well, is IBM dead?
It seems to me that the word dead really sends people off the edge.
IBM is doing better than they were when they made computers. To give them credit, Microsoft could be in the transitional phase. I mean, can you honestly say that you've never played 20 straight hours of Halo on an XBox? I know I can't.
Call me optimistic or just crazy, but I still believe that Microsoft is a competitor in technological innovation. I think Google will suffer from the same condition that plagued Microsoft during 2001-2005 (massive egos). This will help other companies (including Microsoft) get their footing and potentially launch a comeback (as Apple did).
It seems easy to denounce Microsoft as an evil corporation. It's harder to recognize that they have battles of their own. Remember those antitrust cases? Microsoft was given grief for packaging IE into Windows (let's see, who else packages a wad of their own software into their operating system? hmmmmm.....). Do a search for torrents and you can find the latest Windows (or any windows version). Did geeks believe that stealing someone's hard work was cool? Hell yes. Microsoft is the paranoid old man that it is because we helped put it there while we give graces and laud Google and Apple.
I use a Thinkpad running Windows XP (and Ubuntu).
To address your Apple computer usage by geeks: it's the same problem with most amateur photographers, they still think fancy toys are vital in making a photograph (ie having Mac OSX in no way improves your abilities as a designer).
Like many others have said: stick around and let's see what happens.
Meanwhile, anyone up for a game of ultimate frisbee?