The New York Times had a piece today stating that the window of opportunity for Apple to really make some inroads into the Windows’ PC market share was there, but is soon to close. The author makes the case for the botched launch of Windows Vista turning a lot of would be new PC buyers off makes sense on paper but I think it’s different in reality. As I see it, Apple does have a window of opportunity, but that window of opportunity will remain open as long as they keep putting out a better quality product than Microsoft and the PC makers of the world.

Mark Cuban chimed in with his own personal anecdote about how Vista pushed him to switch to a Mac – and how he’ll never go back now (Steve Jobs couldn’t have written it any better). Cuban’s story seems to read just as many average Joe’s and Jane’s would. He has some minor qualms about making the transition (Mark – the new Apple mice do have 2 buttons, they just LOOK like they only have one, but don’t get one, they suck for other reasons – you can use any USB or bluetooth mouse with your laptop though – or as I’m sure you already know by now, control-click to right-click), but the good definitely outweighs the bad (which is his case is simply that all his emails were backed up in Outlook, so Microsoft had him not with a superior product, but because they controlled his data).

My early Mac-switching story is actually very similar to Cuban’s (as I’m sure many people’s are). If you think I’m an Apple fanboy now, you should have met me 10 years ago – I hated Apple, thought it was crap, Microsoft could do no wrong in my mind.

Yes, you read that right. I will say flat out that I used to be a complete Windows fanboy (yes, again, I said Windows). I was at the midnight launch of Windows 95 (I was 13 at the time). I bought Windows Me. I bought Windows XP the day it came out. I even owned Microsoft Bob. I was all-PC, all the time. We had Macs at our high school, I hated them. Thought they were slow, couldn’t play any games on them, couldn’t find any software for them, just didn’t get it.

Then I went to college. At the University of Michigan, the Fish Bowl, as it’s called, is a giant computer lab on central campus split with half Macs and half PCs. Even though the Macs had better monitors, I would rarely go over there because I simply didn’t feel confident using a Mac. Apple hosted a few events up on Michigan’s North Campus (the Engineering School) and I went to one of them and saw OS X. It looked awesome, but I still didn’t see much of a point in using a Mac over a PC.

Cut to a few years later. I had just moved out to Los Angeles after college. Having gone through quite a few PC mishaps in the previous few years (I spent more time using Windows defrag than I care to think about), I had just gotten a new Dell laptop hoping that would solve all my PC issues for the foreseeable future. At first it was fast, I was happy. Then I discovered Firefox. I didn’t realize the Internet didn’t have to run and look like crap (as I thought it did on IE 6) while you were bombarded by pop-ups. Firefox blew me away – the slight seeds of doubt I had against Microsoft because of my PC problems and after the brief glimpse of OS X, intensified.

Then I got my first iPod. I had previously had an Intel MP3 player (that I actually got for free when I bought Windows XP on day 1), and the iPod just completely destroyed it with it’s ease of use. Hmm, I thought, if Apple can make MP3 players so much better than the competition, what else can they do? Don’t let anyone ever tell you the ‘halo effect’ isn’t real.

Then I got a job in Hollywood. Hollywood is all about the Macs. For the first time since high school I was forced to use a Mac everyday – expect now these Macs had OS X. By day 2 I was hooked. I bought my first Apple computer (an iBook) a couple months later.

For a while at home I switched my time between the Dell laptop and the iBook. Looking back it was more of a safety-cord thing than anything else; like Cuban I had about 10 years worth of data on the PC laptop that I had transferred over from my old computers – emails, chats, old-school Microsoft Works documents, etc… I think that I was still worried something crazy might happen with the Mac and I would really just want a PC. Some more time went by and eventually I realized I just wasn’t using my Dell at all anymore. I shipped it back to my dad for him to use. My PC days were officially over.

I have since added another Mac (an Intel iMac) and several more iPods to my Apple collection, as well as, of course, the iPhone. Call me a fanboy if you want – but just know that I was once a pure Windows-only user just like you (and perhaps even more so). I’ve since seen the light, and to me now it seems almost ridiculous that anyone today WOULDN’T buy a Mac. Especially seeing as all the new ones can dual-boot Windows (with Boot Camp or Parallels) in case there really is something you NEED Windows for.

So when I read something about the window of opportunity closing for Apple because soon Vista will take over, I have to kind of laugh. Microsoft’s botched launch of Vista isn’t what is ultimately going to drive more and more users to Apple. It’s the fact that Vista is still Windows. I’ve used it. It looks nicer, still the same old Windows. Unless Microsoft drastically changes they way they do things, and builds an actual completely new operating system from scratch, people are going to keep switching to the Mac – OS X is just a superior product, it’s that simple.

Sure, it may take a while for Apple to make significant gains in market share, but that’s only because they were starting so low. They are going up, and they will continue to go up. It’s a slow process, converting from Windows to OS X. People are afraid of the unknown, there is safety with what you and 90% of the rest of the world uses. But more and more people – like Mark Cuban – are realizing that is simply no reason to stay with an inferior product.

The new iPod’s UIs are starting to look more and more like OS X – especially the iPod Touch and of course, the iPhone. More and more people will continue to use these, and some will make the leap to an Apple computer because of it. Some will make the jump because they will use their roomate’s Mac, some will make the jump because they’ll use a Mac in an Apple store, some at Best Buy. As more and more people actually own Macs, I think you’ll find the percentage of converts will increase.

Yes, Apple has funny commercials with the Mac and PC Guy, but the best way to sell a Mac, is still simply to have someone actually use a Mac. When more people have Macs, this will happen more and more.

So that was just a really long way of me saying that while I see what The New York Times was trying to say, I think they are off the mark. There is always going to be a window of opportunity for Apple to make inroads against Windows as long as Windows is still Windows. It’s going to take a while. Significant percentage changes might be a decade away, but I personally know of at least 20 former PC-only users who have bought Macs in the past 2 years – and that is just me, just of people I personally know. Comparatively I’d say I know of about half that many that have bought a new PC within that timeframe. Maybe they’re just not as excited about it so they don’t tell me, or maybe I just keep a certain type of friend, but they all were PC users who switched.

None of this even gets into where the Internet is taking us. Web applications will increasingly make standard desktop software apps obsolete – when this happens, Microsoft will have even less of a stranglehold. Don’t think they don’t know that either – that’s one of the reasons they are so afraid of Google. The Internet freeing consumers from the grasp of Windows can only help hasten the migration to alternatives like OS X and Linux.

The Times article really fails to think outside the box at all. An argument could certainly be made that a device like the iPhone is a computer and so that person should be counted as a Mac user. Going forward it’s going to be less about the standard desktop PC and more about laptops, sub-laptops, handhelds, cellphones, and the like that make up computing. Does anyone really think in 2027 we’re going to be sitting around at desks using keyboards and mice on our tower PCs? No. We’re going to have technologies like the Multi-Touch in the iPhone fully developed and in use in computers that are simply screens. Which OS looks more poised for that, Windows or OS X?

I’ve written about this previously, but I think the dawn of the ‘Age of Apple‘ took place at some point last year with the transition to Intel chips. It’s going to take a while, but we’re getting there.