Apple:
Quoting Topolsky:
"The company is forcing consumers to ask if they even still want or need something called a PC (while of course making sure to point out that the competition is playing the same old game). And really, that's all part of the plan. Apple is in the process of making the iPad the de-facto standard for what the next stage of computing looks like, from the look and feel to the kind of software and experiences you have on the device. Apple doesn't just want to own the market -- it wants to own the idea of the market. We've seen this act before, and we know how it ends."
If this is indeed Apple's strategy, which seems plausible, then Apple has a major interest in keeping the platform experience as consistent and homogeneous as possible. This renders anything harking back to the days when 'the Mac was just a kind of PC, only different' obsolete and counterproductive. Does this mean it is legitimate for Apple to leave behind faithful users from PPC and Classic days? No, but this puts these users -- us! -- on a different point in phase-space than where Apple wants to be, and where it wants to lead. Our legacy problems are entirely peripheral to their cone of vision, and fading fast.
The legacy question is much more complex than the sum of our individual worries voiced here, and it deserves more careful analysis some day, starting with the fact that the commoditization of personal computers atomised the sustainable systems approach spirit once embodied by engineers like DEC's Ken Olsen.
