I think we can see it all around us that people are switching. Im a recent switcher myself and have had 2 Macs now in 12 months.
What im interested in though, is what effect Vista will have on the rate of switchers. Its fairly easy to get a casual PC user to switch on eye candy alone. Will this work when Vista out eye candys OSX?
Initially perhaps not as great as M$ would wish. For starters, the 6 versions of Vista will be plain confusing for many less-savvy PC owners. Particularly for those with PCs which are in that grey area whereby, for eg. they'll be able to run Vista starter, but not
necessarily Vista basic; or they can
easily run Vista basic, but Vista premium
might struggle, etc. (Similar confusion will abound for some small businesses faced with Vista business or Vista enterprise). Most PCs won't of course be able to run Vista ultimate.
Then you'll have every hacker in the world subjecting Vista to all sorts of viruses, & currently it's anyone's guess as to how well Vista will cope with the waves of attacks. Added to that you'll have some inevitable bugs, which a Vista SP1 or SP2 may finally fix some 12 to 18 months after launch. Also, you'll have the considerable expense of Vista, particularly when compared to Leopard, & the launch of Leopard sometime in spring 2007 with all the favourable comparisons for Apple that will bring.
So IMO,
if M$ gets their product right on a number of levels (& there are so many variables here), then yes, Vista probably will have a major effect on the number of switchers eventually. But I think Apple could continue to increase marketshare at a good rate for some 12 months at least, if not beyond. - (Also, wouldn't be a bad idea to get dedicated graphics inside some of the consumer-priced Macs most likely to appeal to switchers).
