squares flickering across the screen at random all the time!).

Koalas > Jackalopes

I don't know why you sound so unimpressed. A lot of people would consider "more of the same" a good thing coming from Apple. Sure they have their flaws, but by and large they are very good at providing stuff their target market want. You shouldn't expect a world-changing announcement every year - that would detract from their announcements that actually DO change the world.

hey guys, just got back from the store

i tried to return my netbook as 'faulty' but they didn't accept it :(

because they are taking the time to do it right - that way you will get a well thought out 'OS' instead of a repeat of todays dominant OS. if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right.

the internet flourished during the dark age of browsers and we've gone another half decade since then. what's another year between friends? at least we have a promise that it's on its way soon.

besides, with safari, firefox and opera (and even ie??? [ducks]) getting more and more standards compliant and faster JS with each iteration, Google doesn't need to rush. that's the beauty of standards compliance, it turns the browser in to a generic piece of software that is easily interchangeable. That's the future Google are chasing, and it's interesting that Chrome has gone a long way to push that agenda without even releasing a non-Windows version.

what ur saying isn't wrong, but i think it ignores the concept of being sensible.

for example, according to what you said the person who drove the hummer 5 miles to work supposedly used less petrol than the civic driver who drove 50 miles, but that doesn't change the fact that he burnt a stupidly large amount of fuel on such a short trip. that's wasteful. it would be understandable if they were making a journey that required such a vehicle, but 'going to work' is not really a good justification. there probably are some places where a hummer type vehicle is appropriate (army, etc), but most of the hummers that i have seen look quite bling and are so shiny that i doubt they have ever been offroad.

maybe they want to teach the kids the computer skills they will need in the future? with online warfare becoming an increased threat, it's probably good for them to encourage (covertly*) the next generation of American hackers.

i say it's a good use of taxpayers money.

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* online warfare is only to be used as a plan-B (in case operation "hope&change" fails)

hrm, i prefer ZFS (or as it is affectionately known - 'icantbelieveitsnotbttrfs')

im not sure i agree fully.

although linux is widely used in the server world, there is no dominant linux distro. each distro (even the big three: redhat, suse and debian) is a combination of varying security tools (firewalls, ssh, etc) and kernel configurations - each of which could be at any version. if it's too hard for software companies to port their software over to linux because of the inter-distro incompatibilities, it's probably even harder for the malware people. (i think it's called 'security-through-incompatability' - the very same thing that protects vista ;)

i think the same thing protects os x, albeit to a lesser extent - they release a new version roughly every 18 months, each one adding significant security enhancements. from a hackers point of view, it fragments an already tiny market.

xp on the other hand, has been around for a heck of a long time. patches are released, but overall the security model has remained unchanged for the better part of a decade. it's not nearly as much of a moving target, but even if half the users upgrade to the newer secure patch, then hackers will still have many millions of targets in either half of the market.

CONFESSION: i made up all my numbers to help convey my point.