It's funny, but this new Macintosh distinctly reminds me of my beloved Amiga. There are lots of nice features, and it's obvious that a lot of effort has been put into making this system look and feel good.

It's really not surprising. After all, Apple would have gone the way of Commodore if it didn't have three things going for it--great hardware, software, and marketing. Commodore had the first two but lacked the marketing. As far as gaming is concerned, the PC utterly sucked (imho) until the mid-to-late 90s, when games started looking less like Scorched Earth and more like Doom. Of course, Microsoft's DirectX and the overall stabilization of graphics and sound cards played a huge role in the PC platform becoming #1. However, the biggest contributing factor was definitely the non-proprietary nature of the hardware, which allowed so many manufacturers to compete on the market, driving down the price and upping the value.

My prediction is that eventually the GNU/Linux platform will be #1. Why? Because companies can compete for both the hardware and the software. Nothing will be proprietary or in the hands of one company--particularly the all-important standards.

If this seems crazy, again, just think of where the PC was in back in 1990 compared to the Amiga and Mac platforms. I figure the historical parallel would be that the GNU/Linux of today is where the PC was back in the early days of DOS. Yes, a lot of serious people were using them for professional reasons (much of which probably had to do with IBM's legacy as a business computer), but it wasn't until much later in the PC's career that anyone would seriously choose it as a gaming or even a family-friendly rig. GNU/Linux will eventually lose the stigma of being an "expert only" system and gain the lead simply because it'll be the best value option.