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While Steve Jobs and Bill Gates may both say the desktop wars are over, don't try telling that to the legions of Windows and Mac partisans hanging around the Web.

Kindled by these advocates' smoldering passions, our recent column on the prospects of Apple's and Microsoft's next major OS revs had the effect of tossing a kitchen match on a pile of oily rags.

Since the resulting flare-up seems to have generated more heat than light on some message boards focused on the companies' platform prospects, we thought it was worth restating our basic premise: If both companies accomplish most of the competitive feats they're contemplating for their next major OS upgrades, Mac OS X will be running a couple of years ahead of Windows by next fall.

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