Gillmore and not using Microsoft

The latest Gillmore Gang includes Steve Gillmore stating that people choose not to use Microsoft Windows because of lock-in. That may be true amongst the technical elite, but I've watched a whole series of people choose Apple not because they don't like Windows, but because the Mac looks better and 'feels' better. Thanks to the Internet, computers and their operating systems are now a commodity. Macs running OS X look more friendly. Many people just use a computer for a web-browser and music/photo management, and anyone can do that with either a Mac or Windows. (Note: I don't include Linux in that category... yet)

10+ years ago Microsoft worked so hard to build Internet Explorer to compete with Netscape because Microsoft management was worried that the internet would kill the Windows platform. It has finally started to happen, at least for the casual-user home PC. Microsoft should be very scared. Not because people aren't falling for the lock-in, as Steve implied, but because there is no lock-in for a growing class of users.