Quote: "I suspect the retail world will change with it."
Unless you're Cash Converters, when I worked there they were still using DOS. Love how the 'networking' was taking a floppy disk from one end of the store to the other.
Quote: "Apple gets too much flak in my opinion. Is their stuff to expensive? Yes. But is it high quality technology? Absolutely. "
Pretty much, get the same sort of quality like for like on a PC and you're actually paying a similar price. When doing comparisons, I found PC all-in-ones of a similar price and spec to iMacs and even an Alienware for £1,800 when the equivalent spec MacPro was £2000, at least at the time of checking, but the MacPro had the advantage of being able to store a lot more RAM if you wanted to upgrade.
For the spec of that Alienware, I could probably get an Acer for cheaper, but that Acer is probably more likely to go wrong.
Throw in ThinkPads...if you're talking T-Series, then you're welcome to
literally throw it. They're more expensive like for like but then you're getting what you pay for.
I often use this anecdote. 2 laptops bought the same day (nearly 4 years ago), 1 Acer, the other a MacBook. Both cost £700. The Acer? Much higher spec. Sounds like good value for money. Over a year later, Acer dies (and no longer under warranty). Over a year ago, Acer was replaced with a £420 ThinkPad, much lower spec (roughly matches the spec of the Mac bought a couple of years before). The same Acer was going around for about the same price as the ThinkPad too. The state of the MacBook? It's still running and still hasn't had a single problem with it. Total money spent by me: £1120. Total spent by Mac user (sister): £700.
Of course, this is just an anecdote, Mac aren't infallible and some have gone wrong. But the anecdote should illustrate what it's like to base value for money on spec alone and not take into consideration the brand quality or the model quality. I say model quality, because some companies, like Lenovo do cheaper versions of laptops, for example, my ThinkPad is a SL series, it's still well built, but doesn't match the quality of a T series of the same spec.
Anyway, I think the OP is interesting. I'll be honest and say I don't like the direction MS is taking at the moment, Windows 8 doesn't sound like it's going the way it should. They're pretty much giving up on XNA, which makes me wonder about MS's future in the gaming market? Given they're taking the direction of development tools for their mobile platform and making Windows 8 very mobile orientated it looks like they're appealing to the market Apple is flourishing in. I hope I am wrong though. I'd hope they'd be putting the money into the markets they're already flourishing in, such as businesses and gaming (and I don't mean Angry Birds)
So maybe splitting MS up is a good idea, I mean you could have it split between each of their markets.
