...I voted perhaps. It's all in how they deliver it to the PC world. I have to agree with some of the points made by the other members. As someone who has owned and used two OS X Macs and three versions of that OS (10.1, 10.2 and 10.3) between them, I agree that quite a bit of what Apple "sidles off" to Developer Tools installs or their X11 implementation (granted, less and less as time goes on) would make the standard-install OS a lot more useful in the Linux/Unix world.

I do recall rumors, reliable rumors, and the distillations of pundits with broader views than myself over the decades that would lead me to believe this is Apple's habitual mode d'emploi. Take for instance the several times during the 25+ years Motorola was building their hardware; Moto would suggest adding a feature or capability to a model or model line, and Apple's brass, many of whom were groomed in the classic Jean-Louis Gassee fashion by Steve Jobs himself before his foray "into the wilderness," would demur and tell Moto, in effect: "Wait till we roll-out our next OS version."

(For those who aren't familiar with the name or story, Jean-Louis Gassee was a onetime president of Apple France. Jobs brought him to sunny Cali and made him a VP. He canceled a scheme to put the Mac OS on another company's hardware in the 11th hour. When he left to start Be, Inc, he "got his' when he wouldn't pay the package fee Apple insisted on to outsource his BeBox hardware to his old employers. The BeBox, as you may recall, disappeared from the market.)

But back to the subject of the thread/poll.

It's a maybe with me -- I'd like to see ahead of time that they intend to give the rest of us something as good -- or maybe better in ways that count -- than what Mac hardware owners have and use.

BZT