[darkpuppet]

^-- the UAC is pretty useless... I wish it locked out kernel activities like OSX does.

However, there's a lot of good technology in Vista, like an unprecedented level of abstraction between the kernel and driver levels. Sure things like that have a performance hit, but it also means that your computer doesn't have to crash completely when a driver fails.

There's a few other things kernel/user layer-wise that are pretty ingenious, and even MAC OSX doesn't quite take it to that level.

But then again, limiting the hardware platform for Mac OS-X sort of negates that need. However, sometime down the road, I see them branching out and supporting generic hardware.

Mac tends to do things in two steps.

1 ) create technology that will sell macs
2 ) when that fails to increase market share, broaden the distribution.

much like how the iPod went mainstream once they sold pretty much one for every existing mac user... in fact, the iPod (and iTunes) could be the wedge that opens the mass-apeal door to Apple.

Jobs has done a good job bringing the company back from the brink..it's good to see, because it's forcing it's much larger competition to innovate as well.