Somebody did do a ten(?) year update to it with Stephenson's blessing, but from recollection I think they didn't really grok why OS X was so good. They also didn't write as well as Neal, but hey, that's not an especially exclusive group.
It is good and original, but the bits that are good are not original, and the bits that are original are not good.
I recall reading it and thinking "he got that wrong, and that's wrong, and that's wrong, and all of that is wrong" all the way through. I think he was one of those pundits that fundamentally just doesn't understand why people like working with an OS like OS X, they think it is because of some superficial silly reason. Like "consumers like it because it is white and shiny" or "because the UI is pretty".
No no no. A thousand times no. I and everyone I have talked to who uses both, prefer the Mac because Windows is like the death of a thousand papercuts. There is in general no one thing you can point to that is especially horrible (obvious exceptions: Win ME and early Vista and Win CE), but there are a million different things that all add up to an unpleasant experience.
Disclaimer: I used Windows 7 on a decent spec machine recently and it was actually pretty good. But see the above quote about good and original. If Windows is going to end up just copying all the good bits from some other OS, why not switch to that OS now and get the benefits straight away rather than waiting 5-7 years?
