Erik J. Barzeski — Who is the winner in the OS wars? Well, read 
              below and look at the whole issue from a slightly different
              perspective...

          Erica J. Marceau — Apple Wizards Update and a bunch of other
              good stuff :-)

            Contests — Contest winners from October and a description of the
             November contest and prizes!

Erik J. Barzeski — Well Then, You Lose

I recently attended the Associated College Press/College Media Association (ACP/CMA) National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. It was a large convention with many seminars and lots of free stuff (I have almost enough free t-shirts now to last the rest of the year!). The attendees and presenters were primarily all Mac people. This provided the opportunity for what I consider to be the best "ha HA!" moment of the convention.

In one seminar, a web-design session, the presenters were extolling the many virtues of the Mac in web design. While they were explaining how you could easily integrate QuickTime movies into your website via a two-step process, someone raised their hand and asked "What about doing this on a PC?" The response from the presenter was quick and rather harsh: Well then, you lose.

The MacOS has something like a 64% market share in web design. It has something like an 80% market share in multimedia design (CD-ROM, etc.). Now, my question is, where is the world going? Is multimedia the wave of the future? Is the internet? My guesses tell me that yes, these things will be very important in the future (and present). With dominant market shares in each of those, the Mac will survive. PCs? — well then, they lose.

The only area in which PCs excel is web serving. Tests have shown that an NT can outperform a Mac at web-serving. Unix generally beats both. However, as Macs and the PowerPC chip get faster, as Rhapsody progresses, and as people continually discover more security holes in NT machines, Apple is poised to take over the server end of the market. Just think — Rhapsody could have the power of Unix, the ease-of-use of a Mac, and none of the NT security holes! Sounds like a winner to me! NT? — well then, you lose.

Macs are out there and they're doing what needs to be done in the midst of stupid journalists and bad marketing and the occasional "I like PCs just because they come in cow boxes" people. Everyone loves a winner, right? I love my Mac. I love a winner.

PC users? Well then, you lose.

           Erik J. Barzeski
             erik@applewizards.net

Erica J. Marceau — Apple Wizards Update

CD-ROM Distribution

We are proud to announce that each issue of Apple Wizards can now be found on the monthly CD-ROMs that accompany Macworld UK  and MacFormat . I owe a big thanks to Gaz, who gave me me some contact email addresses and also did a little PR for us. These magazines are available only in the United Kingdom, but the rest of us still have the option of downloading the current issue from our website or subscribing to the attachment list. However, it's great that our distribution is growing and now includes some "other" countries.

If you'd like to put the Apple Wizards e-zine on a CD or upload it to a BBS, please send an email to editors@applewizards.net before doing so. You will be given permission to do so, and we ask that you do this simply because we like to keep track of increasing Apple Wizards distribution. We answer email quickly, so you'll most likely get an answer the same day.

Apple Wizards Is Doing Well

The Apple Wizards subscriber list just keeps growing, and I have you, the reader, to thank for it. It's you who spreads the word to friends, family, co-workers, etc., about Apple Wizards. It's you who uploads our issues to BBSs and your local area networks. Thanks for helping Apple Wizards be as successful as it is! Keep up the great work.

Feedback to the Writers

The writers at Apple Wizards thrive on reader feedback. It's what keeps us glued to the computer screen when we could be doing other things like homework, cooking dinner, hobbies, or that little thing we call life. If you read a column that you think is great, bad, inspiring, funny, ridiculous, etc. send the author a note about it. The recognition will make him feel good, and the email will be greatly appreciated. The writer will most likely return your email, so you'll get feedback on your feedback!

             Erica J. Marceau
              erica@applewizards.net
              http://members.aol.com/MacSierra/

Contest Information

This month we gave away 12 (yes, 12!) prizes. The winners and their prizes are listed below. We thank all who entered, and wish you luck in future contests. We will also tabulate the results of our contest survey and post the results in a future "From the Desktop."

           WebSpice Winners
              These individuals won the $200 package — WebSpice 1.0 and
              1,000,000! They now have a ton of art to use in presentations, web design, greeting cards, or anything else!

Tom Fitch

Kimberly Lesser

           SiteLink Shareware CD Winners
             These individuals won a free SiteLink Shareware Volume 2
             CD-ROM. It is packed with the latest shareware — everything from extensions to text editors.

W. Scott Street, IV

Chris Sargent

Russell Shallieu

Lasse Hellsten

Gordon Shupe

Sven Hosford

Gene Madill

David Ramos

Andrew Boyle

James Sentman

This month's contest will be a gaming one — we have 3 games to give away. A free copy of Quake, Obsidian, or WarCraft II will be given to 3 lucky winners. All you have to do to enter is visit our website and answer 5 questions! Four are easy and one's a little teaser, so I wish you luck! More info is available on the website, so check it out!

   

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