over the grey clouds is a clear blue sky.
I've personaly never liked apple corp or their business tactics... or redmond for that matter, or IBM, or any of the big technology makers really (although I make an exception for Slimdevices.. now part of logitech.. but they're probably just too small for me to hear about their evil ways yet).
I guess the problem (well, from a geek consumer point of view anyway) is that you have teams of brilliant engineers who are supervised by monkies who in turn are ruled over by lemurs who take their orders from mysterious sloths with no apparent motives than getting more sleeping time for themselves (the engineer>monkey>lemur>sloth business model is a metaphor btw, no need to start dropping shares just yet... there are as far as I know only humans working in the before mentioned companies.. not counting mascots).
Now, I don't think I would ever buy an iPhone, but this has more to do with the fact that I don't really have any need for a smart phone rather than a dislike of apple products. Truth is, I rather like apple products (I own a Ipod mini with a custom battery and flash storage), and I would love to get my dirty paws on a macbook (although I would probably run winxp on it rather than macos)... their design team for some reason seem to always outdo everyone else in the business :o)
Who knows, if they manage to saturise their current market (people who have loads of cash and are willing to pay a bit (ok, quite a bit) extra for pretty and high spec computers) they may decide to make some models for those of us who realise just how fast computer technology becomes obsolete (I have a tendency to look for the equilibrium between price, specs and the speed at which it will be outdated.. which is why I probably will never own a macbook :o/)
So, let us not boo apples increased market share (although, I believe a previous poster stated that global sales had in fact dropped.. but it's quarter past eight and I'm too lazy to check ;o), but hope that it leads to them eventually releasing a low spec macbook for those of us who are too mindful of the rate at which technology develops to buy pay premiums just to get the latest and fastest into our solid aluminium laptops :o)
and if they ever do release a low cost macbook I will probably buy one, even if I will probably run xp on it :o)