Nosce te ipsum

Interesting times indeed. As the count down to MacWorld Expo in San Francisco draws near and the Christmas holiday is officially behind us, we're starting to see the fallout of the shopping season.

Last monday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article predicting what many in the Mac community have been anticipating for quite some time. With the incredible success of the iPod (and by default, the Apple retail stores), that it is highly likely that Apple will experience the 'halo' effect where many of the iPod customers who are just finding out how good the device is, are starting to take notice that Apple just so happens to make a few products besides the iPod.

The follow-up article in the WSJ features quotes from 20+ recent switchers (and a few with other perspectives) but what's interesting to those in the Mac community is that their words are the same thing we've heard for years now by everyone who 'discovers' the Non-Microsoft centric world of computing. What I find particularly interesting is that the reasons they give are for switching are almost universal (crashes, viruses, worms, adware, spyware, etc) -- but these days, Apple really is on a roll on so many fronts and no, they're not for everyone (face it, some people wouldn't drive a Mercedes either, it's just not their thing) but with the ever growing number of Apple retail stores, the product line that keeps getting better by the week and on the converse, the Windows side of things that just keep getting hammered by one security vulnerability after another. I used to dread dealing with virus outbreaks when I was a Windows network administrator full time but that was several years ago and the volume of issues has grown exponentially since then. Bottom line, it's good news on the Apple front as the year winds down. I'm wondering what we'll see at MacWorld in January - there certainly is a lot of hype surrounding it this year.