I found the the first article in John Papola’s new blog to be a well-written and thoughtful comparison of Apple’s “vertical” operational structure (writing an OS that works with a select core of hardware) with Windows’ “horizontal” one (writing an OS that has to handle all manner of combinations of hardware). It’s a more sober look than the usual cultish rantings one encounters in this debate.I also found it interesting how the article points out Microsoft might be tiring of its role. Taking a page from Apple’s book, MS’s 2006 prototype will be a preassembled computer — the Athens — which also bears a striking resemblance (both externally and feature-wise) to an iMac. And Longhorn, MS’s next Windows incarnation, reportedly bears a similarity to the look of Mac’s OS X.
