The Relevance of Microsoft

Is it me, or is Microsoft losing it's edge? Don't get me wrong, it is still the behemoth of the industry -- not to be trifled with, but they just seem to be slowing down. I guess it was inevitable, but everyone still holds them in such high regard (or fear). With the uncovering today that Longhorn will ship even later than projected (now 2006), they seem to be stuck in big-company mentality. Yes, they are a big company, and millions of people rely on them, but the computer industry has never waited for anyone. You have to build it -- yesterday. Then again, MS has always used pre-announcements to stifle competition. My favorite example is Pen Windows, as detailed in Jerry Kaplan's excellent novel, "Startup". Are these pre-announcements this far ahead by now? Apple is making great strides with their latest release, dubbed Panther. I have been thoroughly impressed by OS X and now use it for all my personal work. They took a nice solid core, added a rich user interface, and built an exceptional development environment with Cocoa. The speed on my 500 MHz iBook is a little lacking, but I haven't missed any of the driver headaches that my old PC gave me. I will admit, it took me some time to adjust to using a Mac. I wasn't accustomed to not having to play with the OS to get things to work. I didn't have to spend four hours setting up my printer like I did with Linux, or reboot the machine ever time I installed a new application. It's weird coming from Windows to this... you almost want Apple to make you reboot once in awhile -- almost. Of course, my first love was the Amiga. That damn computer was so far ahead of everyone else... it really spoiled me. Preemptive multitasking, multimedia, stereo sound, kick-ass graphics, and speed, glorious system responsiveness -- all way before that was the norm... Macs were still in black and white, and DOS was stuck with CGA graphics. I really miss that machine. I had such a connection with it. I would sit in the basement for hours, hacking away on some graphics animation or music file. Spend some time on a local BBS, then go play a game or two. Ah, that brings back some memories. Well, this entry doesn't make any sense now. I'm definitely reaching my goal then. Stream-of-consciousness writing.