But life is not that simple, and Microsoft derives such immense amounts of money and market clout from the desktop market that it can't safely be counted out even after the Windows 2000 train wreck. So at two years out the crystal ball gets a bit cloudy. These are all fairly imponderable. If this were primarily a technical problem, the outcome would hardly be in doubt. Andy Hertzfeld and other members of the original Macintosh design team have formed a open-source company called Eazel with the explicit goal of bringing the Macintosh magic to Linux.
Computers are tools for human beings.
This path will be long, and it won't be easy. But I think the hacker community, in alliance with its new friends in the corporate world, will prove up to the task.