I made some comments about MS' position in my last post, based on the continued strength of Mac tools in the RSS/Atom subscription space - I figured it qualified for a post of its own. What I said:

Still a lot of diversity there (in RSS/Atom tools), but the thing that pops at me is the high number of Mac accesses - the "thought leaders" in the RSS/Atom sphere are skewed that way. Which is why there are rumbles of Apple talking a serious stab at increasing their OS share, I think. Given the problems MS is having with Vista, they might have a chance. MS is rapidly approaching the state IBM was in circa 1985. The main difference is in their leadership - IBM had empty suits back then, and MS still has Gates (and Ozzie). In the long run, it might not matter much.

I think Microsoft has reached a size - and complexity (in terms of their processes and their products) that the leadership is having huge problems turning the ship. There's only so much that Gates and Ozzie can do, when the premier product - Windows - has become a huge ball of mud with too much crap stuffed into the kernel. Ditto their tool suite, where they've managed to hang themselves via multiple dependencies between their tools (like VS and SQL Server, for instance).

The only saving grace for MS at this point is the raw stupidity of their competition. Sun thinks that their revenues will rise, if only they give more stuff away for free. All the alternatives to MS Office suck eggs, and they have all tried to copy all the worst things about the MS tools. I have news for the ODF fans - an open document format doesn't mean anything if the base tool is horrid - and Open Office is, quite simply, horrid.

The upshot of all this? I think Apple has an opening. Not for dominance, but certainly for growth.