It's now more than a week since the introduction of Windows 8 and, despite being told how awesome it is by everyone, the people who aren't going to use it are still not convinced.

Yeah, let's be honest. While he supports choice and competition, there's very little chance the Macalope's going to choose to use Windows 8 of his own free will. Any likely scenario involving him using Windows 8 probably involves a Turkish prison. So his critiques of it should probably be taken with a salt-lick-sized grain of salt, which the horny one happens to have on hand, if anyone forgot to bring theirs.

So enough of the critiques of the jarring user experience between Metro and the Windows desktop. Enough jokes about fans. Let us instead turn to the business of Windows 8, which is caught between Steve Ballmer's head and another hard place that's not Steve Ballmer's head. Possibly an anvil, or something else very dense. Like a neutron star.

When Lion was announced, the Macalope noticed how Apple has been squeezing Microsoft on price. $30 a pop? How's a company supposed to pay for huge developer conferences and lobbying the government? Apple figured out how you hobble a software giant: You drive down the price of software.