Great. It’s just about the best gadget I have owned. I am looking forward to the ICS update which is going to bring some cool S-pen features as well.
Aside of using Windows and Office at home, at work I use Exchange, SQL, TMG, SharePoint, and several Windows Server services like Hyper-V, IIS, Active Directory and so forth and so on, and in short, it works very well; there’s no way Apple or Google can compete with Microsoft if we’re talking business applications, services and ROI. Anybody remember Novell?
Ah nuts, I misread the question, and clicked on the one I could live without, namely Apple. All I use from them is Itunes, and that only once in a while.
So I wouldn’t miss Apple at all, and I could easily use a different search engine than Google (although I would miss Google Earth). I hate hate hate Microsoft, but it is indispensable for me, not just for Windows, but for Visual Studio.
I’m a Windows user, and i often get annoyed with Apple fans needlessly crapping on Windows, but the bolded section here is just as ridiculous.
If you prefer Windows, like i do, then that’s great. If you like using Windows, and find it works well for your needs, that’s great also. But to dismiss Apple computers as toys and not tools, and to suggest that they have a “penchant for slowing you down,” is the height of silliness.
As for the OP’s question, for me it would be a toss-up between Apple and Microsoft.
I’m a Windows user now, and i also use MS Office products. If a chose Apple, i’d have to switch computers, operating systems, and office productivity software. I could do it without too much trouble, i think, and Apple certainly make great computers, but right now i think my answer would still have to be Microsoft.
While i love Google, basically everything i currently get from Google i could also get, usually quite easily, from somewhere else.
I chose Apple. I think all three could supply me with all I need. The only thing I can think of that Apple doesn’t already have is a search engine, as they use Google. But I’d be fine using Firefox. While I do use MS Office, I think it wouldn’t be too big a tradition to work with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
The main thing though is that Apple’s products are always more intuitive and better designed. It appears that it is easier to come up with products like search or Office than it is to to imbue them with elegant simplicity.
Firefox is not a search engine; it’s a browser. And its default search engine, in most cases, is Google. You could still use Firefox on your Apple, but you’d have to set it to use a different search engine. And you could also use Safari with a non-Google search engine.
Oh this is difficult. I use all of them every single day.
I have to have Microsoft for my business though, so I guess I’ll learn to love bing.
I use tons of Google products all the time (search, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Finance, News, Calendar, Docs). If there was some way I could play my video games on an open source OS, I would say Google in a heartbeat. But I would sacrifice Google to the altar of Microsoft to keep my games.
Out of curiosity: for the people who went with Apple in this poll, what search engine would you use? I guess Yahoo is probably still around… but are there any other options?
Microsoft. It would suck to lose Google, Google Earth, and Android, but I make a living off Excel, so it’s rather no contest.
I don’t use any Apple products as far as know and would definitely miss them the least of the three.
Apple. But I do like gmail and google search… And google docs. And google music. Ok, I guess I need both.
How about Apple for the big stuff and Google for the little?
Where do parallels desktop and similar technologies fall into this equation? I’m assuming we couldn’t run a vm to imitate Microsoft in the necessary Mac scenarios? 
I chose Google.
I cannot think of anything from Microsoft that I currently use, except possibly for Microsoft office. Even then, I can easily switch to Open Office.
I currently use a Macbook Pro and an Ipod. I can switch to some other laptop and use Linux. The Ipod is a bit more difficult to replace, but I’m sure there are other acceptable music players out there.
I use Windows, the Google search engine and Youtube. Giving up Google would mean I’d have to start typing “bing *” instead of “google *” and there’s no Youtube equivalent that I’m aware of that comes close, but without Windows I’d probably lose my games and most of my other “big” computer programs.
I chose Apple, but if I had to, I could get along fine with Microsoft or Google.
I’ll second what mhendo expressed. Macs are just a personal preference for me and these daays Windows is infinitely better than it was in the bad old '90’s. I’m actually looking forward to trying out Windows 8.
Microsoft. I’d miss Google’s search engine for a while.
Microsoft is right out; I’d die of an aneurysm if I were forced to only use Windows.
And my Android does’t care what version of music software I have on my computer in order to activate it. So Google.
I picked Microsoft. The only thing I’d lose is Google search, which sucks, but yeah.
Bing. I use Google/Bing pretty much half & half, and they’re at least equal as far as performance. And Bing has very a very pretty front page. I really like the pictures they use, and sometimes they use video. I try to make it a point every day to go to Bing and see what they’ve put on the page.
Right, I’m aware of Bing, but it’s a Microsoft product. So in the OP’s hypothetical, people who swear their undying fealty to Apple wouldn’t be able to use Bing or Google.