Don’t get me wrong, I think the Mac is a good machine and I like OS X. I used a Mac throughout college and advocated for buying Mac workstations for photo work at my last job (because it was the best tool for the job at the time — Windows machines were still behind in multimedia back then). Still, I think Mac’s best days are in the past and it has little hope for becoming a major player again unless it does two things: 1.) Further embrace and lead open source (or at least go modified open source) and 2.) open its OS software to commodity hardware. Otherwise, I doubt Apple will ever again be a serious contender for mindshare in the computer space.

Apparently, I’m not the only who thinks this way. This week, Red Herring published an interesting article called “Apple’s Halo in Doubt” that called into question the halo-effect that Mac has supposedly been getting as a result of Apple’s strong iPod sales. The article points to analyst reports that say that the Mac’s incremental upswing only looks good because Mac marketshare has fallen so abysmally low. I have to agree. With 2.5% marketshare, Mac is barely even a blip on the radar anymore.