Apple 4 - Microsoft 0, Can we say shutout?

If there was a scoreboard keeping a record of who is winning the Desktop OS game, Apple would have a healthy lead. John Boudreau from Mercury News wrote an article essentially summing up the events in the battle of Apple and Microsoft. John's position is that Apple has consistently delivered on its promises while Microsoft seems to jump from delay to delay with no end in sight.

The upcoming World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) is where Apple is expected to release its latest revision of Mac OS X, Leopard and a bevy of other products. Meanwhile Microsoft still hasn't delivered on the Vista promise and don't get me started on the XP promise. If XP were a pizza and Microsoft a Pizza Shop, my food would be free. But the major difference Apple and Microsoft which might explain the severe backlog of releases is that Windows and Vista will have to run on millions of computers world-wide while OS X only runs on a fraction of the machines. The other issue with Vista is that it has to be compatible with a ton of different hardware while Apple only has to worry about a much smaller selection of hardware and software.

My problem with Windows delays is how long will it take before people get fed up with waiting for Vista and switch to something else? I'm surprised how long all the techies who use XP have waited for Vista. I won't take the argument that they have Vista Beta 2 because its no where near ready for release.

In the end the question is, does any of this matter? For the majority of users the answer is no, they have no need for innovation and they are the same people who still use Windows 98 today. Read the original article for more of John's opinions on the topic.