Increasing Apple market share

With Apple’s grasp on consumer computing reaching 10% worldwide, and as high as 20% in the United States, the question must be asked: 

Will OS X remain untouched by general malware and viruses, or will this growing user base draw negative attention from hackers? 

I am torn on this whole subject. On one hand, I would love to see the platform I love skyrocket to Microsoft’s widespread sort of success, however, I feel that I will miss being part of a smaller and focused creative community of Mac users. That a niche will have been lost and the OS might head in – dare I say – slightly more conventional directions.

Poll of the Week

MacBook Air

After much consideration, I purchased the latest MacBook Air model yesterday evening, and so far, I am thoroughly impressed. To be fair, I am upgrading from a PowerBook G4 12″. I find that the new Nvidia 256MB video cards are well worth the wait. My PowerBook’s dedicated 64MB video card lasted a long time, but when this thin, mobile wonder debuted with a video card 4 times its ability, I was impressed. Of course a 1067Mhz frontside bus compared to the PowerBook’s 167Mhz bus, not to mention added DDR3 ram and the dual-core Penryn processor, also helped. Here’s what I’ve noticed in my 12 hours of owning the Air:

I can stream HD video without any hold ups whatsoever, while (legally) downloading a >1GB application from an FTP, and still having enough RAM to keep Mail, Address Book, iCal, and iPhoto running in the background. Stunning. More than I would have ever expected.

On other small topics, I was surprised by the Air’s sub-keyboard speakers. Not bad! The packaging is remarkably small, making the Air seem even more suave.

A follow up later…