>>>As I recall, Apple was all but pronounced dead during the late 90's.
>>>Anyone who bet against the prognosticators and bought Apple stock is wealthy today.
>>>
>>>>>I used to laugh when Microsoft's demise was predicted. Now I think it is a certainty.
>>>Microsoft used to produce some excellent products.
>>>Now they excel at producing FUD.
>>
>>Apple knows their market, and it is users who swarm toward anything shiney. Change a color and tell the masses that they must have that color for it is Apple, and they will drop whatever they have and line up for it.
>>
>>Microsoft doesn't have the same market - especially re: developers. Unlike most Apple users, most MS developers show signs of cranial activity at least occasionally. Eventually, a lot of them can get turned away if Microsoft insists on shifting gears every few hours as they seem to have been doing for the last couple of years.
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>I believe that the media often takes or makes up stories just to push a contrarian point of view in order to sell more copy. In the process they use anything they can get their hands on to support their point while ignoring material that would appear to be contrary to their own contrarian approach. It is far from the scientific methodology, that's for sure. (I know how this is done on both fronts -- I have been a scientist as well as a journalist in my checkered past.)
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>Microsoft's tools division might be suffering from institutional ADD or Asberger's, but many of its other divisions -- especially the server division -- are as strong or stronger than ever. Consider Exchange Server, SQL Server, Windows 2003/2008 Server, Microsoft Office, and many others of their industrial strength commercial products, and the company starts looking to be doing quite well indeed.

I agree re: the servers. Nothing else comes close in actual bang for the buck or reliability.

If/When developers move elsewhere, the competetion will get better.

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>What do CNN's general purpose reporters know about the intricacies of high tech anyways?