It brings back memories. I'm thankful for the replies. There was creative Apple AAPL doing some good things while Microsoft was doing other things, and even better.  MSFT has benefitted so much over the years as a result of wise choices made decades ago. That leads me to post something later on Microsoft's bid for Yahoo and the effect on the price of YHOO shares.

Suppose there was one make of automobile that although it was very reliable, if you had a problem you must go back to the dealer for parts or service.  Although it may be recognized by many as a superior machine, very soon it would be seen as over priced and inconvenient.  No matter how much the manufacturer might wish to  control the 'aftermarket', people would frequently choose to go to the neighborhood mechanic, rather than stand in line and be overcharged when they had a 'car' problem.

That being said, although I worked in an industry  which only wrote proprietary programs in MS language, every computer I have brought (except for one) was an Apple product.  They always have been easier to use and less prone to contamination.

Do you mean the one where you have to stand in line, use proprietary parts, overpriced, etc., is the Apple product?  Oh, and although better in many ways, it's not the one where you can easily use the neighborhood mechanic, right? If so, that's what I mean, too -- I just hate being held captive.

Another gripe: Itunes. Naturally, I initiated my music listening in the time of vinyl, and got used to how you could start a collection and use it wherever you wanted and it was considered YOURS. Yeah, you could even copy them, eventually, to tape casettes; you could also buy the casette and make more casettes. I didn't think this was much abused, except of course in countries where they were mass-producing from copies.

Now, you have to learn some hard-to-figure Itunes rules whenever you buy a new computer and want to put "your" songs on it; that reminds you it's not really yours. It belongs to Apple. Another thing, you can't get genuine, original Beatles tunes or Jethro Tull. What gives? I would really appreciate some enlightenment on that, but from a business standpoint, doesn't Apple end up alienating as many people as they gain, and thus stay at 10% - 15% market share always?

That should be interesting to see. It shows how -- were I to based decisions on things like their lack of Jethro Tull and the Beatles, I would be misstepping. The younger group has barely heard about the Beatles, let alone Jethro Tull; these music groups can just barely be located on YouTube, now. Certainly the inability to find these music groups on iTunes shouldn't make a difference, and they could almost just "write off" potential users in my age group -- I have yet to go out and get an iPod, only just started to WANT to when I heard you can get seminars on it.

 I'm curious about how Apple might react to downward pricing pressure, as when people prefer to listen to anything they can on YouTube and somebody else comes out with something as good as the iPhone.