"I must have known you were speaking about the home market because I had just read the linked article."
Yeah it made more sense in that context and it was also what I was thinking about. I admit I didn't think about workplace use. Not sure if most companies choose Windows because that is what most employees are familiar with.
I think most companies chose Windows:
1) because it's what their IT staff is comfortable with and it's what they advise companies to buy.
2) Unix sysadmins are somewhat more expensive than their Windows counterparts
3) Because there are a lot of applications that run only on Windows. The fact several of them are malware is completely ignored ;-)
4) There is a whole lot of documents that are in Word and Excel and that cannot be reliably converted to, say, OpenOffice. Companies must live with their past.
(burn, karma, burn)
"Maybe the XBox will relegate Windows to the workplace - after all, games have been the most common justification for its existence in homes for a while now."
It's funny, the first time I read your post, this was the meaning I pulled from your phrasing - despite the exaggerations "kill" and "only". I must have known you were speaking about the home market because I had just read the linked article.
I actually think you're on to something. It seems that Windows is losing its grip on the home. Sure, I've heard tales of a few die-hard Media Center PC enthusiasts, but the vast majority probably only need a web browser, a TCP/IP stack, and some implementation of klondike solitaire.
I wonder what the market share of the Mac would look like if you just looked at the segment of the market where a person buys a computer for themselves and/or their family. They seem to have grown there.
We could be in for a historical irony, depending on how things shake out: the rise of the PC in the days of the mainframe happened because non-IT departments (and, in some cases, individuals) could afford to bring a PC into the workplace, ultimately wresting control of computation from the hands of IT departments, who were failing to provide adequate services. In the cubical farm where I work, there are a half dozen people who have decided to just bring their Mac laptop into work every day. And, yes, for work functions.