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InformationWeek.com is a great resource for all things technology. At the bottom of this post you will see 5 other articles I’ve used InformationWeek as a resource for.

In today’s newsletter they shared, A Modest Proposal On How Microsoft Can Clobber Apple.

The most important pieces have been pulled out and shared below:

 
 

Mac market share is receding due to the recession. … CEO Steve Jobs said that Mac users are loyal. They’ll postpone buying, but they won’t switch to Windows. That was true during the last recession — but is it still true today?

The last recession was 2000-2003 or so…, At that time, there was a broad canyon between Mac and Windows applications. If you had a Mac, you weren’t likely to go to Windows because of the financial cost of switching all your applications, and migrating all your data,….

Since then, we’ve seen a big change in Macs. Most applications for the Mac can also be found on Windows,…. In particular, Web browsers are now the most important apps on users’ PCs, and the main Mac Web browsers, Firefox and Safari, which didn’t exist during the last recession, are also available on Windows. And technology such as Boot Camp, Parallels, and VMware Fusion lets you run Windows on the Mac, which means many Mac users have a hand in the Windows world.

These factors worked in Apple’s favor in recent years, removing barriers for people looking to switch from Windows to the Mac. Now, they can work against Apple, if people start thinking about switching back.

Windows and the Mac are much closer together today than they were during the last recession. A Mac user who needed a new computer in 2001-2 might wait until the economy improved. Mac users needing a new computer today might price-shop and decide, “The heck with it. I’ll get a Windows machine today. I’ll think about whether to get another Mac when the economy recovers.”

Mitch Wagner
www.informationweek.com

Other InformationWeek Posts:

Wanting Online Privacy Is For the Naive
Grand Central to become Google Voice
InformationWeek Helps You Pick a Linux
Tux is Cold and Quiet in Classrooms
There Can Only Be One!