And to tell the truth, I have seen Macs used in Graphic Design firms here in Korea, but they are the PowerPC kind using Illustrator 8 and PhotoShop 5. G what? What’s a G3? The designers themselves are all using PCs while the Mac collects dust in the corner. I’ve even seen some musicians with powerbooks, but again these are a select few that have spent ALOT of time in North America.

I’m not trying to shoot you down, but the simple fact of the matter is most people will resist change, especially societies raised with confucianism, such as all of Asia. The government wants to move to Linux because it’s ‘free’, but that’s a very small percentage of the number of computers with an even smaller percentage of qualified users compared to the huge number of internet cafes and millions of common people. You’re also talking about a society that thinks nothing of using pirated software. Do you honestly think China gives a sh*t what Microsoft thinks or wants? In my job as a graphic designer/tech/teacher here in Korea, I even encountered quite a few computers still running Win98 that have never even had an update performed, so many in fact, that it’s shocking. There’s not a cafe in Korea, let alone China that is going to take the time to switch to Linux and use Wine to play a game. The time and effort is just not worth it.

As a Graphic Designer, I love Macs just as much as the next designer, as a techie, I’m a Linux guru, but as a teacher, I’m sorry to say that it’s much easier to teach something that is familiar to the student which just so happens to be Windows. When language is a huge barrier, those stupid familiar icons mean everything.

As for Jerry Yang, he may be taiwanese, but where does he live? pretty sure it ain’t Taiwan, last I heard, he was raised in San Jose, California and educated at Stanford so that would make him as American any caucasian. And trends come and go… how long do you think the iPod will last in place where people don’t even know what an iPod is?

And if the internet cafe owners figure their losses using the same approach as the BSA calculates what it calls ‘piracy losses’ (this is not the correct term because ‘to pirate’ something means to take it from one party, thus depriving them of it’s use and sell it to another.) then they will take the customer count on the busiest day they ever had multiply that by the full retail price of one of everything on their food and beverage menu, plus the highest rental fee for a computer, disregarding any ‘combos’ or ‘package’ specials, coupons, discounts, etc, and then add in the anticipated revenue for the vending machines that they are only considering (at this time) installing. Finally, add in another $20.00 because someone once found a twenty dollar bill on the floor that fell out of someone’s pocket.

Do all of that math and you will be astounded at the horrendous losses were suffered by the owners of the internet cafes.

–TG

The IM programs used here is Yahoo messenger and MSN messenger, actually my cousins in North America doesnt know Yahoo Messenger (actually the cofounder of Yahoo.. Jerry Yang is a taiwanese).

And Apple is do used here in the Philippines, for Graphics and video. Linux is widely use for server platform, and universities. Ipod is a trend here.

Not only that, but the software that they do use to surf the net, like IM programs, are made by Asian companies. Ask someone what MSN, AOL or Yahoo messenger are, and they’ll look at you like you’re crazy, since they use programs with such names as Buddy Buddy or NAteOn that are made only for a windows-based platform.

As popular as Apple or Linux are in North America, nobody in Asia, has ever heard of these OS’ and wouldn’t know how to use a computer if you showed it to them with these OS’ installed. Most of these people wouldn’t even know what an Ipod was if it jumped up and bit them in the ass, yet they all own a MP3 player made by Samsung. Why do you think they only have Itunes in Japan? Because that’s the only place in Asian where Apple products are familiar.

Exactly, an internet cafe should only need a few distros of the firefox liveCD for their users to connect to the web and check email. They would also reduce the ‘fudge factor’ that user bring to the table when using a PC.