Your observation that Macs and Linux machines outnumber computers running Windows is either humorously incorrect, or an outright lie. I work at a newspaper and the only people using Macs are the graphic designers. The rest of us, the vast majority of the company, use Windows.
You need look no further than any old web stats program to see who is online. (A quick look in Omniture at the stats for our newspaper web site shows that 74.4% of the operating systems are running Windows XP. Only 5.2% are using Macs. And just 3.9% are using other operating systems, i.e. Linux.) Or, for the less tech savvy, check the software shelves and see just how many programs support Macs.
It's really too bad. Your essay is otherwise very well written. It's just not founded in fact.
I work at an R1 research institution. When I attend talks in EE and CS (i.e., the ones attended by the guys doing research for tomorrow's technology), I see essentially nothing but Linux and Mac notebooks. 3-4 years ago it was about 50-50 Linux and Windows, rarely a Mac.
I don't think Graham is disputing that there are a lot of Windows machines out there (in fact, I seem to remember the article explicitly acknowledging this). He's talking about tomorrow, not today.
I'll bet if someone had visited your newspaper 25 years ago they'd have seen CP/M or Wang systems.
You need look no further than any old web stats program to see who is online. (A quick look in Omniture at the stats for our newspaper web site shows that 74.4% of the operating systems are running Windows XP. Only 5.2% are using Macs. And just 3.9% are using other operating systems, i.e. Linux.) Or, for the less tech savvy, check the software shelves and see just how many programs support Macs.
It's really too bad. Your essay is otherwise very well written. It's just not founded in fact.