[Prestidigitweeze]

The annoying thing about journalists' arbitrary subsets of Mac, PC and Linux users is that they render a lot of people invisible. The lost Mac user is one whom both camps now seem to disregard: The professional who bought a Mac solely to be compatible with others in their industry.

Many professionals are now caught between Snow Leopard and Lion; between Mac Pros and whatever consumer-specific tablepal Apple sees as the desktop's inevitable replacement.

Thirty years ago, Apple knew they couldn't surpass Windows in the business market and focused on the arts. They won that round. But now that they've got consumers as their sole focus, both their operating system and their hardware are abandoning the user base who once gave them credibility. Apple seems to be ditching the professional artistic market they helped to create.

Former Mac professionals could find themselves and their businesses migrating to Windows if enough crucial options are streamlined out of whatever OSX/iOS hybrid their current towers and laptops get stuck with. Film and music pros are notoriously conservative about updating software ("no point in fixing what isn't broken"), so people could get another four to six years out of whatever setup they now own without ever upgrading to Lion. But then they might be stuck.

I doubt they'll move to any version of Linux (due to existing incompatibilities, and potential glitches which engineers and production people will do anything to avoid) unless it becomes the last platform that allows for minutiae, variables and user control. That's why I see everything moving to Windows unless Apple decides to re-prioritize.